The Stretford End

I’m an avid Guardian reader which has a brilliant sports section (especially the cricket). However I haven’t added to the football blogs for ages, partly because by the time I have read the piece there are 100s of comments, usually abusive with the the usual footbal stereotypes. And if i wanted to read abusive comments i’d spend 5 minutes at You Tube.

So having a well behaved audience is again another important aspect to me when looking for my favourite football blog. Can it really be that hard? You betcha.

The Best Football Website

So here it is, the Best of the football websites (that i have seen) is..drum roll… The Stretford End.

Check it out, it’s just good. Yeah the webmaster reckons he is really unbiased, but obviously lives and breathes Manchester United and given the chance would call all his children (even the girls) Eric, Ryan or Norman. But the journalism and analysis is of the highest quality. Pieces about formations and football strategies are rarely equalled even on the bigger football sites.

So for a small blog about a big team, where the competition (in numbers) is vast, this blog still stands out. So much so that the Times recently mentioned his good work and quality journalism.

So Stretty keep up the good work, even if you still go to sleep with a Red Devils pillow case, I am happy to read your quality articles and give you only our second ever “Best website of the week” award.

Author Sam

Does the tail weigh more than the head?

Using our database at Intelligent Positioning we found that 4 word search queries were more popular than 1 word queries. This was especially true for really large sites.

One of our clients received 20,000 organic clicks for a ‘trophy term’ (position 4 in Google) in January 2008. They also received almost 50,000 organic clicks for sixteen 2, 3, and 4 word derivatives of this ‘trophy term’. ‘Stemming’ has a part to play here but the figures show just how many clicks you can gain from long tail searches.

The Advantages of Long Tail Search

So, what can the advantages of long-tail optimization include? Here are two:

1. Even if the searches for a particular term are quite low, the fact that it is a such a specific search term means you often get a high conversion rate

2. Getting a small amount of hits for many long tail searches all adds up

Knowing what tactic to pursue obviously takes expertise, research and the right data. Good SEO companies can do this for you.

Intelligent Positioning use an inside-out approach based on an advanced data system. This means we are able to make the correct decisions when it comes to keyword pursuit. You don’t have to flip a coin to choose heads or tails!

Author Chris L

Quality Link Building Strategy

The BBC have it, so do Facebook, The Guardian, Adobe, Apple, Wikipedia and so on.

So what is it? The answer: Make a quality site, with content that people want to link to. Easy.

But you don’t have to have a behemoth site with millions of unique users to have decent content – anyone can have interesting unique content, with a little bit of creativity. Writing an intresting blog or offering information that can’t be found anywhere else is ideal. There are multiude of ways to get that interesting information out there too, which we will be writing about soon.

IP-SEO is a great believer in the organic growth of the internet, this includes the building of links. Some websites do indeed need a bit of encouragement to get better links, but like a new shop starting up on the high street, it will get recomendations and support by offering quality products. But generally you will perform well in the SERPS, have a low bounce rate and get many links, if you have a well structured good quality site with content that people want to read and see more of. In turn you should link back to sites that you think offer good content and advice.

This point is expanded upon in this article – from a very good SEO Blog . Also take a look at the SEO and listings companies desperate to give themselves a link in the comments section, despite saying “yes i agree great article”. The irony.

Links are important, but only the right links. We can tell you what are the right links and what are not. One good rule of thumb is, if a company says they will get you 1,000s of links for a couple of hundred pounds, we would suggest they were not great links.

Author Sam

Redirects come in various types from the temporary redirects to permanent redirects, which can be implemented at page level or server level. Implementing redirects is quite an easy task, all you are doing is informing the search engines of the new page location, whilst instructing the server or internet browser to navigate to a new url upon landing on the old url.


A redirect is used to point the old destination to the new destination at page level or domain level, which means you can setup a redirect on single pages or a group of pages, or you can redirect an entire domain. Redirects are versatile and very useful and are a must for anyone looking to change the website structure or domain name.


Lets look at redirects at their different levels:


When implementing a redirect, there are many different things to consider, such as, is the new destination page in a better location then it was previously?. When redirecting one page location to another, it is important that the following factors are considered:

• - Is the destination domain the same or is it a new domain?
• - Is the destination domain brand new or does it have some age behind it?  (only if domain has changed)
• - Is the destination URL friendly (i.e. not excessive in length or keyword usage)
• - Has the destination URL been used for any other pages previously (Conflict of content theme)
• - Has the destination URL been involved in any link development or bad link practices?

Since the domain is the foundation for a website in the natural search index, just swapping it with another domain is not a good idea, especially if the new domain is less than a year old and has no back links, the knock on effects can involve a loss of rankings.


Changing a domain should only be done when absolutely necessary or if the previous domain is very young and hasn’t built up any credibility. Redirects help save a lot of credibility when moving URLS/Pages, however, the changes in website structure can still have a positive or negative effect in Google depending on the redirection used among the changes in content, page text and more.

