SEO Sucks...

That's right...you heard me right...as a matter of fact, I'll say it one more time. SEO SUCKS!!!

Written Jul 01, 2010, read 1427 times since then.

Do you know what else sucks?

Dyson vacuums...

Alright...now that I've gotten your attention, I wanted to illustrate a point and also share a SEO nugget with you to show you that "sucking" isn't always a bad thing.

If you've never used a Dyson, give one a test drive the next time you're out in the appliance section of Sears. It uses a cyclonic separation which essentially takes out any suction loss as it picks up dirt. Now that SUCKS!

Now, why did I use the title that I did? My goal was to make you do a double take and try to stand out from the endless sea of great articles that fellow Bizniker's are pumping out on a daily basis! Just a side note that this site has one of the greatest resources to literally learn something about EVERY single profession out there! How many of you purposely clicked on this article simply because of the controversial title? This is one of the techniques I teach when clients write content for their industry. Hopefully this test succeeds...

With SEO, the purpose behind optimizing the content, structuring your internal architecture, and getting other sites to link to yours is simply to make your website listing in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Page) visibly standout from the rest. Unfortunately, the only way for a listing to stand out in the SERP's is to show up in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd spot as those 3 spots are responsible for over 77% of user clicks for any specific keyword searches.

I think it's safe to say that EVERYBODY who is reading this article knows this basic SEO tidbit right? (If this is new knowledge for you, now you know and you can join the rest of us) ;)

Since I definitely want to value your time for blocking a few minutes out of your schedule to read this far, let me talk about something that I've been seeing more and more of lately.

The URL canonical issue is one thing that I've recommended to many small business owners so if this looks familiar to some of you, you can just rate the article as a 10 and get back to work. :)

Canonical is a long word isn't it? Not to worry, it just means the "preferred" URL or the "pretty" URL, etc. Try doing this little test real quick. Open up a new browser window and type in your URL in the address bar twice. Once with the www and once without the www . For purposes of this illustration, I'm going to use domain.com as an example. Take a look at the URL once the page finishes loading. There are 3 outcomes that I expect.

First, you entered "domain.com" in the address bar and after the page loads, the URL reads "http://domain.com" . Next, you entered "www.domain.com" in the address bar and after the page loads, the URL reads "http://www.domain.com" .
First, you entered "domain.com" in the address bar and after the page loads, the URL reads "http://domain.com" . Next, you entered "www.domain.com" in the address bar and after the page loads, the URL reads "http://domain.com" .
First, you entered "domain.com" in the address bar and after the page loads, the URL reads "http://www.domain.com" . Next, you entered "www.domain.com" in the address bar and after the page loads, the URL reads "http://www.domain.com" .

In the first outcome, your website has a canonical URL issue. This means that although domain.com and www.domain.com are the same page, the search engines see domain.com and www.domain.com as two separate URL's. I wouldn't be surprised if the search engines saw these as a mirrored site penalty and while displaying one version, they penalize the other version rendering your PageRank to zero. If you have a good number of inbound links to your website, some of them might point to domain.com while others point to www.domain.com . If one of your URL duplicates gets penalized, the value that those links bring are rendered useless.

The 2nd and 3rd outcome means that you have this issue taken care of whether you did something or you didn't. So now, how to fix it? An EXTREMELY easy fix and because you're going to rate this article a 10, I'll share it with you. (haha good ol' subliminal messaging) Paste the following code into the <head> portion of your homepage.

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.com/" />

Note that you can either specify with or without the www . Well, I hope this was worth your time and if you have any questions at all about this topic, I'd love to help clear things up!

Learn more about the author, Maximus Kang.

Posted by Blake Newman, Herndon, Virginia | Jul 01, 2010

You know what else is funny about the word, "sucks," is that if you write a blog post that includes the word "sucks" in the title then you suddenly get traffic. I wrote a blog post that Circuit City Sucks and for all of 2009, it ranked as one of my top visited pages. Then Circuit City went out of business. Not saying my article caused Circuit City to go out of business ... was just an interesting correlation and an end to my traffic related to that article.
Posted by Maximus Kang, Issaquah, Washington | Jul 01, 2010

Haha! That is too funny Blake. What was your main argument in the article out of curiosity? :)
Posted by Deborah Rowell, Manchester, New Hampshire | Jul 02, 2010

Hi Maximum, I'm looking at your canonical test. I'm confused.
Anyway, when I did #1, both came out on my home page and url at top was http;//domain-name.com.

