Your Search Engine Optimisation Expert – Sheldon Nesdale

If you research this question online you will find that people are divided into 2 camps:

1. Half think that Google does take clean urls into account when it calculates the rank of your website
2. Half think that Google treats clean urls the same as url’s with query strings

(For the record, I am in camp 1).

But we are asking the wrong question(s).

The right questions are:

• “Do users care about clean urls?”
• “Do they find them useful?”
• “Does it improve usability?”

Perhaps it is true that Google doesn’t mind whether the url is clean or a query string when it is calculating ranking, but I think humans care A LOT.

When you do a search, you’ve noticed that the keywords you used in your search are bolded wherever they appear? Well keyword rich urls get bolded too and that is another indicator to the visitor that your site is the one they should visit.

Everytime you get a click and that person doesn’t click “Back”, Google thinks “aha! I sent you to the right place!”, and that’s when you can climb up the rankings.

So if clean urls are good for the user, they are good for Google because Google wants what the searcher wants – to send them to the right website.

I think clean urls are worth it whatever the cost.

Everytime I have recommended clean urls to customers, and everytime I have changed over to clean urls on my websites, the web traffic has doubled over a 3 month period.

Users love them.  And so Google will value them more and more over time.

Need more fantastic Search Engine Optimisation tips like this?

Call me on (07) 575 8799 or email me.

- Sheldon.

Did you know that Google’s robot crawler can pretty much only read text?

It doesn’t see your pretty images, or flash, or javascript.

It only sees text.

Google has just added a new feature to Webmaster Tools that shows you exactly what GoogleBot sees.

To use Webmaster Tools you will need to sign up, and verify you own your website.

Then you can find it under the “Labs” tab, click on “Fetch as Googlebot”.

What will you see?

1. You’ll see the html source of your webpage (which you can do using your browser by clicking on “View Source”)
2. Response code (Eg 200 which means everything is fine, or 301 which means “temporary redirect”)
3. What type of server your website is on (Eg Apache or IIS/Windows)
4. Any scripts or CSS files which are called and included

Boring?

Yeah it is actually.

How you can use that to improve your Search Engine Optimisation

The point I want to make is that Google gobbles up text for breakfast.

• So if your main navigation is javascript, Googlebot probably can’t read it
• If you have text in your images, Googlebot can’t read it
• If you have keywords in your meta title, meta description, headings and content, you’re on to a winner.

Have no idea what I’m talking about?

4 Things You Can Do to Improve Your Search Engine Optimisation:

1. Free SEO Review of Your Website. Get tips to improve the search engine friendliness of your website, for free
2. The Search Engine Optimisation E-Book. Learn how to do SEO yourself with this low-cost ebook
3. Customised SEO Report for you and your website. Find out exactly what you need to do next to improve your Search Engine ranking
4. Search Engine Advertising with Google Adwords. Find out how you can buy a steady stream of pre-qualified prospects to your website

What does “Bounce Rate” mean?

When a visitor land on a page on your website but doesn’t click on anything – this is called a “bounce”.

“Bounce rate” is the percentage of your web visitors that bounce off your website without clicking on anything.

What is an example of a high “bounce rate” and what does it mean?

As a general rule, a high bounce rate is 50% and above.  So that means 50% of the visitors to that webpage didn’t click to visit other pages of your website.

Every website will have a different average bounce rate. Some of my websites have a 25% bounce rate and some have a 75% bounce rate.

The website with a 75% bounce rate is very well optimised for several common terms such as “whiteware for sale”, “freezers for sale” and it attracts visitors from all over New Zealand.  But I have made it very obvious to visitors that the target market for this website is Hamilton only, so visitors not in Hamilton quickly leave and look elsewhere which counts as a “bounce”.  So in this example, a 75% bounce rate is not a concern.

Why do people “bounce” off a page?

1. They were looking for an answer to a question and your webpage gave them the answer so they left
2. Your webpage didn’t answer their question, and so they click “back” in their web browser to try somewhere else
3. The visitor was just browsing and nothing caught their eye so they left

2 Reasons To Care About Your Bounce Rate

1. You are wasting your money. If you are paying for visitors to your website (eg using Google Adwords), then you are wasting your money if your webpage is bouncing them.
2. You are wasting an opportunity. If these visitors are “organic/free” from Google, then you are wasting an opportunity at scoring a goal, so don’t waste this chance.  Review the content of your landing page.  What can you do to make your visitors take action?

How do you choose a webpage to improve?

You can choose problem pages that need attention by comparing the average bounce rate for your entire website to the bounce rate for individual pages.

Evaluate the pages with a higher bounce rate first.

You may find it interesting to use Google Analytics to determine the referring source of the visitors to each webpage and see if any particular source is generating a disproportionally large number of bounces.

5 Things You Can Do To Reduce Your Bounce Rate

1. If your are using Google Adwords, review the content of your Ad.  What promise are you making? What is the visitor expecting to see when they click on your ad and view your landing page? (I can help you to optimise your  Google Adwords advertising and stop you wasting your money)
2. Review the content of your landing page
3. Ask yourself: “What is the purpose of this webpage?”
4. Ask yourself: “What do I really want to say?”
5. Ask yourself: “What action do I want the audience to take?”

In Conclusion

It is not useful to compare bounce rates between websites. It is most useful to determine the high bounce rate pages on your website and work on improving them.

If you use Google Adwords you may be aware that you have the ability to specify where in New Zealand your ads will be displayed.

For example, if you had a small Tauranga business and you were only targeting local customers in Tauranga, then you could choose “only Tauranga” from the list.

In fact, you can even draw a circle around a single building or a city block and just get your ads to appear on computers in that area.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work.

It’s a real shame.

It doesn’t work, because New Zealand’s IP address system is all screwed up.

Anybody in New Zealand can have just about any IP address so it can’t be used to accurately determine the geographic location of computer you are using.

It’s easy to test.  Use this IP address lookup.  Does the map pin point to Auckland even though you are not in Auckland?  I thought so. There’s your proof.

It’s a damn shame.  Imagine being able to target your customers that accurately…

Oh well, I know a few tricks to compensate, so call me on (07) 575 8799.

- Sheldon.

Have you wondered how Google decides how high your position is for your ad and how much it will cost you?

This video explains the process in a simple and entertaining way:

Do you need help with your Google Adwords campaign or want to start advertising using Google Adwords?

Call me today (07) 575 8799 or email me.