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Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts

Monday, 13 June 2016

Instant Ways to Build SEO-Friendly Web Page

The Beautiful and functional website is not only what users look for. If you really want to achieve the benefits of user’s online presence, you have to come up with an SEO-friendly website design. So that, it may target different kinds of search; including image search, local search, and video search, and so on. It is important to optimize a web page for a marketer while complying with every single Google system update. Doing all this, however, is a tricky thing; and this is what this article is all about. Following are some of the tips which you can follow to make your web page SEO-friendly.
Unique Content
Optimization is effective only if the content is good and unique. Along with that, the content must be comprehensible and understandable.Do not link every page with each other. You must have the vision to write the content for a visitor but not for the search engine only.

Highlight Informative Content
Highlight the important content of the web page to make it more prominent.Use strong tags as well, but do not overuse them; otherwise,the content will lose its worth.

Keyword Placement
The use of keywords must be wise as they constitute the most important part of your SEO Campaign. The prospective customers will not find you if you use wrong keywords. To place a right keyword, make up a list of potential keywords and check them by using keyword research tool.Finalize your keywords based on the result given by research tool and then launch them. Do not forget to place the keywords at the right place on the page.

URLs and Filenames
If the URL is SEO-optimized, it means that the search engine will identify your web page quickly. Add keywords in the URL because it will help to upsurge the search engine’s perceptibility.
If you have images on your web page, name it by a descriptive keyword. For instance, if you name a file saying “abcd.jpg” then it will be worth nothing, but if you say “antique-furniture.jpg,” then it makes sense and will be a successful approach to get highlighted by the search engine.

Add Your Post to Social Media
Don’t forget to make social media a part of your SEO strategy, as it will not only help you a lot in interacting and building your brand but will also help you to gain credibility. Link building will be the best thing to jump on the social media bandwagon.

Adopt Responsive Design
Use the design which is readable and understandable on any device. The site format and layout must remain same on any device. The responsive design creates one URL, which will ultimately help your SEO. The SEO power gained by any inbound link will be centralized; assisting the Google and other search engines in bettering your SEO rank.

Meta Optimization
Meta optimization is of great importance as it helps the user to know whether the data is useful for him or not. The title tag is one of the important Meta tags which are useful to give a primary title to a page to help the user, and it also helps SEO to rank your page.

These are few tricks which you may use to make your page SEO Friendly, and they will surely assist you to improve the SEO ranking of your web page.




3 Link building tactics most digital marketers miss out

Building links online is all about getting high PR sites to refer you.Unless you go for free directory listing, you will have to employ some smart marketing skills.One common trick is to upload content on user generated content sites–typically youtube,slideshare and scribd.Content from these sites always ranks well because they are authority sites trusted by search engines.And there are many more such techniques but let us touch upon three easy tactics most marketers miss on.

Buy Out:Most marketers believe in creating original and unique new content which is click worthy.They hire content agencies to dish out tons of blogs,videos and presentations which are uploaded along with promotional links.And then they employ further SEO strategies to rank that content.Whoa! That’s a pretty long process.Here is a short cut.One can figure out which published content is doing well.Content that is already ranking well on SERPs is a horse you can ride on.Of course,it needs to be relevant to your industry.Once you have spotted the sites,you can write to their owners and simply buy out the content. And if he agrees, publish the content on your blog but ask the site owner to retain the high PR old link. Request him to re-direct it to the new page where the content is now published.You may find some owners averse to such tactics but you can coax them into it by giving them a credit line in the content.

Invite Experts:Find the unsung heroes of your industry.If you are in the food industry you will find some famous bloggers who a lot of people follow already.They may not be big celebrities but they are subject matter experts.People in their niche know them.Get them to write blogs for you on your website and request them to promote it amongst their followers.You get a ready access to a lot of consumers who will begin to associate your brand with the expert they always looked up to.And remember,it is not always about money.If you don’t have a budget,you can offer other intangible benefits.If you have a Facebook page with a huge fan following you can offer to promote the author to your followers.A lot of bloggers find that to be an incentive big enough for link exchange or guest blogging.

Republish:It is absolutely ethical to share content available on social media.So,you can find viral content from your niche and republish it on your page.Since it has already proved its worth,chances are it will go viral from your page as well.But remember,you are using someone else’s content.You must be all means give credit to the original creator even in your republished post.



