how to rank your website on page #1 of google...decrease rankings of sites that engage in shady link...
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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO)
How to Rank Your Website on Page #1 of Google
AcademyEquinet
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Training CourseAcademyEquinet
SEO Head
Technical SEO Content Manager
PR / Link Builder
SEO Analyst / CRO
•Keyword research •Site architecture •On-page SEO •Site auditing •Speed optimisation •Mobile optimisation •Etc
• Content creation • Content research • Content calendar • Content editing • Content design
• Social media • Language translation • Etc
• Identify low hanging fruits • Scaling link building • Event marketing • Relationship building with
customers & influencers • Conducting interviews • Press releases • Etc
• Monitor keyword rankings • Traffic reporting • Revenue per keyword • Overall revenue from search • User behavioural signals
• Bounce rate • Time on site • Pages per visit
• Etc
The 4 Pillars of SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Training CourseAcademyEquinet
Topics Covered
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Introduction
Keyword Research
On-Page SEO
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4 Off-Page SEO(Link Building)
Top 3 Ranking FactorsSearch Results
Answers the searcher’s intent
Keywords are found on the web page
Strong backlink profile
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Introduction to SEO
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SEO Fundamentals
Why SEO is So Important?
to 80% ignore paid ads on the right side of the SERPs70%
of links clicked on by search engine users are organic results70%
Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/24-eye-popping-seo-statistics/42665/
close rate for SEO leads on average compared to 1.7% close rate for outbound leads (print or direct mail)
14.6%
of internet users use search82.6%
illion global searches conducted each month on average100 B
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How Do Search Engines Work?
Algorithms
To calculate authority and relevancy of a webpage to a given search query.
Crawling
Search engine spiders crawl the web through following links
Indexing
Search engines store the information it collects into its index.
Ranking
A score is given to each of webpage after taking into account hundreds of ranking factors.
Search Results
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Google Major Algorithm ChangesGoogle changes its search algorithm around 500 - 600 times each year. That’s 1 - 2 times on average each day. Some algorithm updates have tremendous results on the search rankings. Below is a list of major algorithmic updates in recent years:
•Panda •Penguin •Hummingbird •Pigeon Update •Mobile Update •RankBrain
Panda Update (2011)
Penguin Update (2012)
Hummingbird Update (2013)
Lower the rankings of low-quality sites.
Decrease rankings of sites that engage in shady link building.
Relevancy and Knowledge graph update (Semantic Search).
Pigeon Update (2014)Improves distance and location ranking parameters for local search results.
Mobile-Friendly Update (2015)Impacts mobile search rankings of non-mobile-friendly pages.
Recommended reading: • https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change • http://searchengineland.com/library/google/
google-algorithm-updates
RankBrain (2015)A machine learning algorithm that aims to present the most potentially correct document in response to unfamiliar or verbose queries.
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How to Rank Page #1 on Google
On-Page SEO Off-Page SEO
• Keywords found on content
• Exceptional and unique content
• Fast page loading time
• Optimized for mobile
• Proper URL structures
• Good site architecture
• Optimized internal links
• Acquiring inbound links from reputable, relevant webpages through Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Email Outreach, etc.
• Local citations
• Search engine submission
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Training CourseAcademyEquinet
The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors: 2017
Recommended reading: • http://searchengineland.com/2017-periodic-table-of-seo-factors-276790
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ReportingOff-Page SEOOn-Page SEO
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The 4-Step SEO Process
Step 1: Conduct keyword research
The first step of any SEO campaign is to conduct keyword research. Doing SEO without knowing what keywords your site should rank for is like firing at a target without first taking aim.
Detailed keyword research and analysis sets your SEO campaign up for success in the long run.
Keyword Research
Step 2: Make your site search engine friendly
Once you have gathered a targeted list of keywords, the next step would be to input those keywords into your existing content. You can also use your keyword list to give you new content ideas.
Other on-page SEO factors include site speed, mobile optimisation, site architecture, and internal linking.
Step 3: Link building and local citation building
After taking care of your on-page SEO, here comes the hard part.
Off-page SEO activities include link building and building local citations.
