Category: SEO Opinion

Do you know if you have any duplicate content on your blog? Maybe you don’t but you may have duplicate content on another domain that you don’t know about.

If you do, Google may slap you with a ranking penalty, at worst, or filter out the duplicate content which is normally the case.

So how do i find out if i have duplicate content and either fix it or remove it? Firstly you need to understand what duplicate content is.

What is duplicate content?

Duplicate content means you have large blocks of content which are exactly the same or very similar on your blog or another site.

Whats Not duplicate content: Using the same excerpts on multiple pages or sourced from another domain linked back to the full post isn’t a problem.

Duplicate content can refer to the same content on your website or the same content on two or more sites.

Searchers like to discover a range of unique content which provides them with a diversity of content related to their query rather than the same results.

Examples of Duplicate Content

Generally, forums seem to provide many of the same answers which is viewed as duplicate content and most full time bloggers will have a certain degree of duplicate content within their blog posts.

Blogs generally tend to display duplicate content in multiple locations. For example, you may have a single post indexed and then also have the post category and archive indexed which means you have three permalinks to the same content indexed.

How To Check For Duplicate Content

One way to check your indexed URL’s for duplicate’s is to install an addon called Seo Doctor. This will show you all your indexed URL’s which you can go through manually to fix or remove the duplicate content itself or no index the url.

Here’s a few other ways to fix duplicate content:

Fixing Duplicate Content

There are a number of ways to deal with duplicate content.

You can:

1. Remove the content on your own site
2. Combine the content on one page
3. No Index the content
4. Rewrite the content
5. Ask for it or get it removed from Google’s index

Duplicate Content Tools for Seo

There’s many tools which you can use for free to check for duplicate content. Here’s a few of them:

• Virante Duplicate Content Tool – Checks url’s for duplicates
• Google Webmaster Tools – Checks for duplicate title tags & meta descriptions
• Duplicate Content Tool – Compares 2 URL’s for the same content
• Seo Doctor – Displays a list of all your indexed URL’s which you can check manually
• WordPress Duplicate Content Plugins – 4 Plugins which deal with duplicate content

Duplicate content isn’t a major problem unless someone else is using a scraper to steal your content and your url is filtered out and not indexed because theirs is. This is highly unlikely, but if you experience content theft, you can request a DMCA take down notice to their host or notify Google of copyright infringement.

More Duplicate Content Resources

• Yoast Seo has an excellent post on the causes of Duplicate content and how to fix them
• Here’s what Google has to say about duplicate content and how to fix it.
• You may also find this post of Fixing Duplicate Permalinks Slugs helpful as duplicate titles are a problem yet easily fixed if you use WordPress.
• SEOMoz also have several articles on duplicate content with some image examples of duplicate content.

Have you ever tried building links using Twitter? Building links is a major part of off page Seo and helps increase your keyword positions in Google’s search engine results.

The more quality links you have from blogs & websites with a higher page rank and domain authority than yours, the more chance you have of getting a higher position for the URL’s receiving those links. Especially if those sites linking to you include content in your niche.

Cornerstone Content

One method which works really well is to create cornerstone content using the most popular videos from other sites in your niche which are highly rated.

You can also create lists of different ways to solve a problem or solutions for your niche’s most common problems.

You could take the top 3 videos from the top 3 sites in your niche and create a post about them targeted specifically at one keyword and solution.

Try and find 3 videos which focus specifically on one subject which are the most popular videos for the keyword you are targeting. You can then connect with the author of those videos on twitter and build a relationship with them to get a link to that post where their video is included.

Example:

If i create a blog post or cornerstone content about the best WordPress Seo Plugins and find the most popular youtube video’s produced by the best WordPress Seo plugin creators, i can then connect with the people that appear in those video’s or the owners of the Seo plugins which the videos focus on using Twitter.

Next step is to find Twitter users who have the keyword Seo plugins in their Twitter profile using a tool like Social Oomph or Tweet Adder and start connecting with them on Twitter as well as building a list.

Twitter Follower Lists

The aim is to create Twitter lists of people who have a common interest and get them to view the great content you have created focused specifically on one topic. Once you have created a list of the most popular video’s or best list of solutions, you know they’ll be interested in viewing your content and you’ll get links from some of them.

Once connected with the people who share a common interest, you will receive links to that content because you have inserted the most popular videos which many people have already shown huge interest in.

You can use an exerpt of content from many different highly popular articles which you put together on one page specifically targeting one keyword and use a Twitter service which finds followers who already include that keyword in their profile.

Build the twitter lists and you’ll get links from some of those people who are already interested in your content and are following you.

I use this method to build links using Twitter and it works very well as its targeted at finding twitter followers using the keywords you enter in the system.

Getting enough search engine traffic to your blog? If you’re not ranked in the top 3 on the first page of Google’s search engine results then you need to increase your keyword positions.

The latest data for Click through rates prove that the top 3 positions in Google SERPS get nearly 60% of all the traffic.

Did you know that you’ll get more traffic from being top of page 2 than bottom of page one?

Top 3 CTR’s in Google’s Search Engine Results

Here’s an example of what percentage of the traffic you’ll be getting if you’re in the first 3 results:

If you’re ranked below 3 and want to move up a few positions, you’ll need to use some pretty smart Seo tools to get there.

If you’re NOT on the first page of Google’s results then you’ll be getting less than 2% of the traffic which click through’s for that keyword.

Based on a sample of over 8 million impressions across the Chitika network, these are the figures for the top 20 Google positions:

This image clearly shows how crucial it is to get on the first page of Google’s results

The first step to increase your keyword ranking positions is to find out what keywords you are currently ranking for and what position they are ranked in Google’s search engine results.

Finding Out Your Keyword Positions

Simply entering the main focus keyword of a blog post into the Google search box won’t give you the real position.

There’s several tools which will display all your keywords with ranking positions in the different search engines simply by entering in your domain name.

Some of these Seo tools also display the keyword rankings of your competitors as well as the source of the incoming links to your competitors URL’s.

3 Tools Which Measure Your Keyword Positions

1. Google Webmaster Tools displays a list of all the keywords contained in your content and the average position of each keyword. Go to Your site on the web > Search Queries for the data.
2. Market Samurai displays all your keywords and as well as your competitions keyword ranking positions in all the major search engines. You can try it for free here.
3. SEOMoz is advanced Seo software, regarded as the best in the world and used by many professional Seo’s. The software gives you all your keyword rankings and they offer a free trial for 30 days.

Increasing Your Keyword Positions

There are many methods you can use to increase your keyword positions in Google’s SERPS.

Link building is one of the most popular methods.

One of the most effective methods when using link building is to try and get a link from another URL which is already above your keyword position in SERPS.