So what redirect is right for me?

Temporary 302 Re-direct:

A temporary redirect should be used when the URL structure changes but only temporarily. This is used on websites that are under development and are still undergoing page and url structures. For example, if we wanted to put a temporary redirect on a product page because it was placed in a different destination from what it would be if the website was complete then we would place a 302 redirect on the old destination towards the temporary destination, for example:

• - www.mywebshop.com  > Website (being built, still in progress)
• - www.mywebshop.com/products/toys/cars > (Toys section, this was the URL used at one point)
• - www.mywebshop.com/toys/cars > (New projected destination, still under development so temporary url used)
• - www.mywebshop.com/temp/products/cars > Temporary toys section.
  The temporary redirect should go from the old url to the temporary url until the new section is complete.

There are hundreds of different situations that are ideal for temporary redirects. It is very important that temporary redirects are not used for a long period of time as they do not stand strong ground in Google’s natural search. Because the redirect is known to be temporary, Google knows that the URL structure is likely to change again, therefore its importance is reduced for being returned in natural search.

How can I tell if a redirect is temporary or permanent?

Temporary redirect header codes are returned as a code “302”, using a server header checker you can see what code is returned, if you see a 302 code then the redirect is temporary. Use the following URL to check the servers header code:

http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp

When is it ok to use a temporary redirect?

Temporary redirects are ok for short term URL restructures, for example, if the URL changes because of a website design change or site structure change then a temporary redirect is ok for short term use. Typically, many people that implement the 302 redirect leave it in place to long which is detrimental towards search engine rankings.
Temporary redirects are for temporary use, if implementing, ensure that the temporary redirect is only used for a short period of time, typically 4-6 weeks at the longest.

Why are temporary redirects risky to a websites ranking?

Google and other major search engines use the URL structure as a foundation in the search engine index, but only on the basis that the URL’s indexed are not frequently uprooted and changed. When implementing a 302 redirect search engines know that the URL redirected isn’t permanent, as a result this can cause unreliable results which search engines typically avoid.

Permanent 301 Re-direct

Permanent Redirect:

A permanent redirect is used to change the URL of a page on a permanent basis. Because of its header code, search engines understand that the moved URL will be moved permanently. Because the URL is moved permanently, search engines can update their index with the new URL in place, unlike temporary redirects, search engines class permanent redirects as a safer option since this prevents unreliable results.

How to check if a redirect is permanent:

Visit the URL below and enter the URL to check. If the code returned is 301 then this means that it has been redirected permanently.

http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp

Page by Page Redirects:

Redirects can be implemented site wide or page by page. When redirecting single pages whilst keeping the site structure is unlikely to have any impact on search engine rankings. Implementing page by page redirects is quick and easy to do and is a popular choice for those either redirecting one or more pages.

Sitewide Redirects:

Implementing site wide redirects is a riskier job as changing the whole URL structure can have a temporary knock on search engine rankings. When uprooting the whole URL, search engines have to update their indexes. When doing this, its advisable to create an XML sitemap and submit it to Google webmaster central. Its then important to keep an eye on webmaster central to ensure there is no index problems, or no loss of rankings caused by other issues.

An example of a 301 re-direct:

Below is a successful 301 re-direct implementation for a client of ours. The keyword and URLs are hidden to protect the identity of our client, however the modification was made towards the end of 2008. Future posts will concentrate on how to successfully implement a 301 re-direct, whether it be using php or if your website is hosted on IIS.

Woolworths – Company Focus. Woolworths has obviously had a bad time of things lately.
With the company going into administration and the 1000s of employees facing unemployment just weeks before Christmas, it’s not been happy reading. Woolworths Decline.

However, one shining light for the Woolworths brand over the last 12 months has been their online presence. Whether or not they have been selling products through their website is another discussion, but their positioning in the search engines has been good –

and for certain keywords, it has been excellent.

But then this happened:

The Reason: Woolworths Website holding page throughout the site

This appears on every page linked to. So all the readable content has gone, all meta and all internal links. This blank page is all Google sees. Furthermore bounce rate is therefore 100% and we all know what that means.

Woolworths' keywords fell off a cliff in mid November in Google UK

Previously Woolies was in the top five SERPS for “Toys” “Outdoor Toys” “camp Rock” and many other children’s related purchases. At Christmas, these would be searched millions of times and the purchase rate is for many retailers better in December than for the rest of the year put together. So why did they take the site down?

As you will see above from our Keyword line tracker Woolworths.co.uk the effect of the maintenance page is stark. Woollies online has now taken the same hit as its fellow High Street Stores have – and fallen off a cliff.

Is there a way back?

The Woolies site was getting some very good positons, and closing it down like this, before the business has properly shut-up shop, seems premature. Furthermore, the site itself had a PageRank of 5, certainly a sellable asset to anyone in retail.

But what we can conlude from this is that links, by themselves, will not get you good results.