Peter Wordpress SEO Expert, Author at Wordpress SEO Expert

What is noindex, and when to use it

June 9, 2014 by Peter Wordpress SEO Expert

“noindex” is a simple setting you can activate for any page on your site that instructs search engines not to scan it.

Using WordPress you’ll usually find this on each page and post in the Dashboard, in the settings for whichever SEO Plugin you use (All In One SEO pack, Yoast, etc.).

Most other content management systems will have their own setting, or if your site is totally bespoke you can add this to the code in the <head> section:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow” />

Why would you want search engines to ignore a page when they come to index your site?

There are many reasons actually, but the most common is duplicate content. If you have two pages on your site that have similar content, you want to mark one as noindex so it doesn’t appear as though you’ve stuffed your site with multiple copies of the same thing.

Google and the other major engines see duplicate content as an attempt to make your site look fuller than it really is, or to have stolen content from elsewhere to try to fill your site up quickly, without much thought, and very little originality.

The other time to definitely use nofollow is if you have used a significant portion of content from another site. Sometimes there is a legitimate reason to grab content from elsewhere and publish it yourself, but you should always stop it from being indexed.

Now, before you get too excited and think “I’m fine, I’ve not got anything on my site that exists elsewhere at all”, let me ask you about your Terms and Conditions. Did you have those written from scratch? Or are they standardised, lifted from another site, or based on a template?

noindex them. Even though they’re just the legal bits, you don’t want Google to have any reason to think your site has a predilection toward duplicate content.

I love SEO

June 3, 2014 by Peter Wordpress SEO Expert

It’s true. I love search engine optimisation.

That might seem an odd statement, because surely SEO is just background processes that help bushinesses get an edge, right?

No, as a matter of fact. It has that effect, which is incredibly useful to anyone with an online presence. But it also helps create a “cleaner” world wide web. It helps streamline the internet, making things easier for every one.

SEO helps make sure your site is found by people actually interested in what you’re selling. From that person’s perspective, it’s made their time online easier.

It also helps force us to make better websites, and better content. You need to be writing for the web properly, you need to be as concise as possible without coming across as terse, and most of all you need to communicate carefully, thoughtfully and strategically.

SEO makes the web a better place. And done well, it makes you more money as well.

Buying backlinks

April 22, 2014 by Peter Wordpress SEO Expert

a.k.a. Why it’s best to follow my advice. 🙂

I talk a lot about the importance of doing SEO properly, and not trying to cheat the search engines.

Of all the tricks out there, the most tempting by far is buying backlinks.

Google wants lots of sites to link to us, right? So let’s just get some and get moving up those rankings!

Terrible, terrible idea.

A client of mine bought some from a seller claiming to be Google safe, Panda safe, Penguin safe, PR10, quality links.

But you can’t be Google-safe. All that will ever mean is they haven’t caught you (or the system being used to generate your links) yet. But they’ve been promising for a decade that they will, and more often than not, they do.

The image above is a bit small, but I’m sure you can pinpoint when they bought the so-called “safe” links.

Their sales fell proportionately.

Rearranging my menu, dropping the “Home” link

April 16, 2014 by Peter Wordpress SEO Expert

I’m beginning the process of moving my menu around, which includes dropping a few pages, adding a couple more, and essentially trying to drive visitors towards the products I’m most interested in selling.

As part of the process I’ve dropped my “Welcome” link, which went back to the homepage. Users can still return there by clicking the main site title—but I’m interested to see what happens if I “squeeze” my menu to just the most important bits.

What’s the point of having a link back to the home page anyway? In my case it’s an overview, and I want people to get to the nitty-gritty, and become clients.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Queen’s “Greatest Hits”

April 10, 2014 by Peter Wordpress SEO Expert

What do you blog about when business is slow?

Most of us get inspiration for our posts from what we’re doing professionally. Recent successes, new clients, examples of our work…but what to say when not a lot has been going on?

Dave Burnett is an Essex based wedding photographer I work with, and he sent me this excellent article this morning:
What to blog about when business is slow

Understandably, it’s about the photography business. But there are ideas in there for us all.

Musings
Our greatest hits (the best work of the year before)
Things we want to achieve (our dreams)
Explain concepts from your industry

Whatever you do, avoid the temptation to write about having nothing to write about. I enjoyed Queen’s “Greatest Hits” far more than I would have a lonely press statement saying they contractually had to release something.

New site: Essex Wedding Photographers

March 25, 2014 by Peter Wordpress SEO Expert

Every now and then I launch a new site and I really am just in love with it. This is such a project!

David Burnett from Image Control Photography wanted an update for his site, which was based on a very well-known (but it turns out not cross-browser compatible) WordPress theme. He works in the hotly contested wedding photography market, and needed to stand out from the crowd.

I made one myself that is a lot more dependable than the one he bought off-the-shelf.

Obviously, I’m more of a red and black person and the colour scheme might not be to my personal tastes—but everything is well laid out, easy to read, fully responsive (even on Windows Mobile IE) and has a good mix of high quality photography with text.

I’m going to have a glass of wine to celebrate this one.

imagecontrolphotography.co.uk

PS, Dave, my one confession is for some reason, the way I type doesn’t allow me to ever spell “photography” correctly. So if you find any references in the site to “photogrpahy”, that’s entirely my fault.