1. There are so many different browsers you can regression test only so far before you have to say, “We no longer Support IE 4″
2. With the addition of plugin’s to firefox you have no clue what the total environment will be, and there is a slight chance of a user having something “odd” going on.

But where you can control items is in your QA process: Development = QA = Staging = Production.

When I worked at Northrup and developed testing software for the ICBM program we knew that ever aspect of our environments were identical and we never had hiccups (ok once we did, but that was a low level windows configuration).  But for all of our testing I knew that the data in test was only 1 week old compared to production, all the images in staging matched all 3 other environments etc.

If I logged into QA a week before a deploy I knew the page would look exactly how it would show up in production.

Why am I bringing this up? Very simply, it’s hard to test a product when you don’t know if it will match production.  A particular issue I’m referring too is a server configuration that is really out of the hands of development, and really cause a huge SEO headache over the weekend.  What was it? Imagine this you have several top level domains like www.danielcoburn.com and www.bethegamer.com, but for your testing and staging you consolidate onto one domain like: test-daniel.danielcoburn.com and test-gamer.danielcoburn.com.  While you can maintain the data and images like I mentioned you lose one function that you would never look for except for today.

The development crew created a great single sign on for all of our systems, and they would share a cookie with the primary domain, in test no problem, they actually all exist on the same domain, but in production they are now separate cookies that could cause other problems.  And we found one this weekend. After several back and forths with development we figured out the issue and why we were watching pages fall off of Google daily.  The damage was however done, and we are now working to recover.  But at the end of the day the lesson here is to try to get your environments 100% in sync if you can.  If you cannot, be vigilant in your monitoring of your site, you never know when one will bite you, or you might “save the world”

Right now I’m faced with a fiasco of link changes occurring that are being defined by our UE group, vs. Merchandisers or SEO.  A say that with a big side note: the people doing it are doing a fantastic job, had a very good talk with them today, and they are certainly doing the changes with good reason.  But as I explained to them and many other people, if you change the URL and don’t tell anyone about it, you lose all your “friends”

The best analogy would be moving from one house to another.  If you don’t tell your friends how to get to the new address they will never be able to find you.  That exactly how our friends are on the Internet.  If a link points to your page, either from another site or the search engine, you simply lose it, it’s gone bye bye.  So even if you have little link juice arriving at that page you might still have some history and it will be lost.  Remember a little history added up over time increases the amount there, so you don’t want to lose any of it.

What can you do? As the title states, use 301 Redirects.  A 301 lets everyone know that you have a new address.  All my friends know to pass all my birthday cards to the new address, Google knows where to visit me from and at the end of the day we are all happy.

How do you help taxonomists?

1. You work on a tool that will help when they need to make changes.
2. You tell them to stop (not always the best idea, or the most realistic)
3. Make all changes go through and SEO Screen knowing that it will only have slight impact
4. Do what we did at another company we made taxonomy a function of SEO

I think #1 is the easiest short term solution, a tool that allows taxonomist to invoke 301′s when they make changes. Educating them on the potential impact is step 1, step 2 is helping them with tool implementation in order to ensure solid forwarding, step 3 is to limit possible damage, step 4 is to make changes in taxonomy to the SEO better.

We are just starting to really dig into this issue, we’ll see where it goes from here.  ”Do No Harm” is a great mantra, but sometimes you have to make a new cut to get rid of a scar.

In my previous post, I spoke about sitemaps, and those are imperative for you website, if you page isn’t index, it will never be found.  But also if your page isn’t found, what does the search engines see?

Another foundation is to solidify your page not found (404) page and use it for good vs. evil.  Evil is when you simply put a basic screen that says simply ‘page not found’, even worse is to forward it to our homepage.  Where I am currently at we do both! If you type in site.com/blah you go to the homepage, but if you add an extension (site.com/blah.as) you got to a basic page not found error.  These are is bad for a couple of reasons:

1. If a link into your site is mistyped a person can have a bad experience
2. If you have bad links internally you give the wrong information.

So what should a 404 contain?

1. An apology
2. Something that lets the customer know they are on the right page.
3. A search box
4. A link to a sitemap, to help customers and bots find their way.
5. The proper 404 header
6. A link to your homepage

An Apology – I someone got to a 404 page it’s your fault, either you changed a page, typed a link wrong, or have something pointing to your site that is incorrect.  It’s important to let the visitor know it was a mistake and you are sorry for the inconvenience.

Something letting them know they are in the right place – A person that gets a 404 needs to know they are in the right place, either a logo, sites name, or whatever, simple is good, or simply make a 404 page out of your site skin for continuity.

