Understand the basic concepts of how backlinks are used as one of the primary ranking factors in Google Search.
SEO Jargon - SEO Terminology Demystified
SEO Related Terminology and Concepts You Should Know
/ Anchor & URL
/ Contextual Links, Image Link, Sidebar Widget, Sitewide Link … where link appears
Blog, Company Site, Directory, Guest Post, Comment, Web2.0 site, Social Media, Wiki, Social Bookmark, PBN, Press Release... there’s a ton!
Keyword Research, Monthly Search Volumes, LSI (Latent Symantic Index), Primary & Secondary Keywords, Keyword Stuffing, Keyword Difficulty
/ Anchor Text Ratios
/ Anchor Cloud
Different Algorithms for each
Maps Ranking, 3 Pack, Google My Business (GMB)
Citations via NAP (Name, Address, Phone)
Search Engine Result Pages
Global, Local Country Search
DoFollow vs NoFollow
Title, Description, Canonical, No-Index, H1 H2 H3, Image Optimization, Canonical Tag
Link Power …ability to move rank
/ Link Velocity
/ Link Echo
Link Spam, Content Spam / Web Spam, Search Index Spam
Brand Mentions
Google Auto-Suggest
Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, Rank Brain, Possum, Fred…
/ New vs Incremental Version roll outs
/ Rolling Updates
Manual Action, Algorithmic Action, Recover from Penalty, Disavow Request
Exact Match, Phrase Match, Broad Match
site:
inurl:
allintitle:
Example – site:mydroneshop.com + DJI
Rank Trackers, Link Submitters, Keyword Researchers, AHrefs, Majestic, Moz, SEcockpit, SERPworx, KeywordResearcherPro, WP Plugin - SEO Yoast, Scrapebox, Search Console (WMT), Google Analytics, Google Trends
TF, CF, DR, UR, PA, DA, Keyword Difficulty…
Long Tail Keywords
URL Parameters
Bounce Backs, Dwell Times
CTR (Click Through Rate)
Mobile Index
Page Speed
Responsive Web Design
301s - Redirects
404 - Page Not Found,
500 - Server Error
200 - OK
Technical SEO
Scraping
Desktop Crawlers – Screaming Frog, Xenu, Scrapebox
Server SAAS based Crawlers – Ahrefs, Majestic etc
… and Google! / Googlebot
Proxies
Spintax, Doorway Pages, Page Farms, Spam
/ Money Page
/ Money Site
Duplicate Pages
Unique Pages (Copyscape Check)
Link Building through outreach
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and CPC(Cost-Per-Click)
Robots.txt File
.htaccess File
/ rich snippets
/ knowledge graph
Download my 60+ page PBN Guide Here (free)
Expired Domains and Auction Domains
For Ranking the Keyword - buy drones
EMD (Exact Match Domain)
buydrones.com or .net .org .cc or any TLD
PMD (Partial Match Domain)
buydrones123.com or .net .org .cc or any TLD
CMS (Content Management System)
VAs (Virtual Assistants)
VPS (Virtual Private Server)
Ground Zero SEO - How To Quickly Evaluate an SEO Project
What is Ground Zero SEO?
- My System of Analyzing an SEO project BEFORE I do anything!
- There are many questions you need to ask yourself that will determine the project path
- Type of Site, New or Existing Site, Budget / Time, Niche
- Lets look at these…
Type of Site
- What kind of site is this?
- Local Business Local SEO - Google My Business, Maps Ranking
- Blogs Info Site / Reviews Blog SEO (rank each post)
- Global Company Website Core Pages, Blog Setup
- Ecommerce SEO Product Specific SEO
- User Generated Content (UGC) SEO Forums, Wikis, Marketplaces, Classifieds, etc.
If Site Already Exists...
- (for new sites this is not applicable skip this)
- On-Page Audit – A quick look
- How much SEO done already
- Analyze Metrics (via Google or Tools)
- Current Rankings, Traffic,
- WMT, Search Console
- Google Penalty? Current or Past
- Quick look at Socials (if applicable)
Niche Analysis
- How competitive is the niche – Top Sites Data
- How competitive are keywords (suggested or discovered)
- User Intent in niche… Query Type
- - Navigational
- - Information
- - Transactional
Time and Budget
- Looked at last after quick evaluation
- Is the budget too little?
- Are expectations too high?
