The purpose why website owners engage in search engine optimization or SEO is to have their websites on the top positions of Search Engine Results Pages, or SERPs. This can be done for specific keywords and is grouped into two categories: on-page and off-page optimization. The latter can be achieved by creating back links to the website. The link will help you increase your site reputation and is very crucial for landing in the first page in search results. But the basic element of optimization is the page itself. The on-page optimization is an integral part of search engine optimization because it is the one that describes the content of the website and emphasizes the main keyword you are targeting.
It starts with the identification of keywords
When it comes to SEO, the very first thing you need to do is to pick your keyword. You need to look for targeted words or phrases that are connected to your website or your business. By doing this, you will achieve high search volume. As a rule, you need to optimize each page for only one keyword since the main goal of SEO is to highlight a specific keyword in order to relay a message to your visitors and to the search engine what your site is offering. Aside from this, SEO will guide you in reaching the top position in search results for your keyword. On-page optimization is actually a no-brainer and website owner can achieve the search results position they desire given the right moves.
Rights ways in using keywords
To be successful in on-page search engine optimization, you need to put the main keyword at relevant visible and invisible (Meta) page elements. The best thing to do is to include informative, entertaining and readable content so your visitors can know what your website is all about and can easily find the information they need. Your quality content should also mention your keyword at least 2 to 4 times. Once you have written your website's content with your targeted keyword, you also need to think of a page title that will also contain the keyword. Then, add a few header tags (h1, h2, h3, and so on) in order to label paragraphs. And lastly, it is crucial to be careful when using your keyword. Check the word frequency in order to avoid the excessive usage of the word. As mentioned, 2 or 4 mentions would be sufficient.
Doing all these will not automatically put you on the first page of search engines. Google in particular like clear pages that are informative and easy to navigate. The latter can be achieved with the simple menu from which you can reach any page on the website in just one or two clicks.
The purpose of search engine optimization is to tell everyone what your website is really about. For websites engaged in business, search engine optimization will help them get as many traffic as possible. The number of visitors of the website will equate to the success of their business. Optimization is a cost effective way of introducing your products and services online. If you are really interested in performing SEO on your business or personal website, then it is advised that you follow the right techniques and practices in search engine optimization. B
It starts with the identification of keywords
When it comes to SEO, the very first thing you need to do is to pick your keyword. You need to look for targeted words or phrases that are connected to your website or your business. By doing this, you will achieve high search volume. As a rule, you need to optimize each page for only one keyword since the main goal of SEO is to highlight a specific keyword in order to relay a message to your visitors and to the search engine what your site is offering. Aside from this, SEO will guide you in reaching the top position in search results for your keyword. On-page optimization is actually a no-brainer and website owner can achieve the search results position they desire given the right moves.
Rights ways in using keywords
To be successful in on-page search engine optimization, you need to put the main keyword at relevant visible and invisible (Meta) page elements. The best thing to do is to include informative, entertaining and readable content so your visitors can know what your website is all about and can easily find the information they need. Your quality content should also mention your keyword at least 2 to 4 times. Once you have written your website's content with your targeted keyword, you also need to think of a page title that will also contain the keyword. Then, add a few header tags (h1, h2, h3, and so on) in order to label paragraphs. And lastly, it is crucial to be careful when using your keyword. Check the word frequency in order to avoid the excessive usage of the word. As mentioned, 2 or 4 mentions would be sufficient.
Doing all these will not automatically put you on the first page of search engines. Google in particular like clear pages that are informative and easy to navigate. The latter can be achieved with the simple menu from which you can reach any page on the website in just one or two clicks.
The purpose of search engine optimization is to tell everyone what your website is really about. For websites engaged in business, search engine optimization will help them get as many traffic as possible. The number of visitors of the website will equate to the success of their business. Optimization is a cost effective way of introducing your products and services online. If you are really interested in performing SEO on your business or personal website, then it is advised that you follow the right techniques and practices in search engine optimization. B
Off page SEO refers to techniques that can be used to improve the position of a web site in the search engine results page (SERPs). Many people associate off-page SEO with link building but it is not only that. In general, off Page SEO has to do with promotion methods – beyond website design –for the purpose of ranking a website higher in the search results.
