Seo starter-guide-equinet-academy

Search Engine OptimizationStarter Guide

Table of Contents

Part 1: Introduction to SEO

Search Engine Optimization Theory

- What is SEO? 1 - Push Vs. Pull Marketing 2 - How do Search Engines Work? 3 - White-hat Vs. Black-hat SEO 4 - Summary 6

Part 2: Internal SEO

Writing Unique and Engaging Content

- Planning Your Keywords 7 - Writing Unique and Engaging Content 8 - Examples of Engaging Content 10 - Quality Deserves Freshness (QDF) 11

On-Page SEO

- Keywords 12 - Use Synonyms 13 - Title & Header Tags 14 - URL 15 - Main Content Area 16 - Meta Description 17 - Image Optimization 18

Advanced On-Page SEO

- Robots.txt 19 - Index and Noindex 20 - Rel=”Nofollow” 21 - Canonicalization 22 - Rich Snippets 23

Site Structure

- Planning Your Site Navigation 24 - Main Navigation Menu 25 - Extended Site Links on SRPs 26 - Breadcrumbs and Pagination 27

Other Internal SEO Factors

- Site Speed 28 - Avoid Broken Links (404 Pages) 29 - Avoid Duplicate Content/Titles 30 - Sitemaps 31 - Do Not Overload Site with Ads 32

Part 3: External SEO

PageRank and Site Authority

- PageRank 33 - Site Authority 34

Backlinks - Backlinks 35 - Anchor Text 36 - PageRank and Relevancy 37 - Location of Backlink 38 - Site Identity 39 - Reciprocal Linking 40 - Link Diversity 41 - History of Inbound Links 42

Introduction to Link Building - Link Building Strategies 43 - Link Schemes 44 - High Quality Directory Listings 45 - Participate in Niche Discussions 46 - Link Baiting 48

End

Part 1: Introduction toSEO

What Is SEO?

Copyright © All Rights Reserved ®SEO Guide

Why Should You Learn SEO?

SEO or Search engine optimization is the process ofaffecting a website’s visibility on the search engineresults pages for a target set ofkeywords/keyphrases.

There are millions of people using search engines tosearch for information - from general information toinformation on businesses, products, and services.

If you have a website featuring your company'sproducts and services, search engine optimization canmake your site more visible to your customers.

Better Visibility = Increased Sales

Research has shown that 87% of consumers in the“research phase” use a search engine (over 60% useGoogle) to gather information on a product or servicebefore making a purchase decision.

If you owned a business providing car repair servicesin your area, and there were over a thousand searchesa month for the term “car repair services in [yourlocation]“, wouldn’t it make a lot of sense to be on the1st page of the search results where you’ll be visibleand prominent to your target customers?

Hell yes!

1

Part 1

: Intro

du

ction

to SE

O

Push Vs. Pull Marketing


Attraction Marketing

Back in the old days, traditional marketing methods, orrather push marketing, were very effective.

Launch a newspaper ad back then and you’ll get a tonof responses the following day. Sadly, they are nolonger as effective as they were in the past.

Today's ideal marketing strategy is “attraction” or“pull” marketing, and search engine optimization is oneof the most effective attraction marketing strategiesyou can apply to virtually any business!

The Effectiveness of Search Marketing

People who search for your industry-relatedkeywords/keyphrases and discover your website aremore likely to convert into customers than peoplewho receive your promotional fyers.

Notice the use of the word “discover”. Today’sconsumers don’t like the idea of being marketed to orsold to. They prefer to be the ones who “make thediscovery” or make the decision of a purchase.

By making your website visible on the search resultswhere potential customers are searching forinformation, you are marketing your business in anindirect and subtle manner.

2

Part 1

: Intro

du

ction

to SE

O

How Do Search Engines Work?


Crawling and Indexing

Search engines work to deliver the most relevantresults for any search query keyed in by the user. Theydo so by sending millions of tiny robots or spiders tocrawl millions of webpages.

The data is then fetched back to the database, sortedout, indexed, and displayed on the search resultspages.

Search Engine Algorithms

Search engines use a complex set of calculations oralgorithms to determine which pages to display for anygiven search query.

Yes, we are looking at hundreds of ranking factors.

These algorithms are constantly improved andupdated to combat web spam also known as black-hatSEO. We will take a further look at the differencebetween white-hat and black-hat SEO.

What is PageRank?

What is PageRank? PageRank is basically what Googleassigns to a webpage to indicate how authoritative thepage is. Google crawls the web in decreasing order ofPageRank.

What this means is, the higher your PageRank, themore often Google will crawl your site, and the quickeryour pages will be found and indexed.

PageRank is calculated on a scale of 0-100 and isdetermined by the number and importance of otherwebsites linking to your site.

3

Part 1

: Intro

du

ction

to SE

O

White-hat Vs. Black-hat SEO


Black-hat SEO

Web spam is known as black-hat SEO and search engines are on a never ending battle againstweb spam. Let’s take a look at some examples of web spam:

Keyword Stuffng

Here’s a visual example of keyword stuffng:

Trying to rank for target keywords – “Cake decorating tutorial” and “How to decorate a cake”.

Cloaking

Cloaking refers to displaying different content to search engine bots and humans. An examplewould be making some text white on a white coloured background in an attempt to cloak the textand fool search engines. Unfortunately, this only screams “penalize me!” to search engines.

Comment Spam

Comment spam is one of the oldest and dumbest black-hat SEO techniques and surprisingly it isstill used very frequently by web spammers today. Comment spam is commonly executed by bots,but some do it manually. An example of blog comment spam would be a completely unrelatedcomment with keyword-stuffed sentences and a link back to the spammer’s website.

We’ve only scratched the surface of the common types of black-hat SEO techniques. We’ll covermore examples of black-hat SEO as we go along.

