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The Beginners Guide to SEO

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1. Take a look at any search results page and you ll find the answer to why search marketing has a long healthy life ahead a YAHOO mwa Google widget t ame as wee poma avs nos wa Masda T Wai mband GON GOE IOG br waipa bette r Meare n he Ako Wy yahoo wipe wikpeldowdiogd witipttiwaides more 29 Eventing Wee anyone gt Mere Peet Oty More Tar meets Mim Oy Seay Wiep in commenting amp ah ehdganie D oraase whdgnetor de aah We a eat apetcation at ca Poon MAANA Sterne ooh be natalied and eaecited within a asb page by an ond uter Peman Moro Epewsars mor ord mtdert on wi peda orp whi Nn vidgat Cached Simni Yabo Wegt used Sut Deouahd lie aces tor Mas idat Wikiaa the toe encyclopedia Se ene Se een ie ean ang ae ae enemy Ve widen may moler ia Wagon connie h aceteiter by a man achad Seve Ok cad Det Da rr of Vet Waals A A atten An T Ovce GU wicge n compute poyaning a revuiatie olerert of a vaca wer fr whipeda ogeh Widget Cached Serdar Appie Downioads Dashboard Nov 16 209 Your ore siop widget warehouse You find thousands of widgets mot hom bee May a gerne Get a recioe Check out the late sports _ sect comndoartoadeidendourd Cached rriar pa WeDo jess 00 No meda aos inh oF yah expecially ore hoaa end ach mada powered ty fe Fite Enqajonert Platiors seat oa FOr ber oF Carver be ed quedget amp foe Of aa On he reer e at a k Cached Senter Oe mirens cen nase
2. re THE BEGINNERS pHInE TO SEQ ARAT Search engines have two major functions crawling and ee building an index and providing search users with a ranked list A of the websites they ve determined are the most relevant SN TRAIN A TRAINS TRANC Imagine the World Wide Web as a network of stops in a big city subway system Each stop is a unique document usually a web page but sometimes a PDF JPG or other file The search engines need a way to crawl the entire city and find all the stops along the way so they use the best path available links The link structure of the web serves to bind all of the pages together Links allow the search engines automated robots called crawlers or many billions of interconnected documents on the web spiders to reach the Once the engines find these pages they decipher the code from them and store selected pieces in massive databases to be recalled later when needed for a search query To accomplish the monumental task of holding billions of pages that can be accessed in a fraction of a second the search engine companies have constructed datacenters all over the world These monstrous storage facilities hold thousands of machines processing large quantities of information very quickly When a person performs a search at any of the major engines they demand results instantaneously even a one or two second delay can cause dissatisfaction
3. Links in Flash Java and other plug ins either do not crawl or give very little weight to the links embedded within Standard HTML links should replace JavaScript or accompany it on any page you d like crawlers to crawl Links pointing to pages blocked by the Meta Robots tag or robots txt The Meta Robots tag and the robots txt file both allow a site owner to restrict crawler access to a page Just be warned that many a webmaster has unintentionally used these directives as an attempt to block access by rogue bots only to discover that search engines cease their crawl Frames or iframes Technically links in both frames and iframes are crawlable but both present structural issues for the engines in terms of organization and following Unless you re an advanced user with a good technical understanding of how search engines index and follow links in frames it s best to stay away from them The links embedded inside the Juggling Panda site from our above example are perfect illustrations of this phenomenon Although dozens of pandas are listed and linked to on the page no crawler can reach them through the site s link structure rendering them invisible to the engines and hidden from users search queries Links on pages with many hundreds or thousands of links Search engines will only crawl so many links on a given page This restriction is necessary to cut down on spam and conserve rankings Pages with hundreds of links o
4. Go static The best URLs are human readable and without lots of parameters numbers and symbols Using technologies like mod_rewrite for Apache and ISAPI_rewrite for Microsoft you can easily transform dynamic URLs like this http moz com blog TORY id 123 into a more readable static version like this http moz com blog google fresh factor Even single dynamic parameters in a URL can result in lower overall ranking and indexing Use hyphens to separate words Not all web applications accurately interpret separators like underscores _ plus signs or Spaces 20 so instead use the hyphen character to separate words in a URL as in the google fresh factor URL example above Canonical and Duplicate Versions of Content Duplicate content is one of the most vexing and troublesome problems any website can face Over the past few years search engines have cracked down on pages with thin or duplicate content by assigning them lower rankings Canonicalization happens when two or more duplicate versions of a webpage appear on different URLs This is very common with modern Content Management Systems For example you might offer a regular version of a page and a print optimized version Duplicate content can even appear on multiple websites For search engines this presents a big problem which version of this content should they show to searchers In SEO circles this issue is often referred to as duplicate content desc
5. Prevents compliant robots from accessing specific pages or folders Sitemap Indicates the location of a website s sitemap or sitemaps Crawl Delay Indicates the speed in milliseconds at which a robot can crawl a server An Example of Robots txt Robots txt www example com robots txt User agent Disallow Don t allow spambot to crawl any pages User agent spambot disallow sitemap www example com sitemap xml Warning Not all web robots follow robots txt People with bad intentions e g e mail address scrapers build bots that don t follow this protocol and in extreme cases they can use it to identify the location of private information For this reason it is recommended that the location of administration sections and other private sections of publicly accessible websites not be included in the robots txt file Instead these pages can utilize the meta robots tag discussed next to keep the major search engines from indexing their high risk content 3 Meta Robots The meta robots tag creates page level instructions for search engine bots The meta robots tag should be included in the head section of the HTML document An Example of Meta Robots lt html gt lt head gt lt title gt The Best Webpage on the Internet lt title gt lt meta name ROBOTS content NOINDEX NOFOLLOW gt lt head gt lt body gt lt h1i gt Hello World lt h1 gt lt body gt lt html gt In the
6. In the absence of meta descriptions search engines will create the search snippet from other elements of the page For pages that target multiple Keywords and topics this is a perfectly valid tactic Not as important meta tags Meta Keywords The meta keywords tag had value at one time but is no longer valuable or important to search engine optimization For more on the history and a full account of why meta keywords has fallen into disuse read Meta Keywords Tag 101 from SearchEngineLand Meta Refresh Meta Revisit after Meta Content type and others Although these tags can have uses for search engine optimization they are less critical to the process and so we ll leave it to Google s Webmaster Tools Help to discuss in greater detail RRS SP OS SRS eS SHS HDS URL Structures URLs the addresses for documents on the web are of great value from a search perspective They appear in multiple important locations SEOmoz s Web 2 0 Awards www Seomoz org web2 0 May 9 2007 Awards for sites which focus on user empowerment X iostions and io web ys oat He hitp www seomoz org web2 0 u blog sultantheme The Get g Peers Designing a web 2 0 heme or style _ P m My advice x when pow ye Gstigyung s wed 2 D layout atyletherre the man a atte a Tee wet 2 0 age Maw ter ces Oo content tset Sy wou can look af ths web 2 6 Smard wetrate to eee how they t binoj 2 wet aw vecrvor org wet Since search engines disp
7. actor from Firefly a B B Web Images Video Local Shopping More ACTOR WHO PLAYED WASH FROM FIREFLY W Transactional Searches Identifying a local business making a purchase online or completing a task Transactional searches don t necessarily involve a credit card or wire transfer Signing up for a free trial account at Cook s Illustrated creating a Gmail account or finding the best local Mexican cuisine in Seattle it s Carta de Oaxaca are all transactional queries D mant ta check in far my Alaska Airlines flight YAHOO searcu x E Web images Video Local Shopping More ALASKAN AIRLINES E Informational Searches Researching non transactional information getting quick answers or ego searching Informational searches involve a huge range of queries from finding out the local weather to getting maps and directions to finding out how long that trip to Mars really takes about eight months The common thread here is that the searches are primarily non commercial and non transaction oriented in nature the information itself is the goal and no interaction beyond clicking and reading is required Fulfilling these intents is up to you Creativity high quality writing use of examples and inclusion of images and multimedia can all help in crafting content that perfectly matches a searcher s goals Your reward is satisfied searchers who demonstrate their positive experience through engagement w
8. how Bing indexes their web pages Again similar to settings in Google Webmaster Tools here you can explore how your content is organized within Bing submit URLs remove URLs from search results explore inbound links and adjust parameter settings Traffic The traffic summary in Bing Webmaster Center reports impressions and click through data by combining data from both Bing and Yahoo search results Reports here show average position as well as cost estimates if you were to buy ads targeting each keyword Sign Up Moz Open Site Explorer Moz s Open Site Explorer provides valuable insight into your website and links Features Identify Powerful Links Open Site Explorer sorts all of your inbound links by their metrics that help you determine which links are most important Find the Strongest Linking Domains This tool shows you the strongest domains linking to your domain Analyze Link Anchor Text Distribution Open Site Explorer shows you the distribution of the text people used when linking to you Head to Head Comparison View This feature allows you to compare two websites to see why one is outranking the other Social Share Metrics Measure Facebook Shares Likes Tweets and 1 s for any URL Learn More Search engines have only recently started providing better tools to help webmasters improve their search results This is a big step forward in SEO and the webmaster search engine relationship That said
9. Although search engines have become increasingly sophisticated they still can t see and understand a web page the same way a human can SEO helps the engines figure out what each page is about and how it may be useful for users A Common Argument Against SEO We frequently hear statements like this No smart engineer would ever build a search engine that requires websites to follow certain rules or principles in order to be ranked or indexed Anyone with half a brain would want a system that can crawl through any architecture parse any amount of complex or imperfect code and still find a way to return the most relevant results not the ones that have been optimized by unlicensed search marketing experts But Wait Imagine you posted online a picture of your family dog A human might describe it as a black medium sized dog looks like a Lab playing fetch in the park On the other hand the best search engine in the world would struggle to understand the photo at anywhere near that level of sophistication How do you make a search engine understand a photograph Fortunately SEO allows webmasters to provide clues that the engines can use to understand content In fact adding proper structure to your content is essential to SEO Understanding both the abilities and limitations of search engines allows you to properly build format and annotate your web content in a way that search engines can digest Without SEO a website can
10. Markup Language recommended format This is the most widely accepted format for sitemaps It is extremely easy for search engines to parse and can be produced by a plethora of sitemap generators Additionally it allows for the most granular control of page parameters Relatively large file sizes Since XML requires an open tag and a Close tag around each element file sizes can get very large RSS Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary Easy to maintain RSS sitemaps can easily be coded to automatically update when new content is added Harder to manage Although RSS is a dialect of XML it is actually much harder to manage due to its updating properties 2 Robots txt Txt Text File Extremely easy The text sitemap format is one URL per line up to 50 000 lines Does not provide the ability to add meta data to pages The robots txt file a product of the Robots Exclusion Protocol is a file stored on a website s root directory e g www google com robots txt The robots txt file gives instructions to automated web crawlers visiting your site including search crawlers By using robots txt webmasters can indicate to search engines which areas of a site they would like to disallow bots from crawling as well as indicate the locations of sitemap files and crawl delay parameters You can read more details about this at the robots txt Knowledge Center page The following commands are available Disallow
11. NRR NRR AER G ANNAN Meta Tags Meta tags were originally intended as a proxy for information about a website s content Several of the basic meta tags are listed below along with a description of their use Meta Robots The Meta Robots tag can be used to control search engine crawler activity for all of the major engines on a per page level There are several ways to use Meta Robots to control how search engines treat a page index noindex tells the engines whether the page should be crawled and kept in the engines index for retrieval If you opt to use noindex the page will be excluded from the index By default search engines assume they can index all pages so using the index value is generally unnecessary follow nofollow tells the engines whether links on the page should be crawled If you elect to employ nofollow the engines will disregard the links on the page for discovery ranking purposes or both By default all pages are assumed to have the follow attribute Example lt META NAME ROBOTS CONTENT NOINDEX NOFOLLOW gt noarchive is used to restrict search engines from saving a cached copy of the page By default the engines will maintain visible copies of all pages they have indexed accessible to searchers through the cached link in the search results nosnippet informs the engines that they should refrain from displaying a descriptive block of text next to the page s title and URL in the s
12. Targeting content in Polish Poor link structures If a website s link structure isn t when the majority of the people who would visit your website understandable to the search engines they may not reach all of are from Japan a website s content or if it is crawled the minimally exposed Mixed contextual signals For example the title of your blog post is Mexico s Best Coffee but the post itself is about a content may be deemed unimportant by the engine s index Non text Content Although the engines are getting better at vacation resort in Canada which happens to serve great coffee reading non HTML text content in rich media format is still These mixed messages send confusing signals to search difficult for search engines to parse This includes text in Flash engines files images photos video audio and plug in content Make sure your content gets seen Getting the technical details of search engine friendly web development correct is important but once the basics are covered you must also market your content The engines by themselves have no formulas to gauge the quality of content on the web Instead search technology relies on the metrics of relevance and importance and they measure those metrics by tracking what people do what they discover react comment and link to So you can t just build a perfect website and write great content you also have to get that content shared and talked about lt gt Wich
