Homework - SEO - Learn It
- SEO |
Introduction
Warning: This is intended for those who have SEO knowledge at least to the degree of looking it up on Google and finding out what H1 tags are, and have heard of backlinks.This also references other material by Google to learn exactly what SEO should follow. That said...
There have been thousands of articles, videos, books, and more regarding SEO. Moreover, there have been tons of reports, software, minibooks, techniques, and a plethora of services popping up that either directly hurt a website, help just a little bit, or do nothing at all. I figured it was time to go back to basics. This is not JUST about the basics, however, there is a great many who start their SEO career after learning about some new link building technique, and they have never actually witnessed real SEO in action.
That is not to say in any way that SEO providers do not know what they are doing, but many are either misinformed, or not fully informed. The best way to find out if they understand their trade is by simply looking at their ads. Many professional SEO companies are local and their clients are obtained via referrals and local advertisement. Online SEO companies are much different in the manner that it can be hard to identify between the average linkbuilder labeling themselves as SEO professionals, and those who know and work in the trade.
Thus the reason this now needs to be written. Starting with Google, their changes, and why it's important you know them and how they affect your website and online presence. Why Google? If we target Google's search engine, we get everyone else for free. Because, whether they like it or not, all other search engines want to be Google, and copy them in everything they do. So if you have Google, you have everyone.
To be able to match the needs of SEO for Google you have to know what they specifically want, and though you may feel like skipping this part, if Google's guidelines and changes are unknown to you, there is absolutely no possible way you can even begin to stay on top of their search engine. Boring...maybe, but knowledge is power, without power, you are among the sheep who are led by those with power.
If you are an SEO provider this will benefit you greatly and the more knowledge you have, the more you can gain with that knowledge. If you are a business owner who would like to quit paying an SEO provider who may not be cutting the mustard, or just want to know what they know, this can save you tons of money.
The next step is to develop a great strategy is keyword research. There are a thousand tools, instant magic tricks, and the like online at the moment. However, common sense is the most powerful tool in keyword research. When was the last time you visited Google and typed in, "restaurants my city?" I can tell you, NEVER. You have never just typed in some random keyword and your city name right after that. If you were looking for a used auto lot to purchase a vehicle, you definitely didn't go to Google and type in, "cars my city." So trying to chase keywords based on a simple word, and then a city doesn't make sense. Not common sense at least.
Structuring your site once you understand your target market is not as simple as tossing up a WordPress site, putting on some content, adding tons of plugins, and then calling it ready. The fact is that the more you have on a site; you may be making it worse. There are things you have to understand about your site from the basic SEO settings, speeding up a site to avoid losing readers and potential customers, to the advanced settings and tricks every business person and SEO strategist should know. It is amazing how many do not know that all SEO starts on site, much more than simple H1 tags. Social media, web 2.0 strategies, and the like are all worthless if the site itself doesn't meet these standards.
Understanding Google Analytics and Adwords is important as well. Reason being that this is where the money is at. Understanding tools is also an important part of SEO, allowing you to speed up processes, without cutting quality corners.
I write about evergreen markets for internet marketers in here as well. There seems to be a huge trend where a million sites pop up daily regarding "Hot topics" but these fade almost as fast. Unfortunately for internet marketers, this is slightly a waste of time and money. "Hot Topics" are come and go, and not for the long run at all. That is where evergreen markets come in. The long run, maybe 20 years from now, is the goal with evergreen topics. Learn them, apply them, and you will succeed.
At the end of this, you should be able to take the SEO test, in which you will find out if you meet the bar for SEO knowledge and can effectively develop campaigns for yourself and clients.
Google Changes
Objective: Understand Google's latest changes and why they applied them.
First, a link to the new changes: http://insidesearch.blogspot.se/2012/05/search-quality-highlights-53-changes.html
Google has made 52 (not 53, as stated in the URL, because of a duplicate launch) changes. These changes have to do specifically with the quality of the search engine. From rewriting the way it deals with paginated content (e.g. an article with the words "next" or "back" in there), all the way to how it deals with low quality content on the websites themselves.
You see, Google has roughly 100,000 applicants at any given time. What this means to you is that they have options, and those options include highly educated people with PHD's in their field. So this is definitely a company with nothing but smart cookies in the jar.
Understanding what changes they have made, and why they made them is the beginning of understanding what kind of sites Google's algorithm is going to rank better.
Google's Guidelines and SEO Guide
Google wants the internet to be better. It's a common saying that Google is the bad guy, Google wants everyone to do what it says...that's partially right and partially dead wrong. Google is not the bad guy, as I said; these people are among the smartest in the world, they want a better internet. Google doesn't want everyone to do what THEY say; they want everyone to do what is correct for a better internet. I am not a Google employee, nor am I baised and on their side.
However, look at this from the point of view of the user. Would you, as a searcher, want to type in something you are looking for, and come up with garbage websites JUST trying to sell you something? Probably not.
If you happen to see something for sale on a site that you enjoy reading however, you might just buy it. Content is the concern here. The site itself cannot be a single page site, and its content must be written concisely and motivate the reader to action (whether that be read more, or call and visit a place of business).
This is where relevance is most important. A person on a site that talks about daycare toys is probably not going to see a car insurance ad and click it. But they will see an ad for something that is relevant, like a magazine subscription to parenting, or anything of that nature, and probably buy it.
A better internet, better quality, and better search ability is the ultimate goal. Thus, if you are a local business, your idea is to have your site relevant to your area, and your goal is to have a better, and more Google structured, site than your competitors.
If you are an internet marketer and your site is more genuine than others, and relevant to what you are advertising, you not only have a better opportuinity from the gate, but also more longevity.