Employ some of these methods to build quality links and reach your SEO goals faster.

Which link building techniques have you used that ACTUALLY work

There are a lot of link generation methods out there, and most of us veterans have probably heard about all of them by now... But which ones have you used and actually seen results from?
Which methods can (and do) you reliably use for multiple niches that generate authoritative links and is scalable based on the amount of time required to obtain a link?

A lot of people want to keep it whitehat or don't have the budget to purchase links.

Let's avoid the junk links, so we'll exclude things like forum signatures, article directories, regular directories, reciprocal linking -- even guest posting for dofollow links is greyhat at best these days, and most big sites either don't accept them anymore or you have to know somebody to get approved.

Examples might be:

The skyscraper technique:Taking a page that has a lot of links and making something better (or more currently updated), then reaching out to sites and asking them to link back to you.
Guest-o-graphics:Infographics where you do manual outreach and offer to write a custom short (200-300) word post in which you include your links.
HARO:Answering questions from journalists in the hope of getting a link back in your quote.
Journalist "stalking":Finding journalists who write on your subject often and getting to know them via commenting, social following, emails, etc. until they know who you are and might be open to a pitch.
Broken link building:Trying to find dead links, replicating the content, and reaching out for a link when you inform the webmaster of their broken current link.
Regular content promotion:Trying to write something cool and emailing sites who have posted similar stuff in the past to see if they'll share it. Might also use Google Alerts to try to make your pitches shortly after something relevant is published.
Doing expert round-ups:Emailing a bunch of experts, asking for a quote on a subject, then hoping they will share the content to promote their own brand. Heard this is getting less effective as more people do it.
Those are examples of ways to get whitehat links. But what have you done that HAS gotten you whitehat links?

Not everything that looks good on paper is effective in the real world. Maybe we can learn from each other's experiences.

Best Backlinks SEO Strategy for Authority Blogging?

First of all, "getting backlinks quickly" is already a major red flag buddy!
You should never ever get backlinks fast! ..period!

The "Pros" do not get backlinks quickly. Where did you learn that?

They surely get backlinks in a very smart way - but never fast.

Getting backlinks fast will only hurt you more than help (if it ever helps you that is).

How "quickly" your pages get backlinks will depend on your Domain Authority and your Domain Age. The older the domain and the higher the domain authority - the safer it becomes to give it backlinks "quickly". Hope you get what I mean here.

Backlinks are supposed to be a NATURAL thing. It was never designed to be something people actually pay for and purposely get. So, in a sense, all SEO is blackhat. "White Hat SEO" is just an illusion (or excuse).

The moment you are purposely creating a backlink to your page on another site - it becomes a black hat strategy. Because, the only reason you are consciously creating that backlink is to "cheat the search engines" to get higher rankings. Isn't that right?

I wouldn't stress too much about getting backlinks dude!

Focus more on Generating Traffic to your pages and let the backlinks grow Naturally.

This is the best way to build a successful blog or website online. If you get too caught up in the SEO "teaching" you will find so many contradictions. You just mentioned a few here!

People are really running away from the Search Engine Basics. Because the Laziness in our specie is growing rapidly.

People just want to rank crappy content on the search engines fast and make lots of money online that way - so they can scratch their butts on a couch, while watching the Simpsons and eating chips.

Nothing wrong with the latter-or even with being a bit "lazy". You just have to be Ambitiously Lazy, I've learned.

Work smart, and build Online Assets the Right Way. And trying to fool the search engines is not working smart at all.

You have to lead with REAL VALUE Online if you really want the search engines to give your content good rankings.

You are overlooking one simple fact; the search engine's main Priority is THEIR USER.

Without their user the search engines are out of business.

So, if you want the search engines to love your content-you need to make their user love you first!

Please the search engine users, and the search engines will please you.
That's it!
But how can you really deliver the best of the best to the search engine users if you are too focused on ranking fast and getting a lot of backlinks?

You see how wrong this approach is?

The Pros know this my friend. And it is time you realize the truth as well!

The only two things you should focus on - in order to benefit BIG from the search engines is; High Quality Content AND a shit load of Targeted Traffic.

Nothing to do with Backlinks!
The backlinks will come naturally.