How do you find who’s above you in Google’s search engine results?

Two of the SEO tools i have mentioned above also provide you with this solution.

This post will show you how to find out who the competition is that you are competing against for your keywords and where their links are coming from.

If you search through the top 10 results for your keywords, you should be able to find a URL for some of your keywords where you can place a link which will help increase your position in Google’s SERPS.

If you can increase some of your keyword positions to the first 3 rankings in Google’s search engine results, you should find a substantial lift in traffic to your site.

Have any tips to share which you use to increase your rankings?

Searching for the best way to change your permalink structure without sacrificing performance and losing traffic? If you don’t know how to write code for your htaccess file then you need a tool which does the job properly.

Joost de Valk of Yoast has created a new tool which creates the correct code for redirecting your old permalink structure to /%postname%/

The redirect tool will ONLY redirect your old permalink structure to /%postname%/ so if you wanted a different structure, don’t use this tool.

Use this tool to generate redirects from your old permalink structure to the /%postname%/ permalink structure.

1. Enter the URL of your site
2. If you have WordPress installed in a sub directory, enter the name of the subfolder in the correct field.
3. Select or enter your old Permalink structure and click the Generate Redirect button
4. On the next page you’ll see the code has been generated for copying and pasting into the top of your .htaccess file

I personally use /%category%/%postname%/ which prior to WordPress 3.3 can effect performance if you don’t have caching setup correctly, however the release of WordPress 3.3 has now solved this problem.

Optimizing your WordPress blog so your content is more visible and therefore easier to find on the internet via the search engines like Google is the best way to get targeted traffic to your site.

If you don’t incorporate basic Seo into your posts and pages content, then you are missing a huge opportunity.

Its a well known fact, websites with blog posts receive over 40% more traffic from the search engines which can convert into 80% more leads.

If you’re blogging for business then you’ll want to make sure you understand the most powerful Seo factors to increase qaulity visitors to your site.

If you don’t learn & use SEO in your content, you’ll find building your brand, trust and sales a struggle that will cost you.

These resources will help you understand the most effective search engine optimization (Seo) tips which i use myself and know will help you as they are proven winners.

Before we get started, i suggest you read these articles so you have a basic understanding of the fundamentals of Seo.

In my opinion, the content and links in these articles are the best resource for new WordPress bloggers needing to learn, understand and incorporate Seo into their blogs content.

1. What is Seo?
2. Guide To Seo Setup On a New Website or Blog
3. SEO – Beginners Guide To Search Engine Optimization
4. Download Your Free Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

You’ll find more Seo tips in the SEO category when you are ready, however i suggest you learn the basics before progressing further.

All in one Seo pack for WordPress is one of the most popular plugins having being downloaded over 9 million times. It includes some of the basic Seo features you need to optimize your blog for the search engines.

In this tutorial, i’ll show you the settings and options for configuring the All in one Seo plugin for your WordPress blog.

Download All In One Seo Plugin

Click here to download All In One Seo Pack Plugin for WordPress

Initial Setup

All in one seo pack works straight out of the box so you don’t have to configure the settings if you’re a beginner. However, you will notice this red warning box once you install and activate the plugin and it is highly recommended to configure the plugin options for maximum benefit.

Firstly, you do need to enable the plugin and they ask that you make a donation. After you check these boxes, you can proceed to the configuration options before Updating the options to remove the red warning box.

Configuration Options

There’s a few options you’ll need to configure in order to enable this plugin. If you don’t, the plugin will still work ok.

Home Title: Enter your Home page title here otherwise your default blog title will be used so make sure you have set one or the other and use a keyword which describes the overall topic of your site. i.e If your site is about WordPress then a title like WordPress Sites is perfect.

Home Description: Enter a unique description here describing the different content on your site. If you don’t enter a description here then No description will be used. i.e I have set mine something like this. WordPress sites offers tutorials and How To’s on Everything WordPress including Plugins, Themes and Seo.

Home Keywords: You don’t need to enter anything here if you don’t want as the search engines don’t used meta keywords for Seo. You can enter some related keywords if you want but i don’t think it will make any difference. If you do, enter the main keywords only and don’t stuff this box with too many keywords.

Canonical URLs: Checking this box will make All In One Seo generate unique URL”s for your entire sites page and posts. No 2 permalinks will the same preventing duplicate content penalties from the search engines like Google.

Rewrite Titles: Checking this box will set all page, post, category, search and archive page titles to be rewritten. In my opinion its better to uncheck this so your page, post titles etc are used by default rather than Blog Archive >> Blog Name >> Post Title. If you do check this box, you can edit the templates for each tag to your liking.

Default Title Format Tags

All in one Seo offers a range of custom title formats tags tom choose from if you want to customize your Seo rather than use the default settings. Here’s all the Default Title Formats you can customize.

The reason i suggest you uncheck the Rewrite Titles box is because the default tags which you’ll see in the above screen shot aren’t the best option.

You wouldn’t want all your posts titles to include your blog title on the end of every post title as seen above.

Recommended Title Tags

The above screen shows the default title tag formats however you may want to consider changing to these recommended settings.

More Configuration Options

SEO for Custom Post Types: If you are using Custom Post Types which you have added yourself, via a plugin or included in your theme, then enable this box.

Google Analytics ID: Enter your Google Analytics ID here to track your site with Google Analytics if you haven’t already added it  somewhere else in your themes temaplates. If you haven’t already, you can read more on how to setup Google Analytics here.

Use Categories for META keywords: Check this box if you want your post categories used as the META keywords for this post.

Use Tags for META keywords: Check this box if you want your tags for a post used as META keywords for that post (in addition to any keywords you specify on the post edit page).

Dynamically Generate Keywords for Posts Page: Check this box if you want your keywords on a custom posts page (set it in options->reading) to be dynamically generated from the keywords of the posts showing on that page. If unchecked, it will use the keywords set in the edit page screen for the posts page.

No Index Settings

All 3 no index settings will help Avoid Duplicate content.

Use no index for Categories: Check this for excluding category pages from being crawled. 

Use no index for Archives: Check this for excluding archive pages from being crawled. 

Use no index for Tag Archives: Check this for excluding tag pages from being crawled.

Additional Configuration Settings

Autogenerate Descriptions: Check this and your META descriptions will get autogenerated if there’s no excerpt. In order to increase click through’s from the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) you would be better off to create a compelling description (excerpt) for each post which attracts more clicks. If you don’t, check this box so Meta descriptions will be autogenerated from your content instead.

Capitalize Category Titles: Check this and Category Titles will have the first letter of each word capitalized.

Exclude Pages: Enter any comma separated pages here to be excluded by All in One SEO Pack.