13. af BAK We like to say Build for users not for search engines There are three types of search queries people generally make Do Transactional Queries want to do something such as buy a plane ticket or listen to a song Know Informational Queries need information such as the name of a band or the best restaurant in New York City Go Navigation Queries want to go to a particular place on the Intrernet such as Facebook or the homepage of the NFL When visitors type a query into a search box and land on your site will they be satisfied with what they find This is the primary question that search engines try to answer billions of times each day The search engines primary responsibility is to serve relevant results to their users So ask yourself what your target customers are looking for and make sure your site delivers it to them It all starts with words typed into a small box The True Power of Inbound Marketing with SEO Why should you invest time effort and resources on SEO When looking at the broad picture of search engine usage fascinating data is available from several studies We ve extracted those that are recent relevant and valuable not only for understanding how users search but to help present a compelling argument about the power of SEO How people use search engines has evolved over the years but the primary principles of conducting a search remain largely unchanged Most search
14. and the more recent coverage of the JC Penney Google penalty Trustworthiness Websites that have earned trusted status are often treated differently from those that have not SEOs have commented on the double standards that exist for judging big brand high importance sites compared to newer independent sites For the search engines trust most likely has to do with the links your domain has earned If you publish low quality duplicate content on your personal blog then buy several links from spammy directories you re likely to encounter considerable ranking problems However if you post that same content on Wikipedia even with the same spammy links pointing to the URL it would likely still rank tremendously well Such is the power of domain trust and authority Trust can also be established through inbound links A little duplicate content and a few suspicious links are far more likely to be overlooked if your site has earned hundreds of links from high quality editorial sources like CNN com or Cornell edu Content Value As we ve seen an individual page s value is computed in part based on its uniqueness and the visitor s experience likewise is the entire domain s value assessed Sites that primarily serve non unique non valuable content may find themselves unable to rank even if classic on and off page SEO is well optimized The engines simply don t want thousands of copies of Wikipedia filling up their indexes so they
15. contribute to a positive user experience For more on the subject of cloaking and the levels of risk associated with various tactics see our article on White Hat Cloaking Low Value Pages Although it may not technically be considered web spam the engines all have methods to determine if a page provides unique content and value to its searchers The most commonly filtered types of pages are thin affiliate content duplicate content and dynamically generated content pages that provide very little unique text or value The engines are against including these pages and use a variety of content and link analysis algorithms to screen out low value pages Google s 2011 Panda update took aggressive steps to reduce low quality content across the web and Google continues to iterate on this process SE ST TT TN 2 DOMAIN LEVEL SPAM ANALYSIS In addition to scanning individual pages for spam engines can also identify traits and properties across entire root domains or subdomains that could flag them as spam Linking Practices Just as with individual pages the engines can monitor the kinds of links and quality of referrals sent to a website Sites that are clearly engaging in the manipulative activities described above on a consistent or seriously impacting way may see their search traffic suffer or even have their sites banned from the index You can read about some examples of this from past posts including Widgetbait Gone Wild
16. engine optimization 1 435 2 70 C yahoo 1 016 0 50 linkscage 953 0 46 Sebtota Total canar ord sga analytics A q f Peeing optimization 5 25 587 12 48 205 084 00 00 LOCU mit n IUC un TOOLS amp BRANDED TERMS CARRY THE HIGHEST CONVERSION RATES 5 Number of pages receiving at least one visit from search engines Knowing the number of pages that receive search engine traffic is an essential metric for monitoring overall SEO performance From this number we can get a glimpse into indexation the number of pages from our site the engines are keeping in their indexes For most large websites 50 000 pages mere inclusion is essential to earning traffic and this metric delivers a trackable number that s indicative of success or failure As you work on issues like site architecture link acquisition XML sitemaps and uniqueness of content and meta data the trend line should rise showing that more and more pages are earning their way into the engines results Pages receiving search traffic is quite possibly the best long tail metric around While other analytics data points are of great importance those mentioned above should be universally applied to get the maximum value from your SEO campaigns GOOGLE SENT AT LEAST ONE REFERRAL TO 8 221 PAGES ON SEOMOZ DURING THIS PERIOD Search Engines Direct Google Google s not provided Keywords In 2011 Google announced it would no longer pass
17. example above NOINDEX NOFOLLOW tells robots not to include the given page in their indexes and also not to follow any of the links on the page 5 Rel canonical Often two or more copies of the exact same content appear on your website under different URLs For example the following URLs can all refer to a single homepage http www example com http www example com default asp http example com http example com default asp http Example com Default asp To search engines these appear as five separate pages Because the content is identical on each page this can cause the search engines to devalue the content and its potential rankings The canonical tag solves this problem by telling search robots which page is the singular authoritative version that should count in web results ROBOTS META TAG lt meta name ROBOT NAME content ARGUMENTS gt ROBOT NAME can be either robots for all robots or the user agent of a specific robot See robot use agent list to the left ARGUMENTS noindex Google Yahoo Live Ask Page not indexed nofollow Google Yahoo Live Ask Alllinks on page become no followed noarchive Google Yahoo Live Ask Page not cached noodp Google Yahoo Live Stops description and title tag overwrite by DMOZ only for Homepage noydir Yahoo Stops description and title tag overwrite by Yahoo Directory nosnippet Google Stops Google from generating descr
18. page Perhaps a few more times if there s a lot of text content You may find additional value in using the keyword or variations more than this but in our experience adding more instances of a term or phrase tends to have little or no impact on rankings At least once in the alt attribute of an image on the page This not only helps with web search but also image search which can occasionally bring valuable traffic Once in the URL Additional rules for URLs and keywords are discussed later on in this section At least once in the meta description tag Note that the meta description tag does not get used by the engines for rankings but rather helps to attract clicks by searchers reading the results page as the meta description becomes the snippet of text used by the search engines And you should generally not use keywords in link anchor text pointing to other pages on your site this is Known as Keyword Cannibalization Keyword density is divorced from content quality semantics and relevance What should optimal page density look like then An optimal page for the phrase running shoes would look something like PAGE TARGETING THE PHRASE RUNNING SHOES IME Running Shoes for Runners Who Love High Quality Comfortable Shoes HI HEADER TAG Find the Best Running Shoes to Fit Your Need BODY COPY Some compelling text about the benefits of y hoosing the right running shoes finding the brands ind sizes that fit your f
19. people are searching for when they want what your site provides On Page Optimization Keyword usage and targeting are still a part of the search engines STEP 2 FIND RELEVANT DATABASE STEP 3 RANK DOCUMENTS STEP 4 RETURN SEARCH RESULTS PA Keyword Domination Keywords dominate how we communicate our search intent and interact with the engines When we enter words to search for the engine matches pages to retrieve based on the words we entered The order of the words pandas juggling vs juggling pandas spelling punctuation and capitalization provide additional information that the engines use to help retrieve the right pages and rank them Search engines measure how keywords are used on pages to help determine the relevance of a particular document to a query One of the best ways to optimize a page s rankings is to ensure that the keywords you want to rank for are prominently used in titles text and metadata Generally speaking as you make your keywords more specific you narrow the competition for search results and improve your changes of achieving a higher ranking The map graphic to the left compares the relevance of the broad term books to the specific title Tale of Two Cities Notice that while there are a lot of results for the broad term there are considerably fewer results and thus less competition for the specific result Keyword Density Myth Keyword density is not a part of modern ranking algorith
20. phrase would help significantly MozRank MozRank mR shows how popular a given web page is on the web Pages with high MozRank scores tend to rank better The more links to a given page the more popular it becomes Links from important pages like www cnn com or www irs gov increase a page s popularity and subsequently its MozRank more than unpopular websites Competitor s Backlinks By examining the backlinks inbound links of a website that already ranks well for your targeted keyword phrase you gain valuable intelligence about the links that help them achieve this ranking Using tools like Open Site Explorer SEOs can discover these links and target these domains in their own link building campaigns Number of Links on a Page According to the original PageRank formula the value that a link passes is diluted by the presence of other links on a page Thus all other things being equal being linked to by a page with few links is better than being linked to by a page with many links The degree to which this is relevant is unknowable in our testing it appears to be important but not overwhelmingly so but it s certainly something to be aware of as you conduct your link acquisition A page s MozRank can be improved by getting lots of links from campaign semi popular pages or a few links from very popular pages pay Domain Authority Potential Referral Traffic Link building should never be solely about search engine
21. processes go something like this Experience the need for an answer solution or piece of information Formulate that need in a string of words and phrases also known as the query Enter the query into a search engine Browse through the results for a match Scan for a solution or a link to that solution If unsatisfied return to the search results and browse for another link or Perform a new search with refinements to the query i mi Pa fe oe y Google leads the way in an October 2011 study by comScore Google led the U S core search market in April with 65 4 percent of the searches conducted followed by Yahoo with 17 2 percent and Microsoft with 13 4 percent Microsoft powers Yahoo Search In the real world most webmasters see a much higher percentage of their traffic from Google than these numbers suggest Americans alone conducted a staggering 20 3 billion searches in one month Google accounted for 13 4 billion searches followed by Yahoo 3 3 billion Microsoft 2 7 billion Ask Network 518 million and AOL LLC 277 million Total search powered by Google properties equaled 67 7 percent of all search queries followed by Bing which powered 26 7 percent of all search VIEW ONLINE Billions spent on online marketing from an August 2011 Forrester report Online marketing costs will approach 77 billion in 2016 This amount will represent 26 of al
22. site translates into a machine parseable let s say it s Just an ordinary site without and algorithmically valuable collection of links The timing anything unique or impressive source anchor text and number of links to the new site are all factored into its potential performance i e ranking for relevant queries at the engines Crafting Content For search engine success Develop great content may be the most oft repeated suggestion in the SEO world Despite its clich d status though this is sound advice Appealing useful content is crucial to search engine optimization Every search performed at the engines comes with an intent to find learn solve buy fix treat or understand Search engines place web pages in their results in order to satisfy that intent in the best possible way Crafting fulfilling thorough content that addresses searchers needs improved your chance to earn top rankings Search Intent Flavors Search intent comes in a variety of flavors CPOE OOOO ORES Vatta find a Treek place nearby my Mom s fauaritel e DOING amp Web images Video Local Shopping More GREEK RESTAURANT IN FLEMINGTON NJ Navigational Searches Visiting a pre determined destination or sourcing a specific URL Navigational searches are performed with the intent of surfing directly to a specific website In some cases the user may not know the exact URL and the search engine serves as the White Pages
23. that the further a site page s distance from a trusted seed set the more likely they were to contain spam results of social signals into its search results This involves serving personalized results to logged in users that include content shared by the searcher s social circle Facebook Twitter and others These results might not always appear in the top ten but are undoubtedly promoted due to this social influence The potential power of this shift towards social for search marketers is huge Someone with a large social circle who shares a lot of material is more likely to see that material and her face promoted in search results For publishers it s beneficial to have your content shared by these highly influential folks with large social followings For Google searches this is especially true of content shared on Google Are Social Shares the Same as Links Inaword no Although there is evidence that social shares such as Tweets Likes and Plusses affect rankings at this time links are considered a far superior and more lasting way to promote the popularity of your content than any other method S S S S S S S S S S S S S N S S S S S S S N S S S S ENN EA eile eb leh N eich N R CA abled A NA AA bleh A oblate Shas ables A A A rA gA A alah rA AA rA RA rA RA rA RA rA A gA A ai A AA A A gA AA rA AA gir NA gA A gA A NA Link Building Basics Link building is an art It s almost always the most challenging
24. to entry in understanding the motivations of consumers in virtually any niche How to Judge the Value of a Keyword How much is a keyword worth to your website If you own an APPLE online shoe store do you make more sales from visitors searching for brown shoes or black boots The keywords visitors type into search engines are often available to webmasters and keyword research tools allow us to find this information However those tools cannot show us directly how valuable it is to receive traffic from those searches To understand the value of a keyword we need to understand our own websites make some hypotheses test and repeat the classic web marketing formula A basic process for assessing a keyword s value ncn Ask yourself Is the keyword relevant to your website s content Will searchers find what they are looking for on your site when they search using these keywords Will they be happy with what they find Will this traffic result in financial rewards or other organizational goals If the answer to all of these questions is a clear Yes then proceed Search for the term phrase in the major engines Understanding which websites already rank for your Even the best estimates of value fall flat against the keyword gives you valuable insight into the competition hands on process of optimizing and calculating ROI and also how hard tt will be to rank for the given term Search engine optimization involv
25. to the search page to try again Taken in aggregate over millions and millions of queries each day the engines build up a good pool of data to judge the quality of their results 2 Machine Learning In 2011 Google introduced the Panda update to its ranking algorithm significantly changing the way it judged websites for quality Google started by using human evaluators to manually rate thousands of sites searching for low quality content Google then incorporated machine learning to mimic the human evaluators Once its computers could accurately predict what the humans would judge a low quality site the algorithm was introduced across millions of sites spanning the Internet The end result was a seismic shift that rearranged over 20 of all of Google s search results For more on the Panda update some good resources can be found here and here 3 Linking Patterns The engines discovered early on that the link structure of the web could serve as a proxy for votes and popularity higher quality sites and information earned more links than their less useful lower quality peers Today link analysis algorithms have advanced considerably but these principles hold true That s a caol site Wai That is cask gt mn JD need te blag about ttf amp amp REALLY COOL STE T ji REALLY LAME SITE All of that positive attention and excitement around the content Now imagine that site wasn t so great offered by the new