Unlike On- page SEO, off-page SEO refers to activities outside the boundaries of the webpage. The most important are:
Off page SEO gives them a very good indication on how the World (other websites and users) perceive the particular website. A web site that is useful is more likely to have references (links) from other websites; it is more likely to have mentions on social media (Facebook likes, tweets, Pins, +1’s etc.) and it is more likely to be bookmarked and shared among communities of like-minded users.
Increase in rankings – The website will rank higher in the SERPs and this also means more traffic.
Increase in PageRank – Page rank is a number between 0 and 10 which indicates the importance of a website in the eyes of Google. It is the system invented by Larry Page (one of Google’s founders) and one of the reasons that Google was so successful in showing the most relevant results to the searcher. Page rank today is only one out of the 250 factors that Google is using to rank websites.
More exposure – Higher rankings also means greater exposure because when a website ranks in the top positions: it gets more links, more visits and more social media mentions. It’s like a never ending sequence of events where one thing leads to another and then to another etc.
Over the years webmasters were trying to build links to their websites so that they rank higher and they ‘invented’ a number of ways to increase link count. The most popular ways were:
Blog Directories – something like yellow pages but each entry was a link back to a website
Forum Signatures – Many people where commenting on forums for the sole purpose of getting a link back to their website (they included the links in their signature)
Comment link – The same concept as forum signatures where you comment on some other website or blog in order to get a link back. Even worse, instead of using your real name you could use keywords so instead of writing ‘comment by Alex Chris’, you wrote ‘comment by How to lose weight’ or anything similar.
Article Directories – By publishing your articles on an article directory you could get a link (or 2) back to your website. Some article directories accepted only unique content while other directories accepted anything from spin articles to already published articles.
Shared Content Directories – Websites like hubpages and infobarrel allowed you to publish content and in return you could add a couple of links pointing to your websites.
Link exchange schemes – Instead of trying to publish content you could get in touch with other webmasters and exchange links. In other words I could link your website from mine and you could do the same. In some cases you could even do more complicated exchanges by doing a 3-way link, in other words I link to your website from my website but you link to my website from a different website.
Notice that I used the past tense to describe all the above methods because not only they do not work today, you should not even try them because you are more likely to get a penalty rather than an increase in rankings (especially when it comes to Google).
Google has become very intelligent in recognizing black hat techniques and with the introduction of Panda and Penguin they have managed to solve the problem and protect their search engine from spammers. Of course there are still exceptions but they are doing advances in every new release of their ranking algorithm and very soon none of these tricks will work.
To “follow” or “nofollow”
In addition to the above and in order to give webmasters a way to link to a website without passing any ‘link juice’ (for example in the case of ads), search engines introduced what is known as the “nofollow” link. This is a special tag you can add to a link (for example: “<a href=http://www.somesite.com rel=”nofollow”>Some Site</a>) that tells search engines not to count the particular link as a ‘vote’ to the referenced website.
This was done so that you can link other websites from yours without taking the risk of being caught for selling or exchanging links.
As a rule of thumb, you should add the nofollow tag on all your external links (within your pages) that go to websites you cannot trust 100%, to ALL your comment links, to ALL your blogroll links and to ALL banner ad links.
First you should understand that link building it’s not only a matter of quantity but it is a matter of quality as well. In other words it no longer matters how many links are pointing to your website but it is more important from where these links are coming. For example a link from a normal blog does not have the same weight as a link from New York Times or a link from Matt Cutts blog (head of Google Quality team) is not the same as a link from my blog.
The obvious question is how to you get these links?
If you ask Google they will tell you that any links pointing to your website has to be natural links. Natural links are exactly what their name implies. A website owner or blogger likes another website or blog and naturally adds a link to his/her blog.
Does this happen in reality or is it another myth?