Here is a direct link to Google's SEO Guide: http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
Another Important Guide and FlowChart
You can always have too much information instead of not enough. Thus, the necessity for another fantastic guide leads me to show you this excellent guide giving you a more round look at SEO, which is a very very great guide: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
The above guide gives you more insight to search engines and how to manipulate content (albeit GOOD content) so that search engines can actually SEE it. The more a search engine can see, the higher your opportunities for others to see YOU.
Keyword Research
There are thousands of articles, thousands of methods, thousands of softwares, and all of them talking about keyword research. This must mean that keyword research is very important...because it is. The idea behind keyword research is to think of what people are looking for. So if your business is a locksmith company, you must think of what your customers must be searching for in Google. This is what keyword research is.
Though, again, there are thousands of methods, the main suggestion here is common sense. Think about what you would personally use to search for your business or offering online. One word searches don't usually exist. Most of the time, people search just like people speak, "I need a cheap moving company in [CITY]" So, the idea is to grab the right keywords.
So great keyword research is done based on something people would look for, writing anything you can think of on paper or in notepad, and then the next step is to use Google to type in those searches, and see if Google suggests then in the dropdown box automatically. This means that those keywords are searched for. If they do show up, you know that the keyword/search phrase is great. This is the best way to get the perfect keywords for business.
The same goes for internet marketing. Tools are known all over the place, such as Market Samurai. However, they are still assistants, common sense drives above these, and the Adwords tool, any day. Market Samurai and the Google Adwords tools are fantastic for telling someone how many searches keywords obtain (or varaitions), however, they are limited by the basic searches (Adwords) and not intelligent enough to understand the long phrases people do use (any tool).
This is quite a short lesson for two reasons, the first is fluff. There is no point in dragging this through the dirt and adding tons of words to explain a simple concept that I know you already understand.
URL Structuring
This may not seem important, however, there are certain aspects of URLs that push off search engines. The first of which is the actual way you use your own links, and the way others use your links. This is called canonicolization. For example:
www.example.com
example.com
www.example.com/page
example.com/page
www.example.com/page/
example.com/page/
The above are simple examples of how mixed up a website can be if you use both www and without www, and using the slash at the end, or not.
The problem here is being able to see too many different URLs. Using too many different types of URLs can make a site seem cluttered and have too much of the same content, or duplicate content if you will. It is best to structure the URLs to follow the same pattern.
The best way to do this is with the .htaccess file within a host server (the place where a website is located). The following codes should help to identify which you would like to use.
For using www on all urls, open the .htaccess file and paste in this code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^.]+\.[a-z]{2,6})$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%1/$1 [R=301,L]
For using URLs without www, open the .htaccess and paste in this code:
RewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^domain\.tld$ [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.tld/$1 [R=301,L]
What the two above do is either use www, or not use www. This creates more formality for your site. For those that backlink (or create or pay someone to create links pointing to a site) you have to remember which you chose. www.domain.com or domain.com
Using word delimiters (the space between words in a URL) is also something that used to be an issue. Suffice it to say that either dashes "-" or underscores "_" work fine, but for human readability, dashes are best to use.
Using specific keywords in a URL is perfectly fine as well, if you do not use it more than once. For example:
http://domain.com/how-to-clean-hoses
http://domain.com/how-to-clean-hoses-clean-hoses-with-cleaner
Using the keyword one time is sufficient in the URL itself. And if you use numbers, be sure to use them in a manner that cannot be interpreted as a date.
Avoid using stop words in URLs. A stop word is simply a word that makes people stop. Here is a very good list of stop words: http://www.ranks.nl/resources/stopwords.html
Finally, make sure that if you change a page to a different URL for whatever reason, be sure to create a 404 redirect to that page.
Silo Your Site
If you have never heard of siloing, even being a more experienced user, I wouldn't find that extremely surprising. Siloing is creating structure for your website and dividing things correctly. For example, your business is automotive sales, but your business also includes detailing, bodywork, and auto repair. In this case, a site has to be organized, where your main page points to these services under the services tab in the navigation bar. This is well organized so far because the site is pretty small.
However, when you start to add pages underneath each section, you do not want to lose this structure, and maintain that only certain pages link to other pages of relevance. Each category should show its own subcategories without veering off and pointing in different directions. In this example, for reference, I show two different types:
Auto Sales
Detailing
Bodywork
Mechanic
Auto Sales
Used Cars
New Cars
Detailing
Cars and Trucks
Semi-Trucks
Semi-Trailers
Bodywork
Auto Body Repair
Paint and Trim
Accessories
Mechanic
Engine Repair
Smog
Tune Up
This structure is clean and easy to identify. Thus, anything under mechanic should be pointing to the subcategories using the keywords for those sections.
Breadcrumbs are also an important part of Siloing. Many do not know what a breadcrumb is, so imagine the Hansel and Gretal story. The two children would go into the woods and to find their way back they dropped breadcrumbs saved from dinner, a trail to find their way home.
Of course, Hansel and Gretal became lost because of animals eating the breadcrumbs, yet this is the idea of the breadcrumb: A trail leading back home that can tell the user where they are, and how to get back. It also has link significance as well. For example:
Joe Bob's Auto > Auto Sales > Used Cars
This breadcrumb tells the user where they are at (in Used Cars) and how to get back. If that bread crumb has Auto Sales and Joe Bob's Auto hyperlinked, you have successfully linked back to relevant content in a Siloed manner that is great with Google, and it makes your site made your site more organized at the same time.
It is heard that content should point to other content and this is true (or pages pointing to other pages). However, pointing random keywords all over the place is definitely not the way to go. There are steps you want to follow when writing for your website and using the correct linking structure, meaning pointing people to relevant places in your site.