Top Ranking Factors - An Overview
A quick overview of the top SEO ranking factors
- Plenty of New Algorithm Updates
- Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, RankBrain (AI and Deep Learning)
- New Ranking Factors – both Positive and Negative
- Old Blackhat Methods hardly work anymore
- Need to evolve your SEO with the changing Algorithm
On Site Factors (60%)
URL Silo, Pagename, Title, H1, Internal Links, Schema (eg. Product micro data not h atom)
Offsite Factors (30%)
Backlinks, nofollows, topical mentions, offsite schema, social, brand searches
User Clicks - Rank Brain does this (10%)- SERP Bounce, Internal navigation (Engagement) , Returns and Conversions.
- They track users through Chrome.
- They were quiet about it initially until they got base data.
- Forbes article - Rank brain got things right 80% of the time compared to engineers 70%
- Still a baby growing up. More data… makes it better!
What is RankBrain?
- RankBrain is a new algorithm, and is Hummingbird plus Artificial Intelligence
- Hummingbird ranks entities by building Knowledge Graphs.
- It reads your site and schema to make an entity database out of it.
- It affected 90% of search queries when it was released in 2013.
- RankBrain tracks searches, clicks and search termination, in addition to doing what Hummingbird already does with sophistication of AI and tracking User Behavior for its Deep Learning
- Example of tracking user behavior: While doing a brand search, the result that gets clicked more, gets boosted.
- It works on … “Know, Do, Go” Queries that are Global or Local (Pigeon update).
- 15% of daily queries are never seen before queries (that is 500 million daily queries are new)
- RankBrain ran silently for over a year gathering data (since early 2015)
An All New Ranking Factor
- CTR is a Ranking Factor Now.
- You need to get users to click through more with proper Titles & Descriptions.
- Search termination and bounce backs are very important now.
- You can check your CTR in Google Search Console.
- See how Your listing looks in the SERPs and make it stand out for higher CTR.
- Use catchy words that draw the attention of the reader and get them to click!
Optimizing for a better CTR
- Firstly, users should be searching for your brand.
- OR - Your brand + your service or product
- When they search for your brand, your CTR in the SERPS should be close to 100%
- Anything below 60% is a problem! *Google thinks - why won’t users click your site listing?*
- Then, make sure you satisfy the users search query, when they visit your site (conversion).
- They should definitely not bounce back to Google!
- To improve brand recall you can use a short and catchy name.
- You can do some advertising, so Google sees visits and interaction on your site.
- You need to provide better value that your competitors. Period.
- Make users return and share content and even bookmark your site in their browser.
- *Trick Google* Have a contest! Offer 10% off if a visitor goes back to Google and does a brand search, clicks on your result and comes to your site and can then use the coupon and check out.
Doing Better Keyword Research
- Use the Google Keyword Planner tool.
- Make sure to initially start research with broad phrases
- Then drill down to long tail keywords and exact match keywords
- And use keywords that are relevant and make sense to use for your content.
- You can filter Keyword Planner results by area and also look at mobile queries
- Make sure to limit your content to ONE primary topic per page.
- Use your primary/secondary keywords in the Title, H1,H2,H3 without keyword stuffing.
- Do not use Exact Match Domains (EMDs) as they are dangerous now.
Doing Better Keyword Research
- Remember - A good (catchy) Title and Description will give you a higher CTR.
- Make sure to update your content regularly, and include published dates.
- Identify your most important pages, and tell Google they are the most important pages by making sure that they…
- Get the most internal links
- Must have links to them from homepage
- Remember that large sites have more Authority, but only if content is good, and…
- Their pages convert…
- The user intent happens…
- Be it - Sign ups, clicks, purchase etc.
Google has said that Mobile Index is more important than Desktop
- You should focus on Mobile Experience first
- Desktop is secondary while designing, optimizing etc
- Make sure your site is Responsive
- AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) version is important but does not affect rankings
Some Rules Have Changed
- Get a Google Photographer from your local area listed in Google Business Pages to come to your place and do a photo shoot that you then upload.
- *Hint* You can ask him to refer you to other local SEO clients and in return you give him the business of your clients.
- You must have only one highly specific category in your Google Maps Listing, and other secondary.
- Again - the quality of your site is important, so is task completion and search termination.
- You must get good Reviews from BBB, Local Forums, Blogs, G+, Yelp, FB.
- Your site must be Mobile optimized.
- Your Business Name must be clickable! You do this by ensuring that your Business Name includes your business name and your service name.
- Driving Directions embed, GMB Categories properly
- NAP can be a bit flexible now
Be Real & Be Popular!
- Must have REAL social activity on your main social profiles… FB, Twitter, G+
- Your Social Profiles and Pages must be real, organic and active. NO bots.
