Here’s what I mean. My old profile URL, which still works, is: http://www.linkedin.com/in/joannabutler

However, this is now appearing on profiles as the following:

Not only this, but other country codes are also working as @danbarker noticed:

• http://us.linkedin.com/in/joannabutler
• http://au.linkedin.com/in/joannabutler
• http://nz.linkedin.com/in/joannabutler
• http://hk.linkedin.com/in/joannabutler

All the above URLs have not been blocked through either robots.txt or a robots Meta tag. Only the canonical tag has been used on all URLs, except the ‘www’ and ‘home’ country. The tag specifies the ‘home’ country as the main URL as follows:

As Michael Gray eloquently put it, these tags are like an SEO band-aid and entrusting your entire site and its duplicate content issues with a single tag is a little risky, if not foolish should the effect of these tags change overnight. It is much better to choose one URL and 301 redirect all to it, or at least to use some simple pattern matching in the robots.txt file to block search engines from the duplicate URLs. Failing that, implementing a ‘noindex’ robots Meta tag would help avoid issues.

But, as it currently stands, there are two URLs per profile: ‘www’ and ‘UK’ for me.

So, what are the SEO implications for LinkedIn profiles?

Duplicate content

Besides the fact having two URLs makes absolutely no sense, users are left wondering which URL is their ‘real’ profile and therefore which to link to. Two URLs could potentially mean half the number of inbound links as they’re split between profiles, and therefore link equity, reducing it’s authority.

Rebuilding your ego SERP

If LinkedIn axed the old URLs without 301 redirects, you will probably have to rebuild that equity for your new profile URL. The link to your nicely formatted career summary in the form of your LinkedIn profile page may well disappear out of your ego SERP.

International reach

If you are based in the UK, want to connect with people in the UK, and don’t ever consider moving countries, this update is for you! However, in today’s well-connected, online society this is highly unlikely. You are far more likely to fall into one or more of the following categories:

• You work for an international company
• You need to connect to people around the world
• You may emmigrate

Therefore, you will prefer to keep the original, location-independent URL.

Complex URLs

Already there appears to be a redundant ‘in’ directory within profile URLs, but now we have to remember what country a person resides in in order to reference them.

What benefits are there, if any, of a country subdomain?

Local search

Your profile may well rank better in local searches. That is to say if someone searches for me in the UK, my UK profile should rank better than if they were searching from the US. [However, this may not be true due to the well publicised issues with the UK SERPs recently receiving unnaturally large amounts of foreign websites in local searches, but that's a whole other topic!]

Interestingly, LinkedIn haven’t changed the ‘lang’ attribute in the HTML or employed international language changes such as using ‘resume’ in US profiles and ‘CV’ in UK profiles.

In conclusion: this is a LinkedIn #FAIL

It makes absolutely no sense to adopt this new URL structure from an SEO, usability or recruitment/business standpoint. The only possible reasons they could be opting for this format are to free up more usernames or for unknown technical reasons.

It will be interesting to see what happens to LinkedIn profiles in SERPs over the coming days and weeks. If you have any insights or opinions on this, drop me a comment as I’d love to hear them. Let’s hope you haven’t had any expensive business cards etc. printed with your LinkedIn profile URL on…

No related posts.

LinkedIn’s Redesign Employs International SEO FAIL is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

Now, I like change and especially to see what Google is up to when it experiments, but they can’t really think this would be a change for the better? What are the potential implications of this?

Universal Search

It’s likely to mean people rely much more on mixed results for images and videos for example. But I am personally a fan of being able to flip easily between other search types such as News, Images and Maps. I don’t want to have to trawl through irrelevant types of search results.

Personalised Search Results

When searching, especially when I want to test results for a particular keyword, seeing that I’m logged in in the top right hand corner of the SERPs acts as a reminder that the results I’m seeing may well be peronalised just for me and therefore a less accurate representation of what the average user will see. Removing this log in/out link means that more people will probably forget to log out, Google collects more data from your searches, and presents you with personalised results unbeknownst to you.

Google Denies Users Choice

Ultimately it would force users to use the new drop down “Show options” menu, but this does not offer the same full range of options. Instead it currently only offers Videos, Forums and Reviews. Of course users can hit the ‘back’ button on their browsers and start again as the menu remained on Google’s homepage, but that would have been a pretty bad user experience.

If this change stuck, it would have been a fairly fast transition and I’m not convinced it would have been well thought through. Could this be another knee jerk reaction to Bing’s popularity and moves lately? Bing interestingly has both top and side navigation menus as standard. Choice.

No related posts.

Google’s 24 Hour Navigation Test Dictates User Journey is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

The jist of it is that SEOs feel that big brands are now being favoured more in organic search listings and that smaller brands are having a hard time. But blaming Google for handpicking brands to be boosted in the SERPs (search engine results pages) is false and taking the easy way out.