26. unnecessary in the practice of modern SEO If you hear a pitch from an SEO offering search engine submission services run don t walk to a real SEO Even if the engines used the submission service to crawl your site you d be unlikely to earn enough link juice to be included in their indices or rank competitively for search queries Meta Tags Keyword Stuffing Once upon a time meta tags in particular the meta keywords tag Ever see a page that just looks spammy Perhaps something like were an important part of the SEO process You would include the keywords you wanted your site to rank for and when users typed in those terms your page could come up in a query This process was quickly spammed to death and was eventually dropped by all the major engines as an important ranking signal Not surprisingly a persistent myth in SEO revolves around the concept that keyword density the number of words on a page divided by the number of instances of a given keyword is used by the search engines for relevancy and ranking calculations Bob s cheap Seattle plumber is the best cheap Seattle plumber for all your plumbing needs Contact a cheap Seattle plumber before it s too late Other tags in particular the title tag and meta description tag covered previously in this guide are crucial for quality SEO Additionally the meta robots tag is an important tool for controlling crawler access So while understanding the functions of m
27. wipt fore sena boom Scherer oslo WorPeess Widgets Auiomames Widgets hae come to Wier evan Oyok fe Wiis phige by Aioni and COC Witioets Centon lor Ciseane Conil and Porvengon unre s widoetsoady hone wou can bira the condar custom Mr reser ehrn ay Pa Loar gry iver tens Crenese Widget Feary tiny Health Apoie Dreniosis Dashboard Your oaio wida waretowee You ll Sed toutes of whtgen moet of mem bes Ply ere Cok mige Goeth aad Pe tent aperts soies The shy Pe J mheoari There are on average ten positions on the search results page The pages that fill those positions are ordered by rank The higher your page is on the search results page the better your click through rate and ability to attract searchers Results in positions 1 2 and 3 receive much more traffic than results down the page and considerably more than results on deeper pages The fact that so much attention goes to so few listings means that there will always be a financial incentive for search engine rankings No matter how search may change in the future websites and businesses will compete with one another for this attention and for the user traffic and brand visibility it provides Constantly Changing SEO When search marketing began in the mid 1990s manual submission the meta keywords tag and keyword stuffing were all regular parts of the tactics necessary to rank well In 2004 link bombing with anchor text buying ho
28. 10 point logarithmic scale Number of Links The quantity of pages that contain at least one link to the domain For example if http www loc gov index html and http www loc gov about both contained links to http www nasa gov this would count as two links to the domain Number of Linking Root Domains The quantity of different domains that contain at least one page with a link to any page on the site For example if http www loc gov index html and http www loc gov about both contained links to http www nasa gov this would count as only a single linking root domain to nasa gov SH TN TTT NST TN A A TT NTN NT NT NTT TS TT A A A S APPLYING THAT DATA Just knowing the numbers won t help unless you can effectively interpret and apply changes to course correct Below we ve taken a sample of some of the most common directional signals obtained by tracking data points and offered suggestions on how to capitalize on and respond to them Fluctuation In search engine page and link count numbers The numbers reported in site and link queries are rarely precise SO we caution against getting too worried about large fluctuations unless they are accompanied by traffic drops For example on any given day Yahoo reports between 800 000 and 2 000 000 links to the moz com domain Obviously we don t gain or lose hundreds of thousands of links each day so this variability provides little guidance about our actual link growth or
29. TS RET PIETER EIET PETERT OTET PETERET EIET ERETON PETERT EIET PETERET EIET PTET PETERT EIET ETET here Ree TEET ENTE EET ET Te eT hee here Teh Contributors We would like to extend a very heartfelt thank you to all of the people who contributed to this guide including Urban Influence Linda Jenkinson Tom Critchlow Will Critchlow Dr Pete Hamlet Batista chuckallied lorisa Optomo identity Pat Sexton SeoCatfish David LaFerney Kimber gismd Steph Woods robbothan RandyP bookworm seo Rafi Kaufman Sam Niccolls Danny Dover Cyrus Shepard Sha Menz Casey Henry Lisa Wildwood Jeremy Modjeska and Rand Fishkin
30. an play an important role as independent endorsements external MozRank is an important metric for predicting search engine rankings MOZ Domain Specific Metrics Domain Authority Domain Authority predicts how well a web page on a specific domain will rank The higher the Domain Authority the greater the potential for an individual page on that domain to rank well Domain MozRank Domain level MozRank DmR quantifies the popularity of a given domain compared to all other domains on the web DmR is computed for both subdomains and root domains This metric uses the same algorithm as MozRank but applies it to the domain level link graph a view of the web that only looks at domains as a whole and ignores individual pages Viewing the web from this perspective offers additional insight about the general authority of a domain Just as pages can endorse other pages a link that crosses domain boundaries e g from a page on searchengineland com to a page on http moz com can be seen as an endorsement of one domain by another Domain MoztTrust Just as MozRank can be applied at the domain level Domain level MozRank so can MozTrust Domain level MozlTrust is like MozTrust but instead of being calculated between web pages it is calculated between entire domains New or poorly linked to pages on highly trusted domains may inherit some natural trust by virtue of being hosted on the trusted domain Domain level MozTrust is expressed on a
31. as a mistaken spam penalty is in fact related to accessibility issues Send your reconsideration re inclusion request through the engine s Webmaster Tools service rather than the public form again this creates a greater trust layer and a better chance of hearing back 4 Full disclosure is critical to getting consideration If you ve been spamming own up to everything you ve done links you ve acquired how you got them who sold them to you etc The engines particularly Google want the details so they can improve their algorithms Hold back and they re likely to view you as dishonest corrupt or simply incorrigible and they probably won t respond Get ready to wait Responses can take weeks even months and re inclusion itself if it happens is a lengthy process Hundreds perhaps thousands of sites are penalized every week you can imagine the request backlog 7 If you run a large powerful brand on the web re inclusion can be faster by going directly to an individual source at a conference or event Engineers from all of the engines regularly participate in search industry conferences SMX SES Pubcon etc The value of quickly being re included can be worth the price of admission Be aware that with the search engines lifting a penalty is not their obligation or responsibility Legally they have the right to include or reject any site or page Inclusion is a privilege not a right be cautious and d
32. be invisible to search engines a E E E S E S E E AANS The Limits of Search Engine Technology The major search engines all operate on the same principles as explained in Chapter 1 Automated search bots crawl the web follow links and index content in massive databases They accomplish this with dazzling artificial intelligence but modern search technology is not all powerful There are numerous technical limitations that cause significant problems in both inclusion and rankings We ve listed the most common below Problems Crawling and Indexing Problems Matching Queries to Online forms Search engines aren t good at completing online Content forms such as a login and thus any content contained behind them may remain hidden Uncommon terms Text that is not written in the common terms that people use to search For example writing about food cooling units when people actually search for Duplicate pages Websites using a CMS Content Management refrigerators System often create duplicate versions of the same page this is a major problem for search engines looking for completely original content Language and internationalization subtleties For example color vs colour When in doubt check what people are Blocked in the code Errors in a website s crawling directives PERENG TOF ANd USE EXACT MAGNES IM YOU onien robots txt may lead to blocking search engines entirely Incongruous location targeting
33. building campaigns of low moderate quality links Falling Search traffic from multiple engines Chances are good that you ve done something on your site to block crawlers or stop indexation This could be something in the robots txt or meta robots tags a problem with hosting uptime a DNS resolution issue or a number of other technical breakdowns Talk to your system administrator developers or hosting provider and carefully review your Webmaster Tools accounts and analytics to help determine potential causes Individual Ranking fluctuations Gaining or losing rankings for one or more terms or phrases happens millions of times a day to millions of pages and is generally nothing to be concerned about Ranking algorithms fluctuate competitors gain and lose links and on page optimization tactics and search Don t panic over small fluctuations With large drops be wary against engines even flux between indexes and may sometimes even make mistakes in their making a judgment call until at least a crawling inclusion or ranking processes When a dramatic rankings decrease occurs you few days have passed If you run a new might want to carefully review on page elements for any signs of over optimization or violation of guidelines cloaking keyword stuffing etc and check to see if links have recently been gained or lost Note that with sudden spikes in rankings for new content a temporary period of high visibility followed by a dramat
34. can employ what you learn from these techniques in concert with quality analytics software and SEO education to formulate an action plan for optimizing your website Google Google Site Query Restrict your search to a specific site e g site moz com Useful to see the number and list of pages indexed on a particular domain You can expand the value by adding additional query parameters For example site moz com blog inurl tools will show only those pages in Google s index that are in the blog and contain the word tools in the URL This number will fluctuate but it s a decent rough measurement learn more from this blog post Google Trends At google com trends you can research keyword search volume and popularity over time Log in to your Google account to get richer data including specific numbers instead of simple trend lines G Bing Site Query Restrict your query to a specific site e g site moz com Just like Google Bing allows for queries to show the number and list of pages in their index from a given site Be advised that Bing s counts are given to considerable fluctuation which may limit the utility of the data Bing IP Query Google Blog Search Link Query Search links in a blog e g link http moz com blog Google s regular link query operator is not always useful but their blog search generally yields high quality results sortable by date range and relevance Learn more about the link
35. critical steps to optimize title tags for search engines and for usability Be mindful of length Search engines display only the first 65 75 characters of a title tag in the search results after that the engines show an ellipsis to indicate when a title tag has been cut off This is also the general limit allowed by most social media sites so sticking to this limit is generally wise However if you re targeting multiple keywords or an especially long keyword phrase and having them in the title tag is essential to ranking it may be advisable to go longer Place important keywords close to the front The closer to the start of the title tag your keywords are the more helpful they ll be for ranking and the more likely a user will be to click them in the search results Include branding At Moz we love to end every title tag with a brand name mention as these help to increase brand awareness and create a higher click through rate for people who like and are familiar with a brand Sometimes it makes sense to place your brand at the beginning of query with those terms This helps garner a greater visibility and a higher click through rate Google m Aboa 27 POO rerata 30 eecerets NEL bestand worst Tim Tebow 5 1 after taming latest toe a Mes Tee r Me had 22 cames 57 parte an urdea of mumie ter an WPL Tebosis ao Man Lanan Pe hired Tonan may Bat 1 000 as 4 sooras het m Locat Tebow leads Doncos
36. don t violate the search engines guidelines far more attractive More recently Google s Panda update introduced sophisticated machine learning algorithms to combat spam and other low value pages and the search engines continue to innovate and raise the bar for delivering quality results We obviously don t recommend employing spam tactics But to assist the large number of SEOs who seek help when their sites get penalized banned or flagged it is worthwhile to review some of the factors the engines use to identify spam For additional details about spam from the engines see Google s Webmaster Guidelines and Bing s Webmaster FAQs PDF The important thing to remember is this manipulative techniques generally won t help you and they often result in search engines imposing penalties on your site SN ENA ANA a A TERA CANA R SLCC AC ECAC CCEA CCC CECA CLERC GEE EACLE EERE EARLE DN NaN NN D D D N N N D NE A N EN PAGE LEVEL SPAM ANALYSIS Search engines perform spam analysis across individual pages and entire websites domains We ll look first at how they evaluate manipulative practices on the URL level Keyword Stuffing One of the most obvious and unfortunate spamming techniques keyword stuffing involves littering keyword terms or phrases repetitively on a page in order to make it appear more relevant to the search engines As discussed above this strategy is almost certainly ineffectual Scanning a page for stuffed keywords
37. ds ee Chunky oa J Middle BG se E 11 5 ie J of search Traffic Tgnore the long tail at your peril search marketing and web site content strategies must allow for this impossible to predict form of visits or risk losing out to a more expository and prolific competitor Keyword Research Resources Where do we get all of this knowledge about keyword demand and keyword referrals From research sources like these Google AdWords Keyword Planner Tool Google Trends Microsoft Bing Ads Intelligence Woradtracker s Free Basic Keyword Demand Google s AdWords Keyword Planner tool is a common starting point for SEO keyword research It not only suggests keywords and provides estimated search volume but also predicts the cost of running paid campaigns for these terms To determine volume for a particular keyword be sure to set the Match Type to Exact and look under Local Monthly Searches Remember that these represent total searches Depending on your ranking and click through rate the actual number of visitors you achieve for these Google s AdWords Keyword Tool provides suggested keywords will usually be much lower keyword and volume data Other sources for keyword information exist as do tools with more advanced data The Moz blog category on Keyword Research is an excellent place to start Keyword Difficulty What are my chances of success In order to know which keywords to target it
38. e in helping to educate search marketers In addition to this kind of testing search marketers can also glean competitive intelligence about how the search engines work through patent applications made by the major engines to the United States Patent Office Perhaps the most famous among these is the system that gave rise to Google in the Stanford dormitories during the late 1990s PageRank documented as Patent 6285999 Method for node ranking in a linked database The original paper on the subject Anatomy of a Large Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine has also been the subject of considerable study But don t worry you don t have to go back and take remedial calculus in order to practice SEO Through methods like patent analysis experiments and live testing search marketers as a community have come to understand many of the basic operations of search engines and the critical components of creating websites and pages that earn high rankings and significant traffic The rest of this guide is devoted to clearly these insights Enjoy Step to Domain DOMAIN Page name Page name Page name Step to Domain DOMAIN Page link Page link Page link CHAPTER TWO One of the most important elements to building an online marketing strategy around SEO is empathy for your audience Once you grasp what your target market is looking for you can more effectively reach and keep those users
