Guest blogging, meta descriptions and navigation

Source: SEO 101 podcast, episode Jan 22, 2014.

Matt Cutts does not recommend guest blogging:

I’d expect Google’s webspam team to take a pretty dim view of guest blogging going forward.

Read more on Matt’s blog.

Avoid publishing thin or duplicate content. Best content adds value and is highly unique.

When putting snippets from your articles on other pages use “show more” link. Show no more than one paragraph from the article in the snippet to avoid content duplication. Or show a ‘teaser’ text for your article.

Meta description should precisely describe the content of the page. People are more likely to click on your link in Google search results if its description is relevant to what they searched for.

Keywords in site navigation should be picked by someone outside, someone not as connected to your industry. Do not pick navigation keywords yourself. “It is hard to see the label when you are in the bottle”.

Consider using focus groups to test your site navigation. On www.usertesting.com you can hire users to test your site and then watch a video of their experience.