In Today's Issue
Search Engine Marketing
---> Appending Tracking Codes to Email Sigs
---> Dupe Content From Tracking Link
---> Ranking for Local Keywords – Part 1
---> Ranking for Local Keywords – Part 2
---> Linking to Low-Authority Sites
High Rankings Happenings
---> Need Ongoing SEO Help?
---> Written SEO Website Review of YOUR Site
Twitter Question of the Week
---> Do you ever use nofollow...?
Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week
---> Load Speed – Affecting SEO?
Advisor Wrap-up
---> Busy Time Introduction
Hey everyone!
In today's Q&A edition, I've answered a few follow-up questions from last week's newsletter on creating tracking links for Google Analytics, plus I've answered a few questions about SEO for specific localities, and have provided a few other SEO nuggets that I hope you'll find interesting.
Let's get straight to it! – Jill
Search Engine Marketing Issues
++Appending Tracking Codes to Email Sigs++
Dear Jill,
In last week's newsletter you mentioned appending email signature links with campaign tracking codes. Can you please detail how to do this?
Thank you.
Ilene
++Jill's Response++
Hi Ilene,
The information on creating and appending Google Analytics tracking links was provided in the article linked to within last week's article, called "Measuring Your Marketing: Campaign Tracking via Google Analytics."
Good news – if you think you have to use a long and ugly link in your email signature, you  don't. As long as you send HTML emails rather than plain text, you can create an email signature that uses anchor text as the link to your site, and the long, ugly tracking URL will not be seen in the email.
So, for instance, in your email signature, you might be using a tracking URL such as:
http://www.example.com/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=email signature
But in the email itself, you simply link whatever anchor text you want using that URL. You can even make the anchor text just be www.example.com and link that to the long, ugly tracking URL. You do need to be familiar with how to create signatures and insert hyperlinks, but in general, it's no different from adding any link as you normally would in your email program.
Hope this helps!
Jill
Share your comments and thoughts here.
++Dupe Content From Tracking Links++
Hi Jill – great article about tracking links to a website!
So, I have a question about the duplicate content issue when you append tracking codes.  I've just sent out an email with a special link in the signature which points to one of the Google-generated URLs. With that URL, I'll be able to tell to whom the email was sent and when. But, as a safety measure to avoid duplicate content, I've included a 301-redirect in the .htaccess file, as follows:
Redirect 301 /?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=0510 http://www.mysite.com
Will this fix it or do I have to use the canonical element? I'm concerned about passing link juice.
Thanks much,
Lauren
++Jill's Response++
Hi Lauren,
Glad you liked the article!
No, you don't want to use a server-side redirect such as that, because the tracking data won't be captured that way. Because you're just sending it via an email, if you don't expect people to link to a URL, then I wouldn't worry about it. But if you feel there is a chance some might link to it, then yes, the canonical link element (rel=canonical) is the perfect solution for this type of problem.
Best,
Jill
Share your comments and thoughts here.
++Ranking for Local Keywords – Part 1++
Dear Jill,
We have a puzzle we can't seem to figure out. Why does one of our websites come up #5 on  Google under the keywords "our keyword phrase Los Angeles" when the keywords "Los Angeles" are nowhere to be found on our pages?
We also see one other site on page 1 that has the same issue. The only common denominator is that we are both physically located in Los Angeles.
What criteria could Google possibly be using other than where the domain is registered or where the servers are located?
Thanks.
Alex
++Jill's Response++
Hi Alex,
According to Google, there are links pointing to your site that use the phrase "your keyword phrase Los Angeles." Anchor text links are very powerful and are a big piece of what helps a site to rank for certain phrases. I double-checked this for your specific site and there were indeed pages from other sites that were linking to your site with Los Angeles in the anchor text.
Hope this helps!
Best,
Jill
Share your comments and thoughts here.
++Ranking for Local Keywords – Part 2++
Hi Jill,
My client has a local shop. Should every keyword phrase contain the locale, such as Denver, Arvada, Westminster, etc., and then just change up the item?
For instance, do I need to say, "Denver keyword phrase 1," "Arvada keyword phrase 2," "Arvada keyword phrase 3," "Littleton Colorado keyword phrase 4," etc.?
Thanks,
Cara
++Jill's Response++
Hi Cara,
No, you don't have to – nor should you – do that. If every keyword phrase contained the locale, the page would sound very silly and read very poorly, don't you think?
List your locations somewhere on the page where it will make sense to your site visitors, as well as in the Title tags. This is usually enough to show up for the appropriate locations.
Hope this helps!
Best,
Jill
Share your comments and thoughts here.
++Linking to Low-Authority Sites++
Hi Jill,
I just signed up for your newsletter, which looks good. I have a question for you:
If websites have links pointing externally, is there a difference when pointing to high- or  low-authority sites? Is it good to use the nofollow tag when pointing to low-priority sites so that link juice doesn't leak out to low-ranking sites, but okay to use the dofollow tags when pointing to high-authority sites?
