Happy Friday! Here are my picks of the best blog posts in search for the week ending 17/7/09.

SEO

Looking to build links with relevant blogs in your niche? Read Lucy’s guide on finding niche blogs over at SEOmoz.

Are your title tags in good order? Check out Marc’s guide to optimising title tags over at Bruce Clay Australasia.

PPC

Thinking about restructuring your Adwords campaigns? Be sure to pop over to PPC Hero and read their killer post on the affect of moving keywords in Adwords.

Social Media

Jason Murphy writes an open letter to United Airlines explaining how they might deal with their current reputation management issue - he’s come up with some fabulous ideas, it’s well worth a read.

Blogging

Think writing Guest Posts for other blogs is a waste of your precious time? Think again – read Lisa’s take on the benefits of guest blogging over at the Outspoken Media blog. 

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

This week’s funny comes courtesy of Dilbert – enjoy & have a lovely weekend!

Image credit faeryboots

Did you know that 69% of consumers* decide to click the ‘Report Spam’ or ‘Junk’ button based purely on the contents of the email’s subject line? Be afraid… be very afraid.

Then remember that sitting at your desk being afraid will not save your ailing email campaign. Instead, check out our top tips for tip top email subject lines – feels better already, right?

1. Split Test.

My old boss used to say if you’re sending out an email without running some sort of test, then you’re missing an opportunity. He was annoyingly right about stuff like that. A subject line split test is easy to do, and as your subject line is the key to increasing your open rates so it’s well worth it. Ideally this split testing should be an on-going activity, as you might find that even once you hit upon a subject line that works, over time it may cease to – particularly if you’re emailing the same list of people over and over again.

2. Keep it short.

Now is not the time to write an essay. Ideally keep your subject line to 50 characters or less. Much longer, and your lovely readers won’t be able to read your beautifully crafted subject line in any case, as it will be cut off.

3. Convey Immediacy

If your email contains an offer which is only available for a limited time, say so in the subject line. For example,  ’25% off until 31st July’ or ‘This Week’s Discounted Offers’ help recipients realise that your offers are time bound and to take advantage of them they need to open your email, and sharpish.

4. Personalisation(?)

Using a person’s name in the subject line has been shown to increase open rates; however you may find that after an initial increase you see this become less effective over time. Test it and see.

5. Honesty is the Best Policy

Try to give an accurate description of the contents of the email. Don’t put an outrageously fabulous offer in the subject line, only to follow it up with an ‘only joking’ message in the body of your email. You might increase open rates, but you also run the risk of annoying your readers. Annoyed readers are unlikely to convert. Nuff said. 

6. Check your Spam Score

Over use of symbols such as exclamation marks can lead to increased spam scores. A high spam score could lead to your email getting sent straight to the junk folder. Bad times. Most email service providers allow you to check your spam score before you send. Get it as low as possible. You may have penned the most persuasive subject line and fantabulous email but it will drive nothing to your business if it ends up languishing in it’s recipients’ junk folder.

Got some top tips of your own to share? Please let me know via the comments.

*Source Email Sender and Provider Coalition – 2007 data.

Image credit shnnn

Hello there, here are my picks of the best blog posts in search for the week ending 10/7/09.

SEO

Joanna Butler talks Gorillas, Meerkats & Michael Jackson and the importance of generating ‘buzz’ around your brand.

PPC

Over at Search Engine Land, Doug Drees comes up trumps once again with his excellent tips on Ad Scheduling to maximise your PPC results.

Social Media

Still not quite got your head around link bait? Stephan Spencer explains all.

Is that celeb you’re following on Twitter the real deal? Ciaran talks about the problem of hoax accounts on Twitter.

Blogging

Should your CEO be Blogging? Lisa says no. Thought provoking, funny, and so true… but you didn’t hear me say that – ok?

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

Wondering what SEO’s do on Twitter all day long? Well, after a long day, they like nothing more than to talk Princess Bride

Have a lovely weekend!

