Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer." Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:

• Review of your site content or structure
• Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
• Content development
• Management of online business development campaigns
• Keyword research
• SEO training
• Expertise in specific markets and geographies.

Keep in mind that the Google search results page includes organic search results and often paid advertisement (denoted by the heading "Sponsored Links") as well. Advertising with Google won't have any effect on your site's presence in our search results. Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results. Free resources such as Webmaster Tools, the official Webmaster Central blog, and our discussion forum can provide you with a great deal of information about how to optimize your site for organic search. Many of these free sources, as well as information on paid search, can be found on Google Webmaster Central.

Before beginning your search for an SEO, it's a great idea to become an educated consumer and get familiar with how search engines work. We recommend starting here:

• Google Webmaster Guidelines
• Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web.

If you're thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you're considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.

Some useful questions to ask an SEO include:

• Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
• Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
• Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?
• What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?
• What's your experience in my industry?
• What's your experience in my country/city?
• What's your experience developing international sites?
• What are your most important SEO techniques?
• How long have you been in business?
• How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site's presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from our index. Here are some things to consider:

• Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.

  Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:

  "Dear google.com,
  I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."

  Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

  Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

• Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do.

  Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or "throwaway" domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it's best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to "help" you. If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site.

• You should never have to link to an SEO.

  Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.

• Choose wisely.

  While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that, of course. You might also seek out a few of the cautionary tales that have appeared in the press, including this article on one particularly aggressive SEO:http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html. While Google doesn't comment on specific companies, we've encountered firms calling themselves SEOs who follow practices that are clearly beyond the pale of accepted business behavior. Be careful.

• Be sure to understand where the money goes.

  While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they "control" other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn't work with Google because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you're considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.

• What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter?

One common scam is the creation of "shadow" domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client's behalf. However, if the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor's domain. If that happens, the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO.

Another illicit practice is to place "doorway" pages loaded with keywords on the client's site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious, however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO's other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content.

• What are some other things to look out for?

There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It's far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO:

• owns shadow domains
• puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
• offers to sell keywords in the address bar
• doesn't distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages
• guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
• operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
• gets traffic from "fake" search engines, spyware, or scumware
• has had domains removed from Google's index or is not itself listed in Google

If you feel that you were deceived by an SEO in some way, you may want to report it.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint, visit: http://www.ftc.gov/ and click on "File a Complaint Online," call 1-877-FTC-HELP, or write to:

Federal Trade Commission
CRC-240
Washington, D.C. 20580

If your complaint is against a company in a country other than the United States, please file it athttp://www.econsumer.gov/.

The Foundation Of A Success SEO Campaign: Keyword Research

Here is an outline of the steps you should follow for keyword research:

• Start with a brainstorming session to list all possible words and phrases that people would use to find what you have to offer. Remember to put yourself in the mindset of the potential customer.
• Do the necessary research to continue building your list.

Research your competitors and see what keywords they are using.

Look at your web stats and logs and pull words and phrases from there (this is a great source of info, you can find the words that people are already using to find you and enhance your rankings on those words so you can get even more traffic).

If you have a search feature on your site, look at the logs and see what people are searching for within your site once they get there.

• Take the large master list you have come up with and use a keyword tool to determine how much traffic there is and how competitive the words/phrases are. Remember you can’t live and die by this information, it only acts as a guide for you.
• Take your list and break it into segments. You want some “low hanging fruit” – which means keywords that may be longer phrases with less traffic. These words will be easy to rank for fairly quickly so you can use those as your starting point to drive some quick traffic to the site. The second segment of your list should be words that are more competitive and have more traffic and will take longer to get rankings for. You will be glad you selected keywords from each segment because you will be getting traffic from the low hanging fruit while you are waiting for the more competitive phrases to kick in.

Because #4 is so vitally important, let’s break that down a little further. If your keywords are too generic and not targeted it will take a long time to get rankings and the traffic likely won’t convert as well. If you use keywords that are way too specific you won’t get enough traffic. The solution? Use a 3 tier approach.

Broad:

• Shorter phrases and single words
• Generic to your industry
• Lots of traffic
• Lower conversions

Focused:

• Slightly shorter phrases
• Higher traffic numbers
• Phrases are still focused on what you offer

Laser Focused: The Long Tail

• Longer and more targeted phrases
• Traffic numbers are smaller
• People are further along in the buying process so conversion rates are higher

The thought process behind “long tail keywords” is that the more detail someone

types in, the more they know exactly what they want and the further along they are in the “buying” process.

For example if someone types “blue plates” they could want to buy them or they could want info or they could want to see pics – who knows.

But if someone types in “Pfaltzgraff Blue dinner plates for 8” then they know exactly what they want and are more likely to buy.

Typically the longer the phrase, the less traffic there is but the more targeted it is, so it is likely to convert higher.

A solid SEO strategy should definitely implement some long tail because that allows you to get rankings quicker (there is usually less competition on long tail keywords) and it allows the conversion rate to be higher.

You get the benefit from the long tail while you are waiting for your more competitive phrases to get ranked and kick in.

Most people are continually adding new long tail phrases and find that when they add them up, in total the long tail phrases end up becoming a large part of your traffic.