39. e likely to be a penalty or devaluation of your SEO efforts by that singular engine Uncover Strategic Value It s very likely that some efforts you undertake in SEO will have greater positive results on some engines than on others For example we ve observed that on page optimization tactics like better keyword inclusion and targeting reap greater benefits with Bing and Yahoo than with Google On the other hand gaining specific anchor text links from a large number of domains has a more positive impact on Google than the others If you can identify the tactics that are having success with one engine you ll better know how to focus your efforts 3 Visits Referred by Specific Search Engine Terms and Phrases The keywords that send traffic are another important piece of your analytics pie You ll want to keep track of these on a regular basis to help identify new trends in keyword demand gauge your performance on key terms and find terms that are bringing significant traffic that you re potentially under optimized for You may also find value in tracking search referral counts for terms outside the top terms and phrases those that are most valuable to your business If the trend lines are pointing in the wrong direction you know efforts need to be undertaken to course correct Search traffic worldwide has consistently risen over the past 15 years so a decline in the quantity of referrals is troubling Check for seasonality issues ke
40. e link to constrain the linked text between the tags and prevent the link from encompassing other elements on the page This is the most basic format of a link and it is eminently understandable to the search engines The crawlers know that they should add this link to the engines link graph of the web use it to calculate query independent variables like Google s PageRank and follow it to index the contents of the referenced page Let s look at some common reasons why pages may not be reachable Submission required forms If you require users to complete an online form before accessing certain content chances are search engines will never see those protected pages Forms can include a password protected login or a full blown survey In either case search crawlers generally will not attempt to submit forms so any content or links that would be accessible via a form are invisible to the engines Links in unparseable JavaScript If you use JavaScript for links you may find that search engines Robots don t use search forms Although this relates directly to the above warning on forms it s such a common problem that it bears mentioning Some webmasters believe if they place a search box on their site then engines will be able to find everything that visitors search for Unfortunately crawlers don t perform searches to find content leaving millions of pages inaccessible and doomed to anonymity until a crawled page links to them
41. e page Indexable Content To perform better in search engine listings your most important content should be in HTML text format Images Flash files Java applets and other non text content are often ignored or devalued by search engine crawlers despite advances in crawling technology The easiest way to ensure that the words and phrases you display to your visitors are visible to search engines is to place them in the HTML text on the page However more advanced methods are available for those who demand greater formatting or visual display styles 1 Provide alt text for images Assign 3 Supplement Flash or Java plug ins images in gif jog or png format alt with text on the page RUT PUGS iD RIME Me S8AEn 4 Provide a transscript for video and f T PENA noaee 2 OEEO r Raa audio content if the words and phrases oE used are meant to be indexed by the 2 Supplement search boxes with engines navigation and crawlable links Seeing your site as the search engines do Many websites have significant problems with indexable content so double checking is worthwhile By using tools like Google s cache SEO browser com and the MozBar you can see what elements of your content are visible and indexable to the engines Take a look at Google s text cache of this page you are reading now See how different it looks I have a problem with getting found I built a huge Flash site for Juggling pandas and I m not showing up any
42. earch results noodp noydir are specialized tags telling the engines not to grab a descriptive snippet about a page from the Open Directory Project DMOZ or the Yahoo Directory for display in the search results The X Robots Tag HTTP header directive also accomplishes these same objectives This technique works especially well for content within non HTML files like images Meta Description The meta description tag exists as a short description of a page s content Search engines do not use the keywords or phrases in this tag for rankings but meta descriptions are the primary source for the snippet of text displayed beneath a listing in the results Google The meta description tag serves the function of advertising copy drawing readers to your site from the results It is an extremely important part of search marketing Crafting a readable compelling description using important keywords notice how Google bolds the searched Balboa Park Welcome to Balboa Park in San Diego California the nation s largest urban cultural park Home to 15 major museums renouwned d www balbonpark ceg 13k Coched Simila pages keywords in the description can draw a much higher click through rate of searchers to your page META DESCRIPTION TAG Meta descriptions can be any length but search engines generally will cut snippets longer than 160 characters so it s generally wise to stay within in these limits
43. ed for search ranking and traffic success BRST EIN ISSN TTDI SENS TENG SES STDIN SEIS SDI STEN ESI SSDS STEIN TNS SES SPI SHES STIS ERSTE E ONSEN SEIN SEAS TREN TSN SEIS SSDS SEIS EISENSTEIN SSDI STIS HDS TENS RESIN SPIN SPIER SINS TENG ESN SEIN SEAS SETS ESTES TEIN SDN SEEDS SEEN STEN ESN SEIN SERIES SEER ESTES RESIS O SERIES SEEN NS SEEN GREEN RID SETTER SENS EEE REDS SER EDR SERIE TEENS TEN RIDIN GREE STEREO ATEN REN NED RTE TEEN STEN Link Signals Used by search engines How do search engines assign value to links To answer this we need to explore the individual elements of a link and look at how the search engines assess these elements We don t fully understand the proprietary metrics that search engines use but through analysis of patent applications years of experience and hands on testing we can draw some intelligent assumptions that hold up in the real world Below is a list of notable factors worthy of consideration These signals and many more are considered by professional SEOs when measuring link value and a site s link profile You may also enjoy some further on the Moz Blog reading about search engine valuation of links Global Popularity The more popular and important a site is the more links from that site matter A site like Wikipedia has thousands of diverse sites linking to it which means it s probably a popular and important site To earn trust and authority with the engines you ll need the help of other link
44. eet and how to compart gt am 4 Sp os Yy A gt oo running shoes in an easy to follow logical fashion S2 gt ze ld also be a go id lacet les be how This w A i lifferent running shoes apply to different vities like trail running long distance running sprinting etc ALT ATTRIBUTE FO PHOTO The Famous Running Shoes of an Olympian UAL http www yourdomain com Running Shoes You can read more information about On Page Optimization in this post Me S Poe Reet Geet Gee fe mete rete H Ae HWSO BO PUSS OS Mest Cree raeetyerom The title tag of any page appears at the top of Internet browsing software and is often used as the title when your content is shared through social media or republished eres Scores 6 Somme Parton to Serer Hernes I amats Sport Vatoo Fartany Fonas Sar NFL com Ofog See of ne Natonal Footbal League The fes source tr PL wren o hgga artery bob pea aog Using keywords in the title tag means that search engines will bold those terms in the search results when a user has performed a Title Tags The title element of a page is meant to be an accurate concise description of a page s content It is critical to both user experience and search engine optimization As title tags are such an important part of search engine optimization the following best practices for title tag creation makes for terrific low hanging SEO fruit The recommendations below cover the
45. es constant testing Are there search advertisements running along the top experimenting and improvement Remember even 2 z 3 and right hand side of the organic results Typically Susie h sB istic pene pesca many search ads means a high value keyword and multiple search ads above the organic results often means a highly lucrative and directly conversion prone keyword Buy a sample campaign for the keyword at Google AdWords and or Bing Adcenter If your website doesn t rank for the keyword you can nonetheless buy test traffic to see how well it converts In Google Adwords choose exact match and point the traffic to the relevant page on your website Track impressions and conversion rate over the course of at least 200 300 clicks Using the data you ve collected determine the exact value of each keyword For example assume your search ad generated 5 000 impressions in one day of which 100 visitors have come to your site and three have converted for a total profit not revenue of 300 In this case a single visitor for that keyword is worth 3 to your business Those 5 000 impressions in 24 hours could generate a click through rate of between 18 36 with a 1 ranking see the Slingshot SEO study for more on potential click through rates which would mean 900 1800 visits per day at 3 each or between 1 and 2 million dollars per year No wonder businesses love search marketing marketing investments measuring succe
46. esh content regularly Don t put the text that you want indexed inside images For example if you want your company name or address to be indexed make sure it is not displayed inside a company logo So what you re telling me is that this is just the tip of the search marketing iceberg and there s a ton more Have No Fear Fellow Search Marketer In addition to this freely given advice over the 15 years that web search has existed search marketers have found methods to extract information about how the search engines rank pages SEOs and marketers use that data to help their sites and their clients achieve better positioning Surprisingly the engines support many of these efforts though the public visibility is frequently low Conferences on search marketing such as the Search Marketing Expo Pubcon Search Engine Strategies Distilled and Moz s own MozCon attract engineers and representatives from all of the major engines Search representatives also assist webmasters by occasionally participating online in blogs forums and groups TIME FOR AN EXPERIMENT There is perhaps no greater tool available to webmasters researching the activities of the engines than the freedom to use the search engines themselves to perform experiments test hypotheses and form opinions It is through this iterative sometimes painstaking process that a considerable amount of knowledge about the functions of the engines has bee
47. eta tags Despite being disproved time and again this myth has legs Many is important they re no longer the central focus of SEO SEO tools still feed on the concept that keyword density is an important metric It s not Ignore it and use keywords intelligently and with usability in mind The value from an extra 10 instances of your keyword on the page is far less than earning one good editorial link from a source that doesn t think you re a search spammer Paid Search Helps Bolster Organic Results Put on your tin foil hats it s time for the most common SEO conspiracy theory spending on search engine advertising pay per click or PPC improves your organic SEO rankings In our considerable experience and research we ve never seen evidence that paid advertising positively affects organic search results Google Bing and Yahoo have all erected walls in their organizations specifically to prevent this type of crossover At Google advertisers spending tens of millions of dollars each month have noted that even they cannot get special access or consideration from the search quality or web spam teams So long as the search engines maintain this separation the notion that paid search bolsters organic results should remain a myth sanna SEARCH ENGINE SPAM As long as there is search there will be spam The practice of soamming the search engines creating pages and schemes designed to artificially inflate rankings or abuse the rankin
48. f you have partners you work with regularly or loyal customers that love your brand you can capitalize on this by sending out partnership badges graphic icons that link back to your site like Google often does with their AdWords certification program Just as you d get customers wearing your t shirts or sporting your bumper stickers links are the best way to accomplish the same feat on the web Check out this post on e commerce links for more Build a company blog make it a valuable informative and entertaining resource This content and link building strategy is so popular and valuable that it s one of the few recommended personally by the engineers at Google for more on this see articles at USA Today and Stone Temple Blogs have the unique ability to contribute fresh material on a consistent basis participate in conversations across the web and earn listings and links from other blogs including blogrolls and blog directories The link building activities you engage in depend largely on the type of site you re working with For smaller sites manual link building including directories link requests and link exchanges may be a part of the equation With larger sites these tactics tend to fall flat and more scalable solutions are required Sample strategies are listed here though this is by no means an exhaustive list see Moz s Blog Posts on Link Building for more Search for sites like yours by using keywords and phrase
49. fetching your content and re publishing is called scraping and the scrapers perform remarkably well in search engine rankings often outranking the original sites When you publish content in any type of feed format such as RSS or XML make sure to ping the major blogging and tracking services Google Technorati Yahoo etc You can find instructions for pinging services like Google and Technorati directly from their sites or use a Service like Pingomatic to automate the process If your publishing software is custom built it s typically wise for the developer s to include auto pinging upon publishing Next you can use the scrapers laziness against them Most of the scrapers on the web will re publish content without editing So by including links back to your site and to the specific post you ve authored you can ensure that the search engines see most of the copies linking back to you indicating that your source is probably the originator To do this you ll need to use absolute rather that relative links in your internal linking structure Thus rather than linking to your home page using lt a href gt Home lt a gt You would instead use lt a href http moz com gt Home lt a gt This way when a scraper picks up and copies the content the link remains pointing to your site There are more advanced ways to protect against scraping but none of them are entirely foolproof You should expect that the more p
50. g algorithms has been rising since the mid 1990s The stakes are high One SEO noted that a single day ranking atop Google s search results for the query buy viagra could bring upwards of 20 000 in affiliate revenue So it s little wonder that manipulating the engines is such a popular activity However it has become increasingly difficult and in our opinion less and less worthwhile for two reasons 1 Not Worth the Effort Users hate spam and the search engines have a financial incentive to fight it Many believe that Google s greatest product advantage over the last 10 years has been its ability to control and remove spam better than its competitors It s undoubtedly something all the engines spend a great deal of time effort and resources on While spam still works on occasion it generally takes more effort to succeed than producing good content and the long term payoff is virtually non existent Instead of putting all that time and effort into something that the engines will throw away why not invest in a value added long term strategy instead 2 Smarter Engines Search engines have done a remarkable job identifying scalable intelligent methodologies for fighting spam manipulation making it dramatically more difficult to adversely affect their intended algorithms Metrics like Moz s TrustRank statistical analysis and historical data have all driven down the value of search spam and made white hat SEO tactics those that
