SEO Basics: 8 Essentials When Optimizing Your Site

8 Essentials When Optimizing Your Site


Basic search engine optimization (SEO) is fundamental. And essential. SEO will help you position your website properly to be found at the most critical points in the buying process or when people need your site.

What are search engines looking for? How can you build your website in a way that will please both your visitors/customers, as well as Google, Bing, and other search engines? Most importantly, how can SEO help your web presence become more profitable?

During the Introduction to SEO session at SES New York, Carolyn Shelby (@CShel), Director of SEO, Chicago Tribune/435 Digital, fully explained the extreme value SEO can deliver to a site, and stressed the importance of basic SEO using the following analogy: "Skipping the basics and spending all your time and money on social and 'fancy stuff' is the same as skipping brushing your teeth and showering, but buying white strips and wearing expensive cologne," Shelby said. Although the Introduction to SEO session was intended for industry newcomers, Shelby's tips offer important reminders for even experienced SEO professionals who have been optimizing sites for years.

What is SEO, Exactly?

The goal of foundational SEO isn't to cheat or "game" the search engines. The purpose of SEO is to:

• Create a great, seamless user experience.
• Communicate to the search engines your intentions so they can recommend your website for relevant searches.

1. Your Website is Like a Cake

Your links, paid search, and social media acts as the icing, but your content, information architecture, content management system, and infrastructure act as the sugar and makes the cake. Without it, your cake is tasteless, boring, and gets thrown in the trash.

2. What Search Engines Are Looking For

Search engines want to do their jobs as best as possible by referring users to websites and content that is the most relevant to what the user is looking for. So how is relevancy determined?

• Content: Is determined by the theme that is being given, the text on the page, and the titles and descriptions that are given.
• Performance: How fast is your site and does it work properly?
• Authority: Does your site have good enough content to link to or do other authoritative sites use your website as a reference or cite the information that's available?
• User Experience: How does the site look? Is it easy to navigate around? Does it look safe? Does it have a high bounce rate?

3. What Search Engines Are NOT Looking For

Search engine spiders only have a certain amount of data storage, so if you're performing shady tactics or trying to trick them, chances are you're going to hurt yourself in the long run. Items the search engines don't want are:

• Keyword Stuffing: Overuse of keywords on your pages.
• Purchased Links: Buying links will get you nowhere when it comes to SEO, so be warned.
• Poor User Experience: Make it easy for the user to get around. Too many ads and making it too difficult for people to find content they're looking for will only increase your bounce rate. If you know your bounce rate it will help determine other information about your site. For example, if it's 80 percent or higher and you have content on your website, chances are something is wrong.

4. Know Your Business Model

While this is pretty obvious, so many people tend to not sit down and just focus on what their main goals are. Some questions you need to ask yourself are:

• What defines a conversion for you?
• Are you selling eyeballs (impressions) or what people click on?
• What are your goals?
• Do you know your assets and liabilities?

5. Don't Forget to Optimize for Multi-Channels

Keyword strategy is not only important to implement on-site, but should extend to other off-site platforms, which is why you should also be thinking about multi-channel optimization. These multi-channel platforms include:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email
• Offline, such as radio and TV ads

Being consistent with keyword phrases within these platforms will not only help your branding efforts, but also train users to use specific phrases you're optimizing for.

6. Be Consistent With Domain Names

Domain naming is so important to your overall foundation, so as a best practice you're better off using sub-directory root domains (example.com/awesome) versus sub-domains (awesome.example.com). Some other best practices with domain names are:

• Consistent Domains: If you type in www.example.com, but then your type in just example.com and the "www" does not redirect to www.example.com, that means the search engines are seeing two different sites. This isn't effective for your overall SEO efforts as it will dilute your inbound links, as external sites will be linking to www.example.com and example.com.
• Keep it Old School: Old domains are better than new ones, but if you're buying an old domain, make sure that the previous owner didn't do anything shady to cause the domain to get penalized.
• Keywords in URL: Having keywords you're trying to rank for in your domain will only help your overall efforts.

7. Optimizing for Different Types of Results

In addition to optimizing for the desktop experience, make sure to focus on mobile and tablet optimization as well as other media.