A Search Box – The customer is obviously lost, either by their own fault, your fault, or a third party link fault, but regardless of blame they are their to find somethings, so give them the opportunity to search and get more detailed information on things on your site.  This could be an ideal way to save a sale and get a person back into the funnel.

Link to a sitemap – Giving customers the ability to browse your site vs. search can also work to your advantage, not everyone wants to search, they might just want to browse.  Never a bad idea to give someone a second option on how to find what they want.

Proper 404 header – This is not that important for humans, but it is very important to search engines and analytics software.  Your server needs to send the complete 404 error header when it is delivered to a user.  If it is not configured correctly, it will send a status of 200 which tells the browser and search engine that everything is OK.

Put a link to your homepage -The homepage is one of the most visited pages on your site, and there is a good chance that a customer is looking for that page.  If you have your logo on the page make sure you make it clickable to your homepage, and also give them a link that states something along the lines of “Visit our Homepage”…

1. Turn the power off
2. Press and hold the power button for about 10 minutes seconds
3. Watch a big “W” appear on the TV
4. Reconnect the HDMI cable

This should be good news for people that get a blu-ray player, people that want to hook up their Playstation 3 (PS 3), an HD Connection on their xbox 360.

“Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves.” -Helen Keller

Well a rule of thumb, if you cannot measure it don’t do it!  Simple as that.  If you have online ads, and offline ads, have different ways to measure it.  Of course you cannot control all offline, but you can control a vast majority of online.  If a person clicks on something you know what they clicked on, how many pages they viewed, and if you are advanced enough you can tell what phone number they called and all sales associated with them.

Don’t think that an online marketer isn’t aware of this, make sure you are smart about your money spend and understand that every lead going to your website should be counted as revenue from an online lead so you can analyze your ROI and make educated decisions on what really works and what doesn’t.

As always more later.

But it is important to constantly improve your skills.  I like to search and read blogs all of the time by my counter parts.  Many write lengthy disortations about things, while I have chosen to write smaller snippets.  As time goes on I’ll probably become passionate about a topic and write about it a length.  I might even help some folks understand how certain methods can get them banned from search engines, or put them into the realm of “Grey Hat”.  I’ve intentionally gotten a domain banned from Google just for the heck of it.

If anyone has any questions they can always feel free to write or comment on the blog and I’ll do my best to answer them.  But don’t be spammy, I make sure none of that stuff shows up

Bot’s are blind and can’t see pictures. Help them out make sure you fill out all alt tags. There has been some rumor that GoogleBot gives special weight to alt tags.

Get some sort of analytics program that gives you details on your site. Not analyzing is like trying to thread a needle in the dark. If you don’t know how you are doing, what content is hot or not, how are you going to make the appropriate changes?

A major part of SEM (Search Engine marketing) is advertising. Make sure to track conversions. Try Adsense, YPN, Adbrite, Chitika just to name a few. Get your site visible to the end user. Get that name recognition started.

B: Backlinks and Bold Tags

Get as many quality backlinks as you can. These are the cornerstone to any good seo friendly site. For the dumber bots they lead to your site, for the more complex bots like GoogleBot they are a vote, a link, and a description. They are 50% of rankings. Don’t believe me? Check out this Article from the BBC Google checks what words link to sites, and it essentially cast a vote. At one time Googling Miserable Failure brought up George W. Bush. I knew search engines where smart, but wow that’s impressive.

Bold or Strong tags make your keywords pop. They are a plus 1 for search engine optimization. Having “blue widgets” are cool, blue widgets are nice. Is not as good as blue widgets are cool, blue widgets are nice. Just don’t make it so obvious that you are doing that. Spread your words out and make good sentences and statements.

C: Content, Cache, and Conversions

Content is King, Queen, and even the Joker. Create quality content often, and keep it fresh. Keep the bots coming back for more. The more content the more chances you have to get visitors. At its basic level if you have no content.. you have no pages, and will obviously have no visitors. Doh!

Check your new pages cache frequently, or at least until they become cached .Google Toolbar lets you check to see if the current page has been indexed (cached). How long did they take to show up in the search engines? Which ones showed up quicker, and why? How can you increase the cache time. When where they last indexed? You want to get pages indexed as quickly as possible. Get in the cache.

If you advertise find some way to check your conversion rates. Usually measured as a percentage. What is a conversion. Well it’s when you pay for a visitor and they perform a specific task. These tasks may include purchasing and item, registering for an account, or just viewing a specific page. Most advertisement companies will generate some simple script that you place on the page. When they reach that page then the conversion is made. Drop conversion campaigns that have a high cost per conversion.