I've read this over and over again and still confused. I would like to fix it if it's broken, but it's hard to tell by this test.
Posted by Maximus Kang, Issaquah, Washington | Jul 02, 2010

Hi Deborah,

Yea this stuff can get a little tricky, but if you wanted to post your website here, I can check it for you and lead you through the process if you need. :)
Posted by Deborah Rowell, Manchester, New Hampshire | Jul 02, 2010

Thanks Maximus, that's very kind of you.

http://www.creative-gift-ideas.com

thank you so much!
Posted by Maximus Kang, Issaquah, Washington | Jul 02, 2010

Hi Deborah!

It'd be my pleasure! I just checked your site and low and behold, you have the canonical tag in your homepage as <link href="http://www.creative-gift-ideas.com/" />

So if I type in "creative-gift-ideas.com" into the web browser, you can see the URL automatically change to "http://www.creative-gift-ideas.com"So well done! Or if you have a developer, well done regardless for hiring somebody who did a good job!
Posted by Deborah Rowell, Manchester, New Hampshire | Jul 02, 2010

Thank you for checking, I feel better knowing that I an canonically correct. (lol)

I have SBI (site build it) for my web hosting. They are the best.

Thanks again, Deborah

p.s. Do you know any good ways to get subscribers? I'm having a rough time with this and it's so important to my site. I must have a list of visitors to build relationships with.
Posted by Maximus Kang, Issaquah, Washington | Jul 02, 2010

A good way to get subscribers to build your list might be to create some sort of free e-book or report of some sort that would provide value to your visitors. Have them sign up for it with their email address.

This has worked for me in the past with many of my affiliate websites. What are you currently doing to snatch visitors and turn them into clients?
Posted by Deborah Rowell, Manchester, New Hampshire | Jul 02, 2010

I've heard that creating a free anything would help but I can't come up with anything on a gift site.
Obviously I can't give away any of my affiliate's products.
Since it's not an informational site, not sure what to do. I know eventually as I can traffic, I'll get some. I'm not sending out newsletter at this time because I only have a handful and they are family members.

Several times, I have tried using sales, coupons, etc but no takers. Right now I have a "gift of the week" all set up. It's a great idea, but still no takers. I'm only at 100-200 uniques/day right now and that may be why.
Posted by Maximus Kang, Issaquah, Washington | Jul 02, 2010

Hmm...do you blog? Blogging (as cliche as this is going to sound) is the new revolution these days. If you have specific products that seem to kill it in sales, perhaps you can talk about each of them in different blog posts. This adds quick content to your site and increases the likelihood of showing up for unique, long-tail keyword searches.

Depending on your niche, you can find some coupon aggregator sites and submit your products there to expand your reach. I think that if your site is not an informational site, maybe give it a shot at making it more of an informational site. One of the most beautiful things about marketing is that if something doesn't work as well as you'd like, there are endless opportunities to do something different.

Does SBI have any sort of Wordpress integration? That may be a very quick and easy way to get a blog functional on your site so you can start adding more content.
Posted by Deborah Rowell, Manchester, New Hampshire | Jul 02, 2010

Thank you, those are good ideas. I do have a blog page on my site that's getting good rankings, it's one of my top pages. I'm using it already to highlight products for upcoming holidays, but not to many sales from that page.

I could make it more informational in nature. I've written quite a few articles with good keywords, perhaps post some of them there and maybe put a form up to set feedback. I have 2.0 on my site also so visitors can add content.

What do you think?
Posted by Maximus Kang, Issaquah, Washington | Jul 02, 2010

Oh awesome! Yes, if you've already written the articles then why not post them on there (as long as they aren't indexed on another website). If these articles are already floating around the internet on another website, you would need to re-write it. You can keep the main focus the same, but it definitely needs to be rewritten in order to avoid duplicate content penalties.