1. Use limited amount of links in articles
2. Use links only when necessary, if it benefits the reader or uses keywords that pertain to the topic
3. Use consistent keywords if possible or use parenthesis such as (go to this link for more information)
Sidebars are great for content linking. The problem is that people think sidebars are only good for ads. This is the worst thing to put in a sidebar. The best links in a sidebar should be featured articles, things that change consistently, and zero third party links. This creates an opportunity to create an even better internal linking structure, and opportunity to create more keyword anchors. Avoid ads in a sidebar and change the content frequently.
The footer is also a great place for links, but it is also easily abused. Forget trying to use it specifically for Google bots. People actually use footers to find information. Don't copy the navigation bar like some do and paste it there basically. This is the spot for FAQ, about us, contact us, privacy policy, refund policy, things like this that will be useful. The better your site looks, the more onsite information you can link around to without cluttering the site, the better opportunities a reader has to stay there, and that is what Google wants. Thus, the conclusion is that Google will penalize a cluttered and unreadable site.
Basic WordPress Optimization
Since WordPress is a very easily optimized and ranked platform, I recommend it for any website, if optimized correctly. This section is so short, its one simple link to the best article I found for WordPress optimization. Why reinvent the week and rewrite the same thing here? Why waste your time?
The one thing I will say, WordPress is great for web platforms. It is easy to add plugins that will help to increase rank and content quality. The only thing I don't recommend is shoving tons of plugins into WordPress. I will talk more on that later, but for now, picture your computer with tons of programs and stuff on there. Every time you boot up, it takes like five minutes to load up. The same goes for WordPress sites with too many plugins. Don't do it.
Here is the article that I find is highly efficient for basic WordPress optimization: http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/
Google Analytics and Adwords
So why should you study and know about them? The most important part of this in all is learning how Google sees sites and processes the data. But secondly, you want to learn how to manipulate (may not be the best word) Google analytics to enhance your site and make it more monetizable and seen.
Google Adwords is well known in the IM world as it is used to gain a full time income for many. Studying Google Adwords exams allows the researcher (you) to understand how Adwords works, how to use it to your advantage, and how to increase your online income using Adwords. It is the best way to monetize a website outside of actually selling a service or product (such as your business).
Here are two links I advise anyone to go to and study right now, and stay up to date as well:
Google Analytics: http://www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/iq.html?
Google Adwords Lessons: http://support.google.com/adwords/certification/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=examstudy.cs
About Tools
This chapter is directly related to tools that are used for SEO. One of those tools that is surprisingly unheard of is EXCEL. Many people have a copy of Microsoft Office and almost none of them, I am speaking of SEO practicioners and those interested specifically in SEO, use Excel to accomplish many tasks that it is built for.
A particlularily fantastic article to read is http://www.distilled.net/excel-for-seo/ This article goes indepth and shows how SEO can be analyzed with Excel as the main tool. I HIGHLY SUGGEST that readers study this tool and slowly gather the information so that you understand the formulas. This has the potential to increase your SEO knowledge and experience far beyond thousands of so called SEO experts out there at this moment.
I also recommend SEOTools (Work with SEO in Excel - The ultimate Excel plugin | Niels Bosma), a plugin for Excel that will add tools to the Excel ribbon. This is a great start for everyone who wants to have a more hands on experience with their SEO analytics. And this simple search will give you hundreds of great articles to understand more about SEO in Excel http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=
Here are some great tools to help with SEO analysis that you do not have to use together, but well worth learning and understanding. Just knowing what these tools do will increase your SEO knowledge.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a small desktop program you can install on your PC or Mac which spiders websites' links, images, CSS, script and apps from an SEO perspective. It fetches key onsite page elements for SEO, presents them in tabs by type and allows you to filter for common SEO issues, or slice and dice the data how you see fit by exporting into Excel. You can view, analyse and filter the crawl data as it's gathered and updated continuously in the program's user interface. The standard 'Lite' version of the tool is completely free, however this version is limited to crawling a maximum of 500 URI and it does not give you full access to the configuration options of the spider or the custom source code feature.
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
Quix
Quix is an extensible bookmarklet, that allows you to easily access all your bookmarks and bookmarklets, across all your browsers, while maintaining them in only one spot. All you have to do is remember the shortcut for the bookmarklet, so, basically, it's like a command line for your browser!
http://www.quixapp.com
SEOQuake
SEOquake is a popular and handy analytic seo-tool for Firefox, Chrome and Opera browsers. SEOquake helps to obtain an information about any site for a wide range of parameters such as page rank, Google index, Alexa and many others. Keyword Density tool serves to demonstrate a number of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page. SEOquake has a parameter that highlights noffolow links. SEOquake Toolbar shows values of the parameters under each search result in SERP of Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, Baidu.
http://www.seoquake.com
Firebug
Inspect HTML and modify style and layout in real-time
Use the most advanced JavaScript debugger available for any browser
Accurately analyze network usage and performance
Extend Firebug and add features to make Firebug even more powerful
Get the information you need to get it done with Firebug.
http://getfirebug.com
XPathBuilder
The importXML feature within the Google Docs spreadsheet is an extremely useful tool for SEOs looking for a quick way to pull in search engine results for analysis. Similar functions are available in Microsoft Excel, but Google Docs has the virtue of being both cloud-based and free of charge.
http://www.xpathbuilder.com/
Bookmarklets
A javascript bookmarklet is a small piece of javascript code that you can execute in your browser by bookmarking a link. I have a huge collection which I use daily.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/some-nift...more-efficient
Hashtags.org
Hashtags.org offers a simple interface to search for hashtags and their trending popularity. For example, if you search on the hashtag #business, Hashtags.org will graphically display the times of day and days of the week when the #business hashtag is most popular. If you scroll down below the graph, you'll also see the latest tweets that include that hashtag
http://hashtags.org/
Disable personalized search plugin
This plugin prevents you from seeing personalized search results, when searching from your browser"s search box. In Firefox, this plugin also adds suggest functionality.