D: Digg, Del.Ico, Directory Submit, and Duplicate Content

Digg Del.Ico.us and other social bookmarking sites are a great way to meet, greet, and get traffic. Get to know these sites, submit content often, and traffic should improve.

Submitting to directories with pr 4 or greater is a must. They provide some traffic, and also some extra link juice. Make a goal to submit to at least 1 a week. Also realize some directory submissions may take up to 6 months to get approved. Here is a great list of some SEO Friendly Directories.

Do not, I repeat DO NOT create duplicate content. Don’t have 2 pages with the same content. Canonical content is the same url with and without a www. example. http://mywebsite.com/test.htm is often seen as a totally different site from http://www.mywebsite.com/test.htm This is called Canonical Content. Search engines often are not smart enough to figure this out. The best thing to do is to create Duplicate Content Fixer and add the data to your .htaccess file.

E: Elements and Evolve

Learn Basic (X)HTML Elements/Tags. No matter your level of experience. Learning, or re-learning tags helps. Vary your tags and use proper syntax. Close all element brackets.

Evolve. Once you start getting good search rankings and tracking it’s just begun. You need to constantly evolve. We don’t mean change the entire site, but look at that analytics data. Check your top exit pages. How did you screw them up so that you have such a high bounce rate? Where are people coming from? What terms are you ranking well for and why? What terms are you ranking lousy for? These are all questions you need to ask and understand the answers to.

F: Frames and Flash

Both frames and flash are a no no for seo. Bots see frames as separate pages, and the content in them as a page themselves. They are confusing. Flash is or was until just recently impossible to crawl by bots. You can’t even give it an alt tag it sucks. Stay away from flash if you can help it.

G: Google and Google (noun then verb)

The 7 million pound Gorilla in the room. Set a goal to learn as much as you can about why your competitors are ranking well. Google gets more search traffic than all of its 3 major competitors combined. Wow.

Google your keywords weekly to see where you rank. Something of a warning. Google takes into account the bounce rate… or the number of times a person searches for a term and then returns to search again. This tells them that they didn’t find what they wanted on that url. If it’s a long tail term that isn’t searched for often clicking your site and then searching again for the same term could bear not so positive results.

H: Headings

Learn your <h1><h2><h3><h4><h5> heading tags. They are all really easy. <h1>Some data here</h1> they are the blinking lights on a runway for the bots. They get immediate attention and tell the bot hey this page is organized and is about “blue widgets” or whatever the page is about. Don’t overdue it however. Make sure to use them in order. <h1> Then <h2> etc. then you could maybe <h2> then <h3> etc. It’s very important that you use these. No joke.

I: Italics

Use the <em></em> tags to italicize your keywords making them stick out to users and the bots. When creating a content rich page with I try to italicize my subject (keyword or phrase) a 1x. Usually the 2nd or 3rd time it appears. From what I’ve read bots consider a bold or italicized word important.

J: Javascript

No javascript menu’s. Do not use Javascript in your menus, while they look cool, bots don’t run javascript. They have no way of following those javascript links. Javascript is a SEO No No. Instead use static text links.

K: Keywords

Research your keywords. If you are new to seo or just got dropped off from some planet named mars let me explain keywords. Keywords are searched terms, or phrases. Try some of these cool tools. Use these to find what people are searching for. Put those phrases in your title, description, content, but use them for real. Don’t keyword stuff. Create content that you would want to see when searching for that term. Make the user happy first. Then implement SEO.Tools: Keyword Playground, WordTracker, Adwords Keyword Tool, Seo Book Keyword Suggestion,and SelfSeo Keyword Suggestion Tool.

L: Layout

Whether its a single, double, or tipple column layout. Before you create draw it out on paper and see how it looks. The layout makes the difference between 2 page views and 15 page views per visitor. You want to immerse your user. Put controls or links in normal places, places where you would look.

M: Market Place, Meta Tags, and Apache Mod Rewrite

Research your marketplace. What sells, what’s just a fad, what’s hot, what’s not? Check out Google Trends. It’s an amazing tool that let’s you see exactly that.. trends. Is the marketplace over saturated. Google the term? Are there more than 30Million results? If so it’s probably over saturated. From a SEM point of view it can be very expensive to purchase ads in a over saturated market. Supply and demand. more people wanting ad space mean more expensive ads.

Meta Tags are essential. Description, and Keywords are just a few. Check out this free meta tag generator. Without these your seo sucks. While some people debate over keywords meta, no one argues over description. This is what shows up in the search results.