It'd be a novel idea to include a way for people to interact with your content. If you had a blog post about the hottest birthday gift idea, people would be able to suggest variations and if those specific variations are used to search in Google, those comments only add more content to your existing posts and that can be a way to show up for some obscure searches.
Posted by Deborah Rowell, Manchester, New Hampshire | Jul 02, 2010

You have motivated me to think about ways to utilize my blog. If I put an invitation there for the newsletter perhaps that would spark some interest.

Thanks so much, enjoyed chatting with you and appreciate the time you took to stir up the mix a bit.

Deborah
Posted by Maximus Kang, Issaquah, Washington | Jul 02, 2010

Awesome! I look forward to seeing the finished product! Do keep me in the loop won't you?

Keep it up Deborah! Have a safe and happy 4th of July!
Posted by Deborah Rowell, Manchester, New Hampshire | Jul 02, 2010

Of course I will, I'll come back here and talk to you when I've made some changes for you to see.

Having a BBQ tomorrow with my grandchildren and working some of the weekend.

You have a safe one, and have fun!

Thanks again, Deborah
Posted by Maximus Kang, Issaquah, Washington | Jul 02, 2010

Yay! BBQ's are always fun! I'll chat with you shortly!
Posted by Jim Dickeson, Mercer Island, Washington | Jul 03, 2010

Max,

You lost me on the canonical thing.

Before any change, I type in www... and get a www... page.

After inserting your code, it is exactly the same. No change.

Site is www.importexportgeeks.com.

Thanks.
Posted by Maximus Kang, Issaquah, Washington | Jul 03, 2010

Hi Jim,

I just looked at your code and it looks like you left out the last / in the code. Try this:

<link href="http://www.importexportgeeks.com/" />

Let me know when you get a chance to update it and I'd be more than happy to double check it for you.

As of now, when you type in importexportgeeks.com, you get http://importexportgeeks.com and if you type in www.importexportgeeks.com, you get http://www.importexportgeeks.com. The issue with that is that those are 2 different URL's in the eyes of Google and there could be a chance that there are links pointed at both versions of that URL.

This topic is a rather tricky one and I hope I can help clear it up. :)
Posted by Jim Dickeson, Mercer Island, Washington | Jul 03, 2010

Extra slash at the end!

OK, did that, no difference. Could my web host be overriding something?
Posted by Maximus Kang, Issaquah, Washington | Jul 03, 2010

Ohmygoodness! Jim, for some reason the code I gave you didn't parse correctly. The rel=canonical part is missing. I'm terribly sorry about that, I have no idea what happened. Try this code (last one I promise unless something happens again) and let's see what happens.

<link href="http://www.importexportgeeks.com" />
Posted by Maximus Kang, Issaquah, Washington | Jul 03, 2010

Ahh...just as I thought, I just posted this and it took out the rel=canonical portion of the code. Using the code you already have, insert rel="canonical" between link and href
Posted by Jim Dickeson, Mercer Island, Washington | Jul 04, 2010

Max,

Still not redirecting my browser. But does it have to? So long as the search engines see it and catalog my preferred, shouldn't that really be all that matters?
Posted by Maximus Kang, Issaquah, Washington | Jul 04, 2010

Hi Jim!

I just checked your canonical tag and it looks perfect now. Although, do you want to include the index.php?

The browser doesn't necessarily need to redirect. That is done in the .htaccess file, but that would lead us down a very technical road. I was just reading over our comment thread earlier and I realized it might've helped if I mentioned that it doesn't necessarily need to redirect. My apologies Jim...but hey...at least we got you taken care of right?

Hope you have a safe and happy 4th of July!
Posted by Kelley St. Germain, West Jefferson, North Carolina | Oct 27, 2010

Maximus, I know its been a while since you wrote this article, but I was hoping for your help. I tried your tip, but it doesn't seem to be working for me. I'm not sure what I have messed up.

If you have a chance to look at http://www.wemarketbuilders.com and let me know what I am doing wrong, I would REALLY appreciate it! I want wemarketbuilders.com to go to www.wemarketbuilders.com as you outlined above.

Thanks!!
Posted by Maximus Kang, Issaquah, Washington | Oct 27, 2010

Hi Kelley,

Your links should all direct to the main URL now, however if you wanted the non www version to always point to the www version, it would have to be done via a server-side redirect. :)