The sites that we point to are ALWAYS relevant material related to the link, but some of them are very small manufacturer sites with less PageRank and link juice than we have on our sites. Some of them don't do much Internet marketing and aren't held in high esteem in the eyes of the search engines, though they have all the specs for the products that we are linking to. Is it okay to follow them anyway, as long as the content is relevant?
Thank you,
Pam
++Jill's Response++
Hi Pam,
As long as the URLs you're pointing to within your website are being pointed to for good reason – that is, you want your site visitors to have more information or a recommendation – then it's all good regardless of the perceived authority. Obviously, you wouldn't want to point your site visitors to junky sites, so there shouldn't be an issue as to whether you should nofollow the links or not.
It's absolutely, positively 100% okay to follow them and point your visitors sites that don't have a high Google profile. How else will they ever become more of an authority? What if everyone thought it was bad and refused to link to a site that was helpful to their site visitors because they were worried about Google? It would completely throw off the natural balance of the Web and force Google into a new mode of determining a site's value.
In addition, you should be aware that there's no such thing as a "dofollow tag." All links are followable links by their very nature unless they have the rel=nofollow attribute on them, or the page itself is set with a nofollow meta tag.
Hope this helps!
Best,
Jill
Share your comments and thoughts here.
P.S. If anyone would like to republish any or all of the above Q&As please email me your request and where they will reside, and I'll send you a short bio you can use with it for your site.
Twitter Question of the Week ++Do you ever use nofollow...?++
This week's Twitter Question was:
Do you ever use nofollow links, and if so, for what purpose?
Here's how my Twitter followers responded:
SEOSEM: Sometimes nofollow on About Us or Privacy links.
netmeg: Yep, when I sell text ads on my sites. They are all nofollowed. Regular links are left alone.
kokopoko2: For those privacy policy pages, etc. Stuff that doesn't need to be indexed.
DonnaFontenot: Yes, for affiliate links, cuz Google whacked my TBPR long ago to show disapproval. No reason not to for aff. links anyway. It's possible that G thought some of my afflinks were really paid links, so NF'ing the rest may be unnecessary but I use caution.
Axemedia: I still have some small sites on which I've not gotten around to undoing the old nofollow siloing.
MCIMaui: If you're concerned about duplicate content, such as a print page, putting nofollow into play can be a big help.
Jill's Response: Hmm...not too sure about MCIMaui's response. Nofollow is not at all a "noindex" tag. It just tells Google not to pass link popularity to the page linked to. I would definitely not recommend using it as a way to stop duplicate content issues, because I believe you'd be sorely disappointed in the results.
And it also doesn't make sense to me to use nofollow on Privacy Policy links. I'm happy to pass link juice to those pages because they all link back to my important pages and pass their own link juice to them.
I mostly just use the nofollow attribute on blog comments. And I've experimented with adding it to links that have generic anchor text such as "click here" when there's already a more descriptive anchor text link somewhere else on the page. But I have no idea if it actually makes a difference in that situation or not. I figure it can't hurt!
Want to participate in the Twitter Question of the Week?
Follow @jillwhalen on Twitter
Share your comments and thoughts here.
Advanced Forum Thread of the Week ++Load Speed – Affecting SEO?++
Forum member "tyggis" asks:
Did any of you experience that faster load speed of pages got you better rankings at Google SERP?
See how other forum members answered, and/or leave your own response here:
Load Speed – Affecting SEO?
Advisor Wrap-up
That's all for today!
On the home front, my son Tim is wrapping up his junior year of high school, which is hard to believe. Seems like just yesterday he was graduating from the Montessori school!
He's got a lot on his plate between studying for finals, the SAT2, research papers, getting inducted into the National Honor Society, a year-end performance of the Improv club he co-founded and teaches, the Junior Prom...whew...I'm tired just typing all that. As you can imagine, he's looking forward to summer. He's hoping to have time to program another computer game. (Long-time readers may remember playing his 2008 game.)
It's also been somewhat busy for me the past few weeks. Last week I served on a jury, which turned out to be an interesting experience. I've moved out of my office of 3+, years which was a bit of an undertaking. If anyone in the MA area needs some desks, tables, chairs, printers, or the like, please let me know!
I'm working on a talk for SEMNE in July that I'm calling "Responsible Search Marketing." This should be interesting for me (and hopefully the audience) because it's a first for me to do a talk that's less about teaching SEO and more of an inspirational keynote speech. At least that's my goal. SEMNE is a good place for me to experiment with something new because it's usually a crowd of friendly faces. You can learn more about the event and register for it here.
Catch you in 2 weeks! – Jill
Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, an SEO Consulting Agency in Boston, MA.
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