The Rank Magic Blog

Do You Have a Custom 404 Error Page?

November 25, 2009 ::: Have you ever clicked on a link and encountered a "404 Error - Page Not Found" error? Frustrating, huh? Once you're there, it's not obvious how to get back to what you were looking for on the web site. This is often caused by a web page that's been moved or renamed. It can also happen when someone else links to your site improperly, causing your site to be unable to find the page they intended to link to. This is a sure-fire way to get visitors to leave your site with a bad taste in their mouths.

You need to avoid that in order to retain those visitors, and there's a simple way to do that. You need to create a special 404 error page that expresses sympathy for your visitor's plight and helpfully offers to help them find their way. The page should look like a normal page on your site, with normal navigation opportunities and perhaps a suggestion to try your Site Map. For an example of such a page, visit this (nonexistent) page at our web site: http://www.rankmagic.com/non-existent-page.htm.

Once you've done that, you need to tell browsers to open that new page when they encounter a 404 error. Simply have your webmaster add the following code to your .htacess file:

ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html

where notfound.html is the filename of your custom 404 error page.

Organic Results Increase Paid Search Clicks

November 21, 2009 ::: We've often told clients that showing up in both the organic listings and the sponsored (pay per click, or PPC) listings "super-validates" your site as one to be clicked. Now, a study from a couple of NYU Stern professors has confirmed that organic search engine results can play a direct role in whether or not a paid listing is clicked. In essence, they're saying that if your business has both a paid result and an organic result appear at the same time, you have a better chance of your paid result getting clicked than if the organic result had not appeared. Presumably, the reverse is also true: that your PPC listing increases the odds of your organic listing being clicked.

Professors Anindya Ghose and Sha Yang have highlighted the following findings:

Is Speed a New Factor In Google Rankings?

November 18, 2009 ::: Over the past several months, a consistent theme that Google has been involved with is that of speed. In announcement after announcement, Google has talked about the importance of speed on the web, and how the company wants to do everything it can to make the web a faster place. It may soon be the case that how fast your page loads may have a direct effect on how your site ranks in Google.

In a recent interview, Google's Matt Cutts said this:

Based on Matt's comments, it's probably fair to assume that Google will begin taking page speed into consideration as a ranking factor, although he doesn't come right out and say that definitively. However making your site faster is going to benefit your users and possibly your sales anyway, so optimizing it for speed is probably a good idea anyway. Then if Google really does start using this as a ranking factor, you'll be pre-positioned to retain or improve your rankings.

Google is usually pretty good at providing webmasters with tools they can use to help optimize their sites. Google recently announced a Site Speed site, which provides webmasters with even more resources to help speed up their pages.

Speeding up a web site isn't something most of us are equipped to do, so your webmaster is the one to talk with about this. It's a good idea to check out your site speed, though, so you know if it needs work.

Google Caffeine Is Going Live

November 11, 2009 ::: Google is in the news today as it closes the developers preview of their new search architecture known as Caffeine. Google first announced Caffeine back in August and a lot of people in the SEO community have been examining rankings in the beta version of Caffeine.

Caffeine is a next-generation search architecture for Google and is supposed to be faster and also more accurate than the old version. It will be crawling more of the web and should provide better and more relevant results – at least according to Google.

Of primary concern to us at Rank Magic and to our clients is not how fast Google Caffeine is, but what happens to our rankings. Google has closed the beta version where we could look at Caffeine rankings and compare them to normal Google rankings, and they are rolling out Google Caffeine to one data center immediately. Over the next few weeks, expect them to roll out to other data centers.

There doesn't seem to be an obvious way to check whether what you are seeing when you search in Google is from the old Google or the new Google Caffeine. But as they continue this transition, we can expect rankings to jump around quite a bit. Some people are reporting significant ranking differences between the old Google and Google Caffeine, some up and some down. We'll have to wait and see.

Obviously, we hope that Rank Magic client websites will continue to rank at least as highly in Google Caffeine as they used to rank in the old Google.

Write Customer-Focused Copy

November 2, 2009 ::: Karon Thackston, an SEO copywriting expert, wrote a very helpful article in High Rankings Advisor about customer-focused copy. Customer-focused copy won't help or hinder your rankings in the search engines, but SEO is not really, in the ultimate sense, about rankings. It's about sales -- selling your products or services. Getting high rankings and bringing tons of visitors to your site is useless if the content on your site drives visitors away before you have a chance to snag them as customers. Customer-focused copy is all about conversions: engaging your visitors so they convert from visitors to customers, clients, or patients. Karon writes:

Other blogs of interest

The Computer Lady