http://yoast.com/tools/seo/disable-p...search-plugin/
Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool
The main purpose of the SERP Snippet Optimization Tool is to allow webmasters and content publishers to strategically construct page titles and meta description tags that will result in aesthetically-pleasing or eye-catching listings in Google's organic search results. Using this tool, you can optimize the content of your titles and snippets to maximize your click-through rate (CTR) from Google.
http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html
CuteRank
CuteRank is a FREE keyword rank checker tool (software) designed to batch automatically check keyword positions and track keyword ranking performance on multiple search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing (MSN), Ask, and AOL. What's more, this free keyword rank checker allows you to keep your SEO notes and see how your keyword position improves with your SEO effort. You can also generate keyword position report in multiple formats.
http://www.cuterank.net
Blekko Toolbar
Blekko doesn't believe in keeping secrets. To help make search more transparent, we provide a view of the data that our crawler gathers as it crawls the web.
Every blekko search result has this data associated with it in a manner that you can see. You can access it by either clicking on the SEO link tool in the second line of each result or else searching with the /seo slashtag. The information included on the /seo pages includes inbound links, states and countries where the links are coming from, domains with duplicate content, when the site was last crawled, etc.
http://blekko.com/toolbar
Excellent Analytics
Excellent Analytics is a simple Excel plug-in that lets you import web analytics data from Google Analytics into a spreadsheet. It's an open source project and 100% free to download and use for individuals and businesses. Ampliofy generously spends time keeping Excellent Analytics on the market.
http://excellentanalytics.com/
Übersuggest
Get keyword ideas with Übersuggest the free keyword suggestion tool that makes good use of Google Suggest and other suggest services.
http://ubersuggest.org/
Google Keyword Tool - Google Adwords
Google Keyword Tool will help you choose relevant and popular terms related to your selected key-term and display crucial data for your kw research.
SEOmoz SEO toolbar
Download the MozBar (available in Firefox and Chrome) and streamline your SEO. The MozBar provides easy access to the most powerful SEO tools and data while you surf the Web!
Access important SEO metrics at a glance as you surf the Web.
Create custom searches by search engine, country, region/city.
Easily see what matters: Highlight no-followed, followed, internal, external links, and keywords.
Compare link metrics for Google, Yahoo! and Bing with our SERP overlay.
Expose page elements quickly with the Analyze Page overlay.
Quickly access other powerful SEO tools.
http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar
Open Site Explorer
Search engine for links. Enter a URL and search 65 billion URLs and 9.2 trillion links.
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
SemRush
Get Google keywords
Get AdWords keywords
See your competitors
Estimated SE and AdWords traffic
Find hidden keywords
Order custom reports
http://www.semrush.com
RoboForm
Fill forms with a Single Click Save time with easy one-click form filling. Let RoboForm Password Manager fill in your data on almost any web form. No more needless typing!
http://www.roboform.com
Latent Semantic Indexing
LSIKeywords.com takes all of the complexity out of doing a Latent Semantic analysis. Simply type your keyword or phrase on the home p
http://lsikeywords.com/
DropDay
DropDay was created for people, who are interested in purchasing expired domains and people, who are interested in receiving additional traffic to their website. The huge amount of domains that are expiring each day, are a very comfortable instrument to start or enlarge the traffic to your already existing resources. DropDay.com gives you the opportunity to know which of these domains are worth buying and why.
http://www.dropday.com
Robtex
In Robtex you can search for:
DNS checks detailed dns information for a hostname
( Welcome to Facebook - Log In, Sign Up or Learn More , Yahoo! , YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. )
IP-number checks ip number information such as dns reverse and forwards
A-net checks an entire a-network
B-net checks an entire b-network
C-net checks an entire c-network
whois lookup checks whois information for a domain
route checks a specific routed prefix
AS numbers checks information on an AS-number
BGP announcements checks prefixes origined from a specific AS-number
AS macros checks who belongs to an AS-macro
http://www.robtex.com/
Working Evergreen over "What's Hot"
First, evergreen means longevity. That said, what's hot means anything that happens to be in the news or the talk of the town on twitter. Though it seems like a good idea to create massive amounts of cash when a celebrity dies, or whatever else you happen to be trying to market, the problem is always longevity. It is probably going to make a good amount of cash at first for the experienced online marketer (I know this sounds shady and the like and it probably is). Longevity actually brings in higher amounts of income over time, can make a site seem like an authority on a topic, and can definitely be duplicated using other evergreen topics.
So what is evergreen now that we understand what it can do? Evergreen topics can be history topics, research topics, limited time topics that actually have longevity (such as how to dub a cassette that later turns into how to dub a cd or dvd and then later turns into how to dub some other new similar product).
Evergreen topics are things that people are interested in and come back to consistently, even for the exact same information. This is longevity. And you can become predictive with this as well, for example, your main topic is System Mechanic (or some other software you know is going to be updated) and then you create your links for the different versions, such as System Mechanic 9, and System Mechanic 10, and System Mechanic 10.9 or whatever.
Evergreen is longevity, I cannot say it any better than that.
The Site Audit
After spending all this time on a site (not including social media, anything that can bring others to the site), you want to know if it is ship shape. Bottom line, is my site in perfect order, is it going to push the boat?
The best way to do this is to go down a very reliable checklist that I encountered.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-do-a-site-audit
When you have completed this checklist you can finally say, alright, its done, and its awesome.
The SEO Quiz
Now that you have all of this information at hand, and have developed your site, its time to find out how much you know. Taking the SEO Quiz is not just for figuring out if you qualify to be a professional SEO expert, but also to have the knowledge to push anything you concern yourself with to the top. It gives you a foundation and even motivation to know that you have that information and understand it fully.