- Don’t spam your social profiles with selling offers.
- Always post shareworthy content that has value.
- If you choose to do a promotional announcement, do it once every 20 posts or so.
- If you can create potentially viral content, that is a huge plus.
- Engage with your audience. Talk to them.
- Shares of your pages are important ranking signal… you can get high buzz from experts in your niche. (Tip: use the Buzzsumo tool for outreach)
- Remember - clicks from Social pages ARE IMPORTANT and IS a ranking factor (no matter how much Google search team may choose to deny it).
You Need to be Popular- Topical References
- Social Shares
- Brand Searches
- Social Profile Proof
- Ratings and Reviews
You Need to be Real- Get real aged robust social accounts in your region doing real activity on google search.
- Get visitors to click on your result and visit your site and engage with your content.
- You can incentivize users to do this (sort of blackhat)
- But never buy bot traffic!
- Never use proxy IPs.
- All your Social Profiles must all be active.
- Users must click and terminate search results.
[Good Backlinkls] You Should Get Links From
- High authority sites (real businesses, news sites, charity sites)
- Links from sites where everyone else is NOT there
- Main contextual links
- Anchor must be natural
- Appropriate volume of links
(Do NOT match the SEO spam patterns)
[Toxic Backlinks] You Should NOT Get Links From
- New blogs
- Directories, Article Sites
- Excessive – Sidebar or footer links (Dofollow)
- Excessive – Blog Comments, Social bookmarks, forum profiles
- Spammy links are defined by the SEO community (the algo is trained by them)
- NO more than 10% EMQ, PMQ (even if in URL) anchors
What Panda Is
- Is a Negative Ranking Factor (a demoter).
- It checks your site regularly... for low quality pages.
- It’s now based on primarily on Usage Metrics & Onsite Factors
- Panda now automatically updates in 2016
- They collected the average baseline clicks and conversions in each industry.
- Remember that Google has multiple quality Algorithms and factors.
- You can see accompanying resources PDF for the full list of factors.
What Panda Likes
- Users satisfied and converting over 50%
- Professional and clean website look
- A Legitimate business or entity
- Outbound links to authority sites in your niche
- A site that is shared, liked, reviewed, rated etc.
What Panda Does NOT Like
- A boring blog
- A site that has keyword stuffing
- Bad reputation site
- A site that annoys users with ads (Fred Update)
- Too many affiliate links
- URL parameters in your navigation links… ?=xyz
- Bad design and bad html
What Penguin is- Is another Negative Ranking Factor and a demoter.
- Works on links mostly (and some on-page factors)
- Works on on-page and off-page over-optimization issues.
- More than 10% of Exact Match Query Links -> Exact Match Query Page on domain, are a problem and will get detected by Penguin.
- Example: “Buy red apples” anchors, link to http://yoursite.com/buyredapples.html
- Do not have over-optimized … title, alt, title tags, URL, content, anchors.
- Negative link juice can flow from a internally hit page to your other pages.
- Disavow File – It does not work as intended by Google.
- If it did blackhats would get out easily!
- So, if you get a penalty you really need to delete your toxic links.
- A manual penalty may let you out more easily.
How To Fix a Penguin Hit Site
- Remove on-page keyword stuffing and repetition
- Delete your 80%+ links and then try disavow request (if manual penalty)
- Start a new site (but Google may automatically 301 your old site to new site)
- 404 or delete target pages
Where To Find Them- Come from Manual Web Spam team
- 6 or more types of manual actions
- Listed in Search Console in “Search Traffic”
- Your site must have Search Console installed on it to see them
Most Important Notices to Pay attention to
Action vs Site - you need to delete all the links and then beg to get out with disavow + reconsideration request. (Google wants you to put spammy links in their disavow file for crowdsourcing their machine learning.)
Action vs Links – Do NOTHING. It’s just a warning to change. They are only taking the links out from your link graph.
Is there a “Duplicate Content Penalty?”
- No such thing.
- It just forces google to choose which page to rank.
- And it always chooses legacy + authority
- You don’t want Google to have to choose if your site content is unique or not
- Google trusts sites with duplicate content LESS
- Duplicate content (is a quality issue) and is a canonical (technical) issue.
How To Fix Duplicate Content Issues
- Use tools like - pubsubhubbub, xindexer, and tell search console to spider your content first
- Install view-source blockers… the ones that block right click copy paste
- Use Copyscape tool to find copiers (use their batch search)
- File DMCA requests with Google
- Maintain an Accurate Sitemap. ( this may not be important any more)
- Finally rewrite your duplicate content, and add video and images and did you know factoids etc.