View Google’s Webmaster Tools guidelines on Link schemes.

4

Part 1

: Intro

du

ction

to SE

O

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

White-hat Vs. Black-hat SEO


White-hat SEO

Now let’s take a look at some white-hat SEO examples:

Quality Content

The foundation for effective SEO is writing quality content that is engaging and encouragesreaders to share it on their own.

Quality content isn’t 100 words or less with a ton of target keywords hamburgered into everyparagraph. It’s 300-1000 or more words with the target keywords mentioned throughout thearticle in a natural-sounding way.

Natural Links from Topic-related Websites

Acquiring backlinks from websites that share the same topic or from the same industry as yourswill help push your search engine ranking results. The key to getting natural links is having value-added content on your website and getting in touch with other webmasters in your industry.

Well-designed Site Structure

Use HTML for your webpages and use less of javascript, fash, or any other code language that isdiffcult for search engine bots to crawl through. Site navigation also plays an important role incrawlability for search engines and ease of navigation for users.

Here’s a good rule of thumb. If your users are having a hard time fnding the inner pages of yoursite, very likely will search engine bots as well. Make sure that the inner pages of your site areadequately linked to by other related pages within your site.

5

Part 1

: Intro

du

ction

to SE

O

Summary of Part One


Build Your Website For the User, Not For Search Engines

The conclusion is to build your site for the user, not for search engines. Search engines were created withthe user experience in mind – to provide the most relevant search results for any given search query. Soif you follow this rule of thumb, you'll be well on the right track!

6

Part 1

: Intro

du

ction

to SE

O

Part 2: Internal SEO

Planning Your Keywords


Relevancy

Relevance is one of the most important andheavyweight factors that Google uses to determinewhich position a particular page should show on thesearch results for a given keyword search query.

It is also important to put yourself in the minds of yourpotential consumers and anticipate what they mighttype in to search for something on Google.

Use Google Keyword Planner

Let’s go back to our cake decorating tutorial example.If you are a cake decorating tutorial website and planto write an article promoting a cake decorating class,frst do some keyword research using Google’s Keyword Planner to see what search queriespeople are typing into Google.

Key in a short keyphrase to start off i.e. “decorate acake”.

In this section, we will cover internal ranking factors of a website and how tooptimize your site internally to rank better on the Search Results Pages (SRPs).

Tip:

If you are just starting out, a good strategy would be to aim to rank for long-tail keywords(3 or more words in a search query) frst. There are two reasons for this:

1. Long-tail keywords are usually more targeted and specifc search queries resulting inhigher conversion rates. i.e. (Buy a cake online).

2. It is more often easier to compete in the SRPs rankings with longer tail keywords.

7

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home

Planning Your Keywords


Google Keyword Planner Data

As we can see, Google’s Keyword Planner gives you acouple of keyword ideas that are related to youroriginal search term and even provides you with themonthly average number of searches for each relatedkeyphrase.

Notice how users type in search queries such as “Howto decorate a cake”?

Build a List of Keywords

The next step is to list these keywords downsomewhere and insert them into your contentwherever appropriate, preferably in the title tags ifyou want to rank for a specifc keyphrase.

Repeat this step as many times as you need untilyou’ve gathered a sizable list of keywords that yourpage can potentially rank for.

Relevancy is Key

Remember, the key here is relevance.

If your article title is “How to Decorate a Cake”, yourcontent should be talking about cake decorating andgiving tips on how to decorate a cake. You want it tosound as natural as possible.

The key is to let it fow naturally as you write, notworrying about when or where to insert the keywords.Then once you’ve fnished writing the article, go backand insert the keywords wherever appropriate.

Tip:You also want make sure that you diversify your target keywords, and you do that by lookingout for synonyms of your targeted keywords. For example, a synonym of “Cake baking classes”can be mentioned as “Cake baking courses“.

8

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

Writing Unique & Engaging Content


Importance of Quality Content

Content. Content. Content. You’ll hear this over andover again.

Quality content is important not just for SEO, but alsofor getting repeat visits to your site and ultimatelyachieving your conversion goals. It is the foundationand pillar of your site’s success.

Writing quality content is so essential that even if youranked on the 1st page of the search results, you maynot achieve your expected conversion rate if users donot fnd any importance in staying on your website.

The Key to a Successful SEO Campaignis to Focus on Quality Content

Creating useful and engaging content will naturallyencourage readers to share your content and create aword-of-mouth buzz.

They may post links to your site through their ownblogs, social media platforms, forums, or other meanswhich could build your site’s reputation and authoritywith both the user community and Google.

Tip:Note that Google takes into account(a ranking factor) how long a user stays on your page andhow many internal pages of your site the user navigates through after clicking and landing onyour page from a search result.

9

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

Examples of Engaging Content


Create List Posts

Here’s an example of a headline that will catch your readers’ attention – “Top 10Ideas of Starting Up a Business From Virtually No Investment”. If you’re going towrite on something that sounds really compelling and unbelievable, great! But besure you’re able to deliver your promises.

Gather a list of interesting points and expand on it. People love reading list posts,especially if the content is compelling and engaging.

Interview Experts in Your Industry

Find an expert in your industry and email them, politely requesting that you would like to interview them.Be sure to mention that you respect that their time is valuable and that you would really appreciate ifthey could take fve minutes to read your email and answer a few questions.

After you've interviewed them, create a post quoting your interviewee and expressing your opinions.Don't forget to link back to your interviewee and shout out/tweet him/her a thanks.

Create Fresh, Unique Content on Trending Topics

If you ever run out of ideas on topics to write about, do some research using Google Trends to fnd outwhat are the trending search terms in your related industry.

