Another Arrow in the Linux Quiver [Podcast #28]

Our guest this week is Paul Savage, SEO expert and Irishman abroad.  Paul lives and works in Munich, where he runs BlackDog.ie, an SEO consultancy business.  He’s a regular listener to technology.ie and after a twitter exchange with Michele he agreed to come on the show this week for a chat about Search Engine Optimisation.

Paul points out that for most people, it boils down to a choice between time or money.  If you’ve got time but no money there’s a lot that the average webmaster can do to improve his or her traffic without having to hire a professional such as himself.  He lists 8 common SEO pitfalls to avoid:

1. Buying spammy links, selling links, link exchanges.  It doesn’t work and wastes money.
2. Purchasing video views / Facebook likes / Google Plus votes.  See above.
3. Non unique content – i.e. copying supplier manuals FAQs, glossary, marketing  : what you can do to either stop this content being indexed or thoughts on re-writing it. [nofollow/noindex]
4. Navigational issues
1. cleaning up after you remove pages. : should you 301 it or leave the page there hanging ?
2. linking to relevant sources : linking to outside resources is good, linking to competitors bad, but if you have to do , rel=nofollow them.
5. Over optimisation, to the detriment of of user experience: Writing usable titles, anchors, navigation
6. What is keyword research: seeing your site from your customers perspective, or different types of customer  perspectives, and now what are they potentially search for.
7. Structuring a website, having a hierarchy, showing search engines and humans a relationship in your content
8. Not testing your own ideas : Don’t be afraid to test, wait and analyse.  If you have an idea why not try it and see how the SERPs react ?

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