Improve your Google ranking with Peter Mahoney, 20+ years SEO & Wordpress experience
This is the briefest of posts, because the content is entirely thanks to the wonderful xkcd comic, and it’s pretty damn nerdy.
First person in the comments to exclaim that they get it, and can give some sort of rationale, gets a prize.
via xkcd: Tags.
But like so many things online, as long as you know the basics yourself, there’s a lot you can do with those.
Just adding little bits of code to the Youtube URL for example can have a big effect.
Example:
4. Hide the search box
The search box appears when you hover over an embedded video. To hide the search box add ‘&showsearch=0′ to the embed url.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed a Google UK search for “Peter Mahoney” no longer had me in fourth place. I wasn’t even on the first page.
Second page, fifth down. This sort of thing is normally an absolute disaster for an SEO expert, the sort of thing that gets them mocked on Twitter and thrown out into the void that exists somewhere between success and scrambling about in the pit of people who pretend they know what they’re talking about, but really don’t.
It’s a very full pit.
But since I’d done it on purpose, I wasn’t too worried.
There is so much information online about search engine optimisation (SEO); what works, what doesn’t, what used to but some people still does, what you get penalised for now that most people haven’t cottoned on to—basically a lot of misinformation that can harm your ranking.
This site is my sandpit. It’s where I play with things to find what works, and what doesn’t.
I can now confirm:
I managed to get my ranking back of course, but not just by undoing all the tests I’d tried—I applied an optimised set of tweaks I’ve been working on, and got back the very next time Google spidered my site.
Let me know if you want me to send you up the rankings to, regardless of where you are right now.
I logged into Facebook yesterday to find the list of groups I was a part of was huge. Well over a hundred, some I left years ago, some I barely recognised (short lived in-jokes from 2007) and others I wish I didn’t remember.
I was suddenly a member of every group I’d ever joined, even ones that had been deleted years ago.
Further proof that Facebook really does remember everything we do—forever.
To make matters worse, groups I set up, and had needed to remove people a few people from over the years (for unacceptable behaviour) had all the offenders and their content reinstated.
Facebook have admitted there was a mistake, which on the one hand is positive, at least they’re standing up to say an error was made.
I don’t think they’re being honest about how many people it’s affected. Everyone I’ve interacted with over the past 24 hours has had it crop up. But my main concern is simply that an error like this was able to happen. People who had left groups, private, closed groups, were now able to see all the content since they left.
It was a mistake sure, but mistakes of this magnitude shouldn’t be happening in a company the size of Facebook. I’m beginning to wonder if I test the online communities, sites and systems I’m involved with more rigorously.
After all, I’ve never had a privacy scare. Not one. 🙂
When all is said and done though, and statements are issued and emergency fixed made, here’s my final take on the whole thing:
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/petermahoney/status/274091747422916608″]
I’ve had my profile up there for years, and I’d fleshed it out (past jobs, current responsibilities, photo, all the things that seemed important) but I wasn’t interacting with anyone.
All my colleagues and ex-colleagues were on Facebook. LinkedIn let me post messages and share other people’s updates, but so much less then my other social profiles.
Then I started using it regularly; I just made sure I logged in a couple of times a week. Recommended a couple of people. Wrote to someone I could only find on LinkedIn that I hadn’t spoken to for a while.
Before I knew it I became a regular. And the more I used it, the more people found me. Job offers, professional queries, community discussions, they’ve all become an important part of what I do.
I’ve found even people I do communicate with elsewhere interact differently on LinkedIn. We act in the way we want to present ourselves to our workmates, bosses and clients.
The first is to post directly to it. In this case you’re just giving away your content for free to a massive company. They’ll get the SEO authority for that post, not you. And while you might plan to have a link to your site on the bottom of those posts you give them, links coming out of their website are marked as nofollow, which means they don’t get used by Google (or other major search engines) as a way of passing on authority.
Oh and of course some folks repost, posting the content on the social network and their own site. Which simply leads to duplicate content issues.
The second method is to just post a link to the article as it appears on your site. So you’re sharing a link rather than the text. The trouble again is that those links are nofollow, so you won’t get any SEO juice for it.
But social networks are generally quite protective of their own SEO authority, they’re not in the business of passing that on to anyone who posts on their platforms. SO I prefer that second option, just link back to your own site. Forget about social networks for SEO. But it’s still good to interact with people on them, and hopefully those users might follow a link to your own site – then they’re your audience.
One really positive thing I’ve noticed about LinkedIn though is it’s easy to accidentally give them your SEO authority. SEO authority is a way of referring to the search engine kudos, or points you might have. There are traditionally two ways most people publish content on LinkedIn.
This is the advantage of LinkedIn. Not only can you build your online community, but you can be sure that your interactions on it are going to be framed in a professional manner, and of a higher quality. To this day I’ve not seen a single photo of a kitten on LinkedIn.
Please don’t be the first.
We spend a lot of time worrying about the Data Protection Act (1998) when marketing here in the UK. It’s outdated and therefore unnecessarily restrictive.
It also means there’s a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation flying around about it.
When I worked at the American School in London we sought legal advise as early as 2005, and even then we were told it was impossible to uphold the Act to the letter, and the important thing was to demonstrate that we upheld the “spirit” of it! And that was seven years ago.
The Information Commissioner’s Office is a great place to go for useful information on how the Data Protection Act (1998) really impacts us.
Part of building your online community is that you’re going to want to communicate with them (sorry to state the obvious) and that means the law regarding how you can collect their addresses, and how you can use them becomes really important.
The big question has always been opt-in versus opt-out. Do we need users to give us express permission before we contact them, or can we assume (or even just hope) that they’re OK with it?
Here’s the relevant information straight from the Information Commissioner’s Office. To be honest, it’s better than most people think.
Electronic mail marketing
The most important thing to remember is that you can only carry out unsolicited electronic marketing if the person you’re targeting has given you their permission.
However, there is an exception to this rule. Known as the ‘soft opt-in’ it applies if the following conditions are met;
where you’ve obtained a person’s details in the course of a sale or negotiations for a sale of a product or service;
where the messages are only marketing similar products or services; and
where the person is given a simple opportunity to refuse marketing when their details are collected, and if they don’t opt out at this point, are given a simple way to do so in future messages.
When you send an electronic marketing message, you must tell the recipient who you are and provide a valid contact address.
The rules on emails don’t apply to emails sent to organisations, though you must still identify yourself and provide an address.
The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and Fax Preference Service (FPS) are operated by the Direct Marketing Association, and allow people to register their numbers to opt out of receiving unsolicted calls or faxes. You must not market individuals or organisations who have registered their numbers with the TPS or FPS.
In summary, we recommend that your marketing campaigns are always permission-based and you explain clearly what a person’s details will be used for. Provide a simple way for them to opt out of marketing messages and have a system in place for dealing with complaints.
The difficulty is if you’re starting a mailing list and you already have a database of people you want to put on it. That requires some creative thinking.
via Email & Postal Marketing – Sector Guide for Organisations – ICO.
