Last week, we opened up the Wix SEO Clinic. We took a deep look at the websites of 3 wedding photographers. While the sites may have been ranking well for their own names or domains, the odds are you want your business or website to rank well for your keywords, or words used in a search in Google. Refer back to Chapter 1 of the Wix SEO Clinic, to see the condition of these sites’ SEO before they were checked in and given a full check-up by our team of SEO “doctors”.

Real Results in Google

While conducting SEO for these websites, we tracked the progress made, by searching for each site’s main keyword in Google. We marked down this # every few days. Sure enough, over the course of 5 weeks, some real progress was shown:

Case Study # 1: Blaine Photographers

• Main keyword = “California wedding photographers”
• Google rank before SEO:  650
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO:  49

Case Study # 2: Jaime Miller Photography

• Main keyword: “New jersey wedding photographer”
• Google rank before SEO: 350
  
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 70

Case Study # 3: Studio 48

• Main keyword: “Minnesota wedding photographer”
• Google rank before SEO: 150
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 25

How Did These Jumps Happen?

Magic? No. SEO efforts? Definitely.

As you can see, some real changes were made in the rankings of these 3 Wix websites. (Remember: in terms of search engine rankings – the lower the ranking, the more visible your site is to those searching for your keywords!)

We provided step-by-step instructions to these users in terms of what they had to do on their end, inside their sites. We supplemented this by submitting these sites to some key places on the web.

Here’s exactly what we prescribed for these 3 case studies:

1. Optimize Meta Data (Blaine, Jaime Miller, Studio 48)

This is probably the most important thing you can do for your website’s SEO. It’s also really easy with the Wix website builder. There is now a main keyword for each site in both the <Title> tag, and meta description.

2. Added Content to Home Page (Blaine)

To add some content to their site’s home page without disrupting the page’s clean look and feel, we told the folks of Blaine Photography to add footer text. This was done by creating a text box, and simply dragging it to the bottom of the main page. Using the color pickW tool in the editor, a light gray color was chosen for this text, keeping it readable yet not too distracting.

Footer text is a terrific opportunity to get in some quality content, while preserving the look of your site’s homepage. Blaine wrote a basic description of their services in their footer text. And of course, keywords were also included.

3. Added Keyword-Rich Headers (Blaine, Studio 48)

Google loves headers. To add a header in a Wix document, select the “Text” tool and select “Title”. Title texts in Wix are interpreted by Google as header tags.

Blaine was asked by one of our doctors at the Wix SEO Clinic, to add the following keyword-rich headers to various pages in their site.

Home Page Header: “California Wedding Photographers”; Page 2 Header: “California Wedding Photos”; Page 3 Header: “California Engagement Photos”; Page 4 Header: “California Wedding Photographers”; Page 5 Header: “Wedding Photographer Prices”; Page 7 Header: “Wedding Photographer Blog”

Studio 48 was told to add a keyword header on Home page = “Minnesota wedding photographer”

4. Submitted to Google Places (Blaine, Jaime Miller, Studio 48)

This is a crucial step for any small business hoping to get ranked for regional keywords. We submitted each of these websites to Google Places, and customized their profiles. The instructions for doing this are explained pretty well at the Google Places site.

5. Submitted to Wedding Photographer Directories

To gain some more backlinks (and inject some SEO juice into these sites), we looked for some good wedding photography directories. Getting listed in a directory once you submit your URL can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, but it’s well worth the wait. Especially if it’s a directory with a good PageRank. For our wedding photographers, we submitted to the following directories: www.wedplan.net, www.photographypros.com, www.freephotogallery.info,  and www.ferenc.biz.

Resources

We told these users exactly what to do in order to optimize their site’s performance in Google. If you want to do the same for your site, follow the steps listed above. Here are some helpful links to help you along the way:

• How to Choose Your Keywords
  
• How to Fix Your Site’s Meta Data
• How to Make Header Tags in Wix
• How to Get Ranked for Physical Locations
• How to Gain Backlinks

Note: These methods can be applied to both a free website, and a premium site with its own domain. There’s no excuse for applying some basic, subtle SEO adjustments to your site to get the best traffic you can. Remember: SEO is an ongoing process.  We will continue to track the position of these sites as time goes by, more pages are crawled, indices are updated – and SEO efforts continue to be made.