So for a final thought, take the SEO Quiz, and find out how much you know, and how much you can now apply. http://www.seomoz.org/seo-expert-quiz
Warning: This is intended for those who have SEO knowledge at least to the degree of looking it up on Google and finding out what H1 tags are, and have heard of backlinks.This also references other material by Google to learn exactly what SEO should follow. That said...
There have been thousands of articles, videos, books, and more regarding SEO. Moreover, there have been tons of reports, software, minibooks, techniques, and a plethora of services popping up that either directly hurt a website, help just a little bit, or do nothing at all. I figured it was time to go back to basics. This is not JUST about the basics, however, there is a great many who start their SEO career after learning about some new link building technique, and they have never actually witnessed real SEO in action.
That is not to say in any way that SEO providers do not know what they are doing, but many are either misinformed, or not fully informed. The best way to find out if they understand their trade is by simply looking at their ads. Many professional SEO companies are local and their clients are obtained via referrals and local advertisement. Online SEO companies are much different in the manner that it can be hard to identify between the average linkbuilder labeling themselves as SEO professionals, and those who know and work in the trade.
Thus the reason this now needs to be written. Starting with Google, their changes, and why it's important you know them and how they affect your website and online presence. Why Google? If we target Google's search engine, we get everyone else for free. Because, whether they like it or not, all other search engines want to be Google, and copy them in everything they do. So if you have Google, you have everyone.
To be able to match the needs of SEO for Google you have to know what they specifically want, and though you may feel like skipping this part, if Google's guidelines and changes are unknown to you, there is absolutely no possible way you can even begin to stay on top of their search engine. Boring...maybe, but knowledge is power, without power, you are among the sheep who are led by those with power.
If you are an SEO provider this will benefit you greatly and the more knowledge you have, the more you can gain with that knowledge. If you are a business owner who would like to quit paying an SEO provider who may not be cutting the mustard, or just want to know what they know, this can save you tons of money.
The next step is to develop a great strategy is keyword research. There are a thousand tools, instant magic tricks, and the like online at the moment. However, common sense is the most powerful tool in keyword research. When was the last time you visited Google and typed in, "restaurants my city?" I can tell you, NEVER. You have never just typed in some random keyword and your city name right after that. If you were looking for a used auto lot to purchase a vehicle, you definitely didn't go to Google and type in, "cars my city." So trying to chase keywords based on a simple word, and then a city doesn't make sense. Not common sense at least.
Structuring your site once you understand your target market is not as simple as tossing up a WordPress site, putting on some content, adding tons of plugins, and then calling it ready. The fact is that the more you have on a site; you may be making it worse. There are things you have to understand about your site from the basic SEO settings, speeding up a site to avoid losing readers and potential customers, to the advanced settings and tricks every business person and SEO strategist should know. It is amazing how many do not know that all SEO starts on site, much more than simple H1 tags. Social media, web 2.0 strategies, and the like are all worthless if the site itself doesn't meet these standards.
Understanding Google Analytics and Adwords is important as well. Reason being that this is where the money is at. Understanding tools is also an important part of SEO, allowing you to speed up processes, without cutting quality corners.
I write about evergreen markets for internet marketers in here as well. There seems to be a huge trend where a million sites pop up daily regarding "Hot topics" but these fade almost as fast. Unfortunately for internet marketers, this is slightly a waste of time and money. "Hot Topics" are come and go, and not for the long run at all. That is where evergreen markets come in. The long run, maybe 20 years from now, is the goal with evergreen topics. Learn them, apply them, and you will succeed.
At the end of this, you should be able to take the SEO test, in which you will find out if you meet the bar for SEO knowledge and can effectively develop campaigns for yourself and clients.
Google Changes
Objective: Understand Google's latest changes and why they applied them.
First, a link to the new changes: http://insidesearch.blogspot.se/2012/05/search-quality-highlights-53-changes.html
Google has made 52 (not 53, as stated in the URL, because of a duplicate launch) changes. These changes have to do specifically with the quality of the search engine. From rewriting the way it deals with paginated content (e.g. an article with the words "next" or "back" in there), all the way to how it deals with low quality content on the websites themselves.
You see, Google has roughly 100,000 applicants at any given time. What this means to you is that they have options, and those options include highly educated people with PHD's in their field. So this is definitely a company with nothing but smart cookies in the jar.
Understanding what changes they have made, and why they made them is the beginning of understanding what kind of sites Google's algorithm is going to rank better.
Google's Guidelines and SEO Guide
Google wants the internet to be better. It's a common saying that Google is the bad guy, Google wants everyone to do what it says...that's partially right and partially dead wrong. Google is not the bad guy, as I said; these people are among the smartest in the world, they want a better internet. Google doesn't want everyone to do what THEY say; they want everyone to do what is correct for a better internet. I am not a Google employee, nor am I baised and on their side.
However, look at this from the point of view of the user. Would you, as a searcher, want to type in something you are looking for, and come up with garbage websites JUST trying to sell you something? Probably not.
If you happen to see something for sale on a site that you enjoy reading however, you might just buy it. Content is the concern here. The site itself cannot be a single page site, and its content must be written concisely and motivate the reader to action (whether that be read more, or call and visit a place of business).
This is where relevance is most important. A person on a site that talks about daycare toys is probably not going to see a car insurance ad and click it. But they will see an ad for something that is relevant, like a magazine subscription to parenting, or anything of that nature, and probably buy it.
A better internet, better quality, and better search ability is the ultimate goal. Thus, if you are a local business, your idea is to have your site relevant to your area, and your goal is to have a better, and more Google structured, site than your competitors.
If you are an internet marketer and your site is more genuine than others, and relevant to what you are advertising, you not only have a better opportuinity from the gate, but also more longevity.
