Google’s Traffic Diet PaysTo be honest and in order to share the irony with you, I must admit that I did not come up with this image on my own. The image creator itself is uncertain, but we found it on the University of Minnesota library blog for the biomedical department in a post by Jon Jeffryes entitled “Google for Researchers” and the diet metaphor is richly and rightly portrayed in this and many other aspects, especially in online marketing realms where a good, daily dose of Google traffic is one of the main (and sometimes only) ways new small businesses survive. Online marketing is getting tougher everyday. Google makes it hard to rank organically with it stringent but necessary algorithms. This leaves many little choice but to spend money on an SEO (search engine optimization) consulting service, a pay for click (PPC) campaign, linking campaign in conjunction with or separate from an SEO campaign, or wait, pray and hope that merely building it will in fact mean they will come. Can a website survive on the Internet without getting traffic from Google? The short answer for most online businesses and small business owners using the Internet for their online marketing campaigns is simply, no. That is not to say or discount that many businesses can, and many currently are, enjoy traffic from other sources, namely social media networks, but for the majority of businesses, social media marketing is still more a compliment to their desires to rank in the one Internet traffic source that is still the king of consistent visitors on a daily basis – Google. So Mr. Jeffryes’ find or creation of this image displays applicability across many genres and cliches, to include ours here today – a diet of Google traffic a day does pay!Getting Right with Google While no one knows for sure the undoubtedly very complex algorithms of Google, there are certainly hints and even free Google SEO advice based on their own Google SEO guide and discussions, posts and more hints from the infamous Matt Cutts. While the Google SEO Guide is lengthy, it is certainly a prerequisite to beginning the process of getting right with Google. It only makes sense to read the course syllabus and understand not only the requirements to pass, but the expectations along the way for the best possible grade. Like any course outline or syllabus, this one too has a required reading list, beginning with the Google SEO Starter Guide. Google SEO Starter Guide Highlights Here are some highlights of the guide mixed with our own insights and additions.First, get used to the term “Googlebot” – this is the “robot” or “spider” that crawls the Internet and your website pages gathering information, data, and quality markers for Google to cache and rank in the search engine result pages (SERP).
The first, and obviously very important, thing the Google SEO Stater Guide points out is the need to ensure your title is unique to the page and richly, concisely indicative to the page it represents; keywords of your title will appear in bold when search engine information seekers use those terms in searching. Keep your title from being too length; about 65 characters including spaces.
Make use of your description meta tag. Although Google does not always use this information – it sometimes uses a snippet of the page content or DMOZ directory description – it does sometime rely on it for display in SERP. Descriptions should be short, descriptive summaries of the page it presents or represents; keep to about 160 characters with spaces.
Keep your URL structure user and googlebot friendly by using keyword specific terms where possible but keep them from being too long; keep to a maximum of 75 total characters or use a URL shortening service for posting in social media networks and other places where long URL’s may not be bot friendly.
Create sitemaps for your users and for search engine robots like the Googlebot; an html sitemap for the humans and an xml sitemap for the automated robots coming by on behalf of search engines. Good pages titles with specific URLs and a well structured hierarchy structure will ensure a friendly, easy to follow sitemap for both human and artificially intelligent visitors.
Create smart, friendly 404 error pages should your users get lost. Keep track of legitimate error pages and correct or redirect them.
Provide quality, unique content for your visitors. The importance of quality content cannot be stressed enough. While perfect English, grammar and rhetoric skills are not necessary, good writing mechanics and usage go a long way in keeping your visitors returning and Google impressed.
Optimize images where used; use the alt text attribute to give short descriptive analysis to your viewers what the image is or is about. The same is true for file names – use descriptive words when saving to a logical (/images) and common folder, using common formats (bmp, gif, png, and jpg) that most users will be able to access. Finally, keep your image file size as small as possible for faster loading for readers and better accessing by Googlebot.
Make use of appropriate headings to show your readers important sections of your text and draw careful attention to particular parts, words or messages. Outlining your content with keyword relevant headings helps your readers and your ranking. For a good look at how your website page appears in heading outline you can use the W3C Validator; simply click “more options” and select “show outline” to see this important factor of your website page that is an important, key SEO factor too!
Make good, smart use of your robots.txt file to tell Googlebot and other search engine robots what they should and should not index into their databases for ranking and displaying to the whole of the world wide web.
