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a product of the minds @
Answers to the 26 SEO Questions You Were Too Afraid to Ask
How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engines?
How do I rank higher in se
Contents: PG 04 How does Google search work?
PG 05 What ranking factors does Google consider?
PG 07 What’s the most used search engine? Google vs. Bing vs. Yahoo?
PG 08 How long does it take Google to index my new website/article/post?
PG 09 What is the difference between indexed and crawling?
PG 10 Do keywords matter?
PG 11 How many times should I use a keyword?
PG 12 What is keyword stuffing?
PG 13 Does my domain name (URL) matter?
PG 14 What are backlinks and do they matter?
PG 15 What are meta descriptions and do they still matter?
PG 16 Does having a mobile-friendly website matter?
PG 17 What is the robots.txt file?
PG 18 What is the sitemap.xml file?
PG 19 Why do you need to add alt text to your images?
PG 20 Subfolders vs. Subdomain: What’s better for SEO?
PG 21 Does social media impact search engine rankings?
PG 22 Does “fresh content” matter?
PG 23 What is duplicate content?
PG 24 What will get my website penalized?
PG 26 What’s a manual penalty?
PG 27 What’s the deal with the Panda algorithm update?
PG 29 What’s the deal with the Penguin algorithm update?
PG 30 What is Google’s Knowledge Graph?
PG 31 What are Google’s Answer Boxes?
PG 32 Okay, so how do I rank higher in search engine rankings?
PG 34 Sources
How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | TABLE OF CONTENTS vtldesign.com / @vital_design
Your website’s rankings in search engines are a major contributor to the
number of leads you get from your website.
The trouble is search engine algorithms are complex. And optimizing your
website for search engines can be a frustrating experience if you don’t know
where to start.
This ebook is intended to give you a starting point — a framework to better
understand how search engines work and how you can increase your
website’s rankings.
So you want your website to rank higher in search engines? Of course you do, and you should.
PG 03 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | INTRODUCTION vtldesign.com / @vital_design
A: It’s complicated.When a user enters a query, Google’s machines search the index for matching
pages and return the results they believe are the most relevant to the user (based
on Google’s algorithms). And how do they determine relevance you ask?
For a typical query, there are thousands, if not millions, of webpages with
potentially helpful information. Algorithms are the computer processes and
formulas that take your questions and turn them into answers. Today Google’s
algorithms rely on more than 200 unique signals or “clues” that make it possible
to guess what you might really be looking for. These signals include things like the
keywords on websites, the freshness of content, your region and PageRank.
How does Google search work?
PG 04 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 1 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
How do I rank higher in se
What ranking factors does Google consider?A: Google considers over 200 ranking factors. Here’s a list of ranking factor correlations from Moz.
PG 05 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 2 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
PG 06 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 2 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
A: Google. Hands down.Over the past couple of years, comScore reports have declared Google to be at a
65-68% market share, with most of the remainder divided up between Bing and
Yahoo. Yet, these numbers don’t seem to align with what most webmasters see
in their analytics reports and with survey data.
What’s the most used search engine? Google vs. Bing vs. Yahoo?
PG 07 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 3 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
In a survey conducted by Search Engine Land, on the
question of which search engine respondents considered to
be their primary search engine, Google was the big winner:
80%8%
6%
A: It can take Google several days to over six weeks to index your new content. This depends on a variety of factors including how many pages are on your site, what
your domain authority is, how deep on your site the new pages are and how often you
update your site.
How long does it take Google to index my new website/article/post?
PG 08 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 4 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
A: When search engines look through the content on your website, they are crawling your site. As they crawl your site, they index content that will appear in the search engine.
However, an important thing to remember is that not all content is indexed. Search
engines pick what content they will and won’t index as they go through the crawling
process.
What is the difference between indexed and crawling?
PG 09 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 5 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
A: Yes. But not as much as they used to. It’s important to do keyword research and to use keywords in your content, just don’t
overdo it. Using keywords helps tell Google what your content is about. This is important
when Google is trying to match relevant content to a searcher’s query.
Thanks to recent updates to Google’s algorithm (see Hummingbird mentioned later in this
ebook), the user’s intent is increasingly more important than the actual keyword alone.
Do keywords matter?
PG 10 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 6 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
Replace keyword research with user intent research. Keywords are still an integral part of content strategy. But what’s
more important is to determine the intent behind those keywords.
What did the searcher intend to find when they typed in the
keywords? Create content others will share with users’ intent in mind,
not the algorithm.”