51. h 745 Knowing both the percentage and exact numbers will help you AT amp T 242 238 286 952 263 0 2502 identify weaknesses and give you a basis for comparison over Bogpile 78 7 time For example if you see that traffic has spiked dramatically se am 25 OF SEOMOZ S TRAFFIC COMES Subtotal 237 514 FROM SEARCH ENGINES but it comes from referral links with low relevance it s not time to Total 238 286 get excited On the other hand if search engine traffic falls dramatically you may be in trouble You should use this data to track your marketing efforts and plan your traffic acquisition efforts 2 Search Engine Referrals Three major engines make up 95 of all search traffic in the US Google and the Yahoo Bing alliance For most countries outside the US 80 of search traffic comes solely from Google with a few notable exceptions including Russia and China Measuring the contribution of your search traffic from each engine is useful for several reasons Compare Performance vs Market Share Compare the volume contribution of each engine with its estimated market share Get Visibility Into Potential Drops If your search traffic should drop significantly at any point knowing the relative and exact contributions from each engine will be essential to diagnosing the issue If all the engines drop off equally the problem is almost certainly one of accessibility If Google drops while the others remain at previous levels it s mor
52. happen Googe m K o fom In the example above Google s crawler has reached page A and sees links to pages B and E However even though C and D might be important pages on the site the crawler has no way to reach them or even know they exist This is because no direct crawlable links point pages C and D As far as Google can see they don t exist Great content good keyword targeting and smart marketing won t make any difference if the crawlers can t reach your pages in the first place b P Nee a a_ a e b g wet Aod lt a href http www jonwye com gt Jon Wye s Custom Designed Belts lt a gt start of link tag link referral location visible anchor text of link closure of link tag Link tags can contain images text or other objects all of which provide a clickable area on the page that users can engage to move to another page These links are the original navigational elements of the Internet known as hyperlinks In the above illustration the lt a tag indicates the start of a link The link referral location tells the browser and the search engines where the link points In this example the URL http www jonwye com is referenced Next the visible portion of the link for visitors called anchor text in the SEO world describes the page the link points to The linked to page is about custom belts made by Jon Wye thus the anchor text Jon Wye s Custom Designed Belts The lt a gt tag closes th
53. i e H v H i x i k a i k M E e M s A we ll discuss the most important of these in this guide eee eee i see Seach Engine frcnulty ss Search engines typically assume that the more popular a site page or document the more E ee ga 2 A a valuable the information it contains must be This assumption has proven fairly successful in Heee eee terms of user satisfaction with search results Fees Ronee eee Popularity and relevance aren t determined manually Instead the engines employ mathematical equations algorithms to sort the wheat from the chaff relevance and then to rank the wheat in order of quality popularity These algorithms often comprise hundreds of variables In the search marketing field we refer to them as ranking factors Moz crafted a resource specifically on this subject Search PPP yore PPE eee aos Engine Ranking Factors eceeeeeeeseeeseseesesesseeesese You can surmise that search engines believe that Ohio State is the most relevant and popular page for the query Universities while the page for Harvard ts less relevant popular HAALAAIAAAAA AIAN AAA NAAR NAN AN ANA RINNE NAR NUNRNR ROR NHR ENTREE REAR RAN ERG EN REN GIE GN UNA GIN NEAGLE GN RRR RN GN RRR RR GN CARRIERS CREAR RR RR RREN RRR ARENT How Do Get Some Success Rolling In Or how search marketers succeed The complicated algorithms of search engines may seem impenetrable Indeed the engines themselves provide
54. i2 OT win 96 13 arm Chargen Bios Tete Sebran grogan pesh Dal deien gt Waiting Sar Tebow io Go Soit Giwe Mao RINIA een mnia Sun s song puts hin in ciscussion among MFL s dies piaren ol DETROIT Mean Joe Guere knows what Es Ehe to be regarded as a natty piyer m the NPL The Hal of Famer hopes Nderuhong Sul name doesnt sick _ Video Pepa Suh n titty Mb 2pm Locet NEL andin sumpend Detot Lora Ndamdang Sa for actors The final important reason to create descriptive keyword laden title tags is for ranking at the search engines In Moz s biannual survey of SEO industry leaders 94 of participants said that keyword use in the title tag was the most important place to use keywords to achieve high rankings the title tag such as your homepage Since words at the beginning of the title tag carry more weight be mindful of what you are trying to rank for Consider readability and emotional impact Title tags should be descriptive and readable The title tag is a new visitor s first interaction with your brand and should convey the most positive impression possible Creating a compelling title tag will help grab attention on the search results page and attract more visitors to your site This underscores that SEO is about not only optimization and strategic keyword usage but the entire user experience Best Practices for Title Tags ANAS GEAEREG GANA SANNA RIANNA AAAI NE ENGNG NE REESE AANA ONAN REAGAN AANA
55. ic drop is common in the SEO field we refer to this as the freshness boost site or are in the process of link acquisition and active marketing these sudden spikes and drops are even more common so simply be prepared and keep working Positive Increases in link metrics without rankings increases Many site owners assume that when they ve done some classic SEO on page optimization link acquisition etc they can expect instant results This sadly is not the case Particularly for new sites pages and content that have heavy competition ranking improvements take time Even earning lots of great links is not a sure recipe to instantly reach the top Remember that the engines not only have to crawl all those pages where you ve acquired links but also index and process them So the metrics and rankings you re seeking may be days or even weeks behind the progress you ve made Congratulations You ve made it through the entire Beginner s Guide to SEO Now you are ready to start optimizing your own site implement the tricks you have just learned and improve your search results in the major search engines TUF ENN GSN SNS SIS I SN SIS SI IS GN SN SIS III LN RS SEI II IN CS SIS IS INE I SI SIS IIE INS SN IS III IGN SN SIS SIS IES CNS SIS I IS CNS SIS IIS IRS ONS RNS SIS HR NS OI oO SSRIS SEIS RS RES SNS IDS HN ANN 2 i PERET PRETERE IET PRETE RPT PRET ERPI EIET PETERET ETET PETERET OTET ERETO RET PETERET EIET PIETE ETS here
56. in Use the canonical tag within the page that contains duplicate content The target of the canonical tag points to the master URL that you want to rank for lt link rel canonical href http moz com blog gt This tells search engines that the page in question should be treated as though it were a copy of the URL http moz com blog and that all of the link and content metrics the engines apply should flow back to that URL DISPLAY ONLY From an SEO perspective the Canonical URL tag attribute is similar to a 301 redirect In essence you re telling the engines that multiple pages should be considered as one which a 301 does but without actually redirecting visitors to the new URL This has the added bonus of saving your development staff considerable heartache For more about different types of duplicate content this post by Dr Pete deserves special mention Easy as pie AAA aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa aa a aaa aaa aa aaa n Rich Snippets Ever see a 5 star rating in a search result Chances are the search engine received that information from rich snippets embedded on the webpage Rich snippets are a type of structured data that allow webmasters to mark up content in ways that provide information to the search engines While the use of rich snippets and structured data is not a required element of search engine friendly design its growing adoption means that webmasters who employ it may enjo
57. ing at these links in the aggregate search engines can understand the link neighborhood in which your website exists Thus it s wise to choose those sites you link to carefully and be equally selective with the sites you attempt to earn links from Freshness Link signals tend to decay over time Sites that were once popular often go stale and eventually fail to earn new links Thus it s important to continue earning additional links over time Commonly referred to as FreshRank search engines use the freshness signals of links to judge current popularity and relevance Social Sharing The last few years have seen an explosion in the amount of content shared through social services such as Facebook Twitter and Google Although search engines treat socially shared links differently than other types of links they notice them nonetheless There is much debate among search professionals as to how exactly search engines factor social link signals into their algorithms but there is no denying the rising importance of social channels The Power of Social Sharing How Google Twitter and Facebook Change the Game The years 2011 2012 saw a huge rise in social sharing and its effects on search Google in particular began to incorporate a huge number THE CONCEPT OF TRUSTRANK 0 Spam 0 15 Spam 4 Spam 14 Spam vi Trusted Seed Set Link Hop Away 2 Link Hops Away 3 Link Hops Away Search researchers found
58. iption based on on page text 4 Rel Nofollow Remember how links act as votes The rel nofollow attribute allows you to link to a resource while removing your vote for search engine purposes Literally nofollow tells search engines not to follow the link although some engines still follow them to discover new pages These links certainly pass less value and in most cases no juice than their followed counterparts but are useful in various situations where you link to an untrusted source An Example of nofollow lt a href http www example com title Example rel nofollow gt Example Link lt a gt In the example above the value of the link would not be passed to example com as the rel nofollow attribute has been added An Example of rel canonical for the URL http example com default asp lt html gt lt head gt lt title gt The Best Webpage on the Internet lt title gt lt link rel canonical href http www example com gt lt head gt lt body gt lt h1i gt Hello World lt h1 gt lt body gt lt html gt In the example above rel canonical tells robots that this page is a copy of http www example com and should consider the latter URL as the canonical and authoritative one Search Engine Tools Google Webmaster Tools Google Webmaster Tools Key Features Geographic Target If a given site targets users in a particular location webmasters can provide Google with information that
59. is not terribly challenging and the engines algorithms are all up to the task You can read more about this practice and Google s views on the subject in a blog post from the head of their web spam team SEO Tip Avoid Keyword Stuffing Manipulative Linking One of the most popular forms of web spam manipulative link acquisition attempts to exploit the search engines use of link popularity in their ranking algorithms to artificially improve visibility This is one of the most difficult forms of soamming for the search engines to overcome because it can come in so many forms A few of the many ways manipulative links Can appear include Reciprocal link exchange programs Sites create link pages that point back and forth to one another in an attempt to inflate link popularity The engines are very good at spotting and devaluing these as they fit a very particular pattern Link schemes These include link farms and link networks where fake or low value websites are built or maintained purely as link sources to artificially inflate popularity The engines combat these by detecting connections between site registrations link overlap and other methods targeted at common link scheme tactics Paid links Those seeking to earn higher rankings buy links from sites and pages willing to place a link in exchange for money These sometimes evolve into larger networks of link buyers and sellers and although the engines work hard to stop them Goog
60. ith your site or with links to it CHAPTER SEVEN For search engines that crawl the vast metropolis of the web links are the streets between pages Using sophisticated link analysis the engines can discover how pages are related to each other and in what ways Since the late 1990s search engines have treated links as votes for popularity and importance in the ongoing democratic opinion poll of the web The engines themselves have refined the use of link data to a fine art and use complex algorithms to perform nuanced evaluations of sites and pages based on this information Links aren t everything in SEO but search professionals attribute a large portion of the engines algorithms to link related factors see Search Engine Ranking Factors Through links engines can not only analyze the popularity websites and pages based on the number and popularity of pages linking to them but also metrics like trust soam and authority Trustworthy sites tend to link to other trusted sites while soammy sites receive very few links from trusted sources See MoztTrust Authority models like those postulated in the Hilltop Algorithm suggest that links are a very good way of identifying expert documents on a given subject Thanks to this focus on algorithmic use and analysis of links growing the link profile of a website is critical to gaining traction attention and traffic from the engines As an SEO link building is among the top tasks requir
61. keyword query data through its referrer string for logged in users This meant that instead of showing organic keyword data in Google Analytics visits from users logged into Google would show the keyword query as not provided At the time Google said they expected this to affect less than 10 of all search queries But soon webmasters reported up to 20 of their search queries were from keywords not provided Over the ensuing two years webmasters began reporting much higher volumes of not provided keywords as more and more searched were performed using encrypted search i e the https version of Google With the launch of Google more logged in users pushed this number even higher Over time smart SEOs have identified methods to contend with the not provided situation and tips on reclaiming your data Ue Ue eee Ube hee EITTIE EITE uh Uh Eb Ub ehh Lb tub ti uh eb ITT dub ehh db tub PIT eh buh duh dh db uh Dib ITET EITI tub EIT eb tah duh ah tb uh ITET dub tah PITIT IPT diab eh tb EIT PITIT uh ITITI eh eh ITT IT IT EITT dah tah ITE IET ITT Analytics Software The right rools for the job x Moz Analytics Omniture Fireclick Mint Sawmill Analytics Clicktale Coremetrics Unica NetInsight Additional Reading How to Choose a Web Analytics Tool A Radical Alternative from Avinash Kaushik way back in 2006 but still a relevant and Yahoo Web Analytics formerly Indextools Google Analytics Clicky Web Analytic
62. l advertising budgets combined Search is the new Yellow Pages from a Burke 2011 report 76 of respondents used search engines to find local business information vs 74 who turned to print yellow pages 67 had used search engines in the past 30 days to find local information and 23 responded that they had used online social networks as a local media source VIEW ONLINE An August 2011 Pew Internet study revealed The percentage of Internet users who use search engines on a typical day has been steadily rising from about one third of all users in 2002 to a new high of 59 of all adult Internet users With this increase the number of those using a search engine on a typical day is pulling ever closer to the 61 percent of Internet users who use e mail arguably the Internet s all time killer app on a typical day VIEW ONLINE StatCounter Global Stats reports the top 5 search engines sending traffic worldwide Google sends 90 62 of traffic Yahoo sends 3 78 of traffic Bing sends 3 72 of traffic Ask Jeeves sends 36 of traffic Baidu sends 35 of traffic VIEW ONLINE A 2011 study by Slingshot SEO reveals click through rates for rop rankings A 1 position in Google s search results receives 18 2 of all click through traffic The second position receives 10 1 the third 7 2 the fourth 4 8 and all others under 2 A 1 position in Bing s search results averages a 9 66 click through rate The