Good Luck, and stay tuned for the next Wix SEO Clinic chapter!

Contribute to the Community

Make a name for yourself as a good source of information, by answering questions in forums or on blogs.  Build a positive reputation for yourself (and your website) by offering something useful to those within your industry or community.  This will increase your level of recognition by others, and will make it more likely that they will include a link to your website in the future.

Social Media

Building a profile on social media is a surefire way to increase awareness of your website.  Everyone knows of the big-wigs such as FaceBook, Twitter and MySpace.  Post a link to your website in any of the social networks you’re already a part of.  In addition to these general networks, you might want to become familiar with the myriad of niche social media networks that exist.  These targeted networks will put you in touch with others interested in the same things you are.  DoshDosh provides a list of more than 50 general and niche social media websites, while Social Media Answers neatly lists major social networks, according to category.

Blogging

Present yourself as an authority figure within your niche by creating and maintaining a blog. Blogs are easy to update and maintain, by commenting on relevant news articles or posting an interesting photograph.  Linking your blog to your Wix website is simple with the RSS widget found inside the website builder.  You can also provide tutorials or how-to guides on your blog (or your website itself) that provide information not offered elsewhere.

Share Something Cool

Offering visitors something useful that they can benefit from will make them remember your website, or even bookmark it. Write a tutorial or a how-to guide describing something that isn’t explained elsewhere. Share your experience using a new product or a tip offered on someone else’s website.

(Weaker Yet Effective Techniques)

Controversy

Draw attention to your site, and compel others to comment and post links, by making a statement that will stir the emotions of those visiting your site.  Make a statement that goes against conventional wisdom, challenge prevailing industry opinions, or even say something positive about something deemed unpopular according to mainstream belief.

Lists

Presenting information in list format is very appealing for readers to easily digest information, but this tactic should be used sparingly to retain credibility.  Lists should be the sugars and fats in your website content’s well-balanced diet.

A Word About Spamming

Signing up for blogs or forums to add spam entries that have links to your website is a great way to damage your website’s reputation.  Doing this runs the risk of being noticed as a spammer by search engines, which are smarter than you think and are well-versed in spamming practices. Practice “honest techniques” when attempting to gain backlinks.  Remember, it’s not just the quantity of links you receive, but the quality.

Checking Your Site’s Backlinks

You can determine the number of back-links to your website.  Yahoo! is widely recognized as the most reliable source of back-link data.  To discover how many websites contain back-links to yours, simply enter in the following text to a search in Yahoo:  linkdomain:www.yourwebsite.com

Google’s Thoughts on the Matter

For some more backlinking advice, here’s a short video tutorial provided by Matt Cutts, Google’s head of Webspam. (Notice that Matt recommends “creating a video” as a way to gain links pointing to your website, injecting a little ironic humor into the discussion.) For increased user comprehension, captions are provided.

Good luck putting these techniques into practice, and gaining solid backlinks to your Wix website!

5 Ways to Get Your Keywords Noticed:

Many users want to know how to get search engines to recognize specific keywords that they’d like associated with their website.  The goal is to attract potential customers who don’t know you, through organic Google searches.  Follow these steps to have your targeted keywords correctly inserted into your pages.

1.  Make a List of Keywords

Stay organized and focused. Study your competition. Make a list of keywords that are relevant to your business. Start with the obvious ones. For example, if you were creating a website for Lisa’s pancake house you may write the generic word “pancakes” down first, then perhaps “best pancakes”  and then you might get even more specific and choose a local keyword, such as “San Francisco pancakes” or “strawberry pancakes in San Francisco”. You may be able to get indexed for each of these keywords, but the greater question is how well you can get ranked. Even if you get indexed in the 100^th page for pancakes, it probably benefit your business much. Each keyword has different levels of competition which you can see by the number of results and by undertaking some research to find out how many people search for that keyword. Software is available to help such as WordTracker or Google AdWord.

