Keyword Guide for eCommerce Sites

Okay, this post is intended for those who is new to SEO for their online stores. It is not complicated or “advanced” as some articles in this blog that is focused on search engines. But after seeing so many online store owners are struggling to achieve good rankings for some super hot keywords, I think it is still necessary to write something about one of the most basic SEO topics – keyword research.

Although I said it is not complicated or advanced, but please do not reduce the importance you attach to keyword research – usually, keyword research is what determines whether you win or lose. Continue reading

Quick Facts about Chinese SEO

If you are going to learn some quick facts about Chinese SEO, first I have good news for you that the basics are not very different for Baidu and Google. Link building helps you achieve better rankings and a good internal structure improves link juice flow within the site. But, there are still some things that make Chinese SEO different from English SEO. Continue reading

Top 9 Tips for URL Improvement

As commonly acknowledged, URL structure is crucial to SEO. URL is the door where spiders enter your site, so the quality of URLs determines if spiders can have a good understanding of your site. Today I would like to share with you the top 9 tips on URL improvement.

1. No deep nesting
Limit the subdirectory level under 4. Users and spiders don’t like deep nesting of subdirectories like “…/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/1.html”. This can cause a waste of link juice and is also hard for users to remember the URL.

2. Insert keyword in the URL
As I said above, URL is the door where spiders enter your site. Keywords in URL is like a number plate that informs spiders of what is the house. Notice: do not insert too many. Adding 2-4 keywords sounds wise.

3. Remove the session ID within URL
Session ID with in URL can confuse spiders and make them suspect you have duplicate content.

4. Reduce variables in URL
Variables within URL can trap spiders and make the crawl the same URL again and again. It is a waste of time and resources to search engines as well as your own websites.

5. Use dash to separate Keywords
Do not use “_” but “-” to separate keywords within URL.

6. Use lowercase URLs
URLs are case-sensitive so you should be converted to lowercase.

7. Keyword in filename is better than keyword in directory name
Emphasize the keyword by putting it as the file name rather than directory name.

8. URL canonicalization
Specify the canonical URL to each unique page.

9. 301 redirect
After tweaking the URL, always remember using the 301 redirect to point the old URL to the new one.

After applying the 9 tips into practices, the URL structure of your website will be definitely more search engine friendly and your ranking will be improved.

Method Link-Building

Almost all SEO authorities are advocating that SEOs should build natural links that look innocent to search engines, and at the same time, some of them are offering plenty of awesome tips to make it possible, e.g. writing guest posts, submitting articles, sharing your site on social networking sites.

But you know, sometimes listening to someone is one thing but doing according to what you have heard is another. It is hard for some people to keep making link-building natural in their mind all the time.

So today I am sharing a tip with you, which I learned from method acting.

I myself am a big movie fan and to make it more simple to comprehend, here is my own definition on method acting: method acting is a family of lying techniques that make actors believe what they lie to themselves.

Say you were Robert De Niro and you keep telling yourself you are a vietnam veteran that find himself useless after the war. Once you believe it, you will go grad a pistol and point it at yourself in the mirror, asking “You talkin’ to me?”, very naturally.

Likewise, if you are a link-builder, you imagine yourself as a noraml reader, a blog commenter, a news distributor, an ordinary facebook profile owner, a real sharer…once you believe all this, you will find it hard to leave links that look suspicious to search engines.

It is easy to achieve this. You don’t have to put on 40 pounds like Robert De Niro did for ‘Raging Bull’. All you need to know is what average Internet users are like. I think this is easy because after work, you are one of them.

I call this “Method link-building”.

Does this make sense to you?