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Artwork is signed because it matters who created it

January 29, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I’ve mentioned a few times on here that I’m not a fan of companies that put a “designed by” link in the footer of websites that they create. Google clearly says not to do it, and putting a link there is entirely for the (misguided) advantage of the designer, to the detriment of the site they stick their link on.

One reaction that I sometimes hear about this is that it’s “like an artist signing their painting”, and that the customer should be proud to have worked with that agency. It’s an interesting concept, but I disagree on a few counts:

  • It’s not helping the client site to sell more of their product. No one is going to visit the site, consider making a purchase, see “designed by Acme” in the footer, and then decide that they’re reputable enough to trust.
  • A signature on a painting increases the value of it, while a link in the footer doesn’t.
  • Not only does a footer link fail to increase the value of the site, it actually decreases the value.

I’m noticing that this happens less and less frequently, which is fantastic, but it’s still not acceptable when it does. If you have a “designed by” link at the bottom of your site, you should try to determine if the company that did it is either ignorant of how search engines work, or if they’re shady enough to be ripping you off.

Filed Under: SEO, Trust, Websites

Why should your website rank higher than theirs?

December 19, 2023 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a friend and he was upset that his site wasn’t ranking first on Google for a particular keyword. We ran the search, and sure enough he was in fifth. I proposed a very simple challenge: click the top ranking, and then tell me if his site really deserves to rank higher.

In this case it was incredibly clear. His page for this keyword consisted of one sentence of text and a small photo gallery, while the top ranked site had a more text, photos, testimonials, and other great information. I told him that if I were Google, I’d absolutely leave that other site ranked at the top. He reluctantly agreed.

You can do the same.

If you’re being outranked for a particular search term, look at the pages that rank ahead of you and then make your page better than the ones at the top. Most of the time it’ll take some effort to simply match the top page, but go further. Give your page more info, better photos, clear calls to action, incredible resources, fast loading times, etc. Make it so it’s not even close.

There are certainly times when the top ranked page really isn’t very good, and figuring out why can be frustrating. In most cases, though, the work you need to do in order to take the top spot is pretty clear and you simply need to put in the effort to get there.

Filed Under: Content, SEO, Websites

Marketing isn’t magic

November 20, 2023 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago that was working with a new company. That company had been outsourcing their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) work to another firm for a few thousand dollars a month, but it was unclear exactly what that other firm was doing.

When asked for details on what work was being done each month, they were denied and derided for daring to ask such a question. I don’t know the details of that situation, but I’ve seen similar before where companies were “doing SEO” for company but didn’t disclose what they were doing. Short answer: usually not much.

Marketing isn’t magic. Even SEO, which can be a little complicated at times, includes tactics and practices that are easy to define. If you’re working with a firm that doesn’t disclose details (even for “proprietary secrets”), you need to break ties with them immediately. The lack of transparency is not acceptable, and often means they’re hiding something — usually the fact that they’re not doing much work for the client.

When it comes specifically to SEO, it’s pretty straightforward, though it can take a good bit of work to keep it going strong. In most cases it includes:

  • Keyword research to determine what specific phrases to go after.
  • Work on the technical side of the website to make sure nothing is badly broken. This can take some time, but it’s not an ongoing expense aside from baseline security after a point.
  • Generating strong content. This is often the bulk of the work, and companies deserve to be paid well if they’re doing a good job, but it’s not a secret.

Don’t let companies hide what they’re doing. Good marketing takes effort, but there’s no magic secret to any of this stuff. Follow best practices, know your audience, produce great content, measure the results, and repeat.

If a company says “We’re going to do A, B, and C for you every month for $x,xxx“, that’s awesome.

If they say “just trust us“, don’t.

Filed Under: Content, Marketing, SEO, Trust

Branded searches matter too

October 10, 2023 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

When companies invest in SEO (Search Engine Optimization), their main focus is on unbranded terms. For example, if you’re a roofer you might be trying to rank for things like “roof replacement”, “roofing in Marietta” and other terms like that. This is a fantastic approach, but it often overshadows the value of focusing on your branded searches.

Branded searches are when people search for your name specifically. Rather than searching for a generic marketing firm by using things like “website design companies” or “marketing firms in Marietta”, one might search directly for “GreenMellen”. This is gold, and should not be ignored. The goal of every business should be to be the answer for a problem. If someone finds us via “website design companies”, that’s great; if they find us via “GreenMellen” because they’ve heard we’re the solution for their problem, that’s 10x better.

The good thing about branded search results is that you should do fairly well without much effort. If you have a unique business name, your website should come up first without much effort (unless you mistakenly left the magic checkbox checked, or you got too cute with your name).

However, there are some things you can do to help further:

Google Business Profile

Make sure to claim your Google Business Profile listing, as well as related listings at Yelp and other industry-specific sites.

Schema

Adding structured markup / schema to your site can help a bit, and often will get Google to show a little more info about your business when someone searches for your name.