Consider the size and amount of traffic you are likely to generate to your website. If you’re creating a 10-20 or even 50 page website, I don’t recommend trying to compete with the Apple website, for example.

2. Remember Content is King

This cliché survives because it holds a world of truth.  Your website must contain quality, relevant content in order for its keywords to be caught.  Writing the same key phrases over and over again will be recognized as spam by the search engines. If you’ve chosen good and relevant keywords you should have no problem inserting them into your text naturally and organically.   Insert your keywords throughout your text.  Spread them out evenly and discretely without making it obvious.

Aim for your homepage to contain 400 words.  A footer is a good place to add text if you prefer an image-based homepage.  Aim for 250 words on all other pages. For the best results, you should aim for you keyword to appear about 3 times for every 250 words. This includes your titles, headers and regular text.

Google loves headers. More emphasis is placed on any text that appears in your headers, so make sure you word and phrase your headers wisely. In the Wix website editor, select the Text button from your menu, and choose Title. The text you write here is what will be interpreted as a header tag – it’s that simple. The larger your header text, the higher it will rank.

The more text you have, the more opportunity to insert a keyword. Having trouble finding room for more content? For Lisa’s Pancake House, an “About” page or a ‘Reviews’ page may be good places to add some content.

3. Use Your Meta-Tags

Search engines rely on 2 types of Meta tags to discern the subject of a web page or website.

.  These are both found in the Settings section of your Editor, in the SEO Settings box.

Title Tag: The most important part of your page, in terms of SEO.  The title appears on the very top left-hand corner of your browser when you are viewing your Flash website. Make sure your title contains relevant keywords.  Also note that keywords found at the beginning of a title are much stronger than those placed toward the end.  Titles should not be longer than 70 characters, including spaces.

Description Tag: The description tag is another great opportunity to use your keywords. The description cannot be viewed from within the site, but it is the text that will appear alongside the link to your website in search results. This is an important text. Try to keep this text between 150-160 words.  Use at least two of your keywords in the description.  Keep it to the point, be direct and catchy.

You may also add up to 7 keyword tags in this same section of the Editor. Make sure you’re adding keywords or phrases that actually appear in your content.

Alt Texts: You can add “Alt Text” to your images that will be read by search engine crawlers, and cannot be seen by users.  Take this opportunity to use the keyword you are promoting one more time. In the Wix editor, you can add Alt Texts to your gallery pictures through the Manage Photos option.

4. Internal Linking

Internal linking refers to the navigation within your website and the infrastructure of links pointing from one page to another within your Flash website. Since your homepage (or landing page) is usually the page that gets the most traffic and the most links pointing at it, it is usually the most important page in your website.  Use text links to point at the different pages of your website to make sure that the search engine knows what that page is about.

For example, all links within Jack’s New York Pizzeria website pointing at the website’s homepage can use the ‘anchor text’ “Jack’s New York pizzeria” instead of the generic ‘Homepage’. An inner page in Jack’s website might deal exclusively with pepperoni pizzas, so the link to that page can use the anchor text “Jack’s pepperoni pizza”.

Pages with more links pointing at them will be considered as having more importance and relevancy from the point of view of the search engine crawler. The more often a link is used, the more relevancy and importance it is allocated.

5. External Linking

The same principles of internal linking are applied to links from the outside. Get as many backlinks to your site as possible and make sure your links are properly anchored in relevant text – keywords.

You can optimize specific pages for specific keywords by dedicating specific keywords to specific pages. For example, all links using the anchor text: “Jack’s anchovy pizza” to point at a page that has lots of text on the subject of anchovy pizza. Use all the links with the anchor text “Jack’s New York Pizzeria” to point at the home page that has that specific keyword inserted into it repeatedly.

Links will have greater potency when they come from a powerful website. Powerful websites are websites with a high page rank and a lot of traffic. A web page that simply has a long list of links from it (also known as a link farm) won’t have the same effect on your website as a link in a popular pizza review magazine, pointing at your website from an article raving about your great pizza.