Make use of free webmaster tools. There are a ton of websites out there and some of them are not only paid webmaster help sites, some of them get down right expensive, but some of the best and easiest to use are the free tool offered by Google for webmasters.These are but a few of the Google SEO starter basic and a cursory glance at them, but when Google tells you how to rank in Google, it’s generally a good idea to pay attention.So On-Page SEO is All I Need? Uh, nice wishing; but, no. A well built site with the aforementioned factors factors kept in mind will have a great leg up in getting recognized, but unfortunately these attributes alone will not readily propel a site to the top of Google’s SERP, especially for high contested and competitive keywords or phrases. At L5DG we put the maximum effort possible to on-page factors as outlined above, where possible, with a great emphasis on content for the user; more succinctly put, we build the foundation right and work our way up.
Tag Archives: services
What Are The Greatest Changes In Shopping In Your Lifetime
What are the greatest changes in shopping in your lifetime? So asked my 9 year old grandson.
As I thought of the question the local Green Grocer came to mind. Because that is what the greatest change in shopping in my lifetime is.
That was the first place to start with the question of what are the greatest changes in shopping in your lifetime.
Our local green grocer was the most important change in shopping in my lifetime. Beside him was our butcher, a hairdresser and a chemist.
Looking back, we were well catered for as we had quite a few in our suburb. And yes, the greatest changes in shopping in my lifetime were with the small family owned businesses.
Entertainment While Shopping Has Changed
Buying butter was an entertainment in itself.
My sister and I often had to go to a favourite family grocer close by. We were always polite as we asked for a pound or two of butter and other small items.
Out came a big block of wet butter wrapped in grease-proof paper. Brought from the back of the shop, placed on a huge counter top and included two grooved pates.
That was a big change in our shopping in my lifetime… you don’t come across butter bashing nowadays.
Our old friendly Mr. Mahon with the moustache, would cut a square of butter. Lift it to another piece of greaseproof paper with his pates. On it went to the weighing scales, a bit sliced off or added here and there.
Our old grocer would then bash it with gusto, turning it over and over. Upside down and sideways it went, so that it had grooves from the pates, splashes going everywhere, including our faces.
My sister and I thought this was great fun and it always cracked us up. We loved it, as we loved Mahon’s, on the corner, our very favourite grocery shop.
Grocery Shopping
Further afield, we often had to go to another of my mother’s favourite, not so local, green grocer’s. Mr. McKessie, ( spelt phonetically) would take our list, gather the groceries and put them all in a big cardboard box.
And because we were good customers he always delivered them to our house free of charge. But he wasn’t nearly as much fun as old Mr. Mahon. Even so, he was a nice man.
All Things Fresh
So there were very many common services such as home deliveries like:
• Farm eggs
• Fresh vegetables
• Cow’s milk
• Freshly baked bread
• Coal for our open fires
Delivery Services
A man used to come to our house a couple of times a week with farm fresh eggs.
Another used to come every day with fresh vegetables, although my father loved growing his own.
Our milk, topped with beautiful cream, was delivered to our doorstep every single morning.
Unbelievably, come think of it now, our bread came to us in a huge van driven by our “bread-man” named Jerry who became a family friend.
My parents always invited Jerry and his wife to their parties, and there were many during the summer months. Kids and adults all thoroughly enjoyed these times. Alcohol was never included, my parents were teetotallers. Lemonade was a treat, with home made sandwiches and cakes.
The coal-man was another who delivered bags of coal for our open fires. I can still see his sooty face under his tweed cap but I can’t remember his name. We knew them all by name but most of them escape me now.
Mr. Higgins, a service man from the Hoover Company always came to our house to replace our old vacuum cleaner with an updated model.
Our insurance company even sent a man to collect the weekly premium.
People then only paid for their shopping with cash. This in itself has been a huge change in shopping in my lifetime.
In some department stores there was a system whereby the money from the cash registers was transported in a small cylinder on a moving wire track to the central office.
Some Of The Bigger Changes
Some of the bigger changes in shopping were the opening of supermarkets.
• Supermarkets replaced many individual smaller grocery shops. Cash and bank cheques have given way to credit and key cards.
• Internet shopping… the latest trend, but in many minds, doing more harm, to book shops.
• Not many written shopping lists, because mobile phones have taken over.
On a more optimistic note, I hear that book shops are popular again after a decline.
Personal Service Has Most Definitely Changed
So, no one really has to leave home, to purchase almost anything, technology makes it so easy to do online.
And we have a much bigger range of products now, to choose from, and credit cards have given us the greatest ease of payment.
We have longer shopping hours, and weekend shopping. But we have lost the personal service that we oldies had taken for granted and also appreciated.
Because of their frenetic lifestyles, I have heard people say they find shopping very stressful, that is grocery shopping. I’m sure it is when you have to dash home and cook dinner after a days work. I often think there has to be a better, less stressful way.
My mother had the best of both worlds, in the services she had at her disposal. With a full time job looking after 9 people, 7 children plus her and my dad, she was very lucky. Lucky too that she did not have 2 jobs.