Indexation and quality of auto translated content

We usually need large amounts of english content. We use different approaches to generate it. We have already tested several text auto translation services. We found out that different language pairs provide different-quality results. The best results we got for de-en (from German to English). The result text is not ideal, but rather better than other pairs. For example:
Source text
Ludwig von Mises gilt zweifellos als einer der größten Intellektuellen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Es gibt kaum ein wirtschaftliches Thema, auf das der Philosoph des Liberalismus und Vordenker der Österreichischen Schule der Nationalökonomie in seinen Publikationen nicht eingegangen ist. Das Faszinierende daran:

Seine Gedankengänge sind noch immer brandaktuell, seine Denkanstöße, wie zum Thema Mindestlohn, erschreckend visionär.

Michael Ladwig hat in liebevoller Detailarbeit das umfangreiche Werk Ludwig von Mises’ analysiert und ein Lexikon zusammengestellt, das eine Orientierungshilfe in seiner Philosophie bietet. Leicht verständliche Artikel beleuchten Mises’ Gedanken von A wie Anarchismus bis Z wie Zwang, mal in ein paar Sätzen auf den Punkt gebracht, mal über mehrere spannende Seiten.

Autotranslated text
Ludwig von Mises is without a doubt one of the greatest Intellectuals of the 20th century. Century. There is hardly an economic subject, the philosopher of liberalism, and thinkers of the Austrian school of Economics in its publications is not addressed. The Fascinating thing is:

His thoughts are always up to date, its food for thought, as to the topic of minimum wage, terrifying visionary.

Michael Ladwig has analysed in loving detail the extensive work of Ludwig von Mises’ and a lexicon is compiled, which provides a guidance in his philosophy. Easy-to-understand article Mises’ thoughts of A like anarchism to Z as in forced, time in a couple of sentences to the point light, at other times about several exciting pages.

Questions 1. Do you have any recommendations on how to increase auto translation quality? 2. What language pairs or tricks do you use for qualified autotranslated content generation? 3. Have anyone experimented on indexation and pushing to top of the webpages with the auto translated content?

Backlinking Like a Boss 4 Techniques Guaranteed to Work

This isn’t going to be a namby-pamby guide full of un-actionable suggestions to magically manifest quality backlinks in 20 minutes or less. This is a list of totally actionable ways to get links, from the start of the idea to the end of the concept.
I’m talking about good links, authority links. I’ll wait for you to grab a tissue for all of that drool I know is running down your face. Don’t be offended when I say this is a backlinking guide for dummies. Anyone with a pulse and some content creation skill can follow these steps from start to finish for results, even if you are just a beginner.

Experts are also welcome! I hope you’ll learn something new, and I hope you’ll share tips and tricks that you know with us all in the comments section.

Some of the information discussed here is drawn from a link building case study done by Emily Johnson of Omnipages. This study specifically focused on a niche promotion, which is important because that means it was tricky. If it worked on a hard case, it is likely to work for you.

Some information specifically draws from changes in how Google views links, another solid source for authoritative information on this subject. I’ll share some techniques from Brian Dean’s Skyscraper Technique for link building as well. Some of the suggestions come from my own, on the ground experience in content creation and blogging. The bottom line is, these techniques are guaranteed to work if you work them. Without further delay, let’s get into the meat of plotting out organic link building fast.

1. Asset Content As Link Bait

The art of growing links starts with the seed, which is the idea for your content. You’ll nurture that seed with a few resources that will be attractive to readers in your immediate audience and beyond. As the plant grows, others will notice it, find it attractive, and want to show it off. This is a residual benefit of creating the right type of content and it will feed you traffic without any additional time and effort from you.

Make sure your content is in line with your niche, but also relevant to anyone in a related field. In the Johnson case study, the niche was in writing, and the post was created to appeal to both writers and those outside the writing field. The idea of a workspace organization concept was born, because it could interest anyone working in an office environment, whether for themselves or others. Before deciding on that topic, Johnson sourced some information from BuzzSumo, What’s Trending, and Open Site Explorer to find the most popular published content on the topics they were considering. All of these tools are fantastic for finding viral topics, bloggers and sites with influence, and the hottest search terms.

Read the content that you find using the tools suggested by Johnson and see what seems to me working for them. Structure your content accordingly in terms of layout, including an infographic if that seems to be pulling in views for others, or video, as the case may be. It is often worth collaborating with another content creator that specializes in design. Not only is this a backlink opportunity in itself (give guest post credit for the infographic and ask for a cross post promotion from your collaborator!), but it can really set your content apart from its strongest competitors.

