Make your site easier to navigate

The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can
also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important. Although
Google's search results are provided at a page level, Google also likes to have a sense of what role a
page plays in the bigger picture of the site.

All sites have a home or "root" page, which is usually the most frequented page on the site and the
starting place of navigation for many visitors. Unless your site has only a handful of pages, you should
think about how visitors will go from a general page (your root page) to a page containing more
specific content. Do you have enough pages around a specific topic area that it would make sense to
create a page describing these related pages (e.g. root page -> related topic listing -> specific topic)?
Do you have hundreds of different products that need to be classified under multiple category and
subcategory pages?
The directory

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URL structure

• Use words in URLs - URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure
are friendlier for visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be
more willing to link to them.
Avoid:
• using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs
• choosing generic page names like "page1.html"
• using excessive keywords like "baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.
htm"
• Create a simple directory structure - Use a directory structure that organizes your content
well and is easy for visitors to know where they're at on your site. Try using your directory
structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.
Avoid:
• having deep nesting of subdirectories like ".../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/
page.html"
• using directory names that have no relation to the content in them

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Different types of SEO

This guide covers all major aspects of SEO, including:

• content SEO
• analytical SEO
• performance SEO
• Technical/HTML SEO
• Image SEO
• Off-site SEO

Where possible I will demonstrate techniques (or refer to other articles) with verifiable SEO
examples that you can look at on Google.

Content SEO

Content SEO refers to the techniques you can use to help content appear higher in the SERPs
(Search Engine Results Pages).
How to implement content SEO: Content SEO requires you to know which SEO keywords and
phrases you want to target. This in turn means you need to do some SEO keyword research before
sitting down to write.

The following articles tell you everything you need to know about content SEO:

• Anatomy of a blog post: How to get more traffic and s ocial engagement from your content
• Killer SEO tip: How to make the long tail pay

What's new in content SEO: Google's Panda and Penguin algorithm updates hit a lot of sites. Not
all of the updates affected content SEO - Penguin focused on spammy backlinks, for example.
However, almost all of Google's updates are designed to improve the quality of the content returned
by their search. Quality! That's the new buzzword. Good content SEO starts with high quality
content that is useful, engaging, valuable or entertaining.

Analytical SEO


Analytical SEO makes use of traffic analysis through an analytics service like Google analytics. By
analyzing the sources, demographics, browsing patterns and conversions of organic search traffic, it
is possible to improve your SEO strategy.

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Small business SEO ROI calculation

For the purposes of the ROI (Return on Investment) calculation for small business SEO, we'll make
a few assumptions about the amount of traffic clicking through from Google (feel free to modify
these if you think they are different).

In both cases, we're looking at the traffic generated by results appearing on the first page of Google
that's the whole point of proper SEO after all.
To make the maths easy, let's assume that Google generates 100 000 impressions for your keywords
each month.

We'll also say that the ADV is $5 and that the conversion rate is 2%.
Top of 1st page results:
Monthly value of SEO = 100 000 x (20% click through) x $5 x 0.02 = $2000
Bottom of 1st page results:
Monthly value of SEO = 100 000 x (3% click through) x $5 x 0.02 = $300
The difference between ranking right at the top of the first page in organic search results, and at the
bottom of the first page is considerable. So the margins for error in SEO are very thin - second page
results may generate no traffic at all (depending on the popularity of the keywords).

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Weekly SEO top 5

This SEO list for bloggers and small business will show you five things you should do at least once
a week in order to ensure that your blog or website is driving as much Web traffic as possible.
In many cases, the SEO or search optimization related tasks mentioned in this list should be
performed more than once a week.

1. Create content
Add content to your site at least once a week. If you rely on revenue from the Internet then it is
definitely worthwhile creating content on a more regular basis, as a high authority, highly ranked
niche website can bring great ROI (Return on Investment) online.
New content must be original and relevant to your blog or business niche. In addition, you might
consider doing some SEO keyword research to further enhance the rankings of your content in
search.

2. Monitor analytics
Analytical data, provided by a service like Google analytics, can tell you a great deal about how a
blog or website performs. In particular, it is important to pay close attention to the following
aspects:
• Overall traffic volumes: This metric can provide strong evidence for how well or poorly
various marketing and SEO efforts are paying off.
• Traffic originating from organic search: This provides insight into how well your blog or
website ranks in the SERPs( Search Engine Results Pages).
• Top content: This can tell you which posts bring the most traffic and allows you to tailor
advertising or marketing on these pages, or work to help other pages move up in the
rankings.
• Conversions: If you have set goals, analytics can provide data about how well your blog or
site is converting traffic to meet predefined objectives, such as newsletter signups or product
purchases.
• Bounce Rate: A high bounce rate may indicate poor or confusing web design, or poor
quality content. A low bounce rate is a good indication that your blog or site is engaging
readers well.
To learn more about analytics and how to use analytical data, I recommend reading the following
articles:
• Five awesome tips to extract valuable SEO secrets from Google analytics data
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• How to double your search traffic using SEO, Webmaster t ools and Google analytics
• Five ways to make more money using analytics

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SEO and Internet marketing diversity

So here it is, based on the current state of search, SEO and social, we can make some pretty
powerful deductions about how to move forward with the best SEO and Internet marketing strategy
possible.
The keywords for small business SEO and marketing in 2012 are diversity, authority, and
engagement.
Content diversity
Content needs to be diversified to cater for different needs now that direct product sale conversions
are likely going to diminish with Google's product search taking the majority share of the pie.
Community discussions, reviews, human interest articles are good ways to get around Google
product search and still offer value to readers, with the potential to convert.
SEO and Internet marketing diversity
Don't put all your faith in SEO. It's not clear what effects knowledge graph and product search will
have. Combine that with the current algorithmic fluxes and, while SEO is hugely important, you
should agree that having all your eggs in the proverbial SEO basket is probably not prudent.

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