A: Google has become very sophisticated and doesn’t need the keyword repeated 50 times on every page. In the old days, (say, 2008), the metric “keyword density” was important, but now having
too much keyword density will get you in trouble.
So what should you do? Use the keyword in your headline, your URL, your meta
description, a few image alt tags, the first paragraph of your content and then a few
more times in the body copy—if it comes up naturally in the flow of the writing.
How many times should I use a keyword?
PG 11 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 7 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
https://vtldesign.com/inbound-marketing/16-marketing-kpis-to-measure/
A: “Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose).
Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can
harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses
keywords appropriately and in context.” — Google
Examples of keyword stuffing include:
What is keyword stuffing?
PG 12 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 8 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural
Blocks of text listing cities and states a webpage is trying to rank for
Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value
Using keyword few times is good keyword use. Using keyword too
many times is not good keyword use but bad keyword use. Using too
many keywords is bad keyword use as it is keyword overuse, keyword
kill or keyword stuffing. Bad keyword use, keyword repetition, keyword
stuffing, keyword kill or keyword overuse is bad keyword use.
— Paul Agabin
A: Not really. Not for search engine rankings. It matters for your brand. This used to be an easy way to rank in the old days (again, say, 2008), but ever since
Google rolled out a filter called the “EMD Update” we’ve seen the use of keywords in the
domain name matter less and less to rankings.
“The EMD Update — for ‘Exact Match Domain’ — is a filter Google launched in
September 2012 to prevent poor quality sites from ranking well simply because they
had words that match search terms in their domain names.” — Search Engine Land
That said, for branding purposes having a domain that represents your brand and
works well on marketing materials will have value to your company, just not to search
engines.
Does my domain name (URL) matter?
PG 13 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 9 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
http://www.awesomebrand.com
A: When other websites and blogs link to your website, those are called backlinks.They help with SEO because Google and other search engine algorithms see them as
“signs of approval,” or third party votes for your website. It is important to remember
that Google and other search engines hold diversity of links in high regard. They see it
as a broader way of reaching more people.
Google will reward companies that possess these qualities with better rankings. These
links can also be effective from a user experience standpoint. Users might wish to find
out more about a company’s partners or affiliates. A link provides easy navigation to
the site they are looking to explore.
What are backlinks and do they matter?
PG 14 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 10 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
A: A page’s meta description is the text that appears below your page in a search engine result that explains what the page is all about. Meta descriptions used to be a place to optimize for keywords so crawlers would know
more about your page contents; now, it’s more important that you write something
compelling that makes readers want to click so you can improve conversion rates from
search engine results to your website.
It’s important to note that your meta description, in most cases, needs to contain the
search query (or something close to it) in order for Google to use it in search results. If
it doesn’t, then it’s possible that a random few sentences from the text of the page that
DOES contain the keyword will be used in place of your description.
What are meta descriptions and do they still matter?
PG 15 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 11 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
A: Yes. On April 21, 2015, Google expanded their use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This is the most significant mobile algorithm change to date. The algorithm analyzes
mobile compatibility on a page-by-page basis (rather than a website-wide basis).
Think about it. Google wants to provide the most relevant results to their users, right?
And if their users are searching from a mobile device, the most relevant results will be a
page/website that is, at the very least, mobile-friendly.
Does having a mobile-friendly website matter?
PG 16 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 12 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
60% of cell phone owners use their cell phone to access the Internet.
- Pew Research Center
A: This is a file that gives Googlebot, as well as other web crawlers, directives as to which areas of your server you want crawled, and which you don’t. The robots.txt file, in most cases, can be set to allow any bot to crawl your whole site.
In some cases, such as when using WordPress, you can use a robots boilerplate that
tells Google to no-index certain directories that have no value in search. Its important to
have this file, as Google is looking for it in Webmaster tools, but it should be noted you
can seriously hurt your rankings if it is not done properly!
What is the robots.txt file?
PG 17 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 13 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
http://www.website.com/robots.txt
A: This file is an index of all the pages on your site and content on your site.This file allows you to tell Google which pages, PDFs, images, etc., should be indexed,
and also allows you to tell Google how often you expect your site to be updated. Google
uses this info in Webmaster Tools to identify critical issues with your site. If you’re using
a CMS, there is probably a plugin you can use to update your sitemap automatically. If
not, you’ll need to do it each time you add a new piece of content.
What is the sitemap.xml file?
PG 18 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 14 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
http://www.vtldesign/sitemap.xml
A: First and foremost, the alt tag is for accessibility. People who can’t see use tools that read the alt text aloud to describe what is on the
screen. The alt tag should also contain your targeted keyword because it is considered
one of the core on-page attributes. Plus, if a page doesn’t load for some reason, people
can still find out what the image is by reading the alt text.