Claim and be active elsewhere

Adding more sites that you control to the top of your Google results is a great way to strengthen your branded search results. Here is a good example using personal results, but the same applies to your business. The more results that you can control, the better.

I’m certainly not advocating that you stop worrying about unbranded SEO, as that can be a great source of traffic for your site. Over time, though, you should get increasing amounts of branded search traffic as your company becomes more well-known and respected, so keep an eye on those results and make sure you’re looking as sharp as you can.

Filed Under: Content, SEO, Websites

SEO hasn’t ever really changed

July 12, 2023 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

If you’ve ever done work on your website to improve your search engine optimization (SEO), and you’ve done it in a legit way, the techniques really haven’t changed much over the years.

Google’s Danny Sullivan recently tweeted (via SE Roundtable) that very thing with two comments.

First, he simply said: “Our good advice then remains the same over two decades later. To succeed in Google Search, focus on people-first content.“

Second, he shared a screenshot of Google’s quality guidelines from way back in 2002:

I’ve made the argument for years that Google isn’t changing the rules on us, but they’re simply getting better at detecting and dealing with spam. If you’ve found some creative way to trick Google, they’ll likely find a way to stop it. However, if you simply generate high-quality content that is useful for people, that remains the main thing that Google wants to see.

Google has made a few small shifts over the years, adding emphasis for mobile devices and website security (both of which were irrelevant when they started in 1998), but the core is still the same — make pages for users, not search engines.

The future could be a bit cloudier, as AI is going to disrupt SEO in a few major ways (more AI-generated content, as well as AI-powered search results), but there is no need to get away from the core tenants of what Google is saying. Produce great content for humans, and you’ll do pretty well in search.

Filed Under: Content, SEO

Location pages are no longer helpful for SEO

May 10, 2023 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Nearly a decade ago, I wrote a post explaining how Google doesn’t really change the rules when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). While they change the algorithm quite often, virtually all of those changes are simply to tighten up what they’ve been telling us for years.

Now they’re coming after useless “location pages” on websites, and it’s about time. These are the pages you’ll see on some websites, often for home services like plumbing and electrical, that have dozens of pages that are virtually identical. All of the pages will have the same basic content, just swapping out $city_name on each page. Here’s an example list of those pages from a site:

Google is rightfully cracking down on those, as they provide no real value to users. There is still a chance they could work well if you take time to custom create unique content on every page, but even that is likely to fade in the coming months.

As with most changes, there is some good and some bad. At the most basic level, this means that you can no longer rank as well in other cities, but it also means that your competitors in those other cities can’t rank as well in yours.

What to do?

There’s not a lot you can do, as Google doesn’t want you to rank in cities where you don’t have a true presence, but there are still some actions you can take. Search Engine Land has a good list from a few months ago, including these two ideas:

Local newspaper press releases
Reach out to local newspapers in the surrounding areas and issue a press release.

Brag about your company regarding a past or upcoming charitable contribution or discount you give. Newspaper and local publishing sites typically link back to your website.

Join multiple local Chambers of Commerce
These typically have an annual fee associated with each one you join, but each city you or your client is targeting has one.

If it’s in your budget, join them for the location-relevant links and geographic authority.

For now, it seems you’re pretty safe to leave them on your site as the only real downside is that Google will just remove them from their index, making them useless but also harmless. That may change over time, though, so my advice would be to start removing them now to avoid any potential penalty in the future.

Filed Under: SEO, Websites

Hashtags are just words

March 13, 2023 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

You’ll find hashtags on almost every social media platform, and occasionally on some websites. While they can be very helpful in certain cases, they tend to be wildly overused.

First, they almost never help with rankings. If you include the hashtag “#DigitalMarketing” in a post of yours, the only value that brings is if other people search for that specific hashtag on that platform. Do you often search for hashtags? Most people don’t.

Here’s an example of a post with a bunch of hashtags added in, ironically going against the point of the post.

There are a few cases where hashtags can be awesome, like for an event or conference. For example, at the WordCamp Atlanta conference this fall, attendees will be encouraged to use the hashtag #WCATL on social media. You can search that hashtag and find stuff posted from other people at the event. Fantastic!

Google?

Where this gets interesting is when people cram in hashtags to show up more often on a network. Unless people are literally searching that hashtag, there is no value. Further, this is now happening on some websites, with the same result.

Suppose there were two companies that built decks. One included the text:

“We use the latest composite decking material.”

The other:

#decking #material #composite

While both have the same words, Google would clearly favor the first one because it’s likely to be a better result for humans to read.

In fact, Google’s John Mueller said this very thing in a tweet a few weeks ago. When talking about hashtags, Mueller said:

when it comes to web pages in Google Search, hashtags are just words, they have no special meaning or effect.

If you have a solid reason to use a particular hashtag in a social media post, go for it (and make sure they’re CamelCase). In the right context, they can be great. If you have no good reason, though, let your message stay clear by leaving the hashtags out of it.