Here is a direct link to Google's SEO Guide: http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
Another Important Guide and FlowChart
You can always have too much information instead of not enough. Thus, the necessity for another fantastic guide leads me to show you this excellent guide giving you a more round look at SEO, which is a very very great guide: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
The above guide gives you more insight to search engines and how to manipulate content (albeit GOOD content) so that search engines can actually SEE it. The more a search engine can see, the higher your opportunities for others to see YOU.
Keyword Research
There are thousands of articles, thousands of methods, thousands of softwares, and all of them talking about keyword research. This must mean that keyword research is very important...because it is. The idea behind keyword research is to think of what people are looking for. So if your business is a locksmith company, you must think of what your customers must be searching for in Google. This is what keyword research is.
Though, again, there are thousands of methods, the main suggestion here is common sense. Think about what you would personally use to search for your business or offering online. One word searches don't usually exist. Most of the time, people search just like people speak, "I need a cheap moving company in [CITY]" So, the idea is to grab the right keywords.
So great keyword research is done based on something people would look for, writing anything you can think of on paper or in notepad, and then the next step is to use Google to type in those searches, and see if Google suggests then in the dropdown box automatically. This means that those keywords are searched for. If they do show up, you know that the keyword/search phrase is great. This is the best way to get the perfect keywords for business.
The same goes for internet marketing. Tools are known all over the place, such as Market Samurai. However, they are still assistants, common sense drives above these, and the Adwords tool, any day. Market Samurai and the Google Adwords tools are fantastic for telling someone how many searches keywords obtain (or varaitions), however, they are limited by the basic searches (Adwords) and not intelligent enough to understand the long phrases people do use (any tool).
This is quite a short lesson for two reasons, the first is fluff. There is no point in dragging this through the dirt and adding tons of words to explain a simple concept that I know you already understand.
URL Structuring
This may not seem important, however, there are certain aspects of URLs that push off search engines. The first of which is the actual way you use your own links, and the way others use your links. This is called canonicolization. For example:
www.example.com
example.com
www.example.com/page
example.com/page
www.example.com/page/
example.com/page/
The above are simple examples of how mixed up a website can be if you use both www and without www, and using the slash at the end, or not.
The problem here is being able to see too many different URLs. Using too many different types of URLs can make a site seem cluttered and have too much of the same content, or duplicate content if you will. It is best to structure the URLs to follow the same pattern.
The best way to do this is with the .htaccess file within a host server (the place where a website is located). The following codes should help to identify which you would like to use.
For using www on all urls, open the .htaccess file and paste in this code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^.]+\.[a-z]{2,6})$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%1/$1 [R=301,L]
For using URLs without www, open the .htaccess and paste in this code:
RewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^domain\.tld$ [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.tld/$1 [R=301,L]
What the two above do is either use www, or not use www. This creates more formality for your site. For those that backlink (or create or pay someone to create links pointing to a site) you have to remember which you chose. www.domain.com or domain.com
Using word delimiters (the space between words in a URL) is also something that used to be an issue. Suffice it to say that either dashes "-" or underscores "_" work fine, but for human readability, dashes are best to use.
Using specific keywords in a URL is perfectly fine as well, if you do not use it more than once. For example:
http://domain.com/how-to-clean-hoses
http://domain.com/how-to-clean-hoses-clean-hoses-with-cleaner
Using the keyword one time is sufficient in the URL itself. And if you use numbers, be sure to use them in a manner that cannot be interpreted as a date.
Avoid using stop words in URLs. A stop word is simply a word that makes people stop. Here is a very good list of stop words: http://www.ranks.nl/resources/stopwords.html
Finally, make sure that if you change a page to a different URL for whatever reason, be sure to create a 404 redirect to that page.
Silo Your Site
If you have never heard of siloing, even being a more experienced user, I wouldn't find that extremely surprising. Siloing is creating structure for your website and dividing things correctly. For example, your business is automotive sales, but your business also includes detailing, bodywork, and auto repair. In this case, a site has to be organized, where your main page points to these services under the services tab in the navigation bar. This is well organized so far because the site is pretty small.
However, when you start to add pages underneath each section, you do not want to lose this structure, and maintain that only certain pages link to other pages of relevance. Each category should show its own subcategories without veering off and pointing in different directions. In this example, for reference, I show two different types:
Auto Sales
Detailing
Bodywork
Mechanic
Auto Sales
Used Cars
New Cars
Detailing
Cars and Trucks
Semi-Trucks
Semi-Trailers
Bodywork
Auto Body Repair
Paint and Trim
Accessories
Mechanic
Engine Repair
Smog
Tune Up
This structure is clean and easy to identify. Thus, anything under mechanic should be pointing to the subcategories using the keywords for those sections.
Breadcrumbs are also an important part of Siloing. Many do not know what a breadcrumb is, so imagine the Hansel and Gretal story. The two children would go into the woods and to find their way back they dropped breadcrumbs saved from dinner, a trail to find their way home.
Of course, Hansel and Gretal became lost because of animals eating the breadcrumbs, yet this is the idea of the breadcrumb: A trail leading back home that can tell the user where they are, and how to get back. It also has link significance as well. For example:
Joe Bob's Auto > Auto Sales > Used Cars
This breadcrumb tells the user where they are at (in Used Cars) and how to get back. If that bread crumb has Auto Sales and Joe Bob's Auto hyperlinked, you have successfully linked back to relevant content in a Siloed manner that is great with Google, and it makes your site made your site more organized at the same time.
It is heard that content should point to other content and this is true (or pages pointing to other pages). However, pointing random keywords all over the place is definitely not the way to go. There are steps you want to follow when writing for your website and using the correct linking structure, meaning pointing people to relevant places in your site.