Why do you need to add alt text to your images?
PG 19 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 15 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
<img src= “https://vtldesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/
The-16-Marketing-KPIs-You-Should-Be-Measuring.jpg”
alt= “The 16 Marketing KPIs You Should Be Measuring” />
https://vtldesign.com/inbound-marketing/16-marketing-kpis-to-measure/
Subfolders vs. Subdomain: What’s better for SEO?
PG 20 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 16 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
A: Subfolder. To clarify here’s the difference:
Subdomain: blog.yourwebsite.com
Subfolder: yourwebsite.com/blog
While Google’s official stance is that it does not matter, repeated tests by SEO experts
have shown that putting content in a subfolder will add to the overall value of the
domain and will help content placed in that subfolder rank better.
yourwebsite.com/about yourwebsite.com/products yourwebsite.com/blog
yourwebsite.com
ABOUT PRODUCTS BLOG
A: No. Yes. Maybe. Facebook and Twitter signals are not part of Google’s ranking algorithm officially. However, retweets containing links have been shown to increase rank in search,
generally for a short period of time. There are a few big case studies out there showing
this data.
On January 22, 2014, Google’s Matt Cutts released a video saying that social signals—
metrics such as Facebook likes and Twitter followers, which indicate a profile’s authority
and influence—do not affect search rankings.
Interestingly, Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines state that social media does contribute to
ranking in search engines through influence, and that being influential in social leads
to a higher organic search ranking over time. Bing went on to state that social media
should still be included as one part of a comprehensive SEO campaign.
While social shares may or may not affect a webpage’s position in search listings, social
profiles do rank in search results. Additionally, the traffic sent via social contributes to
on-page user engagement metrics like pageviews and time on site, so by improving
those with relevant social media traffic you can send signals to Google that users find
your site relevant.
Does social media impact search engine rankings?
PG 21 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 17 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
yourwebsite.com
Does “fresh content” matter?
PG 22 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 18 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
A: Sometimes. Search engines love new (fresh) content when being new is relevant to the user’s search query.
The context of why the content is new is important. Basically Google feels only certain search
queries deserve fresh content to be served as a result.
From Search Engine Land:
“Google does have a ‘Query Deserved Freshness (QDF)’ signal. If there’s a search that is suddenly very
popular versus its normal activity, Google will apply QDF to that term and look to see if there’s any fresh
content on that topic. If there is, that new or fresh content is given a boost in search results.
“The best way to think about this is a term like ‘tornado’.
“If there’s no active tornado, then the search results will likely contain listings to government and
reference sites. But if there’s an active tornado, results will change and may reflect stories, news and
information about the active tornado. Sites can take advantage of this freshness boost by producing
relevant content that matches the real-time pulse of their industry.
“You can’t just update your pages (or the publish date) every day thinking that will make them ‘fresh’
and more likely to rank. Nor can you just add new pages constantly, just for the sake of having new
pages, and think that gives you a freshness boost. It won’t.”
A: From Google: “Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin.“However, in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt
to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic. Deceptive practices like this can
result in a poor user experience, when a visitor sees substantially the same content repeated
within a set of search results.
“Google tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information. This filtering means,
for instance, that if your site has a ‘regular’ and ‘printer’ version of each article, and neither
of these is blocked with a noindex meta tag, we’ll choose one of them to list.
“In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent
to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments
in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may
suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no
longer appear in search results.”
This is why you can’t just take an article, publish it to multiple other websites and think
that your article will rank (in search engines) on all of them. It won’t.
What is duplicate content?
PG 23 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 19 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
What will get my website penalized?
PG 24 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 20 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
A: The are many reasons why your website could be penalized.
A Google penalty is the negative impact on a website’s search rankings based on
updates to Google’s search algorithms and/or manual review. The penalty can be
an unfortunate by-product of an algorithm update or an intentional penalization for
various black-hat SEO techniques.
Keyword Stuffing — A very high keyword density is a flag for poorly written content. If
Google detects a weirdly high number of keywords in a page, it may penalize you.
Paid Links — These are simply links that people place on their site for a fee as they
believe this will have a positive impact on the search results. The practice of paid links
was very popular prior to the Penguin update when companies believed they could add
any types of links with impunity since Google claimed prior to that time that they simply
ignored such links they detected instead of penalizing websites.