Step 4: Reporting and analysis
Your SEO campaign doesn’t stop here. Check your keyword ranking reports, regularly monitor your site health through 3rd party tools such as Google Webmaster Tools, check your backlink reports, and identify potential areas for improvement.
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Keyword Research
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How to conduct keyword research
like a pro
What is Keyword Research?Keyword research is finding out what search terms
your potential readers are using, so that you can optimise your site better with the data.
Your job is to know what those keywords are and optimise your
website for them.
Your readers use keywords/search terms to search for your
business.
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Why is Keyword Research Important?
To provide the best answer to a question, you first need to understand the intention of the question, also commonly referred to as the searcher intent. Keyword research can help you to identify buyer personas based on the questions (search terms) they ask.
By conducting keyword research, you’ll discover exactly what questions your consumers are asking. The next step would be to understand the searchers’ intents and create content that will provide the best answers to each question.
Knowing what keywords your potential customers are using can help you better optimise your content for them and for the search engines (e.g. by including the keywords in your title tags, URL, meta description, copy, and image alt tags.)
Discover Personas
Create Useful Content
Optimize Your Content
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The 4-Step Keyword Research Process
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Brainstorm Build Organise Prioritise
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How to use Google Keyword Planner
Step 1: Sign into Google AdWords with your Gmail account.
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Step 2: Set up your AdWords account if you have signed in to AdWords for the first time. Once done, navigate to Tools => Keyword Planner.
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Step 3: Click on “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category”.
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Step 4: Enter a seed keyword (e.g. “training room rental”) and click “Get ideas”.
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Step 5: Explore the “Ad group ideas” and “Keyword ideas” tab and start building your keyword list.Other keyword research tools
Here are some other keyword research tools, both paid and free, to consider:
•Google Suggest •Ubersuggest •Keywordtool.io •semrush •Thesaurus
Once you have gathered additional keywords from the other KW research tools, plug them back into Google Keyword Planner to estimate the average monthly search volume of each search term.
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Some examples of keywords in various buying stages:
“Awareness” keywords: •office supplies needed to
start a business •office supplies for start up business
“Interest” keywords: •best office printers all in one •best office printers for
small business
“Desire” keywords: •office printers for sale •office printers lease
“Action” keywords: •fuji xerox printer cartridges singapore • fuji xerox printer cm225fw
Image Courtesy of
Hubspot
Types of Keywords You Should Target
AIDA Funnel (User Intent)
}}
InformationalContent
Product-CenteredContent
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There are many third party softwares that can automatically analyse the keyword difficulty level (how difficult is it to rank a keyword on Google) such as: • Moz keyword difficulty tool• Ahrefs keyword difficulty tool• SEMrush keyword difficulty tool
To evaluate how competitive a keyword is without the use of tools, you need to look a range of on-page and off-page ranking factors in order to understand what caused a webpage to rank on the top 5 positions of Google such as: • Keywords in Title tags, H1 tags, URL• How useful and relevant is the content to the
search result• Quality and quantity of backlinks to the page• Overall domain authority
How to Evaluate Keyword CompetitivenessTitle Tags
URL
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On-Page SEO
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How to fix internal site issues and optimise your pages to boost rankings.
What is On-Page SEO / Why is it Important?
1 Search engines look for cues (i.e. keywords in the title and URL) on a webpage to determine whether it is relevant enough to rank for a set of search terms.
There are also other factors that search engines take into account such as site load time, crawlability, and click-thru-rate.
On-Page SEO is understanding these ranking factors and fixing any issues to make your site more friendly to the search engines.
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4 Without fixing your on-page SEO issues, it can be difficult to rank well even with good off-page SEO.
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EOUrl: www.fujixerox.com.sg/multifunction-printers1) Keywords
in URL
<title>A4 Colour Laser Printer</title></head>
<h1>A4 Black & White Multifunction Printer</h1>
With Fuji Xerox innovation and benchmark reliability at your
Image Keyword
inserted into Title and/or
Alt Text
<h3>A4 Colour Multifunction Printer</h3>
The Multifunction Printer…
Docuprint M115 w
Check out all our other printers here
<head><meta name=“description” content=“Now you have the freedom to work in the most efficient and productive way..”>
5) LSI Keywords in Content Area
6) Quality & Uniqueness of
Content
2) Keywords in Meta Description
3) Keywords in Title Tags
4) Keywords in Subheadings
7) Keywords in Image Title & Alt Tags
9) Interlink articles with relevant anchor text
(Site architecture)
8) Link out to relevant sources
if possible }10) Design
& UX
11) Mobile-friendly
12) Page Loads Fast
13) Page is crawlable/indexable
14) Include social sharing
buttons
15) Https Secure
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On-
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Title Tag (Best Practices)Ti
tle T
ag (B
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Optimise for multiple keywords
Keep the length of your title between 50 - 60 characters.
