3 Overlooked Optimisation Strategies For Your Site

Unless you are lucky enough to have thousands of links pointing your site, you will have to do everything possible to make sure that you are making the most of the link juice that is flowing towards you. The Internet is full of resources about how to optimise your site, so I thought I would talk about some of the overlooked methods and tactics that can help squeeze the most out of your link juice.

Canonical

I love this term, but I think it can confuse many of us when we come across it for the first time. The canonical tag deals with duplicated content and pages, when you are using a canonical tag you are telling Google that whatever page the tag points to is the most important version of that page and it should be ranked as such.  The canonical tag can be used almost anywhere and this is because if Google sees any difference in a URL it will see that page as being different, even if they have exactly the same content Google will still see these pages as being different and as such may choose to rank one over the other.  Using a canonical tag can help to make sure that Google is ranking the pages you want it to.

www to non www

Like I suggested already if Google sees any variation in the URL it will count these as 2 different pages, this goes for the www version of your site and the non www version of your site, as Google sees these as 2 different pages your page rank can then be split between the 2 versions. Adding a canonical tag here can help but the best thing to do is instigate a permanent redirect from one to the other, you may lose some page rank but it is better than having your juice split between 2 versions of the site. Also be careful of trailing slashes (/) as again these will be considered as a different pages.

Nofollow and java links

This is where things move into the grey area of onsite SEO, If you are using Nofollowed and java script links you are trying to funnel link juice from one section of your site to another. So you have 2 options, adding nofollow will mean Google will see the links but won’t pass any juice through them. ( there is an on-going debate about whether or not Google will still follow these links). Using a java script link will mean the spider won’t see these links at all. There will be sections of every site that you won’t want to leak any page rank to, sections like your terms and conditions and your privacy policy. But I think it is also important to show Google that these pages exist so in these circumstances I would use a no follow tag. Java script is usually more useful if you are trying to conserve as much juice on one page as possible while still offering your visitors a user friendly site that they can easily  navigate through.

Silo

Silioning a site is a tough concept to try and get across especially in a paragraph or 2, if you want find out more check this post out ( be warned you could read this post 5 times before it will make sense). The shortened version is, you build your site around themes and you categorise each page or post under a specific theme. Your goal is to send a clear message to Google about what each section of your site is about, cross links between themes may confuse Google and blur the message you are trying to get across about the different these of your site. You want to keep your site as regimented and structured as possible if you are randomly linking between categories you won’t be able to do that. If you want to link from a post in one theme to a post in another them, if possible link to the main theme page of the other post.

I guess you are probably asking, what about Meta tags, and Url structure. Well a quick search will provide you with all the answers you need to these topics, hopefully the ideas I have mentioned are not covered quite as much as some of the more common methods. Using these tactics won’t give you instant success but if you can add them to your current strategy they may help just a little.

 

This is a Guest post by Neil Jones, who Specializes in launching ecommerce sites, he is currently plying his trade as head of marketing for eMobileScan. With 18 websites based all around Europe they are on course to be one of Europe’s largest online retailers of Industrial handheld computers like the Datalogic Memor and the Symbol MC70. Neil has been an online marketer for the past 6 years and in that time he has owned and run a range of sites all built around the ecommerce platform.

Tags: optimisation strategies strategies for site owners strategies for webmasters