Make sure the content you are going to peddle is solid, interesting and, if possible, entertaining. If it isn’t, all of the networking and research in the world may not help you attract interest from influencers.

2. Identify Influencers

You’ve no doubt found some influencers through BuzzSumo during your research process, but things like the MozBar make SEO research literal second nature. Use it to find posts with a Domain Authority of greater than 30. The authors of these posts are your contact list.

Full disclosure about the next tip: Klout is a thing close to my heart. I think it’s a wonderful way to get a quick and dirty idea about the social influence an individual has, and I think more people should use it to source backlinking opportunities. Peerindex and Kred are other, similar measuring sticks. A Klout score of around 50 is slightly above average, so reach out to those in the 60 and up score. Of course, influencers should be related or relevant to your topic.

Hashtags on social media sites can be another great way to source out influencers, but you have to get involved. Click around at posts that rank highly on trending topics and then click around on those individuals’ pages. If they frequently share or create posts that relate to your topic, consider reaching out to them.

A tip from Brian Dean is to put influencers who already have a history of sharing content from others at the top of your contact list. These influencers are like a warm market waiting for your high asset content to reveal itself to them.

3. Reach Out And Promote Your Content

I could spend a lot of time talking about the mechanics of this, but instead I’m going to give you some scripts to work with. Once you feel confident with the scripts, you can reverse engineer them to figure out new ways to say the same thing that reflect some of your personality. For now, here is a guide.

Hello, I hope this message finds you well! My name is Martha Smith and I am a <your title/role at publication>.

While researching <topic your piece is about that relates to what you’ve seen on their site>, I found this article you published <their URL>. I really enjoyed it and related to it, and even noticed that you linked to <some URL they linked to that is also on topic>, which is a great reference. I’m reaching out because I’ve created a <blog/infographic/video> with <new/more in depth/updated information> on the matter and thought you might find that interesting or useful.

If you’d like to link to my content on your page, I welcome you to do that and am very open to extending that offer to you about your future content as well. I’d love to collaborate. I’m happy to provide you with whatever unique description or intro you might want to use with it.

Thanks so much for doing what you do. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me, anytime.

Make sure all of your most relevant information is included in your email signature, including your blog or the page you are focused on promoting at the moment. At this point, you can sit down and wait. If you’re neurotic like me, you may want to put a spreadsheet together so you can easily see who you’ve reached out to, who has responded, and what the status is. I like to use columns to indicate information like this and also a color coded system where I highlight certain fields to let me know quickly that communication is established. If you do this, you’ll also be able to see what your success rate is from cold emails to your warm market.

Brian saw an 11% conversion rate of quality links result from this practice and it worked for Emily as well. This is expert tested and approved.

With your social media influencers, lurk around on their pages and retweet or share their posts and content. You can warm them up this way, as many pay attention to these types of things (they’re engaging with their audience as well, after all) and they’ll recognize your name. Modify the email script above to reference social media, and see if you can convert them to sharing your posts or even adding your blog or infographic to theirs as a source for additional information. Some social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest are extra friendly to images and infographics, such as Emily’s example in her case study. Considering this will help you along the way, but test out influencers from all forms of social media.

4. Reach For The Stars- Contact Bloggers With Columns Or Relationships With Major Authority Sites
The top of the mountain in backlinks contains A-listers like bloggers for the Huffington Post, LifeHack, Real Simple, and similar high traffic authority sites. Once you’ve collected some hits from the tips outlined earlier in this piece, make a play for the Big Bloggers On Campus. These bloggers should already be interested in the type of content you’ve created and post often. They’re always looking for ideas to keep the content rolling.

Your approach to these folks should be more like pitching an idea to an editor. Be friendly, brief and ask if they’d like to see what you’ve created. Here is a quick modification of the earlier script for authority bloggers:

Hi and thanks for taking the time to read my message. My name is Martha Smith and I am a <your title/role at publication>. I’m a big fan of your work and you’ve given me a lot of great information since I started reading your posts.

I recently created a <blog/infographic/video> on <subject of your post that intersects with their type of content>. It’s doing pretty well online, and I wondered if you have any interest in seeing it.

It’s important to note that PR people can also use these scripts to alert bloggers and news sources to info about events they are promoting. Just substitute in the information where I talk about the subject of the content in either script.