Bottom line: the more anchor links pointing at your website – the better. Make sure these links are active.

www.wix.com
wix.com
www.wix.com/index.html
www.wix.com/home.asp

To many these urls are all the same url, but in fact they aren’t. Also, perhaps you’ve noticed that when you type your website’s URL you can add any text you want after the slash and the same page will still show up. Well, what happens when someone somewhere puts a link to your website, and that link isn’t the same one as the basic url you’ve been using.
This creates the risk that Google will index the same page twice, under different urls. So what can you do?
Well, one option is to make sure that you use the same link consistently throughout your website and your link campaign.
Aside from that, Wix is now incorporating a new feature called a Canonical URL.
The canonical url is a tag that appears in your source. (Quick reminder: to see your source right click over your website and choose the “view source” command). Canonicalization is the process of choosing the best url, or rather, the one you want to use and identify with your website. That way, no matter what url gets indexed or what url the user is using, the search engine is told which url is the main one and which urls to disregard.
This is a great way to avoid unnecessary redirects and other techniques whose entire purpose is to avoid duplicate content. Mattcutts expands on the subject in his blog if you want to read more about it in a more general context.
Also, if you have any suggestions about new developments you’d like to see in Wix, whether from an SEO point of view or from a product point of view, you’re welcome to join the Wix forum and add your suggestion to our Wish list.
More updates to come!

Step 1:

Start searching for keywords relevant to your business and location. Try all the combinations you can think of. For example, if you were to search for a pizzeria in New York, you may use several different combinations.

What you’re looking for is a list of competing and closely related businesses. Imagine you were one of your clients, what possible combinations might you be using to find the service or product you’re looking for?

Step 2:

Start making lists of the businesses that are consistently getting top rankings. The more keywords (word combinations) you try, the more listings you will become familiar with. Get to know your virtual surroundings. For the best results I suggest you get a few dozen listings from your research. You can start a spreadsheet to follow the different data you’re about to derive from each of these listings.

Step 3:

Explore each of these local business’s online profile. Don’t click on the name of the listing, visit the reviews by clicking on the reviews link next to the listing. Each page listed here is a page with information about the restaurant, reviews and information that Google found about the place.

Step 4:

Scroll down the page to the “More about this place” section. This is where you’ll find a wealth of links to websites that contain information and mention the restaurant. This is your goldmine, as you can probably find lots of great places to get listed yourself.

Each of the website’s listed here is a website that Google is crawling for information on that restaurant. You can visit many of these websites and list your own Flash website. Make sure that there is a consistency in your listings, that the phone numbers and address are consistent and true. Google places as much emphasis on quality as it does on quantity, so if you’ve listed yourself in a million places, but those websites are irrelevant or the information on them is irrelevant you’d be doing yourself a disservice.

Even if you don’t care about being listed in local directories but you care about promoting your website, this is a good tactic, as it will bump your website up in terms of ranking. Google will see many good website’s pointing at it and it will consider your website more relevant important.

Step 5:

If you’re feeling particularly industrious you can do the same thing for the “reviews” and “user content” sections. Here you’ll find many more links. Do this process thoroughly and you will reap what you sow. Don’t think small. I recommend you try to get between 50-250 listings, even if it takes you a few days, and of course depending on the level of competition in your field and your area.

Many of you often ask me how to get the search engines to crawl your website more often. Well, the simple answer is that you need to get your website noticed. That means, generating as much traffic as possible and having as many good and established sites pointing at yours, drawing the search engine’s attention to your web page.

Http 301 – the 301 code means that the URL you are requested, meaning, the website you are attempting to visit, has been permanently moved. This is usually used to avoid duplicate content issues when similar documents are located on different URI’s.

Http 302 – This means the document you are searching for has been temporarily moved to a different location.

Http 400 – This code means that there was most likely a syntax error in the URL entered and as a result the server is unable to understand your document request.

Http 401 – This means that there has been an unauthorized request and that the server requires authentication before carrying out the document request.

Http 403 – The server has understood the request but it refuses to fulfill it. This is a ‘forbidden’ code response. A webmaster may alert the user as to the reason his request is being denied, but if he prefers not to notify users, he may use a 404 status code instead.

Http 404 – This response means in general that the document you requested cannot be found. The client was able to communicate with the server but the server was not able to find the requested document. This could also mean that the server was told to refuse the request without providing a reason.