If you own a car website and are looking for trending topics to write about, you can do a search on GoogleTrends by keying in a car brand name, which will return different related trending search terms such as aparticular car model, then do a fresh and unique review post on it. Which leads us to the next point –Query Deserved Freshness (QDF)

Below is an example of a Google Trends report:

10

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

http://www.google.com/trends

Query Deserves Freshness (QDF)


What is Query Deserves Freshness?(QDF)

What in the world is Query Deserves Freshness?

If you’ve ever done a search on any trending topic, youmay have noticed a couple of webpages topping theGoogle search results pages, then disappearing all of asudden and are nowhere to be seen after a few days.

That’s what Google does from time to time – apply theQDF algorithm to fresh content on trending topics.

How QDF Works?

1. Whenever there is a spike in the number of searchesfor any given period of time, Google kicks in the QDFalgorithm. As we can see in the “BMW i3” exampleabove, the number of search queries spiked aroundJuly the 29th and if we do a search on the “BMW i3″ ,we see fresh content ranked above older content onthe 1st page of the search results.

2. Next, Google starts looking for related fresh contentthat fulflls an array of freshness attributes. Forexample how recent were inbound links pointing tothe fresh content.

3. Google then calculates the freshness score anddisplays the most appropriate results for the trendingsearch term.

“Google LovesFresh Content!”

11

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

Keywords


Plan Your Keywords Before Writing

Always identify potential keywords that could drivetraffc to your site before you begin writing yourarticle. Use Google's Keyword Planner.

You don't have to include your target keywords inyour article straight away, you can always go throughthe article after you're done writing and slot them inwherever appropriate.

Having your target keywords in mind will give you abetter idea of what to write and also help you to createa more relevant article to your keyword topic.

Keyword Density Myth

Have you heard about the keyword density myth? Is itfact or fction? Here’s the answer.

It’s fction.

Back in 2007, keyword density was one of the rankingfactors in Google’s algorithms. But many webspammers started abusing it, trying to game Google,hence you started to see many instances of “KeywordStuffng” on many webpages across.

The keyword density situation got worse when SEOsstarted speculating the “appropriate” percentage oftargeted keywords that should be on a page in order torank higher on the search engine results pages (SRPs)– 2%, 5%, 7%, 10%.

None of this is true today. Even just mentioning thekeyword once in the main content section can getyou ranked on Google for that keyword.

“Fiction!”

12

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home

Use Synonyms


Use Synonyms of Your TargetKeywords

Contrary to what you may think, Google actuallyunderstands synonyms associated with your targetkeywords.

Take for example the keyword “automobile”. Googlerecognizes its synonyms and automatically associates“cars”, “transportation”, and “vehicles” with theoriginal keyword “automobile”.

If you are dealing with car spare parts and want yourwebsite to rank well on Google for “car spare parts”,be sure to include “car spare parts” as well as“automobile spare parts” throughout your webpages.

Finding Synonyms

So how do we fnd synonyms?

One of the easiest ways is to go to www.thesaurus.com and type in your target keywordand you'll get a couple of synonyms.

Another way is to go to Google’s Keyword Planner,key in your target keyword, and search for somerelated keyword ideas.

Once you’ve identifed a couple of synonyms withacceptable search volume, form a list.

13

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

http://www.thesaurus.com/

https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/

Title & Header Tags


Title Tags

<title>Title Tags</title> should not be confused with<h1>Header Tags</h1>.

Title tags should be placed in the <head></head>section of your page to let search engines and usersknow what your page is about.

WordPress automatically does this for you, and evenadds a <H1> header tag to your title. Including yourtarget keywords in your <H1> tag is good SEO.

Header Tags

<H1>, <H2>, <H3> are sorted not just by order offont size, but also by order of importance.

Search engines pay attention to which header tagsyou use and whether you include your targetkeywords in the header tags.

A rule of thumb – try to avoid using the <H1> tagmore than once on a page unless you have goodreason to. If unsure, use <h3> and you should be ingood shape.

Title Tags

14

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)


How to Write Your URLs

Your URL i.e. (http://www.example.com/page-title-with-keywords/) should be short, descriptive, and haveyour target keywords inserted into it. It also good practice to keep your URLs in good structure by creatingdescriptive categories and parent pages.

If your URLs contain more than one word, put a dash or an underscore to separate the words. Dashes arerecommended.

Should Target Keywords Be Included in the Primary Domain Name?

The answer is - not necessarily.

Exact keyword match domain names used to have a high ranking factor. Such as “www.onlineshopping.com”had a high chance of ranking for the search term “Online Shopping”.

Not anymore.

As long as the keyword is within the entire URL (i.e. www.shoponline.com/online-shopping”), it is stillcalculated into the overall page ranking factors.

15

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

Main Content Area


Tips For Your Main Content Area

1. Include your target keyword high up in your openingparagraph. (In the frst one or two sentences)

2. Write as naturally as you can with the reader inmind. If you write for users, not search engines, youwill future-proof your SEO efforts as that is whatsearch engines are heading towards.

3. Include synonyms of your target keywordsthroughout your main content.

4. Write 300 words or more. There is no fxed rule, useit only as a guide. If you go over 2000 words, it may bea good idea to separate the content into two or moredifferent pages.

5. Separate different sections of your content intocatchy, descriptive headings.

6. Make your content easy to read by using HTML textand standard font-size.

7. Add pictures or any visual imageries wheneverappropriate

8. Try to keep each paragraph at 3 – 4 lines as a guide.The longer a paragraph, the lengthier it seems to thereader, and this might scare away wordy-paranoiapeople before they even begin reading the frstsentence.

Main Content Area

16

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

Meta Description


What is Meta Description?

Description meta tags give Google a summary ofwhat your page is about. Google may or may notuse your meta description on the search resultspages (SRPs). It really depends on what the usersearch query is.