Be Aware of where is Google going with this…
- Currently SEO is getting to depend more and more on Google tracking user behavior
- Google is using links and social signals to find trusted pages to rank and then solidifies the rankings by tracking user behavior and engagement metrics etc.
- Google Search is now a Mobile First Index
- User tracking is just an interim stage until Google perfects their AI and Deep Learning.
- Once they reach the perfect AI stage, Google will then understand and identify the best pages for rankings, automatically without needing any external ranking factors like backlinks and or tracking user behavior.
A Brief History of SEO
A Quick History of Search Engines
- Early days of the dot com era… 1995, before Social etc.
- About 10 Search Engines Altavista, HotBot, Infoseek, Yahoo, Excite, Looksmart, Megellan, WebCrawler, Inktomi, AllTheWeb, Lycos, & Yahoo!
- No Real Algorithm. Easy To Game. In Minutes!
- Tons of Search Index Spam (enemy of Search Engines)
Along Come Larry & Sergie with Google
- Born Out of Stanford
- Simple Logic from Real World
- More Popularity = Backlinks
- More Popular Circles = More Powerful Backlinks
- PageRank is the Key
- Yahoo, Excite & Others Turn Down Google
How Google Ranks Pages (way back then)
- PageRank Is The Key
- The more links a site gets, the higher it ranks
- Link Juice and Anchor Texts make it rank for the Keyword
- Link Juice is power passed down
- Page linking out does not lose any power
- Higher PR Pages pass down more Link Juice
Hello SEOs and Webspam
- SEOs Start figuring out how easy it is to game Google
- Absence of readily available mass linking tools
- Close kept secrets, small community
- Things change slowly though for Google
- Mass link building tools and methods flood the web!
- Google senses trouble. Needs to Fix it!
Hello Panda Version 1.0
- The “Panda” Algorithm is Born, early 2011
- Targets Low Quality sites with thin content
- Content Farms, Doorway Pages, Scrapers, Web Spam
- New “Updates” to Panda released
- Google always tightlipped about their Algorithm. Why?
- But, even with Panda 1.0 around ranking was easy.
The Attack of the Penguins
- “Penguin” Update Attacks SEOs April 2012
- Counters “link spam” initially.
- Unnatural Links, How do they know?
- They have a picture of 99% of the linking patterns
- Anything unnatural is penalized (deindexed or devalued)
- Manual Penalties & the leaked document
SEO Changed Forever
- Before Penguin Update doing SEO was easy.
- You could build mass links to your site.
- No fear and No danger from bad links.
- The link juice worked positively or just gave zero power.
- Now, with Penguin links can hurt your site.
- Too many poor links = ranking problems
Algorithm Threshold Levels
- Google Algorithm has 100s of “Signals” it controls.
- Think of them as Dials that Google plays with.
- Panda and Penguin are just a set of Similar Dials that Google plays with.
- Too many “unnatural” high signals = *Google slap*
- The birth of Negative SEO
Google Slaps & Penalty Recovery
- Algorithmic vs Manual Penalty / and WMT Notice
- How to get out of a penalty?
- Disavowing your links – does it works?
- Crowdsourced clever move.
- In very rare cases. Maybe less than 5%.
- There are other ways to recover. Blackhat *grin*
The New Badly Done SEO
What looks unnatural? Over stuffed anchor link profile, keyword stuffing in content and in your URL, Exact Match Domains (EMD / PMD), too many thin links, bad link clusters, low link relevancy, bad content on page and site, lack of social signals, slow site, no updates, high bounce rate, poor user experience, low search termination, duplicate content, duplicate images, similar pages… there’s a ton more!
You Need to be Careful with SEO Now
- Backlinks or poorly done SEO can hurt you.
- Every link needs to be well placed and made
- You can build links in mass – but there is a method
- Larger Niches are treated with different Algorithm threshold levels vs Smaller Niches
- Similarly larger sites are treated differently (more tolerance)
What Links Not To Buy
If you’re linking directly to your site (Tier 1 links)
Directory Submissions, Press Releases, Mass irrelevant blog comments, forum spam links, mass article links, spun content, social bookmarks… basically most of the stuff you get on Fiverr.
However, these can be on Tier 2 links
That is pointing to sites that link to you main money site
Regular Updates and More Animals
- Google keeps releasing new updates.
- EMD update, Humming Bird, Mobile Armageddon.
- Millions of sites and real people lose lively hood.