It certainly does but you have to try really hard to get to this point. Take for example this blog, there are many incoming links because other webmasters find the content interesting and I also link to other sites in my articles because I find their content interesting and want to inform my readers about it. This is natural link building where a link has more value from the readers’ point of you rather than the search engine point of view. The best way to attract links is to publish content (text, images, videos, infographics etc) that other people would like to link.
If natural links are what I have just described above, in which category do all other links belong?
They belong in the category of artificial links and by adopting such techniques you increase the risk for getting a manual or algorithmic penalty by Google.
Is guest blogging a valid way to build links?
Guest posting can be a valid way to get links back to your website provided that you don’t do it just for links and that you don’t overdo it. You can read these 2 articles to get a complete picture as to when to accept guest posts on your blog and when to guest post on other blogs.
Social Media mentions are gaining ground as ranking factors and proper configuration of social media profiles can also boost SEO.
In the past you could easily get thousands of links and rank higher but nowadays you have to do more than that. My advice is to forget about link building all together and put all your efforts in making a great website, promote it correctly and everything else will follow.
- Link Building
- Social Media
- Social bookmarking
Why is Off-Page SEO important?
Search engines have been trying for decades to find a way to return the best results to the searcher. To do that, they take into account the on-site SEO factors (described above), some other quality factors and off-page SEO.Off page SEO gives them a very good indication on how the World (other websites and users) perceive the particular website. A web site that is useful is more likely to have references (links) from other websites; it is more likely to have mentions on social media (Facebook likes, tweets, Pins, +1’s etc.) and it is more likely to be bookmarked and shared among communities of like-minded users.
What are the benefits of ‘off-site SEO’ to website owners?
A successful off-site SEO strategy will generate the following benefits to website owners:Increase in rankings – The website will rank higher in the SERPs and this also means more traffic.
Increase in PageRank – Page rank is a number between 0 and 10 which indicates the importance of a website in the eyes of Google. It is the system invented by Larry Page (one of Google’s founders) and one of the reasons that Google was so successful in showing the most relevant results to the searcher. Page rank today is only one out of the 250 factors that Google is using to rank websites.
More exposure – Higher rankings also means greater exposure because when a website ranks in the top positions: it gets more links, more visits and more social media mentions. It’s like a never ending sequence of events where one thing leads to another and then to another etc.
Link Building
Link building is the most popular off-Page SEO method. Basically by building external links to your website, you are trying to gather as many ‘votes’ as you can so that you can bypass your competitors and rank higher. For example if someone likes this article and references it from his/her website or blog, then this is like telling search engines that this page has good information.Over the years webmasters were trying to build links to their websites so that they rank higher and they ‘invented’ a number of ways to increase link count. The most popular ways were:
Blog Directories – something like yellow pages but each entry was a link back to a website
Forum Signatures – Many people where commenting on forums for the sole purpose of getting a link back to their website (they included the links in their signature)
Comment link – The same concept as forum signatures where you comment on some other website or blog in order to get a link back. Even worse, instead of using your real name you could use keywords so instead of writing ‘comment by Alex Chris’, you wrote ‘comment by How to lose weight’ or anything similar.
Article Directories – By publishing your articles on an article directory you could get a link (or 2) back to your website. Some article directories accepted only unique content while other directories accepted anything from spin articles to already published articles.
Shared Content Directories – Websites like hubpages and infobarrel allowed you to publish content and in return you could add a couple of links pointing to your websites.
Link exchange schemes – Instead of trying to publish content you could get in touch with other webmasters and exchange links. In other words I could link your website from mine and you could do the same. In some cases you could even do more complicated exchanges by doing a 3-way link, in other words I link to your website from my website but you link to my website from a different website.
Notice that I used the past tense to describe all the above methods because not only they do not work today, you should not even try them because you are more likely to get a penalty rather than an increase in rankings (especially when it comes to Google).