• Create rich media content like video, as it's easier to get a video to rank on the first page than it is to get a plain text page to rank.
• Optimize your non-text content so search engines can see it. If your site uses Flash or PDFs, make sure you read up on the latest best practices so search engines can crawl that content and give your site credit for it.

8. Focus on Your Meta Data Too

Your content on your site should have title tags and meta descriptions.

• Meta keywords are pretty much ignored by search engines nowadays, but if you still use them, make sure it talks specifically to that page and that it is also formatted correctly.
• Your meta description should be unique and also speak to that specific page. Duplicate meta descriptions from page to page will not get you anywhere.

Title tags should also be unique! Think your title as a 4-8 word ad, so do your best to entice the reader so they want to click and read more.

Summary

You should always keep SEO in the forefront of your mind, and always follow best practices. Skipping the basics of SEO will only leave your site's foundation a mess and prevent you from fully maximizing revenue opportunities.

Article reference:http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2259693/SEO-Basics-8-Essentials-When-Optimizing-Your-Site

marketingseo

6 Big Myths About SEO Google

6 Big Myths About SEO

Your understanding of the way Google works is probably three or four years out of date--and that's an eternity in Web time.


In the world of online marketing, misinformation abounds--and it gets compounded exponentially by an incredibly dynamic and rapidly evolving world. Most of the things you think you know (but don't) about search-engine optimization, or SEO, may have been true a few years ago but have changed; one of the following was always a myth.
Here are some of the myths you need to move beyond to get smarter about SEO..

Myth 1: Metatag Descriptions Help Your Rankings

Not anymore; in fact, metatags are no longer even indexed by Google and Bing. But don't ignore them altogether: Your metatags form the text that is displayed along with your link in the search results--and a more compelling description will compel more users to click on your listing instead of on others.
Here's example of ours; the metatag is everything below the URL.

Myth 2: The More Inbound Links, the Better

False. In all the recent updates to Google's algorithm, the search giant has made it a core priority to have quality trump quantity. Gone are the days of having thousands of superlow-quality links driving up rankings; in fact, creating those links can look spammy and get your site penalized.Focus on obtaining links from sites that are relevant to your products, services, or industry--and on having those links be surrounded by relevant text. A blog review about your "blue widget" that links to your site is far more valuable than a rogue link for "blue widget" stuck in the footer or sidebar of some site--even a highly ranked one.

Myth 3: PageRank Still Matters

Google's infamous PageRank (named after Google co-founder and now-CEO Larry Page, mind you) is a 1-to-10 ranking of the overall authority of every website; the bigger the number, the higher the rank. In years past, this seemingly all-powerful number dominated the attention of SEO experts.

But today, Google's algorithm has evolved well beyond any single indicator. The PageRank still exists, and if all things are equal, a higher PageRank trumps a lower one--but factors such as relevance and context matter, too.

As with inbound links: If you run a dental practice in Los Angeles, it's better to have a link from a site that reviews doctors and dentists in L.A., even if it has a PageRank of 4, than to have a paid link with no context in a huge site with a higher PageRank of 7. 

Myth 4: Google Prefers Keyword-Rich Domains

In years past, Google seemed to put a disproportionate amount of emphasis on keywords in the domain name (what you may think of as the URL). For example, vinylhousesiding.com would almost certainly be ranked first in a search for vinyl house siding.

Not anymore, says Google. If vinylhousesiding.com is in fact the more relevant, authoritative site on the topic, it will probably still rank first--but not because of its domain name alone.

Myth 5: Websites Must Be 'Submitted' to Search Engines

In 2001, yes, this was the case--indeed, this was the first service that my company, Wpromote, ever provided. But in 2012? Not at all. At this point, if there is any connection from any site to yours, your site will be quickly discovered by Google.Note that being indexed is a far cry from achieving high rankings--but that initial step of submission is no longer needed or helpful.

Myth 6: Good SEO Is Basically About Trickery

False, false, false. Although there are still some SEO experts out there who go about their business trying to "trick Google," this is absolutely not the way to provide good, lasting SEO.

Good SEO is about creating a relevant, informative website, with unique content and great user experience, and encouraging the sharing and distribution of great content to drive organic publicity and links back to your site.In the end, this is exactly what Google explicitly wants to reward with high rankings--so it is anything but "tricking" the search engines.