- PageRank Data updates stop - over 1.5 years now
- SEOs and Community come together to Fix Things
- It’s a lot of hard work and fun! (until your sites get hit)
The Birth of Blog Networks
- The trick to Rank sites overnight
- ALN, High PR Society, and other “Autopilot” Blog Farms
- Raked in Millions of $$ . Easy systems to game Google
- Google Reacts, hits Blog Networks
- How? Found their IPs, footprint. Deindexed in Mass.
- Sites using them also got hit.
PBNs (Private Blog Networks)
- The New Buzz word. Works like magic.
- Footprints need to be covered. (key to being found out)
- By Private we mean Private!
- If done carefully can let you rank any site!
- The Larger your PBN the more careful you need to be.
Building Your Private Blog Network
- Thou shalt not Leave A Footprint.
- Hide Everything!
- Private, Fake Whois, IP hosting diversity, no link patterns.
- Buying Expired Domains, Domain Auctions, etc.
- Focus on High Quality Non-spammed Domains
- Build each site in ONE niche – as link RELEVANCY is huge.
PBNs are losing “some” Power
- This is Chess & War. Algorithm Updates will keep coming.
- 2014 – Stronger On-Page, Social Signals, User Signals
- 2015 - Advanced User Signals, Mobile Armageddon
- Social signals are buzz based signals (can be gamed)
- User Signals - click through rate, bounce rate, etc. (are harder to game). They help you maintain your ranks.
Whats Next?
- A better Machine Learning algorithm
- Ray Kurzweil – the Godfather of AI
- Google understands “value” of content on a page
- Cannot target grammar only - Why?
- Identifying clicks on a page and tracking users.
- Mass de-indexing of PBNs, possible?
BlackHat & WhiteHat SEO
- What color hat do you wear?
- Everyone doing SEO wears both.
- Some just do things at an extreme level.
- Small niches & big Lucrative niches
- Use in-house tools and readily available tools
- More collaboration nowadays.
SEO Tools
If you want the big list of SEO Tools with Coupons, please PM me!
:)
- Why Tools? Manual vs Automation
- Insights you cant get otherwise
- Costs - one time vs recurring
- Friends can get together and share (may be against TOS – so check!)
- Long Term Solid Tools vs Short Term Hack Tools
- List Attached with Links / Coupons (ALWAYS UPDATED)
- Scrapebox - You absolutely need this ~ $50 plus small cost for extra modules (most are a free)
- AHREFS, MAJESTIC, MOZ, Cognitive SEO
- LinkResearchTools, SEO PowerSuite
- SEO Power Suite - Rank Tracker, Website Auditor, SEO Spyglass, Link Assistant
- SpyFu, SimilarWeb, SEMrush
- Market Samurai (works but somewhat old) - One Time Cost
- KeywordsEverywhere - Free Browser Extension
- Keywordshitter, UberSuggest
- SECockpit
- Long Tail Pro (cloud version now)
- Keyword Research Pro, PowerSuggestPro
- KeywordTool.io
- FreshKey
- Keyword Snatcher
- Google Search Console, Google Keyword Planner, Adwords
- BrowSEO
- Mass Planner, FaceDominator, Tweet Attacks Pro, PinBot, NinjaGram, Gplus Bot
- Video Spin Blaster Pro
- Tube Buddy
- Buffer App
- BriefCaseHQ
- SERPworx
- URL Profiler
- SEO Tools for Excel
- Ali Inspector
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- PageOptimizer.pro
- Onpageseo.org
- Website Auditor – Link-Assistant (SEO Power Suite)
- WordAI, Spinner Chief, – Content Spinners
- Ntopic.org
- textoptimizer.com
- CORA
- Answer The Public (discovery)
- Audience Analyzer (discovery)
- Answer The Public (discovery)
- BuzzSumo (discovery and outreach)
- BuzzStream (discovery and outreach)
- Pitchbox (discovery and outreach)
- Link Assistant (discovery and outreach)
- GSA SER
- Pingodom (tools.pingodom.com), WebPageTest.org , Google Page Speed Insights
- Indexificaction, No Hands Indexer, – Link Indexing (PM me a gem!)
- BunnyRank, Accurank, ProRankTracker, Scrapebox – Rank Trackers
- Windows VPS (Virtual Private Server) – Hostwinds, Hostamus
- Proxies – Buyproxies.org
- Zennoposter, Ubot Studio – Custom Task Automators
- Be careful of what you read
- BlackhatWorld.com
- Fiverr.com
- PeoplePerHour.com
- Upwork.com
- Mturk.com, MicroWorkers
- SEOclerks
- Freelancer.com
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