If the search query matches some of the keywordsin your meta description, then Google may show it.Otherwise, Google will automatically generate asnippet from your page content to show on theSRPs.

Meta Description Code Example

A meta description is always a good option toinclude in your page’s HTML code. Heres anexample of the code:

Meta Description for WordPress Users

If you are using WordPress, you may install the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast.The meta description box will be on every page and post editor. See example:

17

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

Image Optimization


Why Should You Optimize YourImages?

Optimizing your images may bring you someadditional traffc from Google Images Search. It is alsoconsidered a ranking factor for your page's overallranking.

Image File Name

Include your targeted keywords in your fle name (i.e. “bmw i3 car model.jpeg”).

It is also a good practice to store all your images in onedirectory, so that the path to your images is simplifedand easier for search engines to crawl through.

(i.e. http://example.com/images/bmw-i3-car-model.jpeg/”)

Title and Alt Tags

You will also have the option to include the title imageand alt tags. Include your target keywords in both ofthem but pay closer attention to the alt tags, as Googlewill look at your image alt tags to have an idea of whatyour images is about.

So make your alt tags more descriptive.

Your title tags will show up when the cursor hoversover the image.

18

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

Robots.txt


What is a Robots.txt?

Search engines use bots or spiders to crawl the web,and if there are certain pages on your site that you donot want these bots to crawl through, you may use arobots.txt fle to instruct search engines not to crawl aparticular page.

However, only some bots obey the robots.txt fle (i.e.Google Bot and other major search engines), so theremay be spam bots that could still crawl your content.

For this reason, we recommend privatizing orpassword-protecting content that you want to keepconfdential.

How to Create a Robots.txt

To generate a robots.txt, you may create it manually ,or use a robots.txt tool generator. Once yourrobots.txt fle is generated, upload it to your domain’sroot server via cPanel or ftp. If you are unsure, contactyour web hosting provider.

Robots.txt

19

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156449?hl=en&ref_topic=2370588

http://www.mcanerin.com/EN/search-engine/robots-txt.asp

Index and Noindex


Index or Noindex?

When search engines like Google crawl your pages,they will look to see whether you want your pages tobe indexed in their search results or not.

If for some reason you do not want any page in yoursite to show up on the search results, you may add arobots meta tag to an individual page to preventsearch engines from indexing it on the SRPs.

How do You Noindex a Page?

You can add a robots meta tag on any page to tellGoogle not to index any particular page.

Example of a robots meta tag in your page’s <head>section to tell search engines not to index your page:

Noindex a Page on Wordpress

If you're using Wordpress, you can skip the technicalprocess and easily select noindex from the page editorof any particular page.

However you frst need to install the Wordpress SEO plugin by Yoast.

20

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

Rel=”Nofollow”


What is Rel=”Nofollow” Tag Used For?

Whenever you link to another website with an anchortext, you are passing some PageRank to the page youjust linked to.

PageRank will be further explained in the ExternalSEO section of this course.

Basically the more links a webpage gets, the higher thePageRank (measured on a scale of 1 to 100) of thewebpage.

Now there are some instances when you do not wantto pass PageRank to a particular source you link to. Forexample your blog comments section. Blogs are alwaysa target for web spammers trying to put links intocomments.

Google has link policies about linking to unrelated,spammy websites and if you are found linkingextensively to spammy websites, you could getpenalized by Google.

To prevent any link juice from passing on to a spammywebsite, the rel=”nofollow” tag is used.

How to Use the Rel=“Nofollow” Tag?

There are two ways to use the Rel=”Nofollow” attribute.

1. To block all links on a page from passing page rank, the following code is place the in the <head> section:

<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow” />

2. To block a specifc link from passing page rank, the following code is used when creating an anchor text:

<a href=”http://examplelink.com” rel=”nofollow”>example link</a>

21

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

Canonicalization


What is Canonicalization?

What is canonicalization? “Canonicalization is settingthe preferred version of a set of pages with highlysimilar content.” – as defned by Google.

www. or no www.

When you create a site, you have to option to set apreferred domain either:

http://www.example.com or

htpp://example.com

If you are using WordPress, you can navigate to theSettings => General and set your preferred domain.

You can also setup a Google Webmaster Tools accountand tell Google which is your preferred domain.

Types of URLs You Should Canonicalize

Example of a set of pages with dynamic url and highlysimilar content:

http://example.com/product-category/web-tools/wordpress-themes/?flter_license=20

http://example.com/product-category/web-tools/wordpress-themes/?flter_format=template

Why is Canonicalization Important?

When Google crawls your site and fnds several pageswith similar content, it may only index one version todisplay on the search results.

Therefore, if you want to specify to Google which pageis the one you them to index, you can do so by adding ahtml code:

<link rel=”canonical”href=”http://example.com/shop/product.php?item=psd-download”/>

in the <head> section of your page.

22

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Rich Snippets


What Are Rich Snippets?

What are rich snippets? When you do a search onGoogle, you may notice that certain search resultshave different elements such as review ratings, date ofpost, video preview, etc.

Why use rich snippets? Rich snippets present yourcontent more attractively on the SRPs, increasing yourclick-through rate and ultimately driving more traffcto your site.

How Do You Apply the Markup?

There are a couple ways to create rich snippets:

1. Microformats2. Microdata3. RDFa

We will go through Microformats for this example.

The following HTML code is a review of a basicfondant cake recipe:

<div>How to prep and execute a basic fondant cake.You will need: … The frosting may be pushed outby the weight of the top tier but this if fne. … 3 …Rating: 5Stars based on 30 ratings</div>

What Are Rich Snippets?

What are rich snippets? When you do a search onGoogle, you may notice that certain search resultshave different elements such as review ratings, date ofpost, video preview, etc.

Why use rich snippets? Rich snippets present yourcontent more attractively on the SRPs, increasing yourclick-through rate and ultimately driving more traffcto your site.