Additional Post Headers: What you enter here will be copied verbatim to your header on post pages.

Additional Page Headers: What you enter here will be copied verbatim to your header on pages

Additional Home Headers: What you enter here will be copied verbatim to your header on the home page.

Log important events: Check this and SEO pack will create a log of important events (all_in_one_seo_pack.log) in its plugin directory which might help debugging it. Make sure this directory is writable.

Update Options

Once you have configured All In One Seo Pack, click the Update Options buttons and you’re set.

Edit Post/Page Screen Seo Fields

Once Set, all in one seo pack will display Seo fields on every post edit screen for –

• Title
• Description
• Keywords

Title: You can enter a different title for the search engines here rather than use the default post title

Description: See the above Autogenerate Description configuration options. Its best to use some type of sales copy here to attract higher click through rates from SERPS. Your post description will not be used by the search engines to determine rankings however any keywords will be highlighted in  SERPS snippets which can be used to your advantage.

Keywords: Not used by the search engines so no point in adding anything here in my opinion unless you want to insert some for your own refererence.

Video – Options Configuration

Conclusion

Personally i think this is a great Seo plugin however i use WordPress Seo by Yoast because it includes a sitemap which is very important and 301 redirect options, amongst many others options, on all edit post/page screens.

You can easily migrate All In One Seo Pack Settings to WordPress Seo by Yoast using SEO Data Transporter plugin when changing themes and to the Thesis theme for WordPress .

Whats your favorite SEO plugin?

A common problem bloggers and webmasters are looking to solve is ‘whats the best way to rank a keyword first page of Google’?

In my opinion, based on my own experience, creating a main page/post that you focus the keyword you are trying to rank using what some call ‘cornerstone content’ is a solution which works.

You’ll also need to create other posts that link internally to your cornerstone content page so you pass link juice to it and build up its rank.

Here’s another way to explain cornerstone content.

As an example, if you choose to try and rank for Best cake recipes, you would want to create a single post for each cake recipe and include all the most vital content for that particular recipe within the individual posts content.

Include content based on related keywords which are popular and useful for the ingredients, mixing and baking that cake recipe.

You’ll also need to check what the most vital parts (keywords) for Best Cake Recipes are. Google wants to give its searchers what they want, content that’s vital to the search query and content that’s both relevant to the keyword(s) as well as content that is also useful.

Ranking Keyword on Google

After completing keyword research, you’ll probably find best carrot, chocolate and vanilla cake recipes are the most popular so creating an individual post for each, then creating a single cornerstone post or page for 3 best cake recipes should work well.

After looking at the related searches in Google’s search results pages, you’ll see best birthday cake recipe could also be included.

The reason for this is that when you complete keyword research you’ll find the most popular keywords involve ingredients and baking as this content is vital to making a cake.

Cornerstone Content Ideas

Another way to explain how to rank a keyword first page on Google is to create a list of the 10 best whatever (related to your site) or 5 ways to whatever. A list of the best ways to solve common problems related to your industry or your sites overall topic will be the most useful content for your readers.

Your site might be about cakes or mobile phones, it doesn’t matter.

Write one post for each 10 whatever and include the most important information that’s vital to the use of the product or service you are writing the top 10 list about.

Example of Cornerstone Content

Now this cornerstone content doesn’t rank that well at the moment because i recently changed domains but it did rank first page on Google for Best Seo Plugins before.

The post includes 8 of the best WordPress seo plugins and many of these plugins also contain a link to an individual post about that particular plugin. These internal links give it lots of link juice and support and are all related information vital to the use of each plugin.

The best way to start learning how to create cornerstone content that ranks well in search engines is to create your own list. You can start with the best 3 products, services, methods or tips related to your own sites topic and then create individual posts about each 3.

Internal Linking

Make sure you link the most crucial related keywords from your list to each individual post and link back to your main page/post using the keyword you want to rank for. I think its better to use variations of the keyword you are focusing your cornerstone content on which all have the same meaning.

You can create internal links manually or use a plugin like Seo Smart Links.

The way i link related content internally is to paste the keyword into the posts search box to find which posts contain related content which i can then link back to the cornerstone content.

Then promote the cornerstone page or post as well as each post.

If its done properly, you cornerstone content will become popular, gain links from your readers and be shared more than most other posts on your site.

The most important parts of creating cornerstone content are:

• create the cornerstone page
• create related posts for each main cornerstone item
• link the correct keywords internally
• promote your content using an effective content distribution system.

I’ll be writing more about how to create cornerstone content to rank well in the search engine results soon.

Have any tips on cornerstone content and how to rank first page on Google for one keyword?

Have you created this type of content which attracts links before?

Changing domains effects not only your incoming links but also your keyword positions in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). This all starts once you notify Google of your change of address in Google Webmaster Tools.

Recently i changed domains and have found the keywords in my content go from an indexing of over 7000 keywords to around 2,584 currently.

These keywords will slowly come back into the search results which i expect to happen once the next Page Rank update comes around sometime in January or Febuary.

If you change domains, you’ll find your keywords coming back on at about 200 per day but won’t be as high in the search results until your domain authority and page rank come back.

One way to track your keywords is to use Google Webmaster Tools or another tool named Market Samurai.

[box size=”large” style=”rounded” border=”full”]The Must Have Keyword Research Tool – Market Samurai

If you don’t know which keywords have the traffic and make the money, you are wasting your time.

Market Samurai is the leading keyword research tool that all serious internet marketers use.

Discover how it can help you in our Market Samurai review…

[/box]

Old Domains Keyword Search Queries

You can see from the old domains keyword data available in Webmaster Tools under Your Site on The Web > Search Queries that the figures taken after more than 2 weeks from the domain change.

More than 2 weeks after the domain change the keyword search queries at down 46% and click throughs down 33% on the old domain. These figures are useless because most of the old domains URL’s are no longer indexed.

The real figures are in the next screen shot

New Domains Keyword Search Queries

The new domains keyword search queries are growing because Google is indexing about 200 per day however the data from Webmaster Tools is 2-3 behind.

In hindsite it may have been better to add new content to the new domain for 2-3 months before notifying Google of Change of Address in Webmaster Tools as the screenshots above clearly show Google acts immediately when you notify of change of domains.

I’m not expecting my search traffic to get back to where it was until Feb however it should be higher then because of all the new content i am adding on a regular basis.

Crawl Errors

I’ve also noticed significantly more 404 page not found crawl errors after changing domains. One of the reasons for this is that i have a Apache 301 permanent redirect in my htaccess file which slows down the time it takes to access content when a link from the old domain is clicked on.