Place the keyword closer to the front of the title.
Ensure your title is unique, outstanding, and appealing.
Include your brand name in the title tag - In front for the homepage and at the back for other pages of your site.
Ensure it is wrapped around the title tags <title>Example title</title>
Recommended reading: • https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag • https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2154469/write-title-tags-search-engine-optimization
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On-
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Domain & URL (Best Practices)D
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URL
(Bes
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Avoid rewriting dynamic URLs into static URLs e.g. (www.example.com/index.php?page=icdl-module&id=31)
Keep your domain name and URLs short and easy to understand (< 100 characters) and use lower case letters. Consider removing “stop words” such as and, or, but, a, etc.
Include your keywords in your URLs.
Avoid using uncommon TLDs such as .info, .name, .biz, etc.
Keep all sections of your site in one domain or subdomain and avoid nesting folders into deep layers.
Use hyphens and underscores as word separators but avoid hyphens on domain names.
Https secured
Recommended reading: • https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag • https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2154469/write-title-tags-search-engine-optimization • https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/76329?hl=en
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On-
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Meta Description (Best Practices)M
eta
Des
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(Bes
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Use only alphanumeric characters in your meta description. If wrapped in quotes “ ”, Google won’t display it.
Make your meta description is unique, outstanding, and persuasive.
Include your target keywords in your meta description. (Note: Meta description is not a ranking factor)
Ensure it is wrapped around the meta tags <meta name="description" content=“Example meta description content that will often show up in the search results snippets.”> and placed in the <head></head> section.
Keep your meta description between 150 to 160 characters.
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Use structured data markup if it is appropriate to the content. (Use a WordPress rich snippets plugin if you are using WordPress. Use schema-creator.org/ if you wish to create your own snippets.)
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On-
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Image Optimisation (Best Practices)Im
age
Opt
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Use unique, high quality, custom graphics/photos where possible to increase chances of people embedding/citing your images.
Reduce your image file sizes and use the right image file type (e.g. JPEG is preferred over PNG / GIF).
Make your alt tags descriptive of the image and include your target keywords when possible (do not stuff keywords). <img src=“http://example.com/uploads/car-showroom.jpg alt=“car showroom”>
Use a descriptive image file name i.e. (car-showroom.jpg instead of DM9902.jpg)
Recommended reading: • https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/optimizing-content-efficiency/image-optimization?hl=en • http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-web-optimization-tips-best-practices/ • https://www.shopify.com/blog/7412852-10-must-know-image-optimization-tips • https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016
Include your images into your sitemap and submit your sitemap to search engines.
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On-
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Content Creation (Best Practices)C
onte
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Ensure your content is unique and has E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).
Primary and secondary keywords should be included in subheadings and distributed evenly throughout your copy.
Include keywords that are closely related to your main keywords (also known as Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords) throughout your copy.
Mention your primary and secondary keywords early on in your copy.
Recommended reading: • http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//insidesearch/howsearchworks/assets/
searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf • On-Page SEO Cheat Sheet
Link out to relevant internal pages of your website or relevant external websites where appropriate.
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Ensure your main content (MC) and supplementary content (SC) is relevant to your target keywords and provides the best answer to the searcher intent.
Write like you’re the subject matter expert and worry about keyword optimisation later.
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On-
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Des
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Design & UX (Best Practices)
Text is readable, images and multimedia are high quality.
No excessive placement of ads above the page fold. Ads are not to be disguised as content or be intrusive to users.
Main content elements stand out while supplementary content are displayed in a more subtle manner, making page easy to scan through.
