UK Living / Solar Power : Petition for improved standard house builds

Please show some support (as well as common sense :D),
if you are in the UK, go sign the petition!

#SolarPower #ImprovedHousing #DarthAutocrat

SEO / Voice Search : A sensible look at Voice Search

If you're sick to death of stupid, stuffed, fluffed, nonsensical hyperbolic garbage about Google and Voice Search - then this might be a piece to look at.
It's well laid out, takes a macro and micro look, looks at the history etc.

I was impressed - I'm sure you will enjoy it too :D

#SEO #VoiceSearch #DarthAutocrat

SEO : How to split content without losing (to much) value

So +Barry Schwartz has picked out a question to Google about splitting a page to multiple pages, and letting Google know (so as to not lose value).
The response from G is that there is no way to tell G that you are moving part of a page (the same as there is no way to tell them to ignore part of a page, or that part of a page has gone etc.).

The example uses a shoe site, with an existing category of "heels and wedges",
and they want to split that single category page into two; "heels" category page and "wedges" category page.

Now, most people will point out that the standard approach to this is to pick 1 of the new pages, and 301 the old to that. Any other new pages will basically start from scratch (and will quickly benefit from internal links and PR flow etc.).

But there is another approach - it just takes a little time and effort.

1) Create new pages (for "heels" and "wedges").
There's 2 slightly different approaches to this stage; (1a) or (1b).
. 1a) IF your platform supports it - add the new pages/categories as "siblings" (in the same level).
So the URIs would be;
http;//www,domain,tld/heels_and_wedges
http;//www,domain,tld/heels
http;//www,domain,tld/wedges
I say "if" because you need to present the sections as "children" for PR flow from the original/old page ... so you may need to look at how your platform lets you add sections/categories/pages, and whether you can separate "navigational structure" from "hierarchical structure".
(This means when you are on the "heels & wedges" page, it contains links straight to "heels" and "wedges" as if they were sub-categories.)
. 1b) If your platform doesn't permit (1a), make the new pages "children".
So the URIs would be;
http;//www,domain,tld/heels_and_wedges
http;//www,domain,tld/heels_and_wedges/heels
http;//www,domain,tld/heels_and_wedges/wedges

2) Optimise the new categories/pages.
Do your normal optimisations (internal links and text, promotion, headings etc.).

3) Wait and let things settle.
Give the SEs time to crawl, parse, process and assign values etc.

4) Identify the most benefit from the "old" page.
By looking at Profit, Conversions, Leads, Traffic etc., you can identify which terms the old category/page did the best for.
Using the example, did "heels and wedges" sell more "heels" or more "wedges"?
Did it have more links about "wedges" or about "heels"?
etc.
Once you have an idea of how it was performing - you should know which of the new pages you will redirect to (see (5) below :D).

5) Start 301 redirecting
Depending on whether you did (1a) or (1b) at the start, you may have to only do 1 redirect, or 3+ redirects (depending on how many new pages you have).
. 5a) IF your platform allowed you to setup pages that behaved like sub/child sections, but sat in the same URI position as the the original URI - you only have 1 redirect to setup. You need to redirect the old URI ("heels and wedges") to the new page that matches (so if "heels and wedges" made more profit for "heels", 301 redirect "heels and wedges" to "heels").
Then clean up your site of old links (navigation, context links, blog posts, sitemaps etc.), removing all occurrences to "heels and wedges".
. 5b) IF your system permits "non-pages" (you an have parts in your URL that cannot be accessed as pages), you only have 1 redirect, same as (5a) above.
The only addition is that you need to disable the "active" status (or what ever your platform calls it) on the original category ("heels and wedges").
(Also do the same cleanup as (5a)!)
. 5c) IF your platform didn't permit new sections to look like children, and doesn't permit "non-pages" in the URL ... then you have multiple redirects to setup.
You need to move the newer pages/categories up a level in the hierarchy;
http;//www,domain,tld/heels_and_wedges/heels
becomes
http;//www,domain,tld/heels
And then you need to setup 301 redirects from the older URIs to the newer URIs
You also need to setup the same 301 as described in (5a) above, 301 redirecting the original category/page to the most beneficial newer category.page.
(*Again, do the same cleanup as (5a)!)

There you go.
I know it sounds complicated - but it's simple, logical and has multiple benefits.
A) You get to retain the old (working!) category/page for a while
B) You get to pass value through the old category/page to the new categories/pages
C) You have time to acquire additional value to the newer pages/categories.
D) Your users have time to recognise/use the newer pages/categories.
E) You can plan content/promotion ahead. ready to generate attention/traffic/links after you perform the redirects (so you have a few months to prep all that content :D).
F) You get to pass as much value as possible to the most performant relevant/performant new page/category
G) You suffer the least amount of loss possible (including monetary and rankings).

It works best for category pages.
It's harder work for "article" type content - but you can do it.
We don't know if there is any "transfer" difference in 301's based on similarity (we don't know if G give you less if the new page is less relevant to the old page).

#SEO #SplittingContent #PartialRedirect #DarthAutocrat

Content Marketing : 10 Tips to getting your content seen!

There's a nice roundup of tips from marketing experts by +Lee Odden.
And there are some very nice tips in there.

What I did notice though was a general lack of audience-focus.
It's not about the number of eyeballs on your content,
it's a matter of the right eyeballs.

And that varies - based on your objective - what the purpose of the content is meant to do.
If you're after links, you would likely need content that appeals to peers and put in front of peers.
If you're after traffic, you want a piece that's beneficial to the masses of your target market.
If you're after conversions, you need something that has perceivable value, and to get it in front of those with the right wallet size and the inclination to purchase.

So, go and read Lee's little round up piece,
but in your head, change it a little.
Each thing you read, remember ... you want to be visible to the right people!
Being visible to everyone is not as important (though it is nice :D).

#ContentMarketing #ContentCreation #ContentPromotion #DarthAutocrat