Even though its nearly 3 weeks after i notified Google Webmaster Tools of Change of Address, i can still see some of my old URL’s indexed in the search Engine Results Pages (SERPS)

Is Changing Domains Worth It

Based on my own personal experience and the facts above, the search engines take a long time to index all keywords in your content and don’t immediately transfer Page Rank (PR) or Domain Authority to your new domain.

Even if your new domain is an exact copy of your old site and you have permanently 301 redirected all URL”s to exactly the same content on a new domain to avoid any duplicate content being indexed, you won’t get back the search traffic for some time.

I’ll report back in a few weeks to see exactly what the progress is.

Have you moved domains or are you thinking about it?

What is the reason you want to make the change?

I keep getting emails from one client that keeps asking the same questions. Why? Because they aren’t getting enough traffic and therefore aren’t making enough sales. Fair enough.

I try and show them how i get traffic because it works after trying many methods and working out what works and what doesn’t

One of the best sources of new readers is from the search engines because searchers are looking for something at that time.

Subscribers receive an update everyday but generally don’t need the solution you have written about at the time they receive your blog post.

Seo Basics

Learn the basics of Seo and incorporate those Seo techniques into your content

Publish unique content daily

Create useful content that’s vital to the solution

Cover all bases to that solution within the post or link to other posts which do

Learn from the expert bloggers as they are the benchmark you aim to succeed

Website sales copy doesn’t work on blogs

Pre sell using real, authentic stories which solve real problems

Don’t focus on making money or yourself or your brand

The Best Seo Guides for Beginners

Written by Google  – Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization

Written by SEOMoz – Beginners Guide to Seo

The most successful bloggers

Darren Rowse – His main blog is photography and his photography blog has over 500,000 subscribers across all networks

Brain Clarke – He started with Copyblogger and now owns Studiopress and a new hosting solution for Studiopress

Chris Pearson – Thesis creator with the most useful theme users guide, great blog tips both on his personal blog & Thesis blog

There’s many more.

Learning the basics of and really understanding the basics of Seo is a major key to success because its focused on giving your readers exactly what they want and need at the time they are looking.

Here’s eight more SEO tips for on page optimization.

How do you perform SEO on your content?

Do you focus more on on page or off page SEO?

Changing domains is a decision you should spend some time on and research properly before you take the big plunge because you will suffer in the search results for some time.

I’ve already written about how to get your links indexed after changing domains so you should also check to make sure your links have been redirected properly which you can also do using Google Webmaster Tools.

Here’s an article on the Google Webmaster Blog which talks about how to discover your links in GWT

When you change domains, even though you can create a 301 permanent redirect so all your URL’s arrive at exactly the same content on your new domain, the link juice will become diluted.

Here’s why:

If you have 100 links coming from 20 different domains, you’ll find many of them now come from one single domain, your old domain.

Its better to have 20 links coming from 20 related domains rather than 100 links coming from mostly unrelated domains or coming from only 10 different domain sources.

The reason for this is because they are redirected from your old domain and the search engines count them as being from one source which is nowhere near is good as having them come directly from different domain sources.

The result of this is your domain authority and trust will not be nearly as good therefore your search engine results will not be nearly as high resulting in less traffic.

Old Domain Links

New Domain Links

While i have more links according to Google Webmaster Tools, the source of the links has changed since i changed domains and reduced by more than 50%

The fix: Focus more time and effort on writing more content and increase the time you spend on link building. Also fix any 404 page not found errors which you can easily complete using Google Webmaster Tools.

Personally, i have never spent much time on link building and try and focus on creating real solutions to real problems all related to the overall topic of my site.

I read a really good article recently on SEOmoz about the relevance of content and why relevance is the most important Seo factor. Actually your content should not just be relevant but Vital & Useful which are even more important than just relevance.

Time will tell what happens over the next few weeks and months so i will report back on how the change is effecting my traffic from the Google & Bing SERPS.

I’ll be posting my site stats here in about a weeks time to show you exactly how things are going which will show the days before i made the change and several weeks afterwards.

Next time, we’ll take a look at what happens to your keyword rankings when you change domains.

Did you suffer from any broken links when you changed domains?

What happened to your links when you changed domains?

There’s many reasons you may suffer from 404 page not found crawl errors however the most important thing is you fix them.

If you have too many 404 errors your site visitors will suffer a poor experience and the search engines may penalize you as well.

There are many ways to check for broken links, some of which i have written about previously.

Rather than create a temporary fix, its better to fix them permanently and Google Webmaster Tools provides one of the best solutions.

You’ll need to have created an account with Google Webmaster Tools before we can proceed.

Login to your Webmaster Tools account and navigate to Crawl Errors

Click the errors you want to fix for example: Not Found

You’ll now arrive at a page listing all your 404 Page Not Found URL’s of which only some are real so don’t worry.

On the left you’ll find a list of the URL’s which are producing crawl errors.

On the right you’ll see which pages have Linked From the error page. Click the number underneath the Linked From Column which will produce a list of page URL’s linking to the error page.

On the next page displaying the Linked From URL’s, you can click on the URL’s, locate the link to the error page and either delete it or change it to the correct URL.

You’ll find some pages which produce 404 errors will drop off the reports after a while as the data is historic and all the links may have already been removed.

In this example, we’ll look at the 3rd URL from the screenshot above and find out why its returning a not found error.

Here’s the URL we’ll check: wpsites.net/uncategorized/hello-world/

This is an old URL which comes with a new installation of WordPress which i deleted after i installed this WordPress site. That’s the reason its producing a 404 page not found error.

Its linked from 2 pages so i’ll click on the 2 pages link and see which pages need to be looked at.

The 2 pages that are linking to the 404 error page are also not found so the URL’s producing the errors will eventually drop off the report once the data in Webmaster Tools is updated. No need for any action.

You’ll find this is the case with some of your Not Found errors in Webmaster Tools.

Lets now take a look at a video showing real 404 page not found URL and fix it quickly and easily using Webmaster Tools.

If you get stuck and still have problems trying to fix your crawl errors i suggest you create a post in the Google Webmaster Help Forums

or

Check out the Official Google Webmaster Blog which provides news on crawling and indexing sites in the Google index.

Other Solutions

Other ways to check and fix 404 page not found crawl errors is to install a free WordPress plugin named Broken Link Checker.

• You can read more about this technique in this blog post titled – How To Check For Broken Links Using a Free WordPress Plugin and Why Its Crucial To Fix Them.
• Finding Broken Links Using Xenu’s Desktop App

More Posts Which Include 404 Page Solutions

• 2 Custom 404 Templates For Genesis
• Redirect 404 Page Not Found To Any URL
• Plugin To Search Find & Replace Broken Links in WordPress

There’s already some very good tools that make it very easy to track your own keyword rankings as well as your competitors keyword rankings. But did you know you could track your own keyword rankings in your own Google Analytics account?

