Internet Success Hub » matt cutts

SEO for HTTP and HTTPs

Internet Success Hub — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 02:19:13 +0000

As the holiday season is rolling in, ecommerce websites are going full force at their SEO, which inevitably includes HTTP/HTTPS pages which need to be optimized in a proper way. I approached Matt Cutts with this question on Twitter and got a very simple answer:

Yet, there’s virtually no information anywhere that helps understand the potential challenges for HTTP/HTTPS optimization. Based on my observations and technical knowledge, here’s the top things to watch out for when you are optimizing HTTP/HTTPs – and resolutions for each.

1. Duplicate Content and Canonicalization

Because the protocols (http/https) are different, they are considered two separate sites, so there’s a good chance to get penalized for duplicate content. If the search engine discovers two identical pages, generally it would take the page it saw first and ignore the other pages.

Solutions:

Be smart about the site structure: to keep the engines from crawling and indexing HTTPS pages, structure the website so that HTTPs are only accessible through a form submission (log-in, sign-up, or payment pages). The common mistake is making these pages available via a standard link (happens when you are either ignorant or not aware that the secure version of the site is being crawled and indexed).
Use Robots.txt file to control which pages will be crawled and indexed
Use .htaccess file. Here’s how to do this:
Create a file names robots_ssl.txt in your root.
Add the following code to your .htaccessRewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 443 [NC]RewriteRule ^robots.txt$ robots_ssl.txt [L]
Remove yourdomain.com:443 from the webmaster tools if the pages have already been crawled
For dynamic pages like php, try< ?phpif ($_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] == 443){echo “< meta name=” robots ” content=” noindex,nofollow ” > “;}?>
Dramatic solution (may not always be possible): 301 redirect the HTTPS pages to the HTTP pages – with hopes that the link juice will transfer over.

Additional ideas to solve:

Have portions of the site configured to use SSL TO allow data transfer between the server and the browser over an encrypted (secure) connection. Note: the URLs of these pages still begin with https rather than http to indicate the secure protocol.
If you already have HTTPs pages in the index, remove them with Webmaster Tools

2. Linking

In certain instances, I’ve seen Google index the HTTPs version of a website (for example, PayPal.com) but since everyone tends to be linking to the HTTP version of the page, the HTTPs may be out in the woods in terms of pagerank (though this is not the case with PayPal). Now, if Google indexed only the HTTPs pages, then you may be in trouble because you basically have no link juice from HTTP pages. Of course, this may not be the case if you are after HTTPs from the beginning.
Solutions:

The best practice is to get links to HTTP versions of the pages, and to do this you will need to make sure that important pages are available in HTTP (typically, this should not be a problem, as most HTTPs pages are not content rich and have less value for the search engines).
Keep a different log file for the https domain and write a bit of code to point the referral links to your email every day or week. Contact the webmasters and ask them to change the links to http with a sweet mail (this works for me most times).
Keep normal sections under http only to reduce the likelihood of people linking to https.
Last resort solution: wait for Google to start counting https links for http pages (good luck with that!)

Maria Nikishyna is an accomplished search engine marketer specializing in paid and organic lead gen programs. When Maria is not optimizing websites, she’s an SEM blogger on Seattle Search Marketing Blog. Maria’s posts revolve around technical SEO issues, AdWords tricks, and SEO tips for webmaster.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

SEO for HTTP and HTTPs

SEOmoz 2009 Search Spam PubCon Party

Internet Success Hub — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:03:44 +0000

Posted by jennita

This post really doesn’t need much of an introduction, so I’ll get right down to it. Pubcon is coming! Pubcon is cooommiiinnnnggggg! It seems like the whole industry might just shut down for a week while we take over Las Vegas (I hope they’re ready for us). This would probably be a great time for spammers to come in and take over our SERPs since we’ll be busy in sessions, going to parties, meeting new people… and gambling (DUDE! It’s Vegas).

SEOmoz will be representing in full force this year. Although we don’t have a booth, you’ll find us lurking in all corners of the event. Here’s a quick lowdown on who will be attending from the moz crew:

Photo Courtesy of Dana Lookadoo

Danny – Say "Danny Dover" ten times fast. What?! It’s funny. Really. (ok I’m tired)
Scott – He’s coming out from behind the camera!
Adam – Ping him if you’re interested in user testing some of our new products!
Jen – Holla!
Arden – You’ll recognize him by being the friendly one (unlike the rest of us meanies)
Rand – You know, that guy who always wears those funny yellow shoes
Gillian – She arrives just in time from her worldwide SEO tour
Pete – As in Dr. Pete, apparently people only know him by that name.