63. lay URLs in the URLs make an appearance in the web The URL above is used as the link anchor text results they can impact click through and browser s address bar and while this generally pointing to the referenced page in this blog visibility URLs are also used in ranking has little impact on search engines poor URL documents and those pages whose names structure and design can result in negative user include the queried search terms receive some experiences benefit from proper descriptive use of keywords SC CC CCC CC CT CCC CCC SACRA CRAKS GAARA ROC MAAC AGASSI AARC UAG MOG MOON URL Construction Guidelines Employ empathy Place yourself in the mind of a user and look at your URL If you can easily and accurately predict the content you d expect to find on the page your URL is appropriately descriptive You don t need to spell out every last detail in the URL but a rough idea is a good starting point Shorter is better While a descriptive URL is important minimizing length and trailing slashes will make your URLs easier to copy and paste into emails blog posts text messages etc and will be fully visible in the search results Keyword use is important but overuse is dangerous If your page is targeting a specific term or phrase make sure to include it in the URL However don t go overboard by trying to stuff in multiple keywords for SEO purposes overuse will result in less usable URLs and can trip spam filters
64. le in particular has taken dramatic actions they persist in providing value to many buyers and sellers more on that perspective Low quality directory links These are a frequent source of manipulation for many in the SEO field A large number of pay for placement web directories exist to serve this market and pass themselves off as legitimate with varying degrees of success Google often takes action against these sites by removing the PageRank score from the toolbar or reducing it dramatically but won t do this in all cases There are many more manipulative link building tactics that the search engines have identified In most cases they have found algorithmic methods for reducing their impact As new spam systems emerge engineers will continue to fight them with targeted algorithms human reviews and the collection of spam reports from webmasters and SEOs Cloaking A basic tenet of search engine guidelines is to show the same content to the engine s crawlers that you d show to a human visitor This means among other things not to hide text in the HTML code of your website that a normal visitor can t see When this guideline is broken the engines call it cloaking and take action to prevent these pages from ranking in their results Cloaking can be accomplished in any number of ways and for a variety of reasons both positive and negative In some cases the engines may let practices that are technically cloaking pass because they
65. links or participating in link schemes risk severe penalties that will drop their rankings into oblivion Notwithstanding these efforts link buying sometimes works many search professionals wish the search engines would do even more to discourage it We at Moz recommend spending your time on long term link building strategies that focus on building links naturally CHAPTER EIGHT SEOs tend to use a lot of tools Some of the most useful are provided by the search engines themselves Search engines want webmasters to create sites and content in accessible ways so they provide a variety of tools analytics and guidance These free resources provide data points and unique opportunities for exchanging information with the engines Below we explain the common elements that each of the major search engines support and identify why they are useful Common Search Engine Protocols 1 Sitemaps Think of a sitemap as a list of files that give hints to the search engines on how they can crawl your website Sitemaps help search engines find and classify content on your site that they may not have found on their own Sitemaps also come in a variety of formats and can highlight many different types of content including video images news and mobile You can read the full details of the protocols at Sitemaps org In addition you can build your own sitemaps at XML Sitemaps com Sitemaps come in three varieties XML Extensible
66. little insight into how to achieve better results or garner more traffic What they do provide us about optimization and best practices is described below SEO INFORMATION FROM GOOGLE WEBMASTER GUIDELINES Google recommends the following to get better rankings in their search engine Make pages primarily for users not for search engines Don t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users a practice commonly referred to as cloaking Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link Create a useful information rich site and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content Make sure that your lt title gt elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate Use keywords to create descriptive human friendly URLs Provide one version of a URL to reach a document using 301 redirects or the rel canonical attribute to address duplicate content SEO INFORMATION FROM BING WEBMASTER GUIDELINES Bing engineers at Microsoft recommend the following to get better rankings in their search engine Ensure a clean keyword rich URL structure is in place Make sure content is not buried inside rich media Adobe Flash Player JavaScript Ajax and verify that rich media doesn t hide links from crawlers Create keyword rich content and match keywords to what users are searching for Produce fr
67. ms as demonstrated by Dr Edel Garcia in The Keyword Density of Non Sense If two documents D1 and D2 consist of 1000 terms l 1000 and repeat a term 20 times tf 20 then a keyword density analyzer will tell you that for both documents Keyword Density KD KD 20 1000 0 020 or 2 for that term Identical values are obtained when tf 10 and l 500 Evidently a keyword density analyzer does not establish which document is more relevant A density analysis or keyword density ratio tells us nothing about 1 The relative distance between keywords in documents proximity 2 Where in a document the terms occur distribution 3 The co citation frequency between terms co occurance 4 The main theme topic and sub topics on topic issues of the documents The Conclusion ranking algorithms and we can apply some effective techniques for keyword usage to help create pages that are well optimized Here at Moz we engage in a lot of testing and get to see a huge number of search results and shifts based on keyword usage tactics When working with one of your own sites this is the process we recommend Use the keyword phrase In the title tag at least once Try to keep the keyword phrase as close to the beginning of the title tag as possible More detail on title tags follows later in this section Once prominently near the top of the page At least two or three times including variations in the body copy on the
68. n gleaned Some of the experiments we ve tried go something like this 1 Register a new website with nonsense keywords e g 5 Record the rankings of the pages in search engines ishkabibbell com 6 Now make small alterations to the pages and assess their 2 Create multiple pages on that website all targeting a impact on search results to determine what factors might similarly ludicrous term e g yoogewgally push a result up or down against its peers 3 Make the pages as close to identical as possible then alter Record any results that appear to be effective and re test one variable at a time experimenting with placement of them on other domains or with other terms If several tests text formatting use of keywords link structures etc consistently return the same results chances are you ve discovered a pattern that is used by the search engines Point links at the domain from indexed well crawled pages on other domains An Example Test We Performed In our test we started with the hypothesis that a link earlier higher up on a page carries more weight than a link lower down on the page We tested this by creating a nonsense domain with a home page with links to three remote pages that all have the same nonsense word appearing exactly once on the page After the search engines crawled the pages we found that the page with the earliest link on the home page ranked first This process is useful but is not alon
69. n them are at risk of not getting all of those links crawled and indexed If you avoid these pitfalls you ll have clean spiderable HTML links that will allow the spiders easy access to your content pages rel nofollow Rel nofollow can be used with the following syntax lt a href http moz com rel nofollow gt Lousy Punks lt a gt Links can have lots of attributes The engines ignore nearly all of them with the important exception of the rel nofollow attribute In the example above adding the rel nofollow attribute to the link tag tells the search engines that the site owners do not want this link to be interpreted as an endorsement of the target page Nofollow taken literally instructs search engines to not follow a link although some do The nofollow tag came about as a method to help stop automated blog comment guest book and link injection spam read more about the launch here but has morphed over time into a way of telling the engines to discount any link value that would ordinarily be passed Links tagged with nofollow are interpreted slightly differently by each of the engines but it is clear they do not pass as much weight as normal links Are nofollow links bad Although they don t pass as much value as their followed cousins nofollowed links are a natural part of a diverse link profile A website with lots of inbound links will accumulate many nofollowed links and this isn t a bad thing In fac
70. on t apply SEO techniques that you re skeptical about or you might find yourself in a rough spot They say that if you can measure it then you can improve it In search engine optimization measurement is critical to success Professional SEOs track data about rankings referrals links and more to help analyze their SEO strategy and create road maps for success RECOMMENDED METRICS TO TRACK Although every business is unique and every website has different metrics that matter the following list is nearly universal Here we re covering metrics critical to SEO more general metrics are not be included For a more comprehensive look at web analytics check out Choosing Web Analytics Key Performance Indicators by Avinash Kaushik 1 Search Engine Share of Referring Visits i i i January 2009 340 305 Every month keep track of the contribution of each traffic source a a Kga TOTAL NUMBER OF VISITS TO SEOMOZ for your site including a January 1 March 17 2009 March 2009 219 900 ae ee p Total 952 263 Direct Navigation Typed in traffic bookmarks email links without tracking codes etc Google 218 721 Referral Traffic From links across the web or in trackable Yahoo 10 360 email promotional and branding campaign links Windows Live 3 257 NUMBER OF SEARCH ENGINE VISITS MSN Search 1940 January 1 March 17 2009 Search Traffic Queries that sent traffic from any major or minor Alexa 098 web search engine Ask Jeeves 925 ADL Searc
71. operator in this blog post Restrict your query to a specific IP address e g ip 216 176 191 233 This query will show pages that Microsoft s engine has found on the given IP address This can be useful to identify whether a page is hosted on a shared provider or to find sites hosted the same IP Bing Ads Intelligence Bing Ads Intelligence has a variety of keyword research and audience intelligence tools primarily intended for search and display advertising This guide won t dive deep into the value of each individual tool but they are worth investigating and many can be applied to SEO MOZ Page Specific Metrics Page Authority Page Authority predicts the likelihood that a single page will rank well regardless of its content The higher the Page Authority the greater the potential for that individual page to rank MozRank MozRank part of Moz s Open Site Explorer refers to Moz s general logarithmically scaled 10 point measure of global link authority or popularity MozRank is very similar in purpose to the measures of static importance which means importance independent of a specific query that are used by the search engines e g Google s PageRank or FAST s StaticRank Search engines often rank pages with higher global link authority ahead of pages with lower authority Because measures like MozRank are global and static this ranking power applies to a broad range of search queries rather than pages optimized s
72. opular and visible your site gets the more often you ll find your content scraped and re published Many times you can ignore this problem but if it gets very severe and you find the scrapers taking away your rankings and traffic you might consider using a legal process called a DMCA takedown Moz CEO Sarah Bird offers some quality advice on this topic Four Ways to Enforce Your Copyright What to Do When Your Online Content is Being Stolen lt span itemprop description gt Learn about SEO from experts in the field lt span gt Event date lt time itemprop startDate datetime 2012 05 08T19 30 gt May 8 7 30pm lt time gt lt div gt It all begins with words typed into a search box Keyword research is one of the most important valuable and high return activities in the search marketing field Ranking for the right keywords can make or break your website By researching your market s keyword demand you can not only learn which terms and phrases to target with SEO but also learn more about your customers as a whole It s not always about getting visitors to your site but about getting the right kind of visitors The usefulness of this intelligence cannot be overstated with keyword research you can predict shifts in demand respond to changing market conditions and produce the products services and content that web searchers are actively seeking In the history of marketing there has never been such a low barrier
73. part of an SEO s job but also the one most critical to success Link building requires creativity hustle and often a budget No two link building campaigns are the same and the way you choose to build links depends as much upon your website as it does your personality Below are three basic types of link acquisition Natural Editorial Links Links that are given naturally by sites and pages that want to link to your content or company These links require no specific action from the SEO other than the creation of worthy material great content and the ability to create awareness about it Manual Outreach Link Building The SEO creates these links by emailing bloggers for links submitting sites to directories or paying for listings of any kind The SEO often creates a value proposition by explaining to the link target why creating the link is in their best interest Examples include filling out forms for submissions to a website award program or convincing a professor that your resource is worthy of inclusion on the public syllabus E Self Created Non Editorial Hundreds of thousands of websites offer any visitor the opportunity to create links through guest book signings forum signatures blog comments or user profiles These links offer the lowest value but can in the aggregate still have an impact for some sites In general search engines continue to devalue most of these types of links and have been known to
74. partners The more popular the better Local Topic Specific Popularity The concept of local popularity first pioneered by the Teoma search engine suggests that links from sites within a topic specific community matter more than links from general or off topic sites For example if your website sells dog houses a link from the Society of Dog Breeders matters much more than one from a site about roller skating Anchor Text One of the strongest signals the engines use in rankings is anchor text If dozens of links point to a page with the right keywords that page has a very good probability of ranking well for the targeted phrase in that anchor text You can see examples of this in action with searches like click here where many results rank solely due to the anchor text of inbound links TrustRank It s no surprise that the Internet contains massive amounts of spam Some estimate as much as 60 of the web s pages are spam In order to weed out this irrelevant content search engines use systems for measuring trust many of which are based on the link graph Earning links from highly trusted domains can result in a significant boost to this scoring metric Universities government websites and non profit organizations represent examples of high trust domains Link Neighborhood Spam links often go both ways A website that links to spam is likely spam itself and in turn often has many spam sites linking back to it By look