Generating Brand Buzz

Up until now SEOs have used link building techniques to increase the authority of websites in search engines. But the knock-on effect of Vince is that those who previously used the easy route of mass link building through spamming and paid links will find those techniques no longer produce results. This means that only good quality links are considered – those that are usually created by people naturally linking to the site because they want to.

One reason why SEOs may think that big brands are being favoured is that people naturally talk about them online and in doing so, link to them. Smaller brands on the other hand are less likely to have that buzz generated about them naturally, and therefore now struggle to gain inbound links and authority to compete with the bigger brands.

SEOs should therefore work to generate a buzz about the brand in other ways. This means that they must become better SEOs through considering the whole (on- and offline) marketing mix for their clients rather than concentrating purely on standalone SEO or quick wins.

1. Trending Topics

One way to generate a buzz would be to publish articles or blog posts that centre around a spiking topic in the news. In order to find out which topics are trending take a look at Google Insights for Search or Google Trends. Here’s an example of Google Insights for Search illustrating how searches relating to ‘Michael Jackson’ peaked a couple of weeks ago:

Targeting trending keywords has two benefits: content based upon the topic may see a boost in SERPs and also there are higher volumes of searches for those terms which would result in more traffic to your site.

2. Creating the Buzz Yourself

If publishing content around an existing buzz topic is not possible or relevant to the site in question, the buzz can be created around the brand itself (or product/offer). This is where a combination of offline channels such as TV advertising and online display advertising or YouTube videos can be used to create a viral marketing campaign that captures interest and sparks online searches.

The key is to be creative. The best way to generate a buzz is to engage your target audience and give them something that will entertain, inform or significantly help them in some way. In the UK, take the Cadbury’s gorilla (chocolate) or Compare the Meerkat (price comparison) as completely off-the-wall examples of creative viral campaigns. These have also done extremely well in universal search thanks to placing their TV ads on YouTube, and the buzz has even spread to social networks like Facebook where there are groups dedicated to the campaigns (The Cadbury’s Gorilla has over 120,000 fans and Compare the Meerkat has nearly half a million fans).

The Lesson

Forget SEO as a standalone product; that approach simply doesn’t cut it anymore. Integrate SEO with other marketing channels and watch your campaigns take off.

Related posts:

1. Google Buzz Features Review: what’s all this Buzz about then?

Gorillas, Meerkats & Michael Jackson: Are You Creating Brand Buzz? is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

Here’s a list of some pointers that I’m going to share with you that I find useful when considering a link building strategy for a SEO campaign:

1. Copywriting for forums

Don’t just jump straight into a forum thread or even a relevant Yahoo! Answers page simply to insert a link back. Actually hire a copywriter who knows about your/your client’s industry so that you actively participate and add value and insight into the topic. The copywriter doesn’t have to be an addition to your team – why not send an email round the office asking if anyone has any specialist knowledge about the topic? You’d be surprised what hobbies and interests your colleagues have outside work and how they could help!

2. Bartering for links back

So you’ve explored your competitors’ sites and found their backlinks, and tried to request or add a link back to your site from those sources too. Great. But how about actually pursuading the website owners to link to you instead of your competitor? It’d be doubley successful as you’d gain a link, plus your competitor would lose one! Sneaky…

3. Content distribution

As we all know, duplicate content is an issue in search engines. We also know that including an RSS feed for your site’s content is a great way to get people to link back to your site. So how can you: a) stop people from using your exact content and creating duplicate content issues, and b) ensure they link back after greedily stealing your content? Here’s what I’d suggest:

a) First off, provide only snippets or slightly different content if possible. Any change in the content will help, it doesn’t have to involve a complete article rewrite.

b) Always try to include an internal link (but with full URL path) in the first paragraph of your content. This way, when the article is scraped, there’s a pretty good chance that the link will stay in tact and although you’ve had your content stolen, you’ve actually gained a link back that’s set within context and got great anchor text too.

4. Credit where credit’s due

As part of standard reputation management you should be checking search engines, forums and social media sites etc. for mentions of your company’s name. That way you can spot issues and respond. But also, you may notice that a website has mentioned you, perhaps even quoted you or used your content, but is not providing a link back. So request one. This is also relevant to those sites that include your domain name but do not format it as an actual link back, i.e. www.searchenginechocolate.com

4 ½. Affiliates

This is actually a tough one! Hence it only being worth half a link building tip! You’ll need to be tactful. If you have an affiliate campaing running and some of your affiliates have sites with high PageRank and traffic, you could try approaching them for a direct link to your site. You’ll need to approach this on an affiliate-by-affiliate basis as this will obviously not help their commissions. But if you made it worth their while (giving them a bonus or more commission perhaps?) to add that link back, then you’d have a great ready-made network of people to approach for link building.