Http 410 – Similar to a 404, the 410 code indicates that the document you requested is ‘intentionally gone’ and will no longer be available at this URL address, while there is also no forwarded address. This code is usually used for documents such as promotional information and it is up to the webmaster and at his discretion to determine when to remove the 410 status code.

Http 500 – This indicates an internal server error that is preventing the document from loading.

Http 501 – This indicates that the server does not recognize the document request method. Since the server cannot fulfill the request it displays a ‘not implemented’ status code.

This sums up the basic redirects and what they mean. Just remember that redirects are often problematic and collide with good SEO. This is because good SEO will always prefer to have the simplest and fastest access to a website, for the best usability. Redirects complicate things so don’t use them unless you absolutely have to.

Good Luck!

1. Content

Google and the other search engines crawl your website using the text. They crawl text. That is why you need to have as much of it as possible on your website. A website with no text will simply look empty to the search engine. Make sure you have content in your website and that this content is informative, in the sense that it will tell the search engine who you are and what your website is about.

To be more specific for Wix, I recommend at least 400 words in the homepage. Don’t sweat it though, if you’re using mini-pages you can spread the words throughout the mini-pages, as they’re all counted as one.

2. Keywords  & Meta Tags

Keywords are important in search engine optimization. Keywords are the search terms used by your target audience to reach you. For small to medium sized websites, think of 3-5 main keywords which you would like to optimize. These should be terms (they can be one, two, three or more words) that are relevant to your website and are likely to be searched in order to reach you. The first thing you can do is integrate these keywords into your content as naturally as possible. They should be part of the natural flow of information, and they should make several appearances.  The second thing is using headers to emphasize your keywords. Use your keywords in your headers. This is done through the title text box in the Wix website builder.

Third but certainly as important, use the keywords in your Meta tags. Meta tags are added through the website builder settings that appear at the top of the editor.  Add a title (up to 70 characters long) and a description (around 155 characters including spacing). Use the keywords you want to promote and make sure your description isn’t too short.

3. Links

Links are an important part of search engine optimization. A link pointing at you lets the search engine know you’re there. The more links pointing at you’re the higher your chances of getting indexed faster. Links from high ranking websites, or more important websites (aka – websites with a high page rank) are better and more meaningful than links from link farms or websites of low importance (meaning – websites with a low or no page rank). To take full advantage of the linking system use anchor links. Anchor links are links that are embedded organically into the text. For example, I could say that if you want to learn more about using links to promote your website, you should follow the link. So now the search engine knows that the target page has something to do with information on links and website promotion, and if lots of you start clicking on that link, it will also learn that the content on that page must be valuable. This will increase the ranking and rating of the target page.

4. Structure

The structure of your website is the way each page is connected to another and the manner in which information flows through your site. These days it is understood that the best type of website architecture is a flat architecture. By creating a flat architecture you are endeavoring that each page on your website can be reached with a minimum amount of clicks. This is good both for your website’s users and for search engines. If your homepage has the maximum page rank and importance, than that importance is trickled down throughout the pages. That’s why keeping as many pages as possible as close as possible to the home page (close in terms of the number of links apart), increases their importance.

5. Sitemaps, Directories and Submitting to the Search Engines

There are a number of methods to help your website get indexed along with all the pages in it. The first method of getting all your pages indexed is by using sitemaps. Sitemaps map out all the pages of your website through links. As the search engine crawls your website, having a sitemap increases the chances that all the pages will be crawled and indexed.

Get listed in as many directories as possible. The more traffic a directory has the better. Getting listed under the most relevant category lets search engines know more about your website and also leads relevant traffic your way. It’s an all round beneficial method of promoting your website online.

Last but not least, you can also submit your website directly to the search engines. Both Yahoo and Google have manual submission pages. This does not ensure that the crawler will index your website but it certainly increases the chances.

Good Luck.

Here’s a summary of his key points:
If your facebook profile is completely public, then Google can register the page rank and use it to transfer what I like to call ‘link juice’ to your website. Of course, if your profile isn’t public then Google can’t register the page rank and then this link won’t the same weight and value. It has standard marketing value, but in terms of SEO, you might want to consider opening a public profile specifically for promotional purposes. It’s just a very powerful tool.