Here are some examples:

• Broad: Generic and competitive keywords:

• Plates
• Blue plates
• Dinner plate

• Focused: Less generic, and less competitive:

• Buy dinner plates
• Set of dinner plates
• Cost of dinner plates

• Laser Focused: Long tail phrases:

• Pfaltzgraff plates for 8 set
• Pfaltzgraff Ocean Breeze dinner plate set
• Buy dinner place settings
• Replacement dinner plates for sale

Another thing to consider is the searchers intent. Let’s look at this scenario to understand a little more.

“buy MAC lip gloss ” – the searcher is looking to buy online

“MAC lip gloss prices” – they are comparing prices and probably trying to decide if they will buy

“MAC lip gloss” – they are interested in a specific brand

“lip gloss” – interested in a type of product

You want to capture leads at the different phases, but understand you will convert more at the top level where they are further along in the buying process.

Your SEO strategy should include keywords from each of those “tiers” above.

BUT we’re still not done! Most people stop here (or often don’t even do all the steps to get here). So what else is there?

Did you know that 25% of searches each month are brand new, never before seen search words and phrases? That is shocking. You would think with the number of search queries running through Google, they have seen it all.

So, how do you handle keyword research and make sure you are staying current?

First and foremost you want to make sure you have outlined your strategy. Without a plan in place you are likely to forget to do it, and it’ll just rattle around in the back of your brain or sit on a post-it note that gets stuck to the back of another piece of paper in your planner.

So, before that happens, let’s define your plan right now.

You’ve already done your initial keyword research steps as outlined above. Here is where most people are missing out and need to plan further action. There is a step 5 in the process…

• Once a month you should do keyword research and see what new words and phrases come up and add those new words and phrases to your campaign. If you find once a month is too often, do it every other month. Just make sure you have a plan to check back regularly so you can take advantage of new search phrases and tap into more traffic. You could put a monthly reminder in your Outlook or use an online reminder service. Find a system that will work for you!

Of course all these keywords aren’t going to do any good if you are working on adding content and building links for them. So if you are adding content to your site like you should be, then adding these new keyword phrases should be easy to work into the new content you are writing. J

You should also schedule at least a monthly review of your web stats (if not more often).

Check out how much traffic you are actually getting from the engines. Find out what phrases people are actually finding your site with. Don’t forget the engines will start picking up your site for “bonus keywords” – which are different combinations and variations of your core keywords that you optimized for.

If you identify some of these “bonus keywords” it’ll give you insight into exactly how people are searching and what they are looking for. You may find it’s worth adding content for these new phrases so you can try to get even more exposure for them.

Read more: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-foundation-of-a-success-seo-campaign-keyword-research/22770/#ixzz0xKnMHi4e

How to Get 10,000% More Backlinks in Google, Without Doing Anything

That’s the jittery reality of Google Caffeine, the new indexing system that Google rolled out in June. Billed as the “largest collection of web content we’ve offered,”, Caffeine indexes the Web more deeply and frequently, providing better real-time results for up-to-the-minute content like blogs and tweets. Google provides this diagram of how it works:

So, instead of a neatly stacked search index that’s refreshed in layers, the new one somehow involves all kinds of crazy flying objects.

Never mind the technical details. The most obvious change for SEO professionals is the “Links to Your Site” section in Google Webmaster Tools, which have skyrocketed wildly. (The change was recently verified by Google here.) Taking a sample of our clients at our SEO content firm Media Shower, plus self-reported data from other sites, we have seen an average 10,000% increase in Google-reported backlinks.

Your mileage may vary, of course. Some sites (particularly smaller sites) have seen a “modest” backlink increase of 400%, while others have seen their link counts explode over 50,000%! Here’s a partial list of sites we surveyed.

We’ve always known that Google only showed a fraction of indexed backlinks in Webmaster Tools. While this was not clear from the interface, the company always referred to link counts as a “sample.” Now Google appears to be revealing a complete count of backlinks, or as complete as they’re able to index. This looks to be the most accurate count of backlinks on the Web, which is great news for those of us who track month-to-month progress on building links.

So, who are all these new sites linking to yours? The bad news is that when drilling down into specific backlinks (not overall counts), Google is showing an even smaller sample than before. Worse, the sample may be lower quality than ever, since you will likely find hundreds of spammy sites that have simply scraped your URL off Google SERPs.

The “S”-word: Google will only tell you a fraction of the sites that link to yours.

While Bing has followed suit, only displaying a maximum of 1,000 backlinks to your site, it displays a more helpful sample of 1,000 high-quality links to your site. With Google, you have no idea what you’re getting from their sample; it could be from the fresh end of the link pool, or it could be from the part that someone just peed into.

In short, Google’s Caffeine-powered backlink reports are both a blessing a curse. On the one hand, we now have more accurate (and, we hope, stable) backlink counts that can be used to track monthly progress in linkbuilding efforts. On the other hand, downloading a specific list of backlinks gives us even less useful information than before.

Here’s how Google can make Webmaster Tools the “Bing-Killer”: simply provide more transparency in their “sample” of reported links. Is it a random sample? Is it weighted more heavily in favor of high-quality or low-quality sites? Is it based on an algorithm extrapolated from Sergey’s DNA?

The best SEOs want to know the highest-quality sites that are linking back, so they can find more sites like them. That’s also what Google wants. It’s good for sites, good for webmasters, and good for the Web.

We’ve always known that caffeine is a Web developer’s best friend. We hope that Google Caffeine will eventually become a similar friend for those of us working to make the Web a better place.

Read more: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-get-10000-more-backlinks-in-google-without-doing-anything/22694/#ixzz0xKmO8Z8c

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