Image credit Jonathan Beard

Scenario:

You need to complete an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation) form in order to travel to the States. You don’t know the official site, so you type esta form into your favourite search engine. Below are four screen shots taken from the top sites that appeared on Google for esta form:

A)

A

B)

B

C)

C

D)

D

Now without cheating (i.e. don’t go and find out which is the official site) please select the one you would choose to submit your ESTA:

I’ll publish the results of the survey, reveal which is the official site and examine why choosing the wrong one of these four could prove costly next week…

Within this post we’ll be looking at broken links and 404 error pages – what they are, how they impact users and SEO, how to find them and perhaps most importantly, some ideas on how you might go about dealing with them.

What are broken links & 404 error pages?

Broken links occur when web pages are deleted or moved but the link to the old address still exists.  When a user clicks on the broken link, the page cannot be found, so a 404 error page is displayed.

What does a 404 error page do?

A 404 error page tells the search engines and your web server that a web page cannot be found, this might be because it no longer exists or the url has been changed.

What do 404 error pages mean for SEO?

A 404 page tells the search engine that the page no longer exists. If the page genuinely no longer exists, and you no longer wish to rank for the terms targeted on the page, then that’s fine – over time the search engines will remove the page from their indexes. However, if the page does still exist and you still wish to rank for the terms targeted then you have a problem.

In the event that the page does still exist, but you have moved it, (or changed the url), then in order to preserve your ranking, and avoid returning a 404 error page, you will need to redirect the old url to the new one. How? If the page is moving temporarily, you should use a 302 redirect. If the page is moving permanently you should use a 301 redirect.

What do 404 error pages mean for users?

404 error pages can annoy users and cause them to leave your site as they are unable to navigate to the page which they wish to view. Clearly for this reason alone it’s best to minimise the number of broken links on your site.

How to find broken links on you website:

So how do you know if you’ve got broken links? There are many broken link checkers out there, but I tend to use Google Web Master Tools. If you haven’t done so already, set up a Google Web Master Tools account , then submit your sitemap. Google will crawl and index your website, and if there are any broken links, Web Master Tools will show you which links are broken and returning a 404 web page error.

So now you know which pages are returning 404 errors, what next?

How should you deal with 404’s on your site?

From time to time, you will need to delete pages from your site. For example, if you are an ecommerce site, and you stop selling a particular product. In this instance, it is conceivable that a visitor may have bookmarked the page, in order to return later to purchase. However as you no longer sell that product, the page may no longer exist.

In this instance you have a couple of options:

1)  You might choose to 301 redirect an old product page to a similar product which you still stock; or a page which references the fact that you no longer sell the old product line, but this is the new product which will replace it.

2) Let the default 404 page be displayed.

3) Provide users with a custom 404 page, rather than the default one.  Custom 404 pages are a little more user friendly, and if you create a good one, hopefully you’ll keep the visitor on the site.

How to Create a Custom 404 error page
You can configure a custom 404 error page by inserting a default error page command in the HTACCESS file that is on your server. The HTACCESS file can normally be found in the root of the public html folder – an example is shown below:

You will then need to configure your HTACCESS file to display your custom 404 error page as the default error page for your website. Below is the code command to put in the HTACCESS file.

Once you have uploaded the custom 404 web page and configured the HTACCESS file, test it with URL address errors associated with your domain to see that it is functioning correctly.

For example; type www.(yourdomain).com/404test . Your customised 404 error page should display.

Custom 404 error page designs

When it comes to 404 pages, ultimately you can be as creative as you like. However, ideally the custom 404 should be in keeping with the design of the rest of your website and should aid your visitors in finding what they are looking for.

Examples:

1. Apology with a home page link
You can offer website users a brief apology and lead them back to the home page.

2. Apology with a drop down menu
We’re sorry, but the web page that you are looking for is no longer available. Please select a product from the following menu.

3. Apology with a link list option
We’re sorry, but the page you were looking for no longer exists. We recommend you try:

a) Option A
b) Option B
c) Option C

Below are a few examples of custom 404 error pages to get those creative juices flowing!

Image source: Luminous

  Image source : Mozilla

Seen some great custom 404 error pages? Hit up the comments and share them. Likewise let us know if you’ve got any further questions, or tips you’d like to share.

404 image credit : cbede