Twitter usually adds no-follow to its outgoing links to prevent spamming so its links aren’t as relevant to the SEO cause. Check out his video to learn more on this subject.

So first things first:

• Wix is introducing a new deep linking feature. This will enable you to send links directly to the inner pages of your website. For those of you who are still confused consider what has been happening with your website until now. Anyone who enters your website is automatically redirected to your homepage.  With the new deep linking feature, you can send visitors to a specific page, leading to a better promotion of inner pages. For example, suppose you have a pretty large photography website, and you’ve met a potential client. You have a specific picture you think will be perfect for him. Instead of sending him to your website with a list of explanations on how to reach the exact picture, gambling that this potential client has the patience and determination to actually reach this page, you can send him (or her) directly to the photo or gallery page you want. Good idea right?

At this point, this feature will only work on regular pages (as opposed to mini-pages).

• Getting Inner Pages Crawled. This part of this post is in direct response to recurring queries that have been sent to our support department. Some have noticed that Google will index your inner pages and they will appear as additional results to search queries underneath the homepage result. In some cases, when you change your website’s description you will see that it has been updated in the main result, while these inner pages are still accompanied by the old and outdated description.

This happens in cases where your homepage is crawled and your inner page is not. To see this, visit the cached view of your inner page and compare the date that appears in the header at the top of your page with the one listed for your homepage.

To see the cached view either click the ‘cache’ link which appears alongside your website’s URL in the Google search results, or enter the following search:

Cache:http://www.domainname.com

The solution for this is simple. You must wait until your inner page is crawled and you can hasten this process using the same techniques you used to get your Flash website crawled. You are welcome to browse other posts that appear in this blog for more tips.

One last thing – many of you have been sending different support questions through the comments option. The bad news is that I can’t answer all these support questions through this blog. The good news is that you can easily get an answer through the Wix support. That’s where you can get answers to any technical or even non-technical question you have!

Good Luck!

Your website architecture is important both in terms of its target audience usability and also when taking search engines into consideration.

Focusing on the search engines for this post remember that your site architecture may influence and affect your page rank and traffic, particularly for inner pages. A higher page rank doesn’t necessarily ensure a higher ranking in search results, but it helps. It also tells your users that the information on your page is reliable, having passed the Google test.

So what does ‘flat architecture’ mean? Flat architecture is the alternative to ‘deep’ or ‘nested’ architecture. A deep architecture refers to a long chain of links, leading to inner pages, while a flat architecture refers to a system where practically no link chains exist and each page can be reached in one, two or three links.

Having a flat website makes it possible to access each page on your website quickly. From a search engine’s perspective less clicks translates into higher importance and fewer clicks into diminished importance. This is also based on the logic that the more clicks it takes to reach a page, the fewer the viewers who will reach it. This doesn’t mean you should put all your content on one page. Keep in mind that the logic behind Google’s algorithms is to target improved usability, if all your content is on one page and assuming that you have enough content to fill in several pages, will clog the page and make it harder for users to understand where and what to look at.

Here is a sketch of what was traditionally considered the best practice for an SEO structured website:

Here is a sketch of a modified web architecture, based on the flat structure theory:

This modified web structure is a good idea for websites. If you have hundreds of pages you may find that you’re clogging your homepage with links and damaging the usability of your website, not to mention that Google traditionally does not crawl over 100 links on a specific page.

In terms of transferring the ‘link juice’ and improving the ranking, the more links on a page, the more the potency of the link juice is diminished. Most experts agree that the typical algorithm for link juice is something along the lines: .85 * (1/X), with ‘x’ representing the number of links on the page.  Even so, homepage links are stronger and more valuable than deeper links and the further away a page is (in terms of links) from the homepage, the lower its page rank and importance.

Please remember that this is referring specifically to small websites. Websites with thousands of pages will have to utilize a completely different strategy that will be compatible with their size and subject. If you would like to read further on this subject, you may enjoy Sergey & Larry’s famous original paper on Page Rank .

Good luck with your new Flash website!