The new Google analytics offers some really big improvements like real time analytics and you can also setup Custom Filters to  track your keyword rankings which will help increase traffic to your site?

To do this, first you’ll need to find the ranking of your keywords which is what i am going to show you now. We’ll setup custom filters in the new Google analytics so you can easily track the ranking of the keywords on your own WordPress site.

You can also use this method using the old Google analytics.

If you can find some keywords that rank between 4-10 on the first page of the Google search results, you’ll see a decent increase in traffic if you can increase the rankings of those keywords by one or two spots into the top 5.

Create a New Profile for Custom Reporting

Even though you probably already have a Google analytics profile setup for the domain you wish to track keyword rankings, you still need to create another one for the custom filters you are about to setup as well, under the Default URL for the domain you should already be tracking.

You won’t need to add the analytics code again, simply name your new profile something like “Keyword Rankings” and add the 3 new custom filters to the new profile, NOT your existing profile for the same domain.

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to create and setup a Google analytics account.

Setup Custom Filters

Once you have logged into Google Analytics, navigate to Profiles > select Profile from the drop down menu > Click the Filters tab > Click New Filter.

We’ll create 3 Custom Filters for tracking:

1. Organic Traffic
2. Google Traffic
3. Keyword Rank

There’s many other ways to setup custom filters for tracking your keyword rankings.

This tutorial will only deal with the most basic setup so beginners can more easily use this tutorial as well.

Organic Traffic Custom Filter

After clicking the Add Filter button enter a Filter Name and select Custom Filter type.

Next step is to select the Include radio button and from the dropdown menu for Filter Field select Campaign Medium.

Insert a name for the Filter Pattern and click the Save button to complete the creation of your first custom filter. 2 more to go.

Google Traffic Custom Filter

With the second filter, it will make sure this setup only tracks traffic coming from Google and not Bing or another source.

The setup for this filter is slightly different so follow the screen shot to make sure you’re on track.

Create Keyword Rank Filter

This 3rd filter is more complicated then the first 2 as you need to add some text into 2 advanced fields to create the keyword tracking.

Advanced Fields

Field A   (\?|&)cd=([0-9]+)

Output to  Rank: $A2

You’ll find the data takes a day or 2 to come through after you have completed setup of the 3 filters to track your keyword rankings in Google analytics.

Keyword Ranking Tracking Filters

Here’s the 3 filters already setup in the second profile for the default domain.

Yoasts Seo blog offers a more complex way of tracking keyword rankings and you can also check exactly what the other variables are by clicking the Help link after you select Advanced custom filter.

Keyword Ranking Results

What you’ll see in the User Defined report after 24 hours is the keywords with the ranking number next to each. The number means the position in the search results pages (SERPS) so a 15 will mean its middle of the second page on Google.

You’ll soon become familiar with custom filters if you take a look at the reports everyday and you’ll then be able to more easily setup advanced custom filters and reporting as the picture becomes clearer.

Keyword Ranking of Competitors

Here’s the easy way to track your keyword rankings without having to setup any special custom filters. This tool will also show you how your competitors are ranking and display the data which shows you why they are ranking in that position.

Custom filters are not the only way to track your keyword rankings.

Google Webmaster Tools also offer search query and keyword data giving you a list of all your search query keywords, clicks for each keyword & keyword position change.

Another great tool which gives you all of this plus access to your competitors keyword positions and competitors incoming link URL’s is Market Samurai who offer a free trial.

Recently i decided to move my entire blog to wpsites.net, from, wordpresssites.net. I knew this could be a major problem for my search engine rankings so i started to search for the best way to retain my position in SERPS and not lose any traffic.

The most important part of moving to a new domain is to retain search engine results and traffic.

After spending several days working on the best solution, this is what i suggest you do:

1) Copy your entire site to your new domain and install several sitemap plugins for video’s,images, text and mobile.

Here’s more on how to move WordPress to a new domain.

2) Created a new account in Google and Bing Webmaster Tools for Your New Domain and verify both accounts.

You’ll also need to do the same for your old domain name and make sure it is verified using both the www and non www version of your domain before you create a 301 redirect.

This way you will be able to successfully notify Google and Bing of the change of address as you will NOT be able to easily verify your old domain after you create a 301 redirect.

3) Submit all sitemaps to Webmaster Tools for Bing & Google

4) Create sitemaps for your old site with the old domains URL’s

5) Create a new Feedburner account for the new domain

6) Started creating new content on the new domain and publishing it

7) Created a 301 redirection of all URL’s from my old domain to the exact same content on my new domain. This can be done in cPanel > Domains > redirects > Wild Card Redirect.

I also asked the Linux server engineers to add a 301 redirect using mod_rewrite in htaccess so all my posts and pages redirected perfectly to the exact same posts and pages on my new domain as its an exact copy of my old domain.

If you’re hosting the new domain as an addon domain in the same directory as your old domains site then you cannot create a wild card redirect and will need to modify the .htaccess file as that is typically what is used to do HTTP redirects in Apache.

Caution: Make sure you consult an experienced Linux Administrator when doing this and backup your existing files & databases.

8) Submit your old domains sitemap to Webmaster tools so that the Google & Bing bots crawl your old URL’s and re index them under the new domains URL’s.

9) Notify Bing and Google of your change of address using Webmaster tools. I found that as soon as you do notify the search engines of change of address your traffic will fall sharply unless your new URL’s are indexed first.

I would also create a new post on your old domain several weeks before you redirect to your new domain and notify your RSS subscribers. You could also place a small Note box at the top of each new post for 2-3 weeks so your readers know whats going on.

Ways to Get Your New Domain Indexed Faster

If you can get the Google  & Bing bots to crawl all your old links after they have been properly redirected using a permanent 301 redirect then your new domains URL’s should get indexed faster.

The reason the old sitemap is important is for this reason. You could also use a content distribution system which i use that sends your URL’s to your entire social media network.

This gets your links out there faster and get the bots to crawl all your URL’s faster.

Check here to find your new domains URL’s are indexed in Google Webmaster Tools > Site Configuration > Sitemaps

Here’s Google’s take on what they want you to do when moving your content to a new domain.

In my opinion, its best to make sure all your old URL’s are perfectly redirected to the exact same content on your new domain and indexed on the new domain before you notify Google of Change of Address.

Another tip i think is very useful is to use a server that provides fast page loading speeds and offers plenty of resources. The reason for this is the redirects will consume more CPU and take longer to redirect than a non redirected page.

I needed to upgrade to level 4 VPS after i changed domains because of all the additional http requests created by all the 301 redirects.