If you receive a positive reply, take a moment to dance around the room for a few minutes. You deserve it. Once you’re settled, craft a response and supply the information. Again, be SURE all of your relevant information is in your email signature. This will keep your email body short and to the point and the pretty colored links will stand right out, drawing the blogger to your information.

A great pro tip from Emily Johnson is to avoid Mondays and Fridays to do your prospecting. People are more focused and in the groove from Tuesday to Thursday.

Have any of these tips worked for you? Do you have any great backlinking opportunities to share with the readers? I’d love to hear from you in the comments section.

Does your site have right meta data for SEO?

When the search engine spiders crawl through your website they are on a look out for specific information about your site’s purpose. They find this information in meta data which ideally needs to be included by the coders when they design the site. If your website is already up, don’t sweat. Simply right click on every page and view page source. Look for a code that looks something like this:
<title> Professional content writing agency </title> <meta name=“description” content= “Different types of writing services like technical writing, medical writing and creative writing”/> <meta name=“keywords” content= “writing, technical, medical, creative”/>
There is a theory going around that meta data is no longer important for SEO. Well, part of it is true because Google does not consider it as an important factor in ranking these days. But it still picks up this vital information to create its search results. The blue headline it displays is information written in the title tag. The description below the title in search results is nothing but text from meta descriptions. These titles and descriptions play an important role in ‘click through’.
But remember, it is not enough to have meta data. It is equally important to get it right. How do you ensure you have the right meta data?  
Cut it Short: If you meta description is more than 160 characters, it may get truncated by Google. The users will see an incomplete description and your call to action which is usually towards the end may not be displayed at all. It is best to tell your story in few words. 

Think like a Salesman: Your pitch must be convincing, in active voice and with a strong call to action. Find out more, learn more and try it now are some ways of ending your meta description. 

Optimize Keywords: Don’t try to stuff keywords in your description. Keep it human readable. The sentence should make sense. While stuffing is bad idea, if your description has a keyword that matches search query, it will be highlighted in blue. And that automatically increases the chances of being clicked. So use the right amount of keywords in a readable sentence. 

Be honest: Don’t write a description only to drive click through. Write description that totally matches the content of the page. If you have created dummy pages with meta descriptions or if you are using keyword heavy description for a page that has no relevant content, Google will notice. Chances are that you will be penalized with lower rankings.

That said, meta data need not always be forced. If you have a page with multiple products, you may not be able to write a single 160 characters description that does justice to the content. In such cases, leave the task of generating relevant SERP description to search engines. They will pick up the gist on their own and they are more likely to display keywords being searched for.

Make Google Visit Your Site More Often: 10 Essential Tips for Increasing Your Crawl Rate

Your crawl rate is a good indicator of how well your page is doing in the virtual realm. If you are getting regular and recurrent visits by the crawler, you can consider it a sure sign that your site has been noticed by the search engine. And being noticed by the search engines and identified as more important and relevant than other similar sites generates greater number of visits.
Although there are no guaranteed ways in which you can ensure visits by the search engine bots, what you can do is invite them to come more frequently. The visibility of your site is of crucial importance if you want it to succeed, so make sure you employ the following techniques outlined in this article.

1. Fresh content
Your site has higher chances of being noticed by Google and other search engines if you are updating it with new unique information regularly. It would be good to try and add new creative content as often as possible since that will generate more views. Daily update would be optimal, but if that is not feasible, try to post new content every three days. An easy and affordable way to do this would be to add new content through a blog on your website, which is simpler and easier than adding new web pages constantly, and it yields the same results. There is also another benefit to this: if you are updating your site regularly with unique and interesting content, your visitors will notice it, and come more frequently to check out if there is anything new.

2. Page load time
Search engine bots only have a limited time to visit your page, so you should use it wisely. If the bot has to go through a lot of load heavy content, such as PDF files or huge images, then it will spend less time going to your other pages, that you actually want crawled.


3. Ping power
A good way to directly alert search engines of your new content would be to add automatic pinging to your site. This will give you a better chance of getting your content noticed as soon as it has been posted.

4. Ensure optimal ‘crawlability’
In order to get the best results, you need to make sure that your web site functions well technically. Do everything you can to make it easier for the search engine bot to crawl your page. This includes making sure your server works correctly, fixing any potential crawl errors, make your web site faster, optimize its various performance areas and all the other technical details that might help your web site become a more popular destination for search engine bots.

5. Monitor your crawl speed
You can use Google Webmaster Tools to monitor and optimize your crawl speed. Monitoring and analyzing your crawl stats is important, because it gives you a better picture of what works and what does not in attracting search engine bots to your page. If you figure out you have issues with search engine bots not crawling your site effectively, then you should consider manually changing your crawl rate to faster, which will give the bots the opportunity to crawl more of your web content.

6. Block access to unwanted pages
A very effective way to get the bots to crawl more of your web site is to block all the unnecessary pages, such as admin and back-end pages. These pages do not get indexed anyway, so in this context they represent a loss of time that could be otherwise spent on crawling other content. You can use Robots.txt for this purpose, and do so with a few very simple steps.

7. Avoid duplicate content
Duplicate content brings trouble, so it is best to avoid it all together. You can do so by checking the internal link structure and making sure there is no duplicate content that gets returned via different URLs. One of the more obvious disadvantages of duplicate content is that the time the crawler spends on them will not then be used to visit your actual unique content. Or, simpler: it decreases crawl rates. Having duplicate content can also result in your site being banned, or your ranks decreasing. For all of these reasons, it is a good idea to get rid of the duplicate content, and also to verify that there is no duplicate content on your web site.

8. Create sitemaps
Creating sitemaps is a good way to get your site discovered fast by search engine bots. There are very simple tools available online that you can use to create and submit your sitemap.

9. Connect your site through social networking services
Although there is some debate about the effectiveness of this method, many webmasters report that that connecting their web sites through sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and even Google+ has helped them generate more crawl visits from search engine bots, so it is definitely worth a try. Adding a Twitter search widget or your Twitter profile status can also help you with getting fresh content on your site regularly.

10. Link your site
Getting your site noticed by the search engines could be as simple as getting more backlinks from the sites you know are regularly crawled. High quality backlinks can help improve the crawl rate and the indexation speed of your site.

SEO Mistakes That Destroy Your Search Engine Rankings

SEO is important for the survival of an online business. Many business owners and marketers would disagree with the statement as they like to think that content is more important. Moreover, they presume that having amazing content on their websites is enough for their survival.
If you are one of those people and only praise the content, then you are very wrong as SEO is equally important. In fact, SEO and content go hand in hand, and good quality of both these aspects is required to ensure the survival of online businesses.

After realizing the importance of SEO, be sure to avoid these mistakes that could potentially destroy your search engine rankings for good.

Google Keyword Tool
Some people have the misconception that they are committing a horrendous act of cheating by using the Google keyword search. But this is not the case as this keyword tool is for helping the business owners in identifying the popular and least popular keywords.

Moreover, they also help the people in learning about the popular keywords that could be used by the visitors in their particular niche. So by not using the Google keyword tool and by inventing your keywords is a great way of stuffing up your rankings.

Promotion of Content
The other mistake that could destroy your ranking is not enough promotion of your content. A lot of people feel shy in sharing their content or asking other people to share it on their behalf.

This behavior is totally normal but for the sake of building a huge audience base and to rank better on the searches, one need to remove the feeling of shyness and share their content endlessly on multiple social platforms.

There is no need to promote content when you own a popular website, but you would have to undertake the strenuous task of manually sharing you content in case of the new or unpopular website.

Inconsistent Publishing
A recent study showed that publishing content on your website twice per day has a better chance of ranking in the search engines than those who share content once every week.

So restricting the process of uploading the content to once every single month can destroy your only chance of ranking better in the search engines.

Search Engines’ Webmaster Tool
The webmaster tool is an amazing feature provided by both Bing and Google. It was made public for the benefits of the web owners.

The registered members of the Webmaster Tool have access to a unique way of evaluating their sites and knowing about their status among their target audience. Not utilizing the Webmaster Tool is like driving on a dangerous track with your eyes closed.
Webmaster Tool is an easy process; it doesn’t require technical knowledge. By not utilizing its services, online business owners are destroying their only chance at visibility among their target audience.

This list, in any way, doesn’t make up for the entire SEO mistakes; there are so many other mistakes that even seasoned web owners are committing on a daily basis. So every business owner should be mindful of their environment and should stay clear of these mistakes that could cost them no ranking at all.

Sunday, 12 June 2016

5 Things To Learn From Brian Dean's Complete List Of Google's Ranking Factors

If you have spent any time researching or reading blogs about SEO you will have come across Brian Dean and his website Backlinko. He is a recognized authority on the topic, particularly in relation to white hat link building strategies.

One of the most popular posts on his blog is his "complete list" of Google's 200 ranking factors.

It was first published back in 2013. Since then Dean has updated and modified it as new information becomes available. Over three years on from its first publication date, however, and it is still one of the most popular articles on his blog.

It is a 6,000 word behemoth, but before you go off to trawl through each of the 200 factors, the main things you will learn are outlined below.

What Is Google's 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List About

Before going into the five things you will learn, let's look briefly at what the post is about. It is widely known that Google's search algorithm uses over 200 ranking factors when it decides where to position web pages in a search result.

For anyone interested in SEO, knowing and understanding these factors is a passionate quest. After all, if you know what the Google algorithm considers when it looks at your site, you can take action to improve your position.

The problem is that nobody really knows what those ranking factors are except for a small group of tight-lipped Google engineers. Dean admits this himself on his blog post, saying the 200 ranking factors in his list are based on information that Google has released plus his own research, gut instinct, and speculation.


It is still a fascinating read though, and you will get more out of it once you know what to look out for. So, here are the five things you will learn from Brian Dean's blog post: Google's 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List.

Takeout 1 :

Google is obsessed with its users.

Google states this repeatedly, so it should really not be a surprise to anyone. Look what they did to mobile search results, for example - website owners were warned to improve the quality of mobile user experience and those that didn't were dumped from mobile search results pages.

Still, it is striking to see this obsession with delivering on user expectations as you move down the list of ranking factors. Take number four as an example. It is about the registration length of a domain. Admittedly, it is probably a very minor factor, but it does show the way Google thinks about users. Dean quotes a Google patent which essentially says that domain names that are registered several years in advance appear more legitimate than domain names registered for just a year.


Takeout 2:

Google's advice to forget about how the algorithm works and just concentrate on creating a brilliant user experience is probably still the best SEO advice you will ever get.

There are two reasons for this. The first is the sheer quantity and breadth of the ranking factors listed - it is enough to make your head spin. You only really realize that once you sit and read through it. You will also understand why it takes a machine to make these decisions - no human could consider all the factors and weigh them fairly every time.



The other reason is much more pragmatic. As you read through the list you will realize you will tick-off as complete many of the factors simply by creating great content and a good user experience.

Number 18 on the list is a good example. It is about latent semantic indexing keywords. If you haven't heard of this before it is all about synonyms. When Google looks at the content on a page, it expects to find synonyms of the main keyword. This is not something you have to take action on, however. Instead it is something that will appear naturally if you create content that delivers exceptional user experience.

Takeout 3:

You will still learn something that you don't know.


Despite what was said in the last point, you will probably still learn something useful about SEO. They are peppered throughout the list. Here are a few examples:

• Number 88 - links from competitors who rank well for the same keyword/s are more valuable than other links.
• Number 71 - having an SSL certificate helps
• Number 182 - pop up ads could be damaging
• Number 25-27 - updating pages is important

Takeout 4:

Some of them are really obscure, while others are so minor it was barely worth the 30 seconds it took to read Dean's paragraph.

Number 153 is a good example. It is about Easter egg results. These are results where Google engineers have decided to have a bit of fun. The example Dean gives is a search for the phrase "Atari Breakout". Go ahead and try it - open a new browser window and punch it into a Google Image search.


It has nothing to do with your SEO or search results page position.

An example of a minor factor is the first one on the list - domain age. Dean gives a quote from the well-known Google engineer Matt Cutts:

"The difference between a domain that's six months old versus one year old is really not that big at all."

In other words, for any practical purpose, it is irrelevant.

Out of the 200+ factors on the list, you should only worry about 10 or so.

Takeout 5:

Dean's post will probably make you less interested in Google's complete list of ranking factors in the future.

This is because the information that Google does divulge is undoubtedly the most important, so your time is much better spent concentrating on that rather than the strange, obscure and irrelevant.

Don't let that last takeout put you off reading the post. It all comes down to the knowledge you expect to gain. If you expect to dramatically increase your knowledge of SEO while picking up invaluable tips, you will be disappointed. The best SEO advice is to create brilliant user experiences and, when you have a spare 30 minutes, spend it reading Dean's 200 Google ranking factors.