While search engines are getting smarter every week, it’s still common SEO practice to Mod Rewrite your data. Google Mod Rewrite tutorials if you need instructions. Basically it allows users on an apache web server to make the url more seo friendly. It can turn http://yourwebsite.com/page.php?id=20&content=Cooking+With+Fire&start=true into http://yourwebsite.com/cooking-with-fire.html Since url’s are looked at for content comparison on search engine results you want it to be short and simple. Older bots also have trouble getting over the ? and &. Just like my old grandma and stair, she just can’t get up them, and they confuse her.

N: Niche

Find your niche. Start off in a niche and after you gain trust and traffic then branch out into broader titles.

O: Often

Update content often. When we say this we mean new content, not change the old content. Google knows if your page is stale, they also know their users don’t want last weeks dirty laundry. They want fresh, relevant, content that gives them that info they just searched for. If you update often enough, you can get new content added daily to search engines. As a prime example posts made at the sitepoint forum will show up in google within 3 hours! Google has deemed them a trusted resource for fresh content.

P: PageRank

PageRank is the most visible and misunderstood measurement of a web pages worth. It was originally based off of backlinks when it was created. It was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page. What’s it mean? Not much. Its a decent measurement of a website’s worth, but there are website out there with PR 5 that get 60 visitors a day while some website’s with PR 4 get 6,000. The more quality backlinks the better pr essentially. O yeah people call it PR often in forums. No one knows for sure all the variables but basically the more quality links you have coming in the higher the PR.

Q: Quality and Quicklinks

Create quality content. What’s the point of getting or paying for visitors when they leave after seeing the low quality content you offer. Create quality content.

Make your most important keywords and content available on every page as quicklinks. This will dramatically increase the rankings for those pages. not to many however. Somewhere between 3-10 is appropriate. Any more and you’ll be spreading the link butter to thin.

R: Relevance

Get links from sites that are related to your niche. This is simple, but almost always overlooked. Some mexican horse viagra website linking to your stock tips site isn’t doing you any good. Warning stay away from the mexican horse viagra.

S: Simple, StumbleUpon, and Spelling

Keeping it simple means don’t make pages that are over 200K, keep it minimal. Don’t overwhelm your users with to much animation, ads, or other crap unless you don’t want them to come back. Doing this will also allow users to find what they are looking for. Google only caches about 200kb per page. Much more than that is wasted seo time.

Again hit up those sites like StumbleUpon. A Good stumble can bring you a thousand or more visitors a day.

No one want’s to read crap. Use spellcheck I personally suck at spelling, and this may be an understatement. While writing ABC’s of SEO i’ve mispled atlast 100 werds or more. Spellcheck fixed them however. Search engines take notice of spelling errors and some say even grammar. They check for sentence structure to prevent spammers from creating random content with keywords embeded. Now on a second note sometimes misspelling a commonly misspelled word can help. As people will search for those misspelled terms.

T: Tables, Tweak and Test

Try to stay away from tables. They confuse robots. Robots are dumb little creatures and having to navigate through your <table><tr><td>table</td></tr></table> tags is confusing isn’t it. Try using CSS instead. It takes less code and loads faster. You can float pictures and other content left or right.

Tweak and Test. Make small changes to layouts, content inbound link titles etc. Wait a few weeks for the change. Don’t expect immediate results. Did your page go up or down in ranking? You can always improve.. tweak tweak tweak and test.

U: Underline

Just like the strong and italic tags the underline tag can help give special weight to keywords and phrases.

V: Variation and Validate

Vary or alternate incoming link tags. Don’t have 300 links to your website from other sites saying “blue widget” but have some that say buy blue widgets, free blue widgets, try our blue widgets, widgets blue and so on.

Validate your html or xhtml. Make sure it looks good and doesn’t give the bots a headache. Remember to make it easier on them.

W: Wait

Be patient. Any good seo guru will tell you, unless your site is old and established you need to wait. Keep working, it’s going to take months to rank well.

X: Xchange Links

If you are starting a new website research similar sites and offer link exchanges. It’s not such a good idea if you are established, but if you are new and need indexing, traffic, and to build those inbound links and get your keywords hopping.

Y: Years

When purchasing a domain purchase it for at least 2 years. This helps because the search engines realize hey this guy is in it for the long haul and not just some guy who is going to put up some crap template site with no long term goal. Many black hat domainers will create quick scraper sites and hop from domain to domain. Prove you’re not one. Register for 2 years not 1.

Z: Zesty

Keep content zesty and fresh. Spicy and new. Stay on the cutting edge of your field. Give your users the latest and greatest. Stand out.

Source: howtorank.com