Matt Cutts from Google has stated that site speed is part of the algorithm and the reason all your content may not be indexed is because it takes too long for the Google bot to access because of the slowness caused by all the redirects, so they skip following the links.

This makes a lot of sense because a site visitor won’t wait more than 5 seconds either.

Setting up some new social media accounts/groups and submitting links from your new domain will help bring in the search engine bots which will get your content indexed faster.

New Domains URL’s in Web Index

It only took 3 days to get my URL’s indexed in Google’s search results which is a great result and proves this method works well

Here’s the current situation at the time of writing for my OLD domains URL’s and my NEW domains URL’s

Old Domain URL’s – wordpresssites.net

New Domains URL’s – wpsites.net

Did you have any problems when you changed domains?

Was your rankings effected?

Google webmaster tools provides a range of free tools which help improve your sites visibility on Google. Webmaster tools allow you to see how Google indexes your site and diagnose problems so you can improve your sites visibility.

In order to diagnose and fix duplicate title tags, you’ll need to sign up for a Google Webmaster Tools and navigate to Diagnostics > HTML Suggestions.

Here you can find out if the Google bot detected any problems with your title tags.

Recently i have added post tags to my site and made some changes to my categories. Some of these changes have caused a minor problem by duplicating existing title tags so i want to share with you the method i use to fix them.

Here’s what Google has to say:

When Googlebot crawled your site, it found some issues with your content. These issues won’t prevent your site from appearing in Google search results, but addressing them may help your site’s user experience and performance. Source: Google

Duplicate title tags

Your title provides users and search engines with useful information about your site. Text contained in title tags can appear in search results pages, and relevant, descriptive text is more likely to be clicked on. We recommend reviewing the list and updating the title tags wherever possible. Source: Google

Duplicate title tags aren’t good for Seo so here’s how i went about fixing them.

I’ve already provided the solution on how to fix duplicate category slugs but how about fixing post tags which duplicate existing category slugs?

Simply renaming or deleting the duplicate post tags is the easiest way.

Navigate to Posts > Post Tags  and type the name of the tag into the Search tags box to locate the tag you wish to edit or delete.

Here i edited the tag name and tag slug to a unique taxonomy then updated the slug which is a simple fix anybody can use.

All these duplicate title tags have been easily fixed and know should no longer show up in Google Webmaster Tools after a few days or so. Google provides historic data so i’ll have to wait to confirm the minor issues have been properly resolved.

Did you find this posy helpful?

Are there any other error or fixes you need help with?

Thinking about starting a new website or blog but don’t understand how to setup the Seo side of things?

Or maybe you have already setup your site and are searching for a beginners guide to learn more on what Seo is all about?

Seo setup requires a lot more than installing and configuring a plugin like WordPress Seo by Yoast.

In this post we”ll discuss best practice of Seo setup for beginners with new websites & blogs and also discuss what NOT to do so you don’t get banned or penalized by Google.

Visibility & Accessibility

One of the most important elements of Seo is Visibility & Accessibility. If the search engines and your site visitors can’t see your content then you have a problem.

Google webmaster tools will give you reports on all your broken links, 404 page not founds etc. Sign up for Google webmaster tools and make sure your content is findable by both Google and searchers.

Choosing Relevant Keywords

Best practice dictates choosing multiple word keywords or as some call them, key phrases.

Make sure they are both relevant to the overall content of your site and that the content of each page/post contains keywords & phrases as well as content which is relevant to the title of your page/post.

The page/post titles carry the most weight with the search engines however the content needs to be relevant to the title. Choosing keywords and key phrases which have low competition is recommended for beginners setting up  a new site.

You can using a keyword tool to achieve this.

Quality Content Providing Value

Your main aim here is to solve the problem your site visitors need solved so provide a list of great solutions. My recommendation here is to write separate posts for each solution showing different methods & techniques and then write one post displaying a list of different solutions linked to those individual post.

Example:

1. How to backup your site using cPanel
2. How to backup your site using a plugin
3. How to backup your site manually

Then write a fourth post titled:  3 ways to backup your site.

This gives your reader a range of different solutions which are all displayed in a list but also link to separate posts which contain more specific content which they can choose from.

Your readers need to understand the meaning of certain terms and phrases before they can get a clear picture of what you’re on about.

Design, Layout & Usability

Based on my own personal experiences after moving one of my blogs from the Woo framework to Thesis is i have noticed a big increase in time on site and higher conversions as well as a big rise in subscriptions.

I put this down to a combination of little things including a cleaner layout, nicer design and easier access to old posts.

Google custom search is far more accurate than the default search box as well. The reason for this is by default all your images are stored by the month. If you want to change this you can by going to Settings > Media so all your images become stored in the same folder.

I did however make one big mistake which i’ll discuss later on which is part of the motivation behind writing this post.

A site needs to provide easy access to content which contains solutions as well as being easy on the eye. I’ve seen many sites chocker block full of stuff which makes it hard to find what you are looking for.

Basically, my favorite site is my own and i love it and want to improve it so my readers find it useful.

Social Network Seo

I have setup more than 10 social network groups and really need to fix my branding as it should be consistent across all networks. I have found Youtube and Twitter are great for targeted leads, making connections and establishing social proof, when you understand how to use them.

Tracking the success of social media campaigns is more important than ever and can now be achieved using Google real time analytics.

Social networking including Goolge plus are becoming an important part of future searching engine rankings like never before.

Link Building for Beginners

Writing content as a guest post is a great way to build links especially if the site you write for has a huge subscriber base and is related to your sites content.

Article spinning, Seo hyped directories, reciprocal links, link wheels, automated linking and building links through multiple forum registrations including paid links is bad and will get you penalized.

Caution: Be very careful setting up a forum or anything which offers or allows registration to your site. Spammers will register in the thousands to put a link on your site which connects your site to their’s which is probably low quality and connected to more low qaulity sites.

This will kill your credibility with Google and is very dangerous as you are still on probation when you start a new site.

I always try to keep my posts focused on the positives as i love WordPress but sometimes i have to get serious and speak out.

If you follow the Do’s and focus on the positives from this guide you’ll build targeted traffic from the search engines as well as natural, organic links based on the high value, relevancy and quality of your content. Good luck!

• Here’s a great free guide to getting started with search engine optimization for beginners.
• And try this beginners guide to creating SEO friendly content.

Whats been the most challenging element of setting up your site so far?

Have you spent much time configuring the settings on different SEO plugins?

Ever used Google images to find content? A picture speaks a thousand words as they say but does that picture drive a 1000 visitors to your site? It can if you Seo your images properly.

Outranking the major brands and big websites who not only have massive amounts of incoming links but also high page rank (PR) and high domain authority is not as hard as some think if you use a list of Seo best practices.