Article Spinning — Spinning works by rewriting existing articles, or parts of articles,
and replacing specific words, phrases, sentences, or even entire paragraphs with any
number of alternate versions to provide a slightly different variation with each spin
and posting them on other websites, linking back to your website. This process is often
completely automated and is obviously a clear violation of Google’s guidelines.
Duplicate Content — Any duplicate content on your site makes it less useful in
Google’s view, and that could result in a penalty. Make sure your content is unique and
well-written.
Scraped Content — Sometimes website managers pull content from other sites in
order to bulk our their own pages. Google sees this as pointless duplication.
Hidden Content — Less ethical optimization tactics include disguising text on a page to
manipulate the theme or keyword weighting. The old trick used to be using white text
on a white background. Don’t do it.
PG 25 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 20 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
Blog Networks — Blog networks are a collection of sometimes thousands of blogs that
aim to appear unconnected, which then link out to those prepared to pay for such links.
Google has typically targeted blog networks and once detecting them has penalized
thousands of sites who benefited.
Over-Optimization — Google doesn’t like to see too much of a good thing. An over-
optimization penalty usually means you’ve gone a step too far in your bid to obsessively
out-SEO everyone else in your industry. Cool it and publish some natural content
before your rank suffers.
Bad Domain History — You may have innocently purchased a domain with a bad
history, and that could cause you problems when you try to build a new site around it.
You may be best cutting your losses and buying another domain rather than throwing
more money at the problem.
Keyword domains — While domain names aren’t that risky in and of themselves,
domain names with keywords in them might be. Consider the anchor text linking issue:
if we repeatedly link to that domain, Google might see that as anchor text manipulation.
If you do use an exact match domain, make sure it has plenty of great content on it,
otherwise Google will assume you’re trying to fool people into clicking.
Excessive Reciprocal Links — The old “you link to me and I’ll link to you.” Swapping
links was once an innocent marketing tactic until it started to be abused. If you’ve been
exchanging lots of links with clients, it could be seen as a manipulation attempt.
Buying Links — Buying links could certainly be seen as an attempt to manipulate
PageRank, and therein lies the controversy. If you’ve been buying bad links (and lots of
them), your actions could catch up with you.
Internal 404s — Google wants to know that you tend to your content and weed out any
errors and problems. If you’re delivering 404s inside your own website, it’s a surefire
signal that your users aren’t getting the information they ask for.
yourwebsite.com
A: While Google relies on algorithms to evaluate and constantly improve search quality, they’re also willing to take manual action on sites that use spammy techniques, such as demoting them or even removing them from search results altogether.If your site isn’t appearing in search results, or isn’t performing as well as it once did,
we recommend checking the Message Center of your Webmaster Tools and seeing if
you’ve been notified of a manual penalty taken against your website.
What’s a manual penalty?
PG 26 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 21 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
yourwebsite.com
What’s the deal with the Panda algorithm update?
PG 27 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 22 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
A: First rolled out in February 2011, Panda is a Google algorithm update aimed at fightin low-quality content.
This update aimed to lower the rank of “low-quality sites” or “thin sites” (sites using
keyword stuffing and duplicated or stolen content), and return higher-quality sites near
the top of the search results. It also made webmasters realize how much duplicate
content could hurt their websites by holding them down in rankings.
Unlike PageRank, Panda, which Google runs quite regularly, ranks the entire site or a
big section of the website so all pages must be optimized and free of duplicate content.
Panda likes to read original content.
To know whether your site content is low quality or not, here are some helpful
questions asked by Google Webmaster Central Blog to aid you in determining what is
low quality content:
Does the site have duplicate, overlapping or redundant articles on the same or
similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or
spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as
much attention or care?
Are the articles short, unsubstantial or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to
detail?
Does this article have spelling, stylistic or factual errors?
PG 28 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 22 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
And here are the questions Google says you should ask to determine if the content is
actually authoritative:
Would you trust the information presented in this article?
Is this article written by an expert/enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more
shallow in nature?
Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or
recommend?
Panda updates are continually rolled out, so it’s important to make sure you’re creating
the most relevant, unique content possible.
A: First announced on April 24, 2014, Google Penguin is an algorithm update aimed at fightin web spam. The update is aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using now declared black-hat SEO techniques
involved in artificially increasing the ranking of a webpage by manipulating the number
of links pointing to the page. Such tactics are commonly described as link schemes or
link farms.
What’s the deal with The Penguin Algorithm Update?
PG 29 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 23 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
website1
website2
website5
website4
website6
website3
Link Scheme/Farm
What is Google’s Knowledge Graph?