The markup code will look something like this:

<div><h1 class=”title fn”>Basic Fondant Cake</h1><span class=”author”> by <ahref=”/member/MVMann/” title=”view MVMann’sprofle”>MVMann</a></span><span class=”review hreview-aggregate hidden”><span class=”rating”>rated <spanclass=”average”>5</span>stars based on <span class=”count”>30</span>ratings</span></span></div>

For more examples on how to create rich snippets, visit this link.

For WordPress users, you may install a variety of plugins to generate rich snippets.

23

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/99170?hl=en&ref_topic=1088472

https://www.google.com.sg/search?q=wordpress+richsnippets+plugins&oq=wordpress+richsnippets+plugins&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64.4157j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fp=a70c8018b0426e41&q=wordpress+rich+snippets+plugins&spell=1

Planning Your Site Navigation


Importance of Easy Site Navigation

Navigation is very important not just for searchengines to understand your site better, but also foryour visitors to fnd content they are looking for easily.

If all your pages are well connected to each other andeasily found within a few clicks, you will fnd that yourpages get indexed faster and do better on SRPs.

Planning Your Site Navigation

A good guide to follow is to plan out your site’snavigation starting from the homepage. Can thedeeper and more nested content be found within 2clicks or less from the homepage? Take a look at theexample:

Each page is within 2 clicks from the home page

(i.e. Home => Products => DIY Tools)

Interlinking Your Posts and Pages

Every new page created should have at least one linkto it, either from the main navigation menu, sidebar, oranother page/post.

When your posts and pages are well interlinked, notonly will you fnd that your content gets indexedbetter, your visitors will also stay longer on your site.

24

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

Main Navigation Menu


Importance of Main Navigation

When a user lands on your site, one of the frst fewthings he or she looks at is your main navigation menu.Just looking at the items on the main navigation menucan give the user a good basic idea on what your site isabout.

What to Include in the Main Navigation

Your main navigation menu should include the mostimportant pages of your site such as your about,contact, and products/services pages.

Organizing Your Main Navigation Menu

If you need to include more than 10 links, it would berecommended to include drop down bars or asecondary navigation menu placed below yourprimary menu.

Drop-down Menu

25

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

Extended Site Links On SRPs


Extended Sitelinks on Search Results

If your site navigation is very well structured, searchengines like Google may add sitelinks to your searchresults pages.

Having sitelinks can have a positive effect on the Click-Through Rate (CTR) of your site’s pages, generatingmore visits to your site.

How Do I Get Extended Site Links?

Sitelinks are automatically generated. There are somefactors that Google uses to determine whether asitelink should show or not.

One of the factors is the popularity of the page (howmany visits on a particular page).

If you’d like to remove a sitelink from the searchresults, Google Webmaster Tools allows you to submita request to “demote” the sitelink.

26

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

Breadcrumbs and Pagination


Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are a row of internal links located at thetop or bottom of the page that allow visitors to easilynavigate back to the root page or previous section.

Having breadcrumbs also allows search engines tounderstand your site structure better.

Pagination

Pagination are usually seen in blog categories orresource lists.

The same theory applies to pagination as tobreadcrumbs – better ease of navigation for bothusers and search engines.

27

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

Site Speed


Does Site Speed Matter?

Site speed is one of those things you don’t really haveto worry about, unless your pages take 10 minutes toload. No, actually 8 seconds or longer and Google maystart to take notice.

Research has shown that people have an averageattention span of 4 seconds for a page to load beforenavigating away to another page.

If your site takes longer than 8 seconds to load, youmay want to take a couple of steps to ensure that yourpage loading time is reduced.

How to Analyze Your Page Speed?

First, let’s check out how to analyze your page speed.

1. Navigate to Google Page Speed Insights.

2. Enter your webpage url.

Page Speed will give you insights on how you canoptimize your page speed by solving a couple of issuessuch as minifying HTML, CSS, optimizing images, etc.

For WordPress users, it is recommended you install aplugin such as W3 Total Cache to reduce your pageload time.

28

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

http://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/

Avoid Broken Links (404 Pages)


Broken Links (404 Pages)

Broken links will take the user to a 404 page – a pagenotifying the user that “The page cannot be found”.

If you have one or two broken links within yourwebsite, you shouldn’t have too much to worry about.But if they aren’t fxed after some time and your 404broken links start to increase, then your rankings willstart to drop.

How to Check for Broken Links?

Use a free broken link checker tool such as Broken Link Check to spot and fx any broken linksfound within your entire site.

29

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/

Avoid Duplicate Content/Titles


Avoid Duplicate Titles

Creating unique, short but descriptive page titlesincrease your chances of any of your pages ranking onthe 1st page of the SRPs.

Avoid having duplicate titles or duplicate content, asthis confuses the search engines and either duplicatepages may not get indexed at all.

Taking Measures

If for any reason you decide to have duplicatedcontent, then you can take measures by addingnoindex / nofollow to the page.

Instead of having two pages with the same title (i.e.“Introduction”), expand the title a little bit (i.e.“introduction to SEO” and “Introduction to SocialMedia”)

DuplicateDuplicateContentContent

30

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

Sitemaps


What is a Sitemap?

Sitemaps for a website are similar to internaldirectories in a shopping mall. Sitemaps help tellGoogle and other search engines the overall structureof your site, as well as deep pages into your site thatsearch engine bots may not otherwise discover.

It would be recommended to create 2 types ofsitemaps – One for the user, and one for the searchengines.

How to Create a Sitemap

A sitemap for users may just be a simple page withheaders and links to help the user navigate throughyour website at anytime. A sitemap for users can be inHTML format. A sitemap for search engines is in XMLformat (XML Sitemap).

For reference on how to create a sitemap manually, view this guide.