75. pecifically for a particular keyword MozTrust Another component of Open Site Explorer MozTrust is distributed through links First trustworthy seed sites are identified to feed the calculation of the metric these include major international university media and governmental websites Websites that earn links from the seed set are then able to cast lesser trust votes through their links This process continues across the web and the MozTrust of each applicable link decreases as its distance from the seed sites increases Number of Links The total number of pages that contain at least one link to a page with a maximum of one qualifying link per page For example if the Library of Congress homepage http www loc gov index html linked to the White House s homepage http www whitehouse gov in both the page content and the footer this would be counted as a single link Number of Linking Root Domains The total number of unique root domains that contain a link to a page with a maximum of one qualifying link per domain For example if topics nytimes com and www nytimes com both linked to the homepage of Moz http moz com this would count as a single linking root domain External MozRank Whereas MozRank measures the link juice ranking power of both internal and external links external MozRank measures only the amount of MozRank flowing through external links links located on a separate domain Because external links c
76. penalize sites that pursue these links aggressively Today these types of links are often considered spammy and should be pursued with caution STARTING It s up to you as an SEO to select which of these will have the highest return on the effort invested As a general rule it s wise to build as vast and varied a link profile as possible as this brings the best search engine results Any link building pattern that appears non standard unnatural or manipulative will eventually become a target for advancing search algorithms to discount a Link Building Campaign As with any marketing activity the first step in any link building campaign is the creation of goals and strategies Unfortunately link building is one of the most difficult activities to measure Although the engines internally weigh each link with precise mathematical metrics it s impossible for those on the outside to access this information SEOs rely on a number of signals to help build a rating scale of link value Along with the data from the link signals mentioned above these metrics include the following Ranking for Relevant Search Terms One of the best ways to determine how highly a search engine values a given page is to search for some of the keywords and phrases that page targets particularly those in the title tag and headline For example if you are trying to rank for the phrase dog kennel earning links from pages that already rank for this
77. rd term or phrase allow the engines to retrieve the data they need in a mere fraction of a second Obviously if you want your page to have a chance of ranking in the search results for dog it s wise to make sure the word dog is part of the crawlable content of your document Keyword Abuse Since the dawn of online search folks have abused keywords in a misguided effort to manipulate the engines This involves stuffing keywords into text URLs meta tags and links Unfortunately this tactic almost always does more harm than good for your site In the early days search engines relied on keyword usage as a prime relevancy signal regardless of how the keywords were actually used Today although search engines still can t read and comprehend text as well as a human the use of machine learning has allowed them to get closer to this ideal The best practice is to use your keywords naturally and strategically more on this below If your page targets the keyword phrase Eiffel Tower then you might naturally include content about the Eiffel Tower itself the history of the tower or even recommended Paris hotels On the other hand if you simply sprinkle the words Eiffel Tower onto a page with irrelevant content such as a page about dog breeding then your efforts to rank for Eiffel Tower will be a long uphill battle The point of using keywords is not to rank highly for all keywords but to rank highly for the keywords that
78. rdes of links from automated blog comment spam injectors and the construction of inter linking farms of websites could all be leveraged for traffic In 2011 social media marketing and vertical search inclusion are mainstream methods for conducting search engine optimization The search engines have refined their algorithms along with this evolution so many of the tactics that worked in 2004 can hurt your SEO today The future is uncertain but in the world of search change is a constant For this reason search marketing will continue to be a priority for those who wish to remain competitive on the web Some have claimed that SEO is dead or that SEO amounts to spam As we see it there s no need for a defense other than simple logic websites compete for attention and placement in the search engines and those with the knowledge and experience to improve their website s ranking will receive the benefits of increased traffic and visibility d CHAPTER FOUR Search engines are limited in how they crawl the web and interpret content A webpage doesn t always look the same to you and me as it looks to a search engine In this section we ll focus on specific technical aspects of building or modifying web pages so they are structured for both search engines and human visitors alike Share this part of the guide with your programmers information architects and designers so that all parties involved in a site s construction are on the sam
79. re rife with duplicate content problems especially when they scale to large size Check out this post on duplicate content to identify common problems Confirm that your site has been penalized vs simply lost rankings to competitors Does your site still rank for its Domain Name or other unique branded terms You re probably suffering from a penalty for manipulative linking activity or on site spam cloaking KW stuffing etc First remove all potentially bad outhound links drop any paid link campaigns that Google might have discovered and get rid of your on page issues Then go into Webmaster Central verify and submit a re inclusion request owning up to your spam and promising nicely not to do it again Is your site still indexed sitesurLcom The site is most likely banned Verify with Webmaster Central to double check then consider filing a re inclusion request once you ve removed your spam Your don t have a penalty you ve probably just lost some rankings Get more high quality non manupulative links and review your on page SEO efforts When you search for 5 6 ralatively unique terms in the title tag of your pages does your site still rank in the top 10 20 results You ve most likely had many of your links wiped of their value Google s spam team IDs and eliminates the link love passing ability of many sites and networds every day so you re not alone Go to Webmaster Central verify
80. ribed in greater detail here The engines are picky about duplicate versions of a single piece of material To provide the best searcher experience they will rarely show multiple duplicate pieces of content and instead choose which version is most likely to be the original The end result is all of your duplicate content could rank lower than it should Canonicalization is the practice of organizing your content in such a way that every unique piece has one and only one URL If you leave multiple versions of content on a website or websites you might end up DISCOUNT DISCOUNT DISCOUNT with a scenario like the one on the right which diamond is the right one Instead if the site owner took those three pages and 301 redirected them the search engines would have only one strong page to show in the listings from that site When multiple pages with the potential to rank well are combined into a single page they not only stop competing with each other but also create a stronger relevancy and popularity signal overall This will positively impact your ability to rank well in the search engines Canonical Tag to the rescue A different option from the search engines called the Canonical URL Tag is another way to reduce instances of duplicate content on a single site and canonicalize to an individual URL This can also be used across different websites from one URL on one domain to a different URL on a different doma
81. s Piwik Open Source Analysis Woopra Website Tracking AWStats Choosing can be tough We re partial to Moz Analytics because we built it from the ground up to provide the broadest suite of SEO tools available and give you all of your inbound marketing data in one place For free tools our top recommendation is Google Analytics Because of its broad adoption you can find many tutorials and guides available online Google Analytics also has the quality piece advantage of cross integration with other Google products such as Webmaster Tools AdWords and AdSense No matter which analytics software you select we strongly recommend testing different versions of pages on your site and making conversion rate improvements based on the results Testing pages on your site can be as simple as using a free tool to test two versions of a page header or as complex as using an expensive multivariate software to simultaneously test hundreds of variants of a page Metrics for Measuring Search Engine Optimization It s difficult to optimize for specific behaviors of search engines because their algorithms aren t public But a combination of tactics has proven effective and new data is always emerging to help track the variables that influence ranking and fluctuations in ranking signals You can even use the search engines themselves to gain a competitive advantage by structuring clever queries and by utilizing data the engines have published You
82. s Links that send high amounts of direct click through traffic not only tend to provide better search engine value for rankings but also send targeted valuable visitors to your site the basic goal of all Internet marketing This is something you can estimate based on the numbers of visits or page views according to site analytics If you can t get access to these services like Google Trends can give you a rough idea of at least domain wide traffic although these estimates are known to be wildly inaccurate at times Moz Domain Authority or DA is a query independent measure of how likely a domain is to rank for any given query DA is calculated by analyzing the Internet s domain graph and comparing a given domain to tens of thousands of queries in Google It takes time practice and experience to build comfort with these variables as they relate to search engine traffic However using your websites analytics you should be able to determine whether your campaign is successful Success comes when you see increases in search traffic higher rankings more frequent search engine crawling and increases in referring link traffic If these metrics do not rise after a successful link building campaign it s possible you either need to seek better quality link targets or improve your on page optimization KARASAR RRRA RARR RNR SRRA RARR RRR RARA RAS RARR NRN Five Samples of Link Building Strategies Get your customers to link to you I
83. s directly Create content that inspires viral sharing and natural linking In the SEO world we often call this linkbait Good examples might include David Mihm s Local Search Ranking Factors Compare the Meerkat or the funny How Not To Clean a Window Each leverages aspects of usefulness information dissemination or humor to create a viral effect Users who see it once want to share it with friends and bloggers tech savvy webmasters who see it will often do so through links Such high quality editorially earned votes are invaluable to building trust authority and rankings potential Be newsworthy Earning the attention of the press bloggers and news media is an effective time honored way to earn links Sometimes this is as simple as giving away something for free releasing a great new product or stating something controversial relevant to your business When you locate sites that aren t directly competitive email them use their online forms call them on the phone or even send them a letter by mail to start a conversation about getting a link Check out this blog post on link requests for more detail Show Me the Money An aside on buying links Google and Bing seek to discount the influence of paid links in their organic search results While it is impossible for them to detect and discredit all paid links the search engines put a lot of time and resources into finding ways to detect these Websites caught buying
84. s essential to not only understand the demand for a given term or phrase but also the work required to achieve high rankings If big brands take the top 10 results and you re just starting out on the web the uphill battle for rankings can take years of effort This is why it s essential to understand keyword difficulty H Linad F a a i n PRE TER ERERE RS fae Goce ECS See 02i Different tools around the web help provide this information One of these Moz s own Keyword Analysis Tool does a good job collecting all of these metrics and providing a comparative score for any given search term or phrase CHAPTER SIX The search engines constantly strive to improve their performance by providing the best possible results While best is subjective the engines have a very good idea of the kinds of pages and sites that satisfy their searchers Generally these sites have several traits in common 13 Easy to use navigate and understand Provide direct actionable information relevant to the query E gt Professionally designed and accessible to modern browsers Deliver high quality legitimate credible content Despite amazing technological advances search engines can t yet understand text view images or watch video the same way a human can In order to decipher and rank content they rely on meta information not necessarily meta tags about how people interact with sites and pages and this gives
85. shrinkage If drops in links or pages indexed coincide with traffic referral drops from the search engines you may be experiencing a real loss of link juice check to see if important links that were previously sending traffic rankings boosts still exist or a loss of indexation due to penalties hacking or malware A thorough analysis using your own web analytics and Google s Webmaster Tools can help to identify potential problems Fal l ng 1 You re under a penalty at that engine for violating Search traffic from a single engine search quality or terms of service guidelines Check out this post on how to identify and handle a search engine penalty Ifa single engine is sending you considerably l 3 2 You ve accidentally blocked access to that search less traffic for a wide range of search queries engine s crawler Double check your robots txt file a small number of possibilities exist and meta robots tags and review the Webmaster Tools for that engine to see if any issues exist I d entify th e pr O b l em most lik e ly to b e th e 3 That engine has changed their ranking algorithm in a fashion that no longer favors your site Most culp rit and investlg ate Visit fe Orums like frequently this happens because links pointing to Cre8asite H ig hRankings and Goog le s your site have been devalued in some way and is especially prevalent for sites that engage in manual Groups for Webmasters for help link
86. so the engines work hard to provide answers as fast as possible et Cena Ren Nh e af Soe roe a he aos wipe Ee Crawling and Indexing Crawling and indexing the billions of documents pages files news videos and media on the World Wide Web Providing Answers Providing answers to user queries most frequently through lists of relevant pages that they ve retrieved and ranked for relevancy peo MAES ett ot o SSB Be BAA SEa Tere a Ride Had Sk TETN HE ge S D 09 eure wee ae TA an 6S g REN O fe A ERS Sag ga PRA Search engines are answer machines When a person performs an online search the search engine scours its corpus of billions of documents and does two things first it returns only those results that are relevant or useful to the searcher s query second it ranks those results according to the popularity of the websites serving the information It is both relevance and popularity that the process of SEO is meant to influence How do search engines determine relevance and popularity To a search engine relevance means more than finding a page with the right words In the early days of the web search engines didn t go much further than this simplistic step and search results were of limited value Over the years smart engineers have devised better ways to match results to searchers queries Today hundreds of factors influence relevance and a M i n x
87. ss is still critical to the process RER R A SG CSA SSS OA A OA GGG GAGA SSS GSAS SSS SSSA Understanding the Long Tail of Keyword Demand Going back to our online shoe store example it would be great to rank 1 for the keyword shoes or would it It s wonderful to deal with keywords that have 5 000 searches a day or even 500 searches a day but in reality these popular search terms actually make up less than 30 of the searches performed on the web The remaining 70 lie in what s called the long tail of search The long tail contains hundreds of millions of unique searches that might be conducted a few times in any given day but when taken together comprise the majority of the world s search volume Another lesson search marketers have learned is that long tail keywords often convert better because they catch people later in the buying conversion cycle A person searching for shoes is probably browsing and not ready to buy On the other hand someone searching for best price on Air Jordan size 12 practically has their wallet out Understanding the search demand curve is critical To the right we ve included a sample keyword demand curve illustrating the small number of queries sending larger amounts of traffic alongside the volume of less searched terms and phrases that bring the bulk of our search referrals The Search Demand Curve lop 100 Keywords Top 1K Keywords q _ Top 10K Keywor