Related posts:

1. Website Referrals: Who’s Linking to You?

4-and-a-Half SEO Link Building Strategies to Help You Think Laterally is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

I also have some strong opinions about SEO. I like to stand on the side of SEO that works to make a better quality website for the user, and works to boost sales especially when combined with website optimisation.

However, I’m aware that this is a slightly idealistic and possibly naive view of SEO. At the end of the day, money is what matters. The focus needs to be on generating revenue. Promoting fun and cool functionality is great for the user, but if it detracts from the purchase funnel or attracts the wrong type of traffic, it’s not going to pay for itself.

It’s for that reason that I try my hardest to keep an open mind about SEO. It’s not easy to go against your instincts or preferences, but the client and the project must come first. Having a strong opinion and refusing to operate in any other way is very closed-minded and means you are likely to fail to spot opportunities. There are many theories surrounding SEO and many have conducted experiments that we can all learn from, but at the end of the day, as algorithms and user behaviour continuously evolves, there will never be static rules for SEO.

My advice for anyone wishing to broaden their mind about SEO is:

1. Actually partake in SEO debates. Getting involved, voicing your opinion will encourage people to share their view points too and give you a new perspective you may not have had before. Be open minded to the responses (especially if you are sensitive to criticism!). If you do this already, why not try taking a different stance?
2. Experiment with different SEO techniques regularly.
3. Regularly review your SEO approaches.
4. Adapt.

Related posts:

1. Learning SEO? SEO Tips for Beginners

4 Tips on Avoiding Being a Narrow-Minded SEO is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

Obtaining links to a website is one method of search engine optimisation. However, quality is far greater than quantity when it comes to inbound links. Let me explain. Here are 4 key pointers.

1. Non-linked
Sometimes websites can mention your websites URL without linking to it by writing it as plain text. It is easy to confuse these with actual links that give actual value to your SEO. If you find a website doing this – approach them to see if you can change it to a real inbound link.

2. Nofollow
Harder to spot are links that include rel=”nofollow” in the HTML code for the link. This means that no SEO value is being passed to your domain; the only benefit is that visitors can still follow the link to your website.

3. Source Website
Relevance is key to getting the most from a link. That applies to the website theme, the web page that contains the link and even the text that is used as the link. The closer they match your own website’s theme, especially your most valued keywords, the better. Gaining a link from a florist’s website when yours is about mobile phones will do you no good at all!

4. Trust
The more popular and trustworthy the other website is, the more value the link from their site to yours will be. How do you know what’s trustworthy? Generally speaking, if the website has been around for a fair amount of time and isn’t a directory or based purely on un-moderated user-generated content, it will be trustworthy. Another way to gauge how trustworthy a website is is to check its PageRank (PR) using the Google Toolbar.

Related posts:

1. Website Referrals Part 2: Discovering Inbound Links
2. Website Referrals: Who’s Linking to You?

Website Referrals Part 3: Useful or Useless? is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

Level: Beginner / Intermediate

Discovering Inbound Links

There have been some fantastic posts about discovering inbound links to websites, including competitive link searches, so I don’t want to simply rewrite what has already been said. Instead I’m going to outline the main methods and provide some starting points.

Google

Arguably the most popular search engine, it seems like the perfect place to start. Wrong. While Google provides a method to discover inbound links to a specific domain, its data is innaccurate at best. So what’s the benefit of using Google at all? If you are optimising specifically for Google, it’s useful to know which websites Google is currently aware of that are linking to you. In the search bar:

• link:www.domain.com or link:domain.com – finds the websites that Google is aware of that are linking to the specified domain
• www.domain.com or domain.com – finds instances of the specified domain being mentioned in text form (not necessarily linked)

Yahoo!

Yahoo! has the most accurate data on links and should be your main port of call when finding which websites are linking to you. To get the most out of Yahoo! use SiteExplorer. In the search bar:

• linkdomain:domain.com – site:domain.com or link:http://www.domain.com/ – site:domain.com – find web pages linking to the domain, excluding internal links within the website itself.

MSN Live

MSN isn’t as good as Yahoo! as its data is fairly incomplete, but it is reliable and it’s useful to know which websites MSN is aware of that link to you. In the search bar:

• linkdomain:domain.com -site:domain.com

Website Analytics Software

Using tracking software such as Google Analytics can also help you track websites that are linking to you, but they will only do this once a user has followed the link and not before. However, what the software will tell you is which websites referred the best quality visitors – that is those visitors who interacted the most with your website and converted.