To generate a sitemap for your site automatically, click here.

For WordPress users, installing the Wordpress SEO Plugin by Yoast will auto generate asitemap for your WordPress site.

Submit Your Sitemap to Search Engines

To submit your sitemap to Google, create a Google Webmaster Tools account and submit yoursitemap through the admin panel.

To submit your sitemap to Bing, create a Bing Webmaster Tools account and submit yoursitemap through the admin panel.

There are a lot of things to take in to consideration when it comes to optimizing your site internally for searchengines. Google itself calculates hundreds of ranking factors before deciding which page is the most useful andrelevant to a user search query.

We’ve just gone through several major ranking factors, now let’s look at a couple more internal SEO factors totake note of and/or avoid.

31

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/183668

https://code.google.com/p/sitemap-generators/wiki/SitemapGenerators

http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

Do Not Overload Site With Ads


Avoid Overloading Your Site with Ads

Have you ever been to a site that is full of ad displaybanners, ad text links, ad popups and pop-unders?

Overloading your site with ads provides a poor userexperience and Google has measures in place todevalue pages that are overloaded with ads.

General Rule of Thumb

Cap your ads at 1 to 3 per page

Keep your ads out of the main content body. Placethem in the sidebar or header area.

32

Part 2

: Intern

al SEO

Part 3: External SEO

PageRank


What is PageRank?

PageRank is a measurement of the relative importanceof every page on the web. (PageRank is measured on ascale of 0 to 100, 100 being the highest.)

The higher the PageRank of a given web page, themore trustworthy or important it must be.

A web page’s PageRank is mainly calculated by thenumber of citations (links pointing from otherwebsites to the web page) it has, and how important ortrustworthy the citations are.

If a web page has one link pointing to it from a Yahoopage with PageRank 7, it will be deemed moreimportant and trustworthy than a web page with ahundred backlinks from low quality sites withPageRanks of zero.

PageRank Flow Diagram

Let’s take a closer look at how PageRank fows.

Looking at the diagram on the right, we can see that apage with a PageRank of 100 has two outgoing links.

Each of the outgoing links are carrying dilutedPageRank (50 and 50) to the linked page.

A page with PageRank of 9 with three outgoing linkspass a page rank of 3 to each linked page.

What we are looking at is a simplifed representationof how PageRank fows throughout the web.

In this section, we will cover external SEO and link building strategies that youcan apply to rank your site better on the Search Results Pages (SRPs).

33

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

Site Authority


What Determines the Authority of a Site?

What separates a useful, informative, and trustworthypage from a useless page that’s packed with junk info andjargon?

The answer would be – The majority of votes by users.

The more useful or valuable a particular content is, themore naturally people would want to share andrecommend others to it. And search engines use thissignal as a very strong ranking factor.

The key to becoming an authority in your niche is to tryand acquire as many links from as many trustworthysources as possible.

To understand in detail how Google crawls the web andcalculates site authority, read this report.

34

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/347/1/1998-51.pdf

Backlinks


What is a Backlink?

Well, what is a backlink? A backlink is a text link fromwebsite A pointing to website B. The words in the textlink are also known as anchor text.

Typically, you want the anchor text to contain thekeywords that people are searching for on Google.This will help Google better understand the context ofthe backlink.

Factors of a Quality Backlink

A backlink from a particular page is considered highlyvaluable if the following components match:

High domain authority

High PageRank

Page title relevance

Content topic relevance

Keyword relevance of anchor text

Backlink is placed within the main content body

Dofollow links

Age of the page

Age of the backlink

.edu and .gov sites

Spontaneous/Natural reference as opposed to

unnatural linking pattern

How Do I Get Backlinks?

There are a lot of ways to get backlinks. Creatingquality content and sharing it on social media sites canincrease the exposure of your content and increasethe likelihood of people linking to your content.

More examples will be discussed in the link buildingsection later in this guide.

35

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

Anchor Text


Importance of Anchor Text

Before there was SEO, links were just links. UntilGoogle and other search engines counted the anchortext of a link as a ranking factor.

The anchor text in a backlink indicates to Google thatthe context of the linked website is related to thekeywords in the anchor text.

Therefore, if a website has a lot of backlinks with thetarget keywords included in the anchor text, it willrank better on Google for the target search keyword.

Anchor Text for SEO

If a musical instruments store (i.e.www.musicinstrumentstore.com) had ten PageRank 3websites linking to their website with the anchor text“musical instrument store”, this website would dopretty well on the Google SRPs for the keyword searchphrase “Musical Instrument Store”.

Anchor Text for SEO

Diversify your anchor texts with synonyms andvariations of the same word.

For example, instead of having 10 anchor texts with“Musical Instrument Store”, having “MusicInstruments Shop” for 5 of them would seem morenatural.

Tip:Keyword variations and synonyms in your anchor texts will look more natural in terms ofwhite-hat SEO. 1000 backlinks from 100 PageRank 0 websites with the same anchor text (i.e.“Musical Instrument Store”) is a signal of black-hat SEO.

36

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

PageRank and Relevancy


PageRank of a Backlink

Google takes the PageRank of the page linking to your website into account when crawling your site’sbacklinks. If an authority site is recommending your site, that must mean that your website has someimportance.

Relevancy of a Backlink

The second factor is relevancy. Is this authority site that’s linking to your site related to your niche? Is a highauthority shoe review website recommending your shoe store? If you have lots of links from relevant authoritysites in your niche, you will stand a high chance in ranking for keywords that you are targeting in your niche.

Wikipedia Example

If you Google the search query “shoe”, you’ll fndwikipedia on the very frst position of Google’ssearch results.

Let’s take a look at a backlinks report for[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe] from MajesticSEO.(We will go through MajesticSEO more in section3 – Spying on Your Competitors with AdvancedSEO Tools.