Filed Under: SEO, Social Media

AI is going to kill SEO

February 25, 2023 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

It may take quite a while, but peak SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is behind us, and the relevance of it will only go down from here. That’s not to say that SEO isn’t important, as it still can be a major source of traffic for many sites, but the value will slowly erode over the coming years.

There are two main reasons that:

Too much content

With users able to generate content on the fly, the amount of content on the internet is going to soar. While AI-written content isn’t perfect, and can often be detected by Google, both of those will fade soon. As AI-written content gets better, it’ll be harder to detect and avoid.

Fewer websites in search results

As the major search engines start implementing chat-like interfaces that give direct answers, there will be less of a need for users to click through to other websites for more information.

Wired put it this way: “web users spend more time with bots and less time clicking links, publishers could be cut off from sales of subscriptions, ads, and referrals.“

Related, the Verge said: “But if I ask the new Bing what the 10 best gaming TVs are, and it just makes me a list, why should I, the user, then click on the link to The Verge, which has another list of the 10 best gaming TVs?”

SO instead of SEO

As shared by Search Engine Land, perhaps it’s time we stop talking about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and just talk about SO (Search Optimization). In particular, the search features on most social networks are becoming more and more robust, so positioning your content to show up in those search results is becoming increasingly valuable.

It’s not time to freak out yet, as traditional SEO is still very strong and will be for a while, but it’s time to start looking at what’s next. As always, the more you can position yourself so that people search for you instead of your service (as in, someone searching for “GreenMellen” instead of “website development”), the better off you’ll be through anything that comes next.

Filed Under: AI, Business, Content, SEO

Keyword-rich domain names can cause problems

February 23, 2023 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

It’s long been known that keyword-rich domain names don’t really help with search rankings. If your site is “www.cheap-used-cars.com”, you’re not going to rank better for “cheap used cars” simply due to the domain name.

That said, I never really saw much downside to them. They don’t help, but they don’t hurt. However, Google’s John Mueller recently pointed out some reasons why they could cause some problems, and I found his thoughts rather insightful. Here are a few things he shared.

Spam: Those names can look spammy, which is never good.

Business Focus: If your site is “cheap-used-cars.com”, it’ll be weird if you try to add other services like vehicle repairs or tire services.

Nothing To Search For: Perhaps worse, it’s hard to search for you. If someone searches for “cheap used cars”, you might be in the list somewhere, but you might not be. If you had a more conventional name, you’d be easier to find. It’s similar to companies that got cute and put “near me” in their name, but now they’re simply difficult to actually find if you’re looking for them.

The last one is the killer for me. As a business your main goal shouldn’t be to rank high for unbranded terms (like “cheap used cars”), but to have people intentionally search for you because of your reputation. If you get fancy with names like this, people might want to find you specifically and struggle to do so because Google interprets your company name as a string of keywords instead.

This isn’t a problem I see much of anymore, but I thought it was a neat insight into some previously unknown drawbacks to those types of domain names.

Filed Under: SEO, Websites

Who can see your website right now?

October 24, 2022 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I’ve come across two very different website visibility-related situations in the last few weeks, and I thought they were interesting cases on how Google is able to see your site. They’re both related to “the magic checkbox” being misused.

The first is with a friend of mine. They’re building a new site with another company, and I was curious how things were coming along. Their current site is, let’s say, “theirwebsite.com”. The new site is being constructed at “hidden.theirwebsite.com”. The problem is that the word “hidden” is meaningless by itself — you need to literally tell Google not to visit the site, which they failed to do. As a result, the site is completely open to Google and is being indexed as we speak, which is how I found it. This is foolish, and will likely lead to some negative impacts on their current site.

It’s like when Michael “declared bankruptcy” on The Office; you need to do more than just say it out loud.

The second story was more public, and more troublesome. An Arizona GOP Secretary of State candidate was furious that Google wasn’t showing his site in their search results. He referred to them as “crooks” with their “deep state algorithm”, that “deplatformed” him with their “censoring”. Here is a sample tweet of his:

The reason, of course, was the magic checkbox. His team had checked the box in WordPress that said “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” and, well, they did!

Google even responded directly to him, explaining what he did wrong and how he can fix it.

This points to some deeper problems at play with him here, involving either poor communication, a lack of trust, or simply a lack of competence. In his case, it almost feels like it was intentional and he really wanted to play the victim, because even after he was clearly shown the reason why, he continued to vent on Twitter about how awful Google was. It’s very strange. Techdirt has a great write-up of the entire incident if you’d like to read more.

This is a great example of how little things can make a huge difference. I expect only mild issues from what my friend did, but Mark Finchem’s site will be feeling the effects of this for weeks to come (it can take a while for Google to completely reindex and rank your site), and now a bunch of us have only heard of him because of this foolish mistake.

Really, it comes down to solid processes, and both of these examples are likely lacking in that area. A process can feel restraining at first (who wants more checklists?), but they help prevent situations like these so that you can focus on the job at hand without making simple, brutal mistakes.

Filed Under: SEO, Websites

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