The birth of black hat SEO
Link building was an easy way to manipulate the search engine algorithms and many spammers tried to take advantage of this by building link networks which gradually lead to the creation of what is generally known as black hat SEO.Google has become very intelligent in recognizing black hat techniques and with the introduction of Panda and Penguin they have managed to solve the problem and protect their search engine from spammers. Of course there are still exceptions but they are doing advances in every new release of their ranking algorithm and very soon none of these tricks will work.
To “follow” or “nofollow”
In addition to the above and in order to give webmasters a way to link to a website without passing any ‘link juice’ (for example in the case of ads), search engines introduced what is known as the “nofollow” link. This is a special tag you can add to a link (for example: “<a href=http://www.somesite.com rel=”nofollow”>Some Site</a>) that tells search engines not to count the particular link as a ‘vote’ to the referenced website.
This was done so that you can link other websites from yours without taking the risk of being caught for selling or exchanging links.
As a rule of thumb, you should add the nofollow tag on all your external links (within your pages) that go to websites you cannot trust 100%, to ALL your comment links, to ALL your blogroll links and to ALL banner ad links.
What is a good link?
So, if the above links are not useful, what is a good link?First you should understand that link building it’s not only a matter of quantity but it is a matter of quality as well. In other words it no longer matters how many links are pointing to your website but it is more important from where these links are coming. For example a link from a normal blog does not have the same weight as a link from New York Times or a link from Matt Cutts blog (head of Google Quality team) is not the same as a link from my blog.
The obvious question is how to you get these links?
If you ask Google they will tell you that any links pointing to your website has to be natural links. Natural links are exactly what their name implies. A website owner or blogger likes another website or blog and naturally adds a link to his/her blog.
Does this happen in reality or is it another myth?
It certainly does but you have to try really hard to get to this point. Take for example this blog, there are many incoming links because other webmasters find the content interesting and I also link to other sites in my articles because I find their content interesting and want to inform my readers about it. This is natural link building where a link has more value from the readers’ point of you rather than the search engine point of view. The best way to attract links is to publish content (text, images, videos, infographics etc) that other people would like to link.
If natural links are what I have just described above, in which category do all other links belong?
They belong in the category of artificial links and by adopting such techniques you increase the risk for getting a manual or algorithmic penalty by Google.
Is guest blogging a valid way to build links?
Guest posting can be a valid way to get links back to your website provided that you don’t do it just for links and that you don’t overdo it. You can read these 2 articles to get a complete picture as to when to accept guest posts on your blog and when to guest post on other blogs.
Social Media
Social media is part of ‘off-site SEO’ and if you think about it, it’s also a form of link building. It should be noted that almost all of the links you get from social media sites are “nofollow” but this does not mean that they do not have any value.Social Media mentions are gaining ground as ranking factors and proper configuration of social media profiles can also boost SEO.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is not as popular as it used to be in the past but it is still a good way to get traffic to your website. Depending on your niche you can find web sites like reddit.com, digg.com, stumbleupon.com, scoop.it and delicious.com (to name a few) to promote your content.Conclusion
Off-page SEO is as important as on-site SEO. If you want your SEO campaigns to be successful you have to do both. When thinking about link building don’t take the easy way, but try to get links from hard-to-get places. The more difficult is to get a link, the more value it has.In the past you could easily get thousands of links and rank higher but nowadays you have to do more than that. My advice is to forget about link building all together and put all your efforts in making a great website, promote it correctly and everything else will follow.
White hat versus black hat techniques:
SEO techniques can be classified into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques of which search engines do not approve. The search engines attempt to minimize the effect of the latter, among them spamdexing. Industry commentators have classified these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO. White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility, although the two are not identical.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review. One example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices. Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's list.
As a marketing strategy
SEO is not an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be more effective like paid advertising through PPC campaigns, depending on the site operator's goals. A successful Internet marketing campaign may also depend upon building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, setting up analytic programs to enable site owners to measure results, and improving a site's conversion rate.SEO may generate an adequate return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors. Search engines can change their algorithms, impacting a website's placement, possibly resulting in a serious loss of traffic. According to Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, in 2010, Google made over 500 algorithm changes – almost 1.5 per day. It is considered wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic
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