Let's take a look at the top 10sites with the most backlinkslinking to[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe].

Almost all of them are shoewebsites.

Wikipedia is on the 1st pagesearch results for two mainreasons:

1) Wikipedia.org itself has avery high PageRank of 97.

2) Coupled with many nicherelated sites linking to its shoepage,[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe]gets the 1st place on Google’ssearch results.

37

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

Location of Backlink


Backlinks in the Main Content AreaCarry the Most Weight

Let’s say a page has 3 outgoing links. One in the maincontent area, one in the sidebar, and one in the footerarea. The backlink in the main content area will carrythe most weight.

The reason is that links in the main content area aresomewhat like word of mouth referral. If you arewriting an article on a certain topic and you decide toinclude a link to another source that contains more in-depth information on your topic, it shows that you fndthe other article helpful to your readers and it makessense to link to them.

Sidebar and Footer Links

Links in the sidebar don't carry as much weight as linksin the main content area.

The reason is that the same links on the sidebar arepresent on almost every page, thus there is very littlerecommendation value in these links.

Footer links are the least valued links.

38

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

Site Identity


Does Site Identity Matter?

Does the identity of the site matter? In other words,will Google devalue backlinks from websites pointingto another website that are all coming from the samewebmaster?

Yes.

Let’s say you own 3 websites, and you have 2 of yourwebsites linking to 1 of your websites. So Website Band C are linking to A. That shouldn’t raise any alarms.

But if you have 10 websites and 9 of them are linkingto 1 website with the exact same anchor textkeywords, that will raise some alarms.

So how does Google know exactly who owns a ring ofwebsites?

Well they don’t actually know the identity of thewebmaster. But they do know if a cluster of websitesshare the same IP or Class C Subnet, meaning thewebsite domains are all hosted under the same hostingserver of a single webmaster.

Unique IP and Class C Subnets

Using an SEO tool like MajesticSEO can tell you if acluster of websites belong to the same Class CSubnets.

First, what is a Class C Subnet? Read Moz.com’s thread answer.

Looking at a report generated by MajesticSEO can alsotell you how many referring IPs and Class C Subnets awebsite has.

What you don’t want to see is 100,000 externalbacklinks and 1 referring subnet. Basically, you wantto have a diverse portfolio of backlinks from a varietyof unique websites, not tons of links from the same CSubnet.

39

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

http://www.majesticseo.com/

http://moz.com/community/q/what-is-a-class-c-subnet-and-why-should-i-care

Reciprocal Linking


Is Reciprocal Linking Bad for SEO?

Is reciprocal linking bad for SEO? Black-hat SEO?

The answer is – Not really.

If you have a couple of niche-related websites with thesame Class C Subnet and you link them together(reciprocal linking), you should be fne.

But if you have 1,000 backlinks from 100 websites andyour website is linked reciprocally to every single oneof the 100 websites, it will look very suspicious.

Think about a scenario where people knew about thevalue of acquiring backlinks. They would start tradingor exchanging backlinks with other webmasters.

Google sees this way of acquiring backlinks asunnatural, and these reciprocal links will start to bedevalued by Google.

So if you were ranking on the top 3 positions due to alarge percentage of reciprocal backlinks in yourbacklink profle, then you may start to see yourrankings drop after awhile.

40

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

Link Diversity


Diversify Your Backlink Portfolio

You want to make sure your site’s backlink portfolio iswell diverse.

You’ve heard the saying before – “Don’t put all youreggs in one basket.” It's exactly the same when it comesto link building.

Don’t just submit your site to 1432 directories and stopthere. In fact, limit your directory submission to around5 a month, and focus the rest of your time on creatinggreat content.

Once you’ve gotten great content on your site, share iton social networking platforms, join blogging networksand interact with other bloggers in your related niche,and participate in discussions in forums, groups, andblog comments.

41

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

History of Inbound Links


History of Inbound Links

The historical pattern of your inbound links are alsotaken into account. Does the historical pattern of yourbacklinks look natural?

A good example of a natural backlinking pattern wouldlook something like this:

What Looks Natural?

As you can see in the graph, we have a somewhatconsistent wave of backlinks.

An unnatural backlinking pattern would have sharpspikes in the number of backlinks at one time period,and no down-sliding waves immediately after thesharp spikes.

What if you purchased a domain name with a bad linkhistory caused by the previous owner? Will it havetrust issues with Google? Click here to see video.

42

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

http://youtu.be/iKDlEKnT1Ko

Link Building Strategies


Introduction to Link Building

Link building can be a very long and tiring process. But with perseverance, the results can be very rewarding.

When doing link building however, be sure to avoid violating Google’s Content Guidelines. Violating any of Google’s Content Guidelines will be considered as Black-hat SEO and get your site removed from Google’sindex.

Future-Proof Your SEO Efforts

In order to future-proof your SEO efforts against Google’s algorithm updates, you have to plan and execute asuccessful link building strategy.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. And forthat, constant algorithm updates are inevitable, as Google’s initiative to combat web spam and return only themost relevant and useful results to any search query is imbued into their core mission statement.

In this following sections, we will go through some outdated link building strategies that have been used and isstill being used by web spammers today.

We will also be going through successful link building strategies, social media SEO, and some advanced linkbuilding strategies.

43

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO


Link Schemes


Examples of Link Schemes

- Blog Comment Spam

- Forum Comment Spam

- Large-Scale Article Marketing or Guest PostingCampaigns with Keyword-Rich Anchor Text Links

- Large-Scale Press Releases with Keyword-richAnchor Text Links

- Mass submission of Site to Low Quality Directory orBookmarking Site Links

- Buying or Selling Links that Pass PageRank

- Text and Graphic Advertisements that PassPageRank

- Use of Automated Bot Software or Services toCreate Links to Your Site

- Embedded and Widely-Distributed Links on Widgetsor Footers

- Excessive Reciprocal Linking

How to Request For a Recondsideration

If your site violates any of Google’s ContentGuidelines, you may still submit a reconsiderationrequest.