On page Seo factors and keyword positioning will also play an important part when completing image seo as well.

Here’s a few basic Seo tips on how to beat your competition and the big boys using the best method for image SEO.

Here’s an Seo checklist for ten of the most important factors when optimizing your images

1. Domain authority
2. Page authority
3. Anchor text
4. Text wrap
5. File name
6. Alt text
7. Description
8. Inbound links
9. Hosted on root domain
10. Outbound links to related content

I’ll use one of the best Seo tools from SEOMoz who are one of the leading internet marketing companies offering seo software for this purpose. If i don’t use this tool then i can’t find out some of these figures and complete the job properly.

Domain Authority predicts how well a domain may rank.

Page Authority predicts how well a single page on a domain can rank.

Anchor Text should include the correct use of relevant keyword in the link.

Text Wrap should relate to the images ALT Text and File name, In other words, the text which the image is wrapped around the image.

File Name of the image should include the correct keywords which describe the image and be different to the ALT Text.

Description of the image should contain the correct long tail keyword phrases.

Inbound Links should contain the correct anchor text and the number of inbound links from different domains with higher Page Rank (PR) counts towards the overall rank

Image Hosted on Root Domain scores a higher rank than images hosted on a free server or another server.

Outbound Links to Related Content should contain highly related content which help the searcher find exactly what they are looking for or complete the picture of understanding of your content. In other words related posts and keywords within the content which contain links to an explanation of keyword terms help rank higher.

Lets take a look at a real example for – How To Cook Scotch Fillet Medium Rare

Google images search comes up with the following results

No.1 Result

Inspection of what the Google images bot will scan for this image.

<a href=”http://www.jordoschopshop.com/beef-olives-1.html” title=”Scotch Fillet Beef Olives“><img src=”http://www.jordoschopshop.com/media/catalog/product/cache/                                        alt=”Scotch Fillet Beef Olives“></a>

File URL – The No.1 ranked image on Google contains NO descriptive file URL in red:  img_0257.jpg

Title is: Scotch Fillet Beef Olives

ALT Text – This image contains Scotch Fillet Beef Olives

SEOMoz data

Domain authority 17

Page authority 15

Links 118

Overall this image produced an excellent result considering the site is new and has a very low D.A and P.A. This proves its not difficult to achieve top results as long as you use the basic optimization technique for images and some link building.

No.2 Result

src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_iXux0O_9IBI/THzqw9BwBnI/AAAAAAAAADw/LLH7jgrgHMc/s400/DSC_0986.JPG” alt=”” id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5511538170731169394″ border=”0″>

File URL – No description in the URL

ALT Text – Not Added

Title – Not added

SEOMoz data

Domain authority is 80 which is high as its a Blogspot domain

Page authority is 1

Links 0

Good result considering its a free hosted blog with no links or page authority. Maybe its not possible to add ALT Text, Title and a description to free hosted blogs.

No.3 Result

<img src=”/content/cache/400×225/Recipes/Thumbnails/foodsourcenz_bbq-scotch-fillet.jpg” id=”ctl00_LeftCol_RecipeContent_RecipeImage” itemprop=”image” alt=”BBQ Scotch Fillet With Brussel Sprouts, Smoky Bacon &amp; Anchovy Sauce“>

File URL – foodsourcenz_bbq-scotch-fillet.jpg

Title  No title is added

ALT Text is added – BBQ Scotch Fillet With Brussel Sprouts, Smoky Bacon &amp; Anchovy Sauce

SEOMOz data

Domain Authority 58

Page authority 37

Links 13

This result could be improved on by building incoming links to this page as it has the best overall SEO potential.

Conclusion: It seems very clear to me that regardless of your domain and page authority, you still need to build links to your content and use the basic optimization for images: ALT Text & Title

SEOMoz offers a free 30 day trial of their Seo software which enables you to compare your sites Seo to your competitors to see where you can improve your rankings.

Ranking higher by optimizing your images for Google isn’t difficult once you learn which elements of your images need attention.

The new Open Site Explorer has finally been released. If you haven’t already taken it for a spin, its like a search engine for links, keyword rankings and other important elements of SEO. You can check all your website ranking data with the worlds most popular seo software.

You can search over 58 Billion url’s & 9 Trillion links.

You can now get seo data & social media stats on the same page:

1. page authority
2. domain authority
3. Links
4. social media

The open site explorer main menu includes:

1. Inbound Links
2. Top Pages
3. Linking Domains
4. Anchor Text
5. Link Comparison Metrics
6. Advanced Reports

Comparison reports allow you to compare data for sub domains, pages and root domains on 5 URL’s side by side

Open Site Explorer will also release more features in September and if you haven’t tried the best internet marketing tools in the world yet i suggest you take them up on a Free 30 day trial while the offer lasts and discover how you can improve your website rankings.

How many links do you have and how did you get them?

Do you spend much time building links to your site?

Search engine optimization is the process of using different techniques and methods to try and increase traffic from search engines like Google.

The closer to the beginning or top of the search results your web pages appear, the better chance you have of receiving more visitors to your website.

Seo involves researching keywords used in the search query by someone searching for particular information. The words searchers type into the search box are called keywords or key phrases.

Performing seo on a website or page can be completed during the writing of the original content or after the webpage has been published to the live website and the internet. Seo involves both on page and off page techniques & methods.

Seo also refers to industry experienced specialists who offer services for a living also known as seo experts.

On Page

This involves optimizing all the important on page elements and keyword positions which are included in the content of your website pages and blog posts. On page SEO also includes internal linking, keyword research and a list of other important on page factors.

Off Page – Links

Off page Seo focuses mainly on building external incoming links to your site in order to increase the importance of your content from other websites. Fine tuning link building involves using the correct anchor text (linked keyword).

The keywords and key phrases which are linked from an external source to a page on your website should describe what the content on that page contains.

Building links from sites which have a page rank (PR) higher than yours is seen by the search engines as a vote of confidence in your websites content.

Indexing

Google, Yahoo and Bing are the 3 largest search engines which most webmasters and blog owners like their sites to be indexed with.

You can submit your website/ blog or new posts/pages to the search engines for inclusion in the search results (index) or you can wait for the search engines robots (bots) to find your new content.

Search engines can’t read websites like humans can so they prefer to read a sitemap. Sitemaps can be installed on your website to include your text content, images, videos and mobile.

The search engines love sitemaps which can also be submitted directly for inclusion via webmaster tools offered by all three engines.

Best Practices

Increasing targeted traffic from the search engines to your webpages involves different methods and techniques where best practice is called white hat Seo.

Black hat Seo involves using tricks and other methods to try and achieve better rankings unfairly.