Article reference: http://www.inc.com/michael-mothner/seo-marketing-myths.html
bestmarketingseo.com

Google Panda Update vs Google Penguin Updates

The SEO community has been a buzz this past week with the latest update from Google, named Penguin. Penguin came down the pipeline last week, right on the tail of the latest Panda update. Since most of the big updates in the past year have been focused on Panda, many site owners are left wondering what the real differences between Panda and Penguin are. Here is a breakdown:

Google Panda Update Overview:

According to Google’s official blog post when Panda launched,

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

Basically, Panda updates are designed to target pages that aren’t necessarily spam but aren’t great quality. This was the first ever penalty that went after “thin content,” and the sites that were hit hardest by the first Panda update were content farms (hence why it was originally called the Farmer update), where users could publish dozens of low-quality, keyword stuffed articles that offered little to no real value for the reader. Many publishers would submit the same article to a bunch of these content farms just to get extra links.

Panda is a site wide penalty, which means that if “enough” (no specific number) pages of your site were flagged for having thin content, your entire site could be penalized. Panda was also intended to stop scrappers (sites that would republish other company’s content) from outranking the original author’s content.

Here is a breakdown of all the Panda updates and their release dates. If your site’s traffic took a major hit around one of these times there is a good chance it was flagged by Panda

1. Panda 1.0 (aka the Farmer Update) on February 24th 2011

2. Panda 2.0 on April 11th 2011. (Panda impacts all English speaking countries)

3. Panda 2.1 on May 9th 2011 or so

4. Panda 2.2 on June 18th 2011 or so.

5. Panda 2.3 on around July 22nd 2011.

6. Panda 2.4 in August 2011(Panda goes international)

7. Panda 2.5 on September 28th 2011

8. Panda 2.5.1 on October 9th 2011

9. Panda 2.5.2 on October 13th 2011

10. Panda 2.5.3 on October 19/20th 2011

11. Panda 3.1 on November 18th 2011

12. Panda 3.2 on about January 15th 2012

13. Panda 3.3 on about February 26th 2012

14. Panda 3.4 on March 23rd 2012

15. Panda 3.5 on April 19th 2012

Search Engine Land recently created this great Google Panda update infographic to help walk site owners through the many versions of the Google Panda updates.

Many site owners complained that even after they made changes to their sites in order to be more “Panda friendly,” their sites didn’t automatically recover. Panda updates do not happen at regular intervals, and Google doesn’t re-index every site each time, so some site owners were forced to deal with low traffic for several months until Google got around to re-crawling their website and taking note of any positive changes.

Search Engine Land recently created this great Google Panda update infographic to help walk site owners through the many versions of the Google Panda updates.

Many site owners complained that even after they made changes to their sites in order to be more “Panda friendly,” their sites didn’t automatically recover. Panda updates do not happen at regular intervals, and Google doesn’t re-index every site each time, so some site owners were forced to deal with low traffic for several months until Google got around to re-crawling their website and taking note of any positive changes.

Google Penguin Update Overview:

The Google Penguin Update launched on April 24. According to the Google blog, Penguin is an “important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines.” Google mentions that typical black hat SEO tactics like keyword stuffing (long considered webspam) would get a site in trouble, but less obvious tactics (link incorporating irrelevant outgoing links into a page of content) would also cause Penguin to flag your site. Says Google,

Sites affected by this change might not be easily recognizable as spamming without deep analysis or expertise, but the common thread is that these sites are doing much more than white hat SEO; we believe they are engaging in webspam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings.

Site owners should be sure to check their Google Webmaster accounts for any messages from Google warning about your past spam activity and a potential penalty. Google says that Penguin has impacted about 3.1% of queries (compared to Panda 1.0’s 12%). If you saw major traffic losses between April 24th and April 25th, chances are Penguin is the culprit, even though Panda 3.5 came out around the same time.

