This Week In SEO 42
How to: AMP, Local Link Building, Silos, & More
Getting Started with Accelerated Mobile Pages
http://searchengineland.com/get-started-accelerated-mobile-pages-amp-240688
AMP this, AMP that, it’s time to really dive into what accelerated mobile pages are, how they can help your mobile SEO, and how to take advantage of them.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), a very accessible framework for creating fast-loading mobile web pages. The open-source initiative is designed to enable publishers to easily improve speed (and consequently, the user experience) for their mobile readership without sacrificing any ad revenue that they may rely upon.
Thumbs up for quicker loading sites and better user experience.
Here’s an interesting bit about AMP that SEOs will want to pay attention to:
you will have to maintain at least two versions of any article page: The original version of your article page that users will typically see, and the AMP version of that page.
Looking at the details of implementing pages, it can get a little overwhelming to the average webmaster without some serious coding muscle.
There are some interesting tools popping up to help with this. Such as this WP plugin:
Page Frog: http://pagefrog.com
This tool helps you create both AMP and Facebook Instant articles. I have not tried this plugin yet, so i am not recommending it THAT strongly. But it looks interesting and there are some good reviews, so if setting up this content is on your todo list, start with Page Frog.
The SEJ article gets into using schema, official WordPress plugins, and more. Check it out.
How to Find Local Link Building Opportunities
http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/77-how-to-find-opportunities-for-local-link-building
http://niftymarketing.com/list-of-local-link-building-ideas/
Must have been something in the air. Both Whitespark and Nifty Marketing published some solid, actionable content on building links (specifically to local sites).
The Whitespark article is, unsurprisingly, heavily focused on using their local citation tool. But still, there’s a ton of good advice here if you’re looking for links and don’t know where to start.
The local pack algorithm is tied to the organic algorithm which makes Link Building one of the few tactics that can help you rank higher organically, and in maps. While many people focus only on citations, reviews, or content, you can get a double benefit with links pointing to your local landing page.
These two posts are very straightforward, and easy to understand. If you’re trying to rank a local site (or, really, any sort of site where some of these would be relevant), click on through and get to work.
How to Increase Organic Traffic
http://www.siegemedia.com/increase-website-traffic
This article is an all-you-can-eat buffet of content marketing advice aimed at one metric: increased organic traffic.
Though a lot of the stuff talked about in this article won’t apply to your site right away, you can start putting your content together with a purpose.
Content layering is the most powerful part of this process, and one of the pieces of this strategy that many haven’t realized the power of.
If you can create content that generates links, ranks well, and layers directly on top of one of your landing pages, you’ll not only see the value of that additional traffic, there’s also a strong certainty you’ll push your more commercial landing page to #1 as well.
If your site gets a lot of traffic through the heavy use of content, definitely check this article out. It could have a big pay-off for you.
Everything Should Not be a Blog Post
http://searchengineland.com/everything-not-blog-post-start-using-silos-242508
This is a nice primer on the importance of silos, and how to implement them on your site. As Google’s basic aim is to categorize the internet (and present the most relevant links to a particular search), you’d be hard-pressed to find a more useful use of your time than to make sure your site is properly organized.
The more topically relevant content you cover in a silo, the more topically relevant your website will be in the eyes of Google. If you cover all of the major search queries that people use when searching for a topic — and your site shows up and is clicked on for these queries — then you are the best result, period.
Ecommerce SEO
Ahrefs content has been consistently strong, lately. This one is a guest post by David McSweeny and is a meaty guide to ecommerce SEO. Not just “do this, don’t do that,” but everything is illustrated in the context of two case studies.
Toy Universe were able to double their search traffic in a short period by putting in the time and effort to create unique content for their products, and by implementing solid, sensible SEO best practices across the site.
By adopting a ‘top down’ approach and working on the most important products and categories first, they were able to maximize the SEO benefit and see some quick results from their efforts