1. Use limited amount of links in articles
2. Use links only when necessary, if it benefits the reader or uses keywords that pertain to the topic
3. Use consistent keywords if possible or use parenthesis such as (go to this link for more information)
Sidebars are great for content linking. The problem is that people think sidebars are only good for ads. This is the worst thing to put in a sidebar. The best links in a sidebar should be featured articles, things that change consistently, and zero third party links. This creates an opportunity to create an even better internal linking structure, and opportunity to create more keyword anchors. Avoid ads in a sidebar and change the content frequently.
The footer is also a great place for links, but it is also easily abused. Forget trying to use it specifically for Google bots. People actually use footers to find information. Don't copy the navigation bar like some do and paste it there basically. This is the spot for FAQ, about us, contact us, privacy policy, refund policy, things like this that will be useful. The better your site looks, the more onsite information you can link around to without cluttering the site, the better opportunities a reader has to stay there, and that is what Google wants. Thus, the conclusion is that Google will penalize a cluttered and unreadable site.
Basic WordPress Optimization
Since WordPress is a very easily optimized and ranked platform, I recommend it for any website, if optimized correctly. This section is so short, its one simple link to the best article I found for WordPress optimization. Why reinvent the week and rewrite the same thing here? Why waste your time?
The one thing I will say, WordPress is great for web platforms. It is easy to add plugins that will help to increase rank and content quality. The only thing I don't recommend is shoving tons of plugins into WordPress. I will talk more on that later, but for now, picture your computer with tons of programs and stuff on there. Every time you boot up, it takes like five minutes to load up. The same goes for WordPress sites with too many plugins. Don't do it.
Here is the article that I find is highly efficient for basic WordPress optimization: http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/
Google Analytics and Adwords
So why should you study and know about them? The most important part of this in all is learning how Google sees sites and processes the data. But secondly, you want to learn how to manipulate (may not be the best word) Google analytics to enhance your site and make it more monetizable and seen.
Google Adwords is well known in the IM world as it is used to gain a full time income for many. Studying Google Adwords exams allows the researcher (you) to understand how Adwords works, how to use it to your advantage, and how to increase your online income using Adwords. It is the best way to monetize a website outside of actually selling a service or product (such as your business).
Here are two links I advise anyone to go to and study right now, and stay up to date as well:
Google Analytics: http://www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/iq.html?
Google Adwords Lessons: http://support.google.com/adwords/certification/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=examstudy.cs
About Tools
This chapter is directly related to tools that are used for SEO. One of those tools that is surprisingly unheard of is EXCEL. Many people have a copy of Microsoft Office and almost none of them, I am speaking of SEO practicioners and those interested specifically in SEO, use Excel to accomplish many tasks that it is built for.
A particlularily fantastic article to read is http://www.distilled.net/excel-for-seo/ This article goes indepth and shows how SEO can be analyzed with Excel as the main tool. I HIGHLY SUGGEST that readers study this tool and slowly gather the information so that you understand the formulas. This has the potential to increase your SEO knowledge and experience far beyond thousands of so called SEO experts out there at this moment.
I also recommend SEOTools (Work with SEO in Excel - The ultimate Excel plugin | Niels Bosma), a plugin for Excel that will add tools to the Excel ribbon. This is a great start for everyone who wants to have a more hands on experience with their SEO analytics. And this simple search will give you hundreds of great articles to understand more about SEO in Excel http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=
Here are some great tools to help with SEO analysis that you do not have to use together, but well worth learning and understanding. Just knowing what these tools do will increase your SEO knowledge.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a small desktop program you can install on your PC or Mac which spiders websites' links, images, CSS, script and apps from an SEO perspective. It fetches key onsite page elements for SEO, presents them in tabs by type and allows you to filter for common SEO issues, or slice and dice the data how you see fit by exporting into Excel. You can view, analyse and filter the crawl data as it's gathered and updated continuously in the program's user interface. The standard 'Lite' version of the tool is completely free, however this version is limited to crawling a maximum of 500 URI and it does not give you full access to the configuration options of the spider or the custom source code feature.
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
Quix
Quix is an extensible bookmarklet, that allows you to easily access all your bookmarks and bookmarklets, across all your browsers, while maintaining them in only one spot. All you have to do is remember the shortcut for the bookmarklet, so, basically, it's like a command line for your browser!
http://www.quixapp.com
SEOQuake
SEOquake is a popular and handy analytic seo-tool for Firefox, Chrome and Opera browsers. SEOquake helps to obtain an information about any site for a wide range of parameters such as page rank, Google index, Alexa and many others. Keyword Density tool serves to demonstrate a number of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page. SEOquake has a parameter that highlights noffolow links. SEOquake Toolbar shows values of the parameters under each search result in SERP of Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, Baidu.
http://www.seoquake.com
Firebug
Inspect HTML and modify style and layout in real-time
Use the most advanced JavaScript debugger available for any browser
Accurately analyze network usage and performance
Extend Firebug and add features to make Firebug even more powerful
Get the information you need to get it done with Firebug.
http://getfirebug.com
XPathBuilder
The importXML feature within the Google Docs spreadsheet is an extremely useful tool for SEOs looking for a quick way to pull in search engine results for analysis. Similar functions are available in Microsoft Excel, but Google Docs has the virtue of being both cloud-based and free of charge.
http://www.xpathbuilder.com/
Bookmarklets
A javascript bookmarklet is a small piece of javascript code that you can execute in your browser by bookmarking a link. I have a huge collection which I use daily.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/some-nift...more-efficient
Hashtags.org
Hashtags.org offers a simple interface to search for hashtags and their trending popularity. For example, if you search on the hashtag #business, Hashtags.org will graphically display the times of day and days of the week when the #business hashtag is most popular. If you scroll down below the graph, you'll also see the latest tweets that include that hashtag
http://hashtags.org/
Disable personalized search plugin
This plugin prevents you from seeing personalized search results, when searching from your browser"s search box. In Firefox, this plugin also adds suggest functionality.
http://yoast.com/tools/seo/disable-p...search-plugin/
Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool
The main purpose of the SERP Snippet Optimization Tool is to allow webmasters and content publishers to strategically construct page titles and meta description tags that will result in aesthetically-pleasing or eye-catching listings in Google's organic search results. Using this tool, you can optimize the content of your titles and snippets to maximize your click-through rate (CTR) from Google.
http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html
CuteRank
CuteRank is a FREE keyword rank checker tool (software) designed to batch automatically check keyword positions and track keyword ranking performance on multiple search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing (MSN), Ask, and AOL. What's more, this free keyword rank checker allows you to keep your SEO notes and see how your keyword position improves with your SEO effort. You can also generate keyword position report in multiple formats.
http://www.cuterank.net
Blekko Toolbar
Blekko doesn't believe in keeping secrets. To help make search more transparent, we provide a view of the data that our crawler gathers as it crawls the web.