88. submit a re inclusion request saying you re sorry ID ing your bad links and asking forgiveness Then go get lots of great high quality natural links to help you rank again While this chart s process won t work for every situation the logic has proven reliable in helping us identify spam penalties and mistaken flagging for spam by the engines and separating those from basic ranking drops This page from Google and the embedded YouTube video may also provide value on this topic Getting Penalties Lifted The task of requesting reconsideration or re inclusion in the engines is painful and often unsuccessful It s also rarely accompanied by any feedback to let you Know what happened or why However it is important to know what to do in the event of a penalty or banning If you haven t already register your site with the engine s Remove or fix everything you can If you ve acquired bad Webmaster Tools service Google s and Bing s This links try to get them taken down If you ve done any registration creates an additional layer of trust and manipulation on your own site over optimized internal connection between your site and the search engine linking keyword stuffing etc get it off before you submit teams your request Q Make sure to thoroughly review the data in your Webmaster Tools accounts from broken pages to server or crawl errors to warnings or spam alert messages Very often what s initially perceived
89. submit sitemaps test robots txt files adjust sitelinks and submit change of address requests when you move your website from one domain to another This area also contains the Settings and URL parameters sections discussed in the previous column 1 Metrics When users share your content on Google with the 1 button this activity is often annotated in search results Watch this illuminating video on Google to understand why this is important In this section Google Webmaster Tools reports the effect of 1 sharing on your site s performance in search results Labs The Labs section of Webmaster Tools contains reports that Google considers still in the experimental stage but which can nonethelsss be useful to webmasters One of the most important of these reports is Site Performance which indicates how fast or slow your site loads for visitors Bing Webmaster Center Bing Webmaster Center Key Features Sites Overview This interface provides a single overview of all your websites performance in Bing powered search results Metrics at a glance include clicks impressions pages indexed and number of pages crawled for each site Crawl Stats Here you can view reports on how many pages of your site Bing has crawled and discover any errors encountered Like Google Webmaster Tools you can also submit sitemaps to help Bing to discover and prioritize your content Index This section allows webmasters to view and help control
90. t Moz s Ranking Factors showed that high ranking sites tended to have a higher percentage of inbound nofollow links than lower ranking sites Google Google states that in most cases they don t follow nofollow links nor do these links transfer PageRank or anchor text values Essentially using nofollow causes Google to drop the target links from their overall graph of the web Nofollow links carry no weight and are interpreted as HTML text as though the link did not exist That said many webmasters believe that even a nofollow link from a high authority site such as Wikipedia could be interpreted as a sign of trust Bing amp Yahoo Bing which powers Yahoo search results has also stated that they do not include nofollow links in the link graph though their crawlers may still use nofollow links as a way to discover new pages So while they may follow the links they don t use them in rankings calculations Keyword Usage and Targeting Keywords are fundamental to the search process They are the building blocks of language and of search In fact the entire science of information retrieval including web based search engines like Google is based on keywords As the engines crawl and index the contents of pages around the web they keep track of those pages in keyword based indexes rather than storing 25 billion web pages all in one database Millions and millions of smaller databases each centered on a particular keywo
91. t to a search engine JugglingPandas com s homepage doesn t contain all the rich information that we see This makes it difficult for search engines to interpret relevancy What Search Engines See Hey where did the fun go Uh oh via Google cache we can see that the page is a barren wasteland There s not even text telling us that the page contains the Axe Battling Monkeys The site is built entirely in Flash but sadly this means that search engines cannot index any of the text content or even the links to the individual games Without any HTML text this page would have a very hard time ranking in search results It s wise to not only check for text content but to also use SEO tools to double check that the pages you re building are visible to the engines This applies to your images and as we see below to your links as well Crawlable Link Structures Just as search engines need to see content in order to list pages in their massive keyword based indexes they also need to see links in order to find the content in the first place A crawlable link structure one that lets the crawlers browse the pathways of a website is vital to them finding all of the pages on a website Hundreds of thousands of sites make the critical mistake of structuring their navigation in ways that search engines cannot access hindering their ability to get pages listed in the search engines indexes Below we ve illustrated how this problem can
92. the engines can only go so far to help webmasters It is true today and will likely be true in the future that the ultimate responsibility for SEO lies with marketers and webmasters It is for this reason that learning SEO for yourself is so important CHAPTER NINE po Over the past several years a number of misconceptions have emerged about how the search engines operate For the beginner SEO this causes confusion about what s required to perform effectively In this section we ll explain the real story behind the myths Search Engine Submission In classical SEO times the late 1990s search engines had submission forms that were part of the optimization process Webmasters and site owners would tag their sites and pages with keyword information and submit them to the engines Soon after submission a bot would Google crawl and include those resources in their index Simple SEO Unfortunately this process didn t scale very well the submissions were often spam so the practice eventually gave way to purely crawl based engines Since 2001 not only has search engine submission not been required but has become virtually useless The engines all publicly note that they rarely use submitted URLs and that the best practice is to earn links from other sites This will expose your content to the engines naturally You can still sometimes find submission pages here s one for Bing but these are remnants of the past and are
93. them insight into the quality of the pages themselves The Impact of Usability and User Experience On search engine rankings There are a limited number of variables that search engines can take into account directly including keywords links and site structure However through linking patterns user engagement metrics and machine learning the engines make a considerable number of intuitions about a given site Usability and user experience are second order influences on search engine ranking success They provide an indirect but measurable benefit to a site s external popularity which the engines can then interpret as a signal of higher quality This is called the no one likes to link to a crummy site phenomenon Crafting a thoughtful empathetic user experience helps ensure that visitors to your site perceive it positively encouraging sharing bookmarking return visits and inbound links all signals that trickle down to the search engines and contribute to high rankings SSNS a a Signals of Quality Content 1 Engagement Metrics When a search engine delivers a page of results to you it can measure the success of the rankings by observing how you engage with those results If you click the first link then immediately hit the back button to try the second link this indicates that you were not satisfied with the first result Search engines seek the long click where users click a result without immediately returning
94. total average click through rate for first ten results was 52 32 for Google and 26 32 for Bing VIEW ONLINE So TT TE That s Some Spicy Data You Got There This particular study perfectly illustrated how little attention is paid to results on the page vs those higher up and how users eyes are drawn to bolded keywords titles and descriptions in the organic results vs The paid search listings All of this impressive research data leads us to important conclusions about web search and marketing through search engines In particular we re able to make the following statements Search is very very popular Growing strong at nearly 20 a year it reaches nearly every online American and billions of people around the world Search drives an incredible amount of both online and offline economic activity Higher rankings in the first few results are critical to visibility Being listed at the top of the results not only provides the greatest amount of traffic but also instills trust in consumers as to the worthiness and relative importance of the company or website Learning the foundations of SEO is a vital step in achieving these For marketers the Internet as a whole and search in particular are among the most important ways to reach consumers and build a business goals CHAPTER THREE An important aspect of SEO is making your website easy for both users and search engine robots to understand
95. use algorithmic and manual review methods to prevent this Search engines constantly evaluate the effectiveness of their own results They measure when users click on a result quickly hit the back button on their browser and try another result This indicates that the result they served didn t meet the user s expectations It s not enough just to rank for a query Once you ve earned your ranking you have to prove it over and over again Re SSS SSS SSS SS ao SSS SSS So How Do You Know If You ve Been Bad It can be tough to know if your site or page actually has a penalty Sometimes search engines algorithms change Or maybe you changed something on your site that negatively impacted your rankings Before you assume you ve been penalized check for the following x Once you ve ruled out the list below follow the flowchart beneath for more specific advice Errors Errors on your site that may have inhibited or prevented crawling Google s Webmaster Tools is a good free place to start Changes Changes to your site or pages that may have changed the way search engines view your content on page changes internal link structure changes content moves etc Similarity Check for sites that share similar backlink profiles and see if they ve also lost rankings When the engines update ranking algorithms link valuation and importance can shift causing ranking movements Duplicate Content Modern websites a
96. where on Google What s up af Dep were mamoa ongtearn danny bisis i PE tepaka ne eee das com Herre Abas Li Panas Wingy Consaar Us Home About Us Pandas Why Contact Us Lomm pare deter pt amet eoar adipering cit Is becca Cheque tere Sed preteens veiocaia ome wel fmpis Nuin rft Io omar orta tomar end dgra Agam wane boom wia o mega sapien Pos vine rors no sore conic mpre er o relorads Were commoner faript Agar h veraia vipe ote rene Onoda aera noe ance Wray np eel mah que koeta rt Cebi et urpis Sette Came spint tact pectegs ad Dom ongan per conubia nomre per expense bemersce Praesent bate Jon pem a modet Mam sbort mor mu m comsecters tower oma ut Der remde nps ac Gementem bibashss pola Vivewes cagi tte nabh st smrt ante vinoda md froctee tie joria Beopend iver printi es a rete pore Coble 1 ated mtrt apni ng Fl Apara pores fhs potare ot ebibed ia Whexenper vw mapua Qeepe is odio once Through Browser Whoa That s what we look like Lorem poen Gober ni amet commerteter edptering AR Abqeers pores tts pomem et eiiiai in hemerper ot wag Crepe ie edi cris Bed at ost vitor ligedeimreds J pedvinart Salle i ditemi swta Nall Gib Lh cles masia tischen a coedisnsa uggle Pa Uroa Cre ede sox panem mee A surripe sed Vrae ec mam Museot i soge urm ft emet tooda Bos Quiegae son Dgan hia Dower inmez ma e npm Pings et emer bniet borers Sem Mara ac boo ndh Using the Google cache feature we can see tha
97. will help determine how that site appears in its country specific search results and also improve Google search results for geographic queries Preferred Domain The preferred domain is the one that a webmaster would like used to index their site s pages If a webmaster specifies a preferred domain as http www example com and Google finds a link to that site that is formatted as http example com Google will treat that link as if it were pointing at http www example com URL Parameters You can indicate to Google information about each parameter on your site such as sort price and sessionid 2 This helps Google crawl your site more efficiently Crawl Rate The crawl rate affects the speed but not the frequency of Googlebot s requests during the crawl process Malware Google will inform you if it has found any malware on your site Malware creates a bad user experience and hurts your rankings Crawl Errors If Googlebot encounters significant errors while crawling your site such as 404s it will report these HTML Suggestions Google looks for search engine unfriendly HTML elements such as issues with meta descriptions and title tags Sign Up Your Site on the Web Statistics provided by search engine tools offer unique insight to SEOs like keyword impressions click through rates top pages delivered in search results and linking statistics Site Configuration This important section allows you to
98. y an advantage in some circumstances Structured data means adding markup to your content so that search engines can easily identify what type of content it is Schema org provides some examples of data that can benefit from structured markup including people products reviews businesses recipes and events Often the search engines include structured data in search results such as in the case of user reviews stars and author profiles pictures There are several good resources for learning more Rich Snippets in the Wild Let s say you announce an SEO conference on your blog In regular HTML your code might look like this lt div gt SEO Conference lt br gt Learn about SEO from experts in the field lt br gt Event date lt br gt May 8 7 30pm lt div gt Now by structuring the data we can tell the search engines more specific information about the type of data The end result might look like this lt div itemscope itemtype http schema org Event gt lt div itemprop name gt SEO Conference lt div gt about rich snippets online including information at Schema org and Google s Rich Snippet Testing Tool Defending Your Site s Honor How scrapers steal your rankings Unfortunately the web is littered with unscrupulous websites whose business and traffic models depend on plucking content from other sites and re using it sometimes in strangely modified ways on their own domains This practice of
99. ywords that are only in demand certain times of the week month year and rankings have you dropped or has search volume ebbed 4 Conversion Rate by Search Query Term Phrase When it comes to the bottom line for your organization few metrics matter as much as conversion For example in the graphic to the right 5 80 of visitors who reached Moz with the query SEO Tools signed up to become members during that visit This is amuch higher conversion rate than most of the thousands of keywords used to find our site With this information we can now do two things 1 Checking our rankings we see that we only rank 4 for SEO Tools Working to improve this position will undoubtedly lead to more conversion 2 Because our analytics will also tell us what page these visitors landed on mostly http moz com tools we can focus our efforts on improving the visitor experience on that page The real value from this simplistic tracking comes from the low hanging fruit finding keywords that continually send visitors who convert to paying customers and increasing focus on rankings and on improving the landing pages that visitors reach While conversion rate tracking from keyword phrase referrals is certainly important it s never the whole story Dig deeper and you can often uncover far more interesting and applicable data about how conversion starts and ends on your site seo blog 1 738 Social a ledia marketiog 1 608 search

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