Speaking of Dr. Pete, don’t forget to check out his post 7 Tips for Surviving PubCon to help you make it through the week.

Party Party Party!

I know I know, quit blabbing and get to the good stuff. SEOmoz will be hosting the 3rd Annual Search Spam / Werewolf party on Tuesday night. Tickets are unfortunately limited to 200 people and are for SEOmoz Pro members plus guests, so be sure to RSVP right away before they’re gone!

Here are the details:

Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Time: 7-9pm
Location: Wynn Hotel – Chambertin Room
Drinks: 1 free drink ticket per person, cash bar after that

This is a great way to meet other people from the community in a fun, laid back environment. There’s nothing better than meeting Matt Cutts for the first time while sitting at a table, cursing him, during a vocal game of Werewolf.

Remember that if you attend you get your own deck of Werewolf cards with 25 well known Search Marketing peeps. Oh! And check this out, this year we have an ALL NEW deck of Search Spam cards. That’s right people, those old cards are now collectors items and you can probably sell them on eBay for millions of dollars. Heh… ok probably not, but if you do I’d like a percentage of the profit.

Cindy Krum, Todd Friesen and Chris Winfield are on the deck this year. There’s also a mystery coupon!

Who knows, you could be the new Gracious Granter of Re-Inclusion or one of the dubious Black Hats. Perhaps you’re more on the white side of things? Hmmmm could you be in the deck? The only way to find out is to actually come to the party and get your own deck! If you’re not in the deck, you could always have fun with it and try to get people’s signatures on their cards. I actually did that last year and found it to be a good way to find a reason to talk to the "celebrities" (ya do what you gotta do).

Werewolf Game

So what IS this Werewolf game I’m talking about? Well you can find the description & rules here, plus I found this great quote from Ian Kennedy about the game back in 2007:

Werewolf (also known as Mafia) is a great parlor game in which players try and figure out the good guys from the bad guys relying on your ability to read the body language of other players to determine who is telling the truth and who is lying while keeping your role and identity hidden from others. Because the game inspires psychological tactics and gaming, it’s the perfect way for a room full of SEO experts and search engine engineers to unwind after a full day of conference sessions here at Webmaster World in Las Vegas.
- Ian Kennedy (everwas.com)

Last year I played the game for the first time. It took me a while to warm up to playing, but once I did I had a great time! I met a bunch of new people, and who knows maybe it even helped me to get this job! (I played Matt Cutts QUITE well I should add). I can say from experience that I was glad I didn’t miss this party, and I can’t wait to play again this year. Be sure to sign up soon as the space is limited! We don’t want you to miss out and not get to see who else is in the deck. It could be YOU! (Yep, I’m in the deck and it says "Jenny from the C-Block" heh)

The moz party is happening before the PubCon Palazzo Lavo Nightclub Party, be sure to also RSVP for that as well. Don’t forget to check out the PubCon blog to get information on all the PubCon parties going on.

Please remember to say hello if you see any of us! But whatever you do, RSVP for the Search Spam party ASAP.

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You Aren’t Average

Internet Success Hub — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:16:09 +0000

Do you ever think that SEO is “obvious”? “Common knowledge”? “Pretty easy, really”?

Watch this:

In this video, “Scott” from Google asked 50 people on the street if they knew what a browser was.

Less than 8% of people surveyed did.

Many people confused a browser with a search engine. Google Chome – or Google “Crown” as one woman put it – was unheard of.

I bet you’re feeling smarter than you did before you watched that video! Fact is, if you’re reading this site, you’re already waaaay ahead of most people in terms of internet knowledge and how it all hangs together. Pat yourself on the back.

There is a downside, however.

The Distorted Lens Of Familiarity

We see the internet through our own lens, a lens that has been honed over the years by focusing on a specific thing. We study search engines, we experiment with algorithms, we hang on Matt Cutts every word – they should have asked the people if they knew who Matt Cutts was – “Matt Coutts?”, we upload sites, we research keywords, we study user behavior, we build links, and more.

Such attention to detail can provide clarity, but can also distort our view.

We need to keep in mind that most people don’t see the internet as we do. Most people don’t know what a browser is. Most people cannot tell a paid search result from a non-paid one. People certainly do not understand that the site they are seeing in first position may only be there because some smart SEO has helped ensure that happens.