Related posts:

1. Website Referrals Part 3: Useful or Useless?
2. Website Referrals: Who’s Linking to You?

Website Referrals Part 2: Discovering Inbound Links is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

So you might already know you’re getting X number of visitors from Google organic searches, X number from pay-per-click and X from Yahoo and MSN Live, but how often do you check referrals from other sites? If you don’t use affiliate marketing (meaning you’re devoted to knowing where visitors are coming from) chances are you may not remember to check your website referrers frequently enough.

If you have enough time to read this, you have enough time to check your referring sites. If you are using Google Analytics, you can find a list of Referring Sites under Traffic Sources (see screenshot above).

Ok, now what? Look at the sites that refer the most visitors. In response to the fact I get so much traffic through Twitter I set up a Twitter landing page specifically for people clicking the link in my profile. I’ve tailored it to help to explain who I am and encourage visitors to follow me if they aren’t already. Problogger has a great guide to creating a Twitter landing page.

Also, I noticed that I’m getting traffic from sites that have mentioned my blog in their articles (I’m especially proud to have been mentioned on the Search Engine Strategies blog). Online marketing (especially via social media) is all about give and take – so make sure you use this opportunity to thank your referrers.

It’s a great idea to keep tabs on what links people are using to find your site. Some clients of mine were getting links to an old domain so we were able to correct this. Also, it’s a great opportunity to ask the referrer if you can enhance the link back by using better anchor text or placing the link in a more prominent or relevant context for your website’s theme. You could also get ideas for other websites to approach for links back to your site and thus improve your site’s ‘trust’ ranking in search engines.

Related posts:

1. Website Referrals Part 2: Discovering Inbound Links
2. Website Referrals Part 3: Useful or Useless?
3. 5 Online Marketing Motivators

Website Referrals: Who’s Linking to You? is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

1. Places to Learn SEO

Load up your RSS reader (I recommend Google Reader) with a range of SEO blogs. It is important to note that SEO techniques change constantly, and there’s no one ‘right’ method because every website is different. However, here are a few great blogs and some articles in particular to get you started. Many feature case studies in their articles so you will get a feel for which route to take when it comes to planning your SEO campaign:

• SEOmoz: www.seomoz.org/blog
• SEOptimise.com: www.seoptimise.com/blog – 25 Outdated SEO Terms & Tactics vs Their Modern Alternatives, 33 Website Success Metrics Instead of Rankings, Google PageRank and Traffic
• Web Master Radio: www.webmasterradio.fm
• Econsultancy: econsultancy.com

2. SEO People to Follow

These are a few key players in the SEO industry, but it is my no means an exhaustive list. Read their blogs or follow them on Twitter (links on their websites). Many offer their opinions or share their experiences of SEO:

• Matt Cutts – works at Google: www.mattcutts.com/blog
• Dave Naylor: www.davidnaylor.co.uk/blog
• SEO by the Sea: www.seobythesea.com
• Search Engine Land: searchengineland.com
• Search Engine Watch: searchenginewatch.com
• SEO Book: www.seobook.com/blog
• Twitter groups – SEO people to follow on Twitter: twittgroups.com/group/seo

3. SEO Tools

Learn how to recognise well-optimised websites using the following tools. There are many listed here, so I recommend trying one at a time, exploring each one for a few days to get a feel for it. Most of these have really great Help files that explain how to get the most out of the tools, but you are still struggling, the websites above often cover tools such as these:

• Google Analytics: www.google.com/analytics
• Google Toolbar: toolbar.google.com
• SEO Toolbar (for Firefox only at the moment): tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar/
• Google Search-based Keyword Tool: google.com/sktool/
• Google Webmaster Central: www.google.com/webmasters/
• Yahoo! Siteexplorer: siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
• Live Search Webmaster Center: webmaster.live.com/webmaster/

4. SEO Events

Attending events gives you the chance to hear industry leaders talk on the subject of SEO and maybe even a chance to ask them questions. These are just two of several conferences that tour the globe, but check your local business networking events as many speakers touch on the subject of SEO and are designed with the beginner in mind.

• Search Engine Strategies (SES) – Chicago, Hamburg, London, New York, Amsterdam, San Jose, Tokyo, Toronto: www.searchenginestrategies.com
• Search Marketing Expo (SMX) – West, Toronto, Sydney, Munic, New York City, London, Seattle, Madrid, São Paulo, Stockholm: searchmarketingexpo.com

5. Do Your Own SEO Experiments:

The best way to learn is by practising. Optimise your current website or set up a blog if you don’t have one.

• WordPress: Free blog or Free blog tool
• Blogspot: blogger.com
• ProBlogger – for great tips on blogging: www.problogger.net/blog/

Do you have any resources that you’d recommend to help a beginner understand SEO?

Related posts:

1. 4 Tips on Avoiding Being a Narrow-Minded SEO
2. Website Referrals Part 3: Useful or Useless?

Learning SEO? SEO Tips for Beginners is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate