basics of seo - share! 2016 (leeds digital festival 2016)
TRANSCRIPT
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION
AN INTRODUCTION TO
CONTENTS
• What is SEO?
• How does Google determine what ranks?
• What is Google looking for?
• The importance of analytics
— Lyndon Antcliff, Cornwall SEO
SEO ISN’T DEAD, IT’S JUST NO LONGER FASHIONABLE.
WHICH IS GOOD.
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WHAT IS SEO?
THE FIRST ENGINES
• 1990 - Archie
• 1993 - Excite, JumpStation
• 1994 - WebCrawler, Yahoo & Lycos
• 1997 - Ask Jeeves
• 1999 - Google
• 2000 - Yandex
• 2008 - DuckDuckGo
• 2009 - Bing
WHAT IS SEO
ON SITE
OFF SITE TECHNICAL
HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES OPERATE
Search engines have two major functions: crawling and building an index, and providing search users with a ranked list of the websites they've determined are the most relevant.
HOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT
RANKS?
ALGORITHMS
ALGORITHMS
• Panda
• Penguin
• Hummingbird
• Pigeon
• Phantom
• Pay Day
• Pirate
PANDA ALGORITHMHOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
Panda is a change to Google's search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011.
The change aimed to lower the rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites", and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results.
PANDA ALGORITHMHOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
• Ensure there is a good level (500+ words) of unique, relevant content on a page
• Include links to other relevant pages on the site as well as links to authoritative external sites
• Ensure all taxonomies (tag, category and author pages) and any paginated pages (page 2 onwards) are noindexed
PENGUIN ALGORITHMHOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
Penguin is a codename for a Google algorithm update that was first announced on April 24, 2012.
The update is aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using now declared black-hat SEO techniques involved in increasing artificially the ranking of a webpage by manipulating the number of links pointing to the page.
PENGUIN ALGORITHMHOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
• Don’t submit the site to too many online directories, if you do, also use the brand name and link to the home page
• Don’t buy links of Fiverr
• Vary your link text
• Not all links have to be ‘follow links’
• https://monitorbacklinks.com/seo-tools/free-backlink-checker
PIGEON ALGORITHMHOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
Pigeon is the code name given to one of Google's local search algorithm updates. This update was released on July 24, 2014.
The update is aimed to increase the ranking of local listing in a search.
The changes will also affect the search results shown in Google Maps along with the regular Google search results.
PIGEON ALGORITHMHOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
• Have a complete Google+ profile and Google My Business listing
• Use the same phone number and brand name everywhere online
PHANTOM ALGORITHMHOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
Phantom 1 (May 2013): unconfirmed by Google, could be any change to the algorithm
Phantom 2 = Quality Update 1 (May 2015): The change first identified and unofficially named “Phantom 2” was later officially confirmed by Google and called the “Quality Update.”
Phantom 3 (Nov. 2015): Unconfirmed by Google, suspected to be effectively Quality Update 2.
WHAT IS GOOGLE LOOKING FOR?
ONSITEFACTORS
SEARCH QUALITY GUIDELINES
• In 2013 Google released a condensed version of their Search Quality Guidelines – however on November 12, 2015 Google rocked the SEO world by releasing the entire document.
• The document weighs in at a substantial 144 insight packed pages.
• Download link: http://bit.ly/1YQzJ3I
YMYL PAGES - YOUR MONEY OF YOUR LIFE
Your money or your life pages (YMYL) are held in very high regard by Google as they often contain information that can directly influence a searchers life (either medically or financially). Google has five categories of YMYL pages, these are ecommerce/transactional pages, financial advice/information pages, medical information pages, legal pages and ‘Other’.
While in theory, anyone can create a page about specific medical conditions or financial planning, Google wants to ensure that the YMYL pages on page one are as high quality as they can be. You can improve your score by linking to and referencing high authority resources, being linked to as a resource, including ‘expert’ opinions and providing additional content (and downloads).
Notably, Google sees ecommerce sites in the same vein as YMYL pages. It’s therefore vitally important that any site with a store element is functional, secure and free from glaring errors.
IS YOUR SITE TRUSTWORTHY?
Every now and again we all come across an abandoned blog or website that hasn’t been updated in months (if not longer). However a site could be active and still active, but if there is no moderation on the blog and it’s full of spammy, bot generated comments about great pharmaceutical products or it looks like the site has been hacked/isn’t formatting correctly – it sends all the wrong signals and that the site is untrustworthy.
If a site owner doesn’t care enough to make sure the site formats correctly and isn’t full of spam, why should a site user trust the site and the company supposedly maintaining it?
REMOVE LOW QUALITY CONTENT
Your page has thin content – It’s been known for a while now that thin content is not the Panda update’s friend, however it’s more than having 500 words on a page.
In some cases, short content works – however if your page title warrants more than a short paragraph explaining it fully, you probably should look at expanding it.
This isn’t saying that all short content is bad, for example Know Queries and Know Simple Queries are the driving force behind featured snippets in SERPs and are often basic questions that can be answered in one or two sentences (and there is a general consensus that there is one agreeable answer).
PAUL HAAHR - SMX MUNICH, MARCH 2016GRADING PAGES
• Google measures itself with live experiments:
• A/B experiments on real traffic
• Look for changes in click patterns
• A lot of traffic is in one experiment or another
• Google judges pages on two main factors:
• Needs Met (where mobile is front and centre)
• Page Quality
E.A.T.
EXPERTISE
AUTHORITY TRUST
INTERNAL/EXTERNAL LINKING
• Link to internal pages within your site wherever necessary, for example if your bananas page mentions apples and you have another page dedicated to apples, link the word apples to this page
• If possible, link to other websites that are relevant to the topic - such as The Guardian, Huffington Post, Wikipedia and other blogs. As long as this is natural and provides user value, Google will value your page as a resource
OFFSITEFACTORS
COMMUNITY CREATION ON SOCIAL NETWORKS
Also known as online reputation management, this is the first and foremost step with which you have to initiate your process.
By doing this you can extend your network online, get connect with your friends, share things with each other, and promote your company/website to build an online reputation.
This is the same as Web 2.0 (Participatory Web), which means you have to show your active participation on a regular basis.
It can also be beneficial to create a branded Tumblr, Pinterest, This.cm and Blogspot account and post to these monthly with unique content, as these can provide good social links.
BLOGGING
This is one of the most powerful ways to promote your site online.
Write a blog of your own for your company/website and include lots of unique content. Be precise in what you're trying to convey for the users in your blog entry and promote your blog in blog directories and blog search engines.
If you're not very good at writing content for blog posts, hire a guest blogger for your blog and ask him/her to write precise and unique content so that your blog can gain more credit from a search engine point of view.
fiverr.com and upwork.com
IDENTIFYING BLOGS
TECHNICALFACTORS
SITE SPEED
Slow websites reduce user satisfaction. Simple as that. And since Google is obsessed with user satisfaction, it measures site speed when crawling websites.
Google also considers user-generated signals related to site speed, including clickthrough rate and bounce rate. Load speed directly affects user engagement.
If your website load speed is higher than 10 seconds, consider reducing multimedia elements. Also, pay attention to coding errors that may be creating page load issues.
SITE ARCHITECTURE
Your site’s architecture has a significant effect on search engine rankings.
There’s no exact site architecture that works for every site.
The important thing is to make sure your site is user friendly.
Site architecture affects engagement factors like clickthrough rate, time on site and bounce rate. Engagement factors directly (and indirectly) influence search results. Your site should have clear page navigation, a compelling design, prominent calls-to-actions and social media icons.
META DATA
Meta data continues to play a pivotal role in search rankings. The presence of the description tag is a minor ranking factor. Its importance is more for getting searchers to click through to your site.
Avoid keyword stuffing in the meta data. It’s no longer part of the ranking algorithm and can have a negative impact if used improperly.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ANALYTICS
William Edwards Deming
YOU CAN’T MANAGE WHAT YOU DON’T MEASURE.
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LEARNING IS NOT COMPULSORY. NEITHER IS
SURVIVAL.
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WITHOUT DATA YOU’RE JUST ANOTHER PERSON WITH AN
OPINION.
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GOOGLE ANALYTICS