Every blekko search result has this data associated with it in a manner that you can see. You can access it by either clicking on the SEO link tool in the second line of each result or else searching with the /seo slashtag. The information included on the /seo pages includes inbound links, states and countries where the links are coming from, domains with duplicate content, when the site was last crawled, etc.
http://blekko.com/toolbar
Excellent Analytics
Excellent Analytics is a simple Excel plug-in that lets you import web analytics data from Google Analytics into a spreadsheet. It's an open source project and 100% free to download and use for individuals and businesses. Ampliofy generously spends time keeping Excellent Analytics on the market.
http://excellentanalytics.com/
Übersuggest
Get keyword ideas with Übersuggest the free keyword suggestion tool that makes good use of Google Suggest and other suggest services.
http://ubersuggest.org/
Google Keyword Tool - Google Adwords
Google Keyword Tool will help you choose relevant and popular terms related to your selected key-term and display crucial data for your kw research.
SEOmoz SEO toolbar
Download the MozBar (available in Firefox and Chrome) and streamline your SEO. The MozBar provides easy access to the most powerful SEO tools and data while you surf the Web!
Access important SEO metrics at a glance as you surf the Web.
Create custom searches by search engine, country, region/city.
Easily see what matters: Highlight no-followed, followed, internal, external links, and keywords.
Compare link metrics for Google, Yahoo! and Bing with our SERP overlay.
Expose page elements quickly with the Analyze Page overlay.
Quickly access other powerful SEO tools.
http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar
Open Site Explorer
Search engine for links. Enter a URL and search 65 billion URLs and 9.2 trillion links.
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
SemRush
Get Google keywords
Get AdWords keywords
See your competitors
Estimated SE and AdWords traffic
Find hidden keywords
Order custom reports
http://www.semrush.com
RoboForm
Fill forms with a Single Click Save time with easy one-click form filling. Let RoboForm Password Manager fill in your data on almost any web form. No more needless typing!
http://www.roboform.com
Latent Semantic Indexing
LSIKeywords.com takes all of the complexity out of doing a Latent Semantic analysis. Simply type your keyword or phrase on the home p
http://lsikeywords.com/
DropDay
DropDay was created for people, who are interested in purchasing expired domains and people, who are interested in receiving additional traffic to their website. The huge amount of domains that are expiring each day, are a very comfortable instrument to start or enlarge the traffic to your already existing resources. DropDay.com gives you the opportunity to know which of these domains are worth buying and why.
http://www.dropday.com
Robtex
In Robtex you can search for:
DNS checks detailed dns information for a hostname
( Welcome to Facebook - Log In, Sign Up or Learn More , Yahoo! , YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. )
IP-number checks ip number information such as dns reverse and forwards
A-net checks an entire a-network
B-net checks an entire b-network
C-net checks an entire c-network
whois lookup checks whois information for a domain
route checks a specific routed prefix
AS numbers checks information on an AS-number
BGP announcements checks prefixes origined from a specific AS-number
AS macros checks who belongs to an AS-macro
http://www.robtex.com/
Working Evergreen over "What's Hot"
First, evergreen means longevity. That said, what's hot means anything that happens to be in the news or the talk of the town on twitter. Though it seems like a good idea to create massive amounts of cash when a celebrity dies, or whatever else you happen to be trying to market, the problem is always longevity. It is probably going to make a good amount of cash at first for the experienced online marketer (I know this sounds shady and the like and it probably is). Longevity actually brings in higher amounts of income over time, can make a site seem like an authority on a topic, and can definitely be duplicated using other evergreen topics.
So what is evergreen now that we understand what it can do? Evergreen topics can be history topics, research topics, limited time topics that actually have longevity (such as how to dub a cassette that later turns into how to dub a cd or dvd and then later turns into how to dub some other new similar product).
Evergreen topics are things that people are interested in and come back to consistently, even for the exact same information. This is longevity. And you can become predictive with this as well, for example, your main topic is System Mechanic (or some other software you know is going to be updated) and then you create your links for the different versions, such as System Mechanic 9, and System Mechanic 10, and System Mechanic 10.9 or whatever.
Evergreen is longevity, I cannot say it any better than that.
The Site Audit
After spending all this time on a site (not including social media, anything that can bring others to the site), you want to know if it is ship shape. Bottom line, is my site in perfect order, is it going to push the boat?
The best way to do this is to go down a very reliable checklist that I encountered.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-do-a-site-audit
When you have completed this checklist you can finally say, alright, its done, and its awesome.
The SEO Quiz
Now that you have all of this information at hand, and have developed your site, its time to find out how much you know. Taking the SEO Quiz is not just for figuring out if you qualify to be a professional SEO expert, but also to have the knowledge to push anything you concern yourself with to the top. It gives you a foundation and even motivation to know that you have that information and understand it fully.
So for a final thought, take the SEO Quiz, and find out how much you know, and how much you can now apply. http://www.seomoz.org/seo-expert-quiz
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