Use breadcrumbs, submenus, navigational menus to provide users a better user experience when navigating through your site.
Page layout is designed with the enduser in mind.
Page renders fast (optimal loading time < 4 seconds).
Page is browser and device responsive.
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On-
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Site
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Site Architecture (Best Practices)
Related pages are well interlinked with appropriate anchor texts.
Main navigation menu is well organised, with the most important pages placed there. (Users can easily understand the theme of the site just by browsing through the main menu.)
Site is well organised into main categories and subcategories. (Proper URL structure is recommended. E.g. example.com/parent-category/child-category/post)
Target keywords are well organised and optimised on individual pages in order to avoid keyword cannibalisation.
Indicate paginated content with rel=”next” and rel=”prev”.
Use breadcrumbs.
Recommended reading: • https://moz.com/blog/site-architecture-for-seo • https://moz.com/blog/information-architecture-for-seo-whiteboard-friday
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Acce
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Accessibility For Search Engine Spiders
Redirects from older versions use 301 (permanent) instead of 302 (temporary) and not more than 2 hops.
Meta robots tags allows crawling and indexing.
Page content loads in page’s HTML.
Robots.txt file not blocking crawlers.
Implements canonicalisation where necessary.
XML Sitemap is submitted to Webmaster Tools.
Is not password protected or requires login.
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On-
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Robots.txt file not blocking crawlers.
A robots.txt file is used by web masters to give instructions to web robots not to visit specified pages or sections of a website. Note that it is entirely up to robots whether or not to obey your robots.txt commands.
A robots.txt can be easily generated via a text file and placed in the top-level directory of your web server.
Meta robots tags allows crawling and indexing.
Meta robots tags on the other tells robots not to index the content of a page and/or not to scan it for links to follow. It is placed in a page’s <head></head> section.
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User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /downloads/ Disallow: /members/
robots.txt file example
<html> <head> <title>...</title> <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> </head>
Robots <meta> tag example
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On-
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Redirects from older versions use 301 (permanent) instead of 302 (temporary) and not more than 2 hops.
A 301 redirect is recommended over a 302 redirect. 301 or permanent redirects tells search engines and browsers that a page has moved permanently. This passes around 100% of PageRank or link juice to the newly specified page.
A 302 or temporary redirect indicates that a page has “moved temporarily” and 100% PageRank or link juice will be passed to the newly specified page.
It is also recommended not to redirect more than 2 hops (e.g. from page A to page B to page C and finally to page D) as search engines bots might stop following the redirects after a few hops.
Recommended reading: • https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection • http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php • http://searchengineland.com/google-no-pagerank-dilution-
using-301-302-30x-redirects-anymore-254608Acce
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Example of redirect command in .htaccess file
#Redirect your website to another domainRedirect 301 / http://example.com/
#Redirect your one page to anotherRedirect 301 /index.html http://example.com/
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On-
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Page content loads in page’s HTML.
It is imperative that the content you’re optimising your keywords in loads in HTML.
Though it is not advised to load your keywords in Javascript or Flash, Google can still pick up your keywords in these languages in some cases.
Human Search engine robot
Flash Website
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EOImplements canonicalisation where necessary.
What is canonicalisation?
Canonicalisation is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would consider these the same urls: www.example.com example.com/ www.example.com/index.html example.com/home.asp - Matt Cutts.
In cases where you require similar content on 2 or more different URLs (e.g. an A/B split testing experiment), implement the rel=canonical tag on the duplicate pages. This passes the same amount of link juice as a 301 redirect.
Recommended reading: • https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/ • https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
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Rel=canonical tag example
<head><link href="http://www.example.com/mainpage/" rel="canonical" /></head>
When Do You Implement Canonicalisation?
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On-
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XML Sitemap is submitted to Webmaster Tools.
Submitting an XML sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools can help Google better crawl and index your website.
It is also recommended to include a HTML sitemap on your website for users to access, especially if your site is huge and split into many main categories and subcategories.
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On-
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Is not password protected or requires login.
Password protected pages prevent search engine bots from accessing the page assets, resulting in subpar rankings.
If it is necessary to include gated pages (e.g. the backend of your CMS), it is good practice to block search engines from crawling these pages via your robots.txt file. This will save server resources and bandwidth.