PG 30 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 24 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
A: It is the knowledge base used by Google to understand facts about people, places and things and how these entities are all connected. The Knowledge Graph manifests in an information card that shows up to the right of
search results. These information cards don’t always appear, only showing up when Google
deems them relevant. With the Knowledge Graph, Google can better understand your
query, so they can summarize relevant content around that topic, including key facts you’re
likely to need for that particular thing.
For example, if you’re looking for Frank Lloyd Wright, the information card will
tell you when he was born and died, but you’ll also get details on his architectural
accomplishments and books. This is an example of one entity within the Knowledge Graph,
which Google now claims has over 200 million entities.
“We’ve always believed that the perfect search
engine should understand exactly what you
mean and give you back exactly what you
want. And we can now sometimes help answer
your next question before you’ve asked it,
because the facts we show are informed by
what other people have searched for. For
example, the information we show for Tom
Cruise answers 37 percent of next queries that
people ask about him.” — Google
A: Its Google’s way of providing answers, not just links.An “answer box” is a SERP feature, usually displayed in a light-gray box that appears
above the organic results (left column) and tries to directly answer a question. Most of
these answers come directly from Google’s Knowledge Graph, though some answers
are pulled from other authoritative websites.
For example, if you were to ask Google, “What is the Declaration of Independence?” it
will show an answer, pulled from Wikipedia (see below).
You’ll notice you don’t have to actually visit a website to get the answer.
A recent study found that almost 20% of search results had rich answers in some
format (Knowledge Graph panels or Answer Boxes). For the business that counts on
website traffic from Google, that’s a lot of traffic these rich answers are taking away by
serving answers (without requiring the user to visit the website).
What are Google’s Answer Boxes?
PG 31 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 25 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
Okay, so how do I rank higher in search engine rankings?
PG 32 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 26 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
A: That is the question. You need to think about it from Google’s standpoint.
They want to provide the most relevant results to their users. This is Google’s entire
value proposition, If their search engines start providing a bad experience they’ll lose
their users who will just go elsewhere (Bing or Yahoo).
Understanding #1: Google Considers Searchers To Be Their Users (Not Your
Potential Customers)
This means that they are direly concerned with their user’s experience and the
relevance of the results that Google serves up. They always want to provide their
users with the most relevant and helpful results possible.
Therefore you should always create content that is relevant and helpful to their
users (your target audience), as opposed to content you think will simply rank well
in search engines.
Understanding #2: Google Ranks Pages, Not Websites
This is a common misunderstanding. You’re not working to get your entire site to
rank. Instead you should be working to get specific pages from your website to
rank in search engines.
PG 33 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | QUESTION 26 vtldesign.com / @vital_design
This is why having a content marketing strategy is so important, and why a blog
post/article is such a powerful tool. Each new blog post added to your website
counts as a brand new page, and once it gets indexed it has the opportunity to
rank. The more pages you create on your website, the more opportunities you have
to rank.
Understanding #3: There Are No Shortcuts
There are shortcuts to improving your website’s rankings.
You can’t game Google. You can try, and it might work for a little bit, but eventually
they’ll notice. And when they notice, they’ll slap you with a penalty and remove your
website from their index. We’ve seen it over and over again. Google continually
slams the door on any attempt to cheat the system.
Panda and Penguin (mentioned earlier) were two updates from Google that had a
devastating impact on sites who were using spammy practices. Nowadays having
your website removed from Google’s index and thus tanking your traffic can
literally put you out of business. It’s just not worth it.
The path to improving rankings is based on discipline and fortitude — the discipline
to consistently create relevant content and the fortitude to not give up when you’re
not ranking on page 1 by next week. Improving your rankings in search engines
is a long-term strategy, requiring patience, an expertise in continually following/
understanding the latest updates from Google and the ability to create relevant
content for their/your users.
How do I rank higher in se
Sources:
PG 34 | How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engine Rankings? | SOURCES vtldesign.com / @vital_design
Google http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/
Moz
http://moz.com/blog/seo-value-knowledge-graph-answer-boxes-whiteboard-friday
KISS Metricshttps://blog.kissmetrics.com/penalized-by-google/
Search Engine Land http://searchengineland.com/library/google/emd-update
Search Engine Land http://searchengineland.com/whos-really-winning-search-war-204651
Search Engine Land http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-knowledge-graph-121585
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_penalty
RavenTools http://blog.raventools.com/social-media-impact-seo/
HubSpothttp://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/seo-faqs-list-ht
Josh Bachynski http://moz.com/blog/panda-41-google-leaked-dos-and-donts-whiteboard-friday