What is “spam” to the trained SEO eye may be perfectly acceptable to the end user, so long as the user gets the answer they want.

normal people can’t tell the difference between AdSense style ads and all the other links on most web sites. And almost the same number don’t know what “sponsored results” on the Search Results Page are either. It’s just a page of links to them. They click the ones that look like they’ll get them what they want. It’s that simple

Beyond the tiny web-savvy crowd, these people are your market. So it pays to put yourself in their shoes, especially when making decisions about how your site functions and displays information.

According to research conducted by the Nielsen company, the average internet user now spends 68 hours online per month. That may sound like a lot, but it only comes out to an average of about two and a quarter hours a day

You have a tiny window of opportunity. There are so many other activities, and web sites, demanding a visitors attention. The fact someone has even arrived at your site should be seen as something special.

Here a few points I’ve found to be true.

1. When Designing A Site, Make It Stupidly Easy To Use

Internet users spend less than one minute per page while surfing. You have roughly four seconds to get their attention. The average time spent on a page is falling, indicating that if people don’t find what they want immediately, they will go elsewhere, and they can, because the supply of websites is endless. Ignore design rules predicated on the notion of information scarcity.

A user won’t wrestle with your site. Web design, particularly navigation, is not the place to get clever. Web design should be no more complicated than book design. You might notice every book shares the exact same user interface. As do cars. As do bicycles. I have no idea how my car works. People have explained the workings of the internal combustion engine to me, and I nod sagely, but really, I don’t have a clue. Nor do I need to know. I just turn the key and hit the pedal.

Your website design should ask nothing more of the user than a car does. Assume nothing, other than the user will point and click something obvious.

2. Make The Thing You Do Obvious

Once a person decides your page is roughly what they are looking for, you have a further four seconds to direct them to desired action or get them to continue reading. On the average web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.

If you make your money via Adsense, then place Adsense prominently on your pages. If you make money selling subscriptions, make a huge button that says “sign up for a subscription here”. Place it where everyone can see it on their first – and possibly only – visit. If you want people to donate to your charity, make the donate button big and bold and place it prominently on every page.

Pretty obvious, right.

But it’s amazing how many sites bury what they want a user to do.

So, decide what is the one thing you want users to do, and relegate – or remove – all other distractions. The exception is a site to which users return to time and again. Make more features available to power users, but ensure there is always a clear, simple path for the first time user.

Language can also get in the way of conversions. Assuming people know everything that you do (including acronyms and industry jargon) is an easy way to passively lose sales every day.

3. SEO – You Don’t Need to Sweat The Small Stuff

There are people who spend their life finding and exploiting gaps in the algorithms, gaps that often exist only temporarily. I’m not one of those people. Neither is Aaron.

I think SEO is most effective when approached holistically i.e understanding how the different stages of attracting the visitor then converting them to desired action relate to one and other.

Identify the target market – keyword research and visitor profiling – and work backwards from there.

When the visitor who – and lets remember, s/he most likely doesn’t know what a browser is – searches for “lemon law” – what do they really want to achieve? Do they want to find information about this topic? Do they want to buy something? Do they want to compare one service provider with another? What’s really on their mind?

Sift through a list of related keywords until you can determine intent. Once you’ve figured out the intent, give the people the content they desire. Publish crawlable pages addressing that topic and intent, get the pages linked from other pages related to that topic and intent, and advertise your pages anywhere where your target market resides, either by buying space on high ranking sites or publishing your views, and links, on those sites. Read this.

That’s SEO in a nutshell. Leave the minutiae to the hackers, unless you are one!

4. The Most Successful Stuff Replicates Something The User Already Does

Email is a killer app because it enables a user to do something they already do more easily – write letters to people.

Search is a killer app because people have always looked for information, and search makes that process more efficient.

The computer games industry is huge because people have always played games.

Facebook and Twitter are huge because they are essentially txt messaging in another format. Txt messaging is a replacement for calling people on the phone.

Skype. Amazon. Ebay. All the big, successful internet plays took an everyday task the user already undertakes, and puts that task in an online context.

These services don’t ask the user to do something genuinely new. Most applications that ask users to do something genuinely new – a lot of Web 2.0 applications, for example – fail miserably for this reason. Most users don’t want to do anything genuinely new.

The people who do – radical early adopters – are highly unlikely to be your target market.

Try to frame whatever you do in terms of a task a visitor already knows well. Demonstrate, quickly and clearly, how you make that task easier or more efficient.