Unfortunately, Google has yet to outline exactly what signals Penguin is picking up on, so many site owners that were negatively impacted are in the dark as to where they want wrong with their onsite SEO. Many in the SEO community have speculated that some contributing factors to Penguin might be things like:

1. Aggressive exact-match anchor text

2. Overuse of exact-match domains

3. Low-quality article marketing & blog spam

4. Keyword stuffing in internal/outbound links

It’s important to remember that Panda is an algorithm update, not a manual penalty. A reconsideration request to Google won’t make much a difference–you’ll have to repair your site and wait for a refresh before your site will recover.  As always do not panic if you are seeing a down turn in traffic, in the past when there is a major Google update like this things often rebound.  If you do think you have some sort of SEO penalty as a result of either the Google Panda or Google Penguin updates, please contact your SEO service provider to help or start trouble shooting.

Article reference:brickmarketing.com/blog/panda-penguin-updates.htm

bestmarketingseo.com

What is this "over optimization" that everyone is talking about?

Google’s “over optimization” Penalty 

1.  The most common infraction is keyword stuffing/spamming/abusing etc.  When desperate for rankings people will often resort to just repeating keywords as often as they can.  You need to focus on proper keyword usage and the best test for this is to read your content out loud.  You'll know if it sounds keyword stuffed and you can go back and edit it.  One way to avoid keyword stuffing is to use different variations of your words and phrases and look for synonyms that you can get in there.  That eliminates the over usage of one phrase and it creates more phrases you can possibly be found for.

2.    Lots of low quality links all with the same or very similar anchor text. This dates back to the days of the good old fashioned link exchange - "you link to me and I'll link to you and by the way, let's both have everyone linking to us use the same anchor text and all link to only the homepage".  Not cool these days.  As with most things in SEO, it's about balance and well rounded diversity.  You want quality links to many different pages, all with different anchor text (that is relevant to the page you are linking to).  These kind of links are hard to obtain but Google doesn't care.  It's what they want.  Most people want a quick easy link fix and it was never a good idea but it's even more important that you avoid it these days.

3.    Too little content on the page but lots of "optimization"

4.    Lots of duplicate content taken from sites that rank well.

5.    There is some theory that too many sites being pointed/redirected to your main site could hurt you.  I've heard a lot of talk about this one but not seen a lot of proof

6.    Link farms/networks. There are two ways this can hurt you.  If you are running a link farm - which means too many links on a page, none with any real text or purpose other than giving out links.  The second way is having a link farm/network linking to your site (especially if the same ones have multiple links back to your site).

It actually surprises me that everyone is making such a big deal about this - over optimization has always been a bad thing.  It's been called spamming and black hat (which also involves cloaking and various other nefarious things) but the bottom line is Google has been continually ramping up their efforts to weed out bad sites.  Each time it happens and a group of bad sites take a hit, everyone is surprised and rushes to analyze it.  The truth is you do need to optimize but it needs to be in a more "natural" way.  Avoid some pretty basic things and be strong in the areas you should be.
As I said, this really isn't new.  We went through this months ago.  I mean, wasn't Panda aimed at the quality of sites?  You bet it was!

All this really means is Google is getting more aggressive about cleaning up the search results.  I am actually good with that.  Sites that aren't participating in any of the problem areas have nothing to worry about. If you have a quality site that focuses on "evergreen" optimization, you won't have to worry each time there is an algorithm shake up.

Article Resources Write by Jennifer Horowitz

 marketingseo 

Is Cloud Computing Good For SEO?

 Is Cloud Computing Good For SEO?

Cloud computing is often thought about in terms of data storage, not web development. But as it becomes more popular you’ll start to see many more uses for it. For data storage purposes, cloud computing was thought to be a much needed relief for many companies. But it turns out that even Google has security issues with keeping data secure. So if Google can’t do it, who can?

Someday someone is going to get the bright idea to build a website in the cloud. What will happen?

First, I predict the site will be hacked. If data storage is unsecure in the cloud then how much more will web development be? Hackers can already sneak into WordPress and other CMS systems. If those systems were cloud-based they’d be even that much more insecure. And an unsecure server is bad for search engine optimization and your website.

If a hacker gets into your server, he could really do some damage. Link dropping, malicious malware downloads, just to name a couple. Some webmasters on traditional servers have already experienced these issues with WordPress and other CMSs. Just by not updating their software. Now put that non-updated software on the cloud. See the issue?

You could lose your search engine rankings for some of these issues. All because of a lack of security in the cloud.

article sources:http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com/2009/07/16/cloud-computing-seo/