More details on how to submit a reconsiderationrequest here.

Say No toWeb Spam

44

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO


High-Quality Directory Listings


Directory Submission

When your site launches, one of the frst things youwant to do is to submit your site to free high qualitydirectories.

Here’s a list of directories you can submit your websiteto to get a head start in building backlinks.

Before you submit your site to any directory, do yourown assessment of whether a directory is low or highquality

Do Your Own Assessment of Quality

Some ways to check whether a directory site is lowquality:

1. Read and assess the submission procedures. Doesthe directory manually review and approve site listingsubmissions or is it relatively easy for spammers tosubmit without an review and approval process?

2. Do a Google search on the directory site’s domain.Type in “www.directorysite.com” and if the sitedoesn’t even show up on the search results, you can besure this site directory has issues with Google.

3. Manually go through some of the sites that arealready listed on the directory. Do they look like lowquality spam websites? If they are spammy-lookingwebsites, you don’t want your site listing nestledamong a bunch of links to spammy-looking websites.

If the directory you are planning to submit to doesn’traise any of the above alarms, then it should be okayfor submission.

Tip:Submit your site to directories on a gradual basis. Do not submit to 10 directories every singleday.

45

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

http://www.cucumbernebula.com/blog/a-list-of-link-building-lists/

Participate in Niche-RelatedCommunity Discussions


Building Relationships in Your Niche

One of the best ways to build links and drive traffcdirectly to your site is to be involved in the communityof your niche.

But frst, how do you fnd out where these discussionsand groups are hanging out?

Using Google Discussions Search andGoogle Search Tools and Filters

If you are dealing with properties in Singapore andwant to fnd out where discussions on buyingproperties in Singapore are taking place, you can useGoogle’s Discussion Search.

1. Key in your search query i.e. Buying properties inSingapore.

2. Select the “More” drop down and select“Discussions” (Figure 1.1)

You’ll see a different display of search results. MostlyGoogle Groups, forums and discussions taking place.(Figure 1.2)

You also have the option to sort search results byfreshness or relevance with Google’s Search Tools andFilters. (Figure 1.3)

Creating Relevant Blog Posts to AnswerNiche-Related Questions

From here, you’ll be able to browse and participate inany niche-related discussions in the community.

An example of how to drive direct traffc and generatepotential backlinks would be to search for question-related forum posts and answer only part of thequestion, while linking out to a specifc blogpost ofyours in order to get the rest of the answer.

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2

46

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

Participate in Niche-RelatedCommunity Discussions


Creating Relevant Blog Posts to AnswerNiche-Related Questions

Here’s a detailed example:

1. Random forum user asks a question on a datingforum such as, “How do I get my ex back?”

2. You reply with this, “Chances of getting your ex backreally depends on the nature of the breakup. Howeverhere are a few tips to increase your chances of gettingyour ex back.”

3. You give a couple of pointers, then stop at around 3,and say something like, “read this post on 10 ways toincrease your chances of getting your ex back –www.mydatingtipswebsite.com/how-to-get-your-ex-back/“.

There are few things that could happen here to youradvantage:

1. You’ve just earned yourself some direct traffc froma couple of forum readers who are read this post andclicked on your link out of curiosity.

2. This forum post may get on the frst page of GoogleSRPs and more traffc to this forum post means morepotential clicks on your post link.

3. After some time, you may notice other bloggerslinking to your post titled “How to Get Your Ex Back”.

Whether you get links or not really depends on howvaluable the information you provide is.

Figure 1.3

Tip:Always focus on creating quality content. The more valuable and useful readers fnd yourinformation, the higher your chances of them linking to you and acquiring backlinks to your site.

47

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

Link Baiting


What is a Link Bait?

A link bait is any content or feature, within a website,designed specifcally to gain attention or encourageothers to link to the website. Matt Cutts defnes linkbait as anything “interesting enough to catch people’sattention.” A link bait can be an extremely powerfulform of marketing as it is viral in nature. – Wikipedia

Now that you have an idea of what link bait is, let’sdiscuss some successful link baiting techniques andexamples. But frst, let’s understand the importance ofcreating quality content.

Quality Content is Link Bait Itself

Creating interesting and useful content willencourage sharing on its own. Take for example,you’re writing a blog post and you’re doing acomparison between commercial plastic bottles andBPA-free plastic bottles for your ecommerce storepromoting BPA-free plastic bottles.

As you’re writing your post, pointing out howcommercial plastic bottles that aren’t BPA free canincrease the risk of cancer, you realize you need toreference a reliable source to justify the claim.

So you do a search on Google and fnd a reliable source– the FDA, a government website has written adetailed report on the harmful chemical found presentin many hard plastic bottles.

What do you do then? You include a link to the reportto justify your claim. This is a classic example ofbacklinks being acquired naturally useful content thatprovides value to the reader such as the aboveexample (which is a health case study).

For a detailed guide and more examples on linkbaiting, visit this link bait guide and 10 examples of effective link bait.

48

Part 3

: Extern

al SEO

https://www.distilled.net/linkbait-guide/

http://moz.com/blog/10-extraordinary-examples-of-effective-link-bait

End of SEO Starter Guide


“Thank you for reading our SEO Starter Guide.”

We've come to the end of this guide. Visit our website www.equinetacademy.com to register for our 2-day hands-on SEO course in Singapore or

www.aceclick.com.sg where we provide reliable SEO/SEM services.

49

En

d

http://www.equinetacademy.com/

http://www.aceclick.com.sg/

Social Media

Seo starter-guide-equinet-academy