5. Even Google Users Are Not Typical

Studies suggest that Google users tend to be wealthier than average, and have more experience with the internet than users of MSN and Yahoo. The longer people have been using the Internet, the more likely it is that Google will be their search engine of choice, are more likely to have household incomes above US$60,000 than people who use competing search engines.

Whilst these numbers are probably getting more mainstream as Google grows their market share, it pays to remember that your target market may not be using Google at all! One of the secrets of search marketing is that the conversion rates from MSN and Yahoo can blow Google conversion rates out of the water, especially if you’re in the market of providing goods and services to the average punter.

A good example of this was when Aaron recently shared ad click-through rates per visitor for some large sites…with Bing in the clear lead…nearing double the rate of Google users.

Summary

In summary, the key to internet marketing is to know your audience. Really know them. It is not that people are stupid, it is that they are likely to be unfamiliar.

And remember that the average internet user is not you

The Thesis Theme for WordPress Gets Even Better

Internet Success Hub — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:03:58 +0000

There’s a new version of Thesis out that has our customers excited, thanks to some really cool new features. And it occurred to me that there are a lot of new Copyblogger subscribers who might use WordPress, and yet not really “get” what this Thesis thing is all about.

So in this post I’ll tell you what’s brand new in Thesis 1.6, and also bring everyone up to speed on why Thesis makes WordPress way better.

What is the Thesis Theme for WordPress?

Thesis is the flagship product of DIY Themes, a partnership between Chris Pearson and me. It’s the theme framework that powers Copyblogger and many other high-traffic sites.

In a nutshell, Thesis is software that delivers rock-solid SEO website code, plus unprecedented design flexibility for WordPress — without requiring the novice user to code anything.

For sophisticated users, Thesis is a search-optimized development framework that allows designers and web developers to build sites better and faster than ever before.

* SEO

Search legend Danny Sullivan, Google’s Matt Cutts, and Microsoft search engineer Jeremiah Andrick all use Thesis for their sites. So does search and affiliate marketing entrepreneur Rae Hoffman, SEO guru Michael Gray, top bloggers Darren Rowse and Robert Scoble, web-hosting entrepreneur Scott Beale, social media darling Chris Brogan, and thousands of others.

To find out why the Thesis approach to site code results in maximum search engine crawlibility, watch this quick video I put together.

* Design Flexibility

With most WordPress themes, you’re stuck with the basic look and feel that the theme designer decided on. With Thesis, you can choose between one, two, or three column layouts (and the size of each column), change font types and sizes, create a magazine-style layout, and lots more. Again, watch this video for an overview, and then dive into the three demo videos listed below the general video to see what Thesis can do.

* Support

Even with everything Thesis makes easier, we know people don’t want to be hung out to dry. Our support forums have evolved into a truly supportive community of over 10,000 of your fellow webmasters and bloggers. You’ll have help from DIY Themes support professionals, Thesis Certified Designers, and tons of your peers who simply enjoy lending a helping hand.

What’s New in Thesis 1.6?

Now, here’s the new goodness. Thesis 1.6 offers a lot of improvements throughout, plus two major innovative capabilities – you can now change colors throughout the theme without getting into the CSS markup, and you can create drop-down interactive navigation menus right from the control panel in the WordPress dashboard.

* Change Colors Throughout the Theme Without Code

This is huge for someone like me, who would never mess with CSS in order to change background colors, column colors, etc. I only know enough code to be dangerous, but now if I want to throw up a new site with a varied color scheme, I can do it without bugging Chris or Tony.

Watch this video to see how to build a site with Thesis 1.6.

* Create Killer Navigation Menus

This is another awesome feature for people who don’t code. Now you can create interactive navigation menus with drop-down subpages for each choice, all point-and-click from the Thesis design panel. It was cool the other day when Mark McGuiness proudly emailed me to check out his new interactive navigation menu (Mark’s a poet and a creativity consultant, not a coder).

Watch this quick video to see how the navigation options work.

What About Thesis 2.0?

The buzz is already building about the highly-anticipated Thesis 2.0 – a complete next generation approach to an already innovative theme. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s hard to believe this is the natural evolution from what we started with a year-and-a-half ago.

But don’t think you have to wait. Our current model and pricing provides all Thesis customers with every future update and unlimited access to support… so you can get started with Thesis today and never miss out on what’s coming next.

(And if you caught the hint by my use of the word “current,” you understand that this will change in the near future. Come join the Thesis community today).

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.