4.  Footer Links

Wow, first she’s taking a shot at my keyword stuffing, and now my footer links?  Now it’s really getting personal   I actually have been known to use footer links for keyword stuffing as a matter of fact, so that must make me quite a devil here

Actually, footer links are a great place to get some extra keywords in.  Some of the things that I’ve done with this has amazed people as to why the site hasn’t been thrown into the permanent dungeon.  We’re not taking just a few footer links here either, we‘re talking many heavily keyword laden internal links.  So I tell them, well I’ve tested this out thoroughly and removed the alleged spam and it hurt me bad, and when I put it back up, it helped me again tremendously.  That usually shuts them up

She says that they have a low click through rate, and given that we’re generally talking external links here, who wants them clicked, ever?  In fact a no click through rate would be ideal here.  We certainly don’t want visitors taking off to other sites with these.  People only put these up for link juice anyway, and the other guy gives you some juice as well.  Like the guy said in Dances With Wolves, good trade

I’ve no idea in fact why we‘d worry about these links at all in fact, other than just putting them up.  As well, as I’ve said, this can be used as a great tool for internal linking and as a bonus you get your keywords up there too.

Of course we need to see keywords as a good thing, but they really are.  There’s only so many you can put in your content without having it sound retarded, and at the footer, well there is no such worry.  It’s also a good place to stick external links where your partners don’t want to give you the good stuff like premium in content ones, or you’re just looking to help out a friend or one of your other sites with an extra link.  Footer linkers unite!

5.  Not Using Analytical Data

This is one that I have to admit that I agree with for the most part.  Having said that though, a lot of webmasters spend way too much of their time pouring over this stuff, where they could be spending it on higher value tasks.

It’s good to have a look at your analytics from time to time but you always need to make sure the time you spend on this delivers enough value to you.  Checking this just for the sake of checking it or for entertainment value doesn’t make a lot of sense.  Some websites, the ones that are complete and you’re only looking to tweak it once in a while, may only need checking once in a while.

For instance, some people will keep checking things like bounce rate and such, presumably just to have something to keep lamenting about.  They keep checking, not looking to fix things, but more out of some sort of vague hope that things will turn around.  While with a new site you need a good sample size, and until you do, the data may turn around, this still isn’t something you need to be monitoring this closely.

What you want to do here is to look for things that you can change, and then make the changes you feel you need to based upon your analysis, and then go back there when you are finished and periodically monitor the effects.  If you are using analytics more than this, you’re using it too often.

6.  Relying On H1 Tags

To be more precise, I guess we could call this relying on H Tags.  I’m of the camp that the HTML tags here don’t add anything to SEO, although there are a lot of people who feel that they can’t hurt and add them anyway, and I can’t disagree with that.  The reason I don’t use them is that it’s a pain for me to do it, with the web builder that I use, so it isn’t worth the effort to me for what is probably no help at all.

I’m not really sure what Lisa is talking about when she says don’t put your eggs in an H1 basket which kind of confused me.  She also says that H tags don’t make a substantial difference.  That would suggest that they would then be a good idea.  Even a slight difference is worth pursuing in SEO, and if H tags add a little to the deal, and it only takes a little to do them up, then it makes perfect sense to use them.

However, as I’ve said, I feel that the text size itself as well as the bolding, and italics if you use them, is what drives the SEO here where headlines are concerned.  I will say though that headlines in themselves are extremely important, both for SEO and for setting off the content to make it more accessible to your readers.

More is better, although you don’t want to go too crazy with this either.  What looks natural and what will benefit your readers the most is a good rule of thumb to follow.  It is about the readers as well, and you always want to take care of both the readers and the search engines at the same time.  So as long as you are paying attention to all of this, you can’t go too far wrong.

So there are 4 more, which I’ll discuss in the final part of this series, Part 3.  Feel free to post any comments that you might have, and we’ll see you in the next segment.