How to Rank Your Website on Page #1 of Google SEARCH ENGINE - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Equinet Academy How to Rank Your Website on Page #1 of Google SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO) Topics Covered 1 Introduction 2 Keyword Research 3 On-Page SEO 4 Off-Page SEO 5 SEO Analytics Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Training
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Training Course
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Introduction Keyword Research On-Page SEO Off-Page SEO SEO Analytics
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Chapter 1: Introduction to SEO
Google 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 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).
Mobile-Friendly Update (2015)
Impacts mobile search rankings of non-mobile-friendly pages.
Recommended reading:
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.
Unnamed Update (2018)
Rankings showed a spike in volatility around February 20th, 2018 which quickly settled down, sometimes signalling a targeted algorithm update.
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Chapter 1: Introduction to SEO
Google’s search engine algorithms have evolved to combat black hat techniques, and take a very serious note on black hat link building. Some black hat SEO techniques include:
especially on low quality sites Keyword Stuffing Example: This cake decorating tutorial will show you a cake decorating tutorial on how to decorate a cake. The first part of this cake decorating tutorial is on how to decorate a cake. Here’s how to decorate a cake in this cake decorating tutorial.
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Reporting Off-Page SEO On-Page SEO
Chapter 1: Introduction to SEO
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
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