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Link Building
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The definitive guide to link building
It’s easy to manipulate on-page SEO It’s more difficult to influence inbound links
Why Use Links?
At one point, Google tested removing links entirely from the core algorithms and they didn’t like the results.
Link
Link Link
Link
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High Domain AuthorityHigh PageRank
Relevant Co-citationsRelevant Page Title
Keywords in Anchor TextPlaced in Main BodyAge of Page and BacklinkDofollow Link
Co-occurence
Relevant Content Topic
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Main Domainexample.com
InternalPages
InternalPages
InternalPages
ExternalSite
ExternalSite
ExternalSite
ExternalSite
DomainAuthority
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Site APR 8
Site BPR 3
Site CPR 0
PR4
PR4
Site DPR 2
PR3
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Site BHealth
Site CHealth
Your Site(Health)
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There we can make a statement that “cancer surgery” co-occured with “treating cancer with surgery”.
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3 Major Off-Page SEO Ranking Factors
Link Relevancy Link Popularity
Shoe Website
Shoe Article
Shoe Directory
Shoe Website
High PageRank
High PageRank
High PageRank
Link Diversity
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Are Facebook and Twitter signals part of the ranking algorithm? How much do they matter?
Google crawls and indexes Facebook and Twitter pages just like any other webpage on the web.
There are currently no special social ranking signals in Google’s ranking algorithms due to one instance where Google was blocked from crawling these pages for over a month.
It is more a matter of correlation than causation if a webpage has lots of social shares and is ranking highly on Google.
Links from Social Media sites are also usually nofollow links, preventing PageRank from passing to the linked page.
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Blog Comment Spam
Forum Comment Spam
Large-scale article marketing with keyword-rich anchor texts
Mass submission of site to low quality directories
Buying or selling links that pass PageRank
Text and graphic advertisements that pass PageRank
Use of automated bot software to create backlinks
Embedded and widely-distributed links on widgets or footers
Excessive reciprocal linking
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The 4-Step Link Building Process
Analyze Define Develop & Execute Measure
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Build
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Refer to: • 4-step link building process workbook
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Declare All Alternate
Versions On Every Page
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pter
5: L
ocal
& In
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nal S
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Mis
c.
Recommended reading: • https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-international-seo • https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en • https://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool • http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-seo-tools/hreflang-tags-generator/
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Training CourseAcademyEquinet
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SEO ReportingC
hapt
er 5
: Loc
al &
Inte
rnat
iona
l SEO
& M
isc.
Analysing landing page effectiveness. Are you serving content that’s relevant to the search query? Can your landing pages be improved in terms of delivery and quality of information and design, in order to reduce
bounce rates and increase time spent on page and site?
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SEO ReportingC
hapt
er 5
: Loc
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iona
l SEO
& M
isc. Analysing goal completions from various sources/mediums through Google Analytics.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Training CourseAcademyEquinet
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SEO ReportingC
hapt
er 5
: Loc
al &
Inte
rnat
iona
l SEO
& M
isc. Analysing estimate revenue/profit through goal completions from organic search.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Training CourseAcademyEquinet
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SEO ReportingC
hapt
er 5
: Loc
al &
Inte
rnat
iona
l SEO
& M
isc. SEO Book’s Firefox Rank Checker
Recommended Tools: • http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/ • http://www.seopowersuite.com/rank-tracker/
SEO PowerSuite’s Rank Tracker
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Training CourseAcademyEquinet
Cha
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5: L
ocal
& In
tern
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nal S
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SEO Head
Technical SEO Content Manager
PR / Link Builder
SEO Analyst / CRO
•Keyword research •Site architecture •On-page SEO •Site auditing •Speed optimisation •Mobile optimisation •Etc
• Content creation • Content research • Content calendar • Content editing • Content design
• Social media • Language translation • Etc
• Identify low hanging fruits • Scaling link building • Event marketing • Relationship building with
customers & influencers • Conducting interviews • Press releases • Etc
• Monitor keyword rankings • Traffic reporting • Revenue per keyword • Overall revenue from search • User behavioural signals
• Bounce rate • Time on site • Pages per visit
• Etc
The 4 Pillars of SEO