The most common white hat methods used to improve the optimization of your website is to include internal links with anchor text, correct use of keywords relevant to your content, unique, descriptive titles and a high degree of relevancy to the search query.

Unique, quality content which is useful and creates a great user experience should also solve the problem and provide the best solution or list of solutions for your site visitors.

Guides

Several of the best Seo Companies produce a beginners guide to Seo and Google also produce a free Seo starter guide which is highly recommended reading.

Seo Companies

The best Seo companies offer a fantastic free resource of tips and tools which you can access and use and build knowledge.

Some of the best resources & tools come from:

1. SEOMoz – World’s Best Seo Software
2. SEOBook
3. Google Webmaster Tools
4. Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Experts

The most famous seo experts who are well known in the industry are:

1. Aaron Wall – SEOBook
2. Matt Cutts – Head of Google Webspam
3. Danny Sullivan – Search Engine Land

Rankings

Most search marketers focus far to heavily on link building and therefore receive most of their traffic from links rather than from search results.

Increasing links and page rank don’t increase the quality of your content nor do they create a better experience for the searcher.

Some of the best examples especially in respect of on page seo and internal linking come from non profit sites like Wikipedia.

Social Media

The more popular your content, the more signals the search engines will receive that your content is useful.

This is the reason social media is now playing a major role in how high your content is indexed.

Unpopular content that doesn’t produce sharing from your readers to their network results in poorer rankings in the search results pages.

Search Engine Results Errors

Some of the big search engines like Google do make mistakes when indexing web pages.

Even though Google has stated they don’t want the same domains url’s indexed more than 3 times on one page, they continue to produce these errors.

Google continues to index forum questions without answers and blank pages in their results because of the strength of the domains authority and high page rank.

What has been your experience optimizing your blogs content for the search engines?

Any tips & resources you’ve found useful?

Are there any essential Seo factors you apply every time you write a new blog post?

Below is a Seo Pyramid showing how important basic on page Seo factors and keywords are to achieving great search results.

Social media compliments traditional Seo more so now than ever however it does not replace it.

Social media can be used like a content distribution system to spread new content over the internet effectively which increases Seo.

Unique Content

1) Unique content based on your own personal experience is real, genuine and authentic. Try pasting your new unpublished post title into the Google search box before you publish and see what you’re up against.

This is a great way to test relevancy and check out how unique your content really is. If it looks a bit like another post on the first few pages of the SERPS then it may not get indexed at all.

The search engines ABSOLUTELY love site maps of all various sizes and descriptions. Try getting your own homemade video’s in the search results along with your own homemade images by installing sitemaps for video, images, mobile as well as text.

Don’t get youtube’s URL indexed when you can easily host your own video’s and increase the importance and authority of your own domain rather than a youtube and the like.

Use tags, categories and drop down or second menu’s with relevant anchor text as the link to the content so its easy to find specific content. Searchers don’t really want knowledge they want solutions, tutorials and how to’s which they can act on and see the results. Previous and next page links also increase page views.

Relevant Keywords

2) Keyword homework is pretty easy if you do it everyday when you are writing fresh content for your blog. You never really know which keywords will work the best or which one’s are popular until you take a look using a keyword tool. I also use the related content links in the search results as well as related keywords in the keyword results which works well.

There’s a list of the most important keyword positions to place your keywords which is really powerful and clocks up a good seo score with the search engines. Unique titles with main focus key words/phrases are a must as you should already know.

Natural Linking

3) We all know how important links are for seo but did we all know that Google only counts unique anchor text and not the same anchor when it adds up your score?

Using keywords which have the same meaning yet are different gets a higher score and stops spammers using automated means to spam links with the same anchor text.

Recently i have been putting far more time into internal links. Once i have published a new post i will search all my posts using the main keyword of the latest post and add internal links to all my previous posts.

The results are more page views and longer time on site as well as increased relevance and higher indexing.

Social Media Sharing

4) I use a content delivery system to share my new content to all my networks quickly and easily using a variety of social media. This provides consistent traffic and links back to my content.

Using the correct keywords as tags with these social media sites helps searchers on those sites find relevant content and is becoming more important for search engine results.

New Google toolbar page rank (PR) results where out recently. How did you go and what do you think of the Alex ranking as well? Accurate or not?

This post will help you better understand microdata and the use of schema.org html 5 tags, so that you can start using these tags to markup your content so the search engines understand your content better. You should also see an improvement in your search results.

What are Schemas?

Scheme.org was created by Google in order to fine tune search results by creating Schemas (HTML Tags) which webmasters use to markup (wrap html text with) their content better in a language the search engines understand.

This additional information gives you an advantage in the search results as it tells the search engines a lot more about your content as opposed to your competitors who don’t use schemas. This narrows down the results to provide the search query user with a more targeted result which you content will be included in.

Search engines are now using these tags in order to categorize content better so the search results for your content should gain an advantage if you use the correct tags.

What is Microdata?

Microdata is a set of tags, introduced with HTML5, that allows the search engines to better understand your content and display it in a useful, relevant way.

Note: You only need basic HTML knowledge to use schemas so if you know how to edit the code in your WordPress editors HTML view, you’ll know how to add these html tags.

Example: I added some basic html tags to my about page which you can view here from my WordPress editor’s  HTML view.

<div itemscope itemtype=”http://data-vocabulary.org/Person”>
My name is <span itemprop=”name”>Brad Dalton</span> and i’m a full time <span itemprop=”title”>WordPress Developer</span> &amp; Blogger covering everything related to WordPress.
<span itemprop=”affiliation”>WordPress sites</span> is a blog about WordPress.org which is free </div>

Here’s what i’ve marked up using the Schema.org HTML 5 tags which i have effectively wrapped around the content i want marked up for the search engines.

Microdata Tags

1. my name – <span itemprop=”name”>
2. my title – <span itemprop=”title”> 
3. my company – <span itemprop=”affiliation”> 

You can clearly see the code in blue which are the special HTML 5 tags or Schemas which Google has created especially for this purpose. Marking up your microdata format like this is very simple and results in an easy win with the search engines. All you need to do is add these tags at the beginning of the text you want to markup as your microdata and add </span> after the text so the tags wrap around the text.

Here are several excellent articles about Schema.org language and Microdata format.

• Getting started with schema.org
• Microdata

For specific vocabulary and examples, see:

• Reviews
• People
• Products
• Businesses and organizations
• Recipes
• Events
• Video

Full list of schema types

You can add html 5 microdata to WordPress automatically using the Seo ultimate plugin which includes rich snippet creator.

Use the Rich Snippets Testing Tool to check that Google can correctly parse your structured data markup and display it in search results.

Your site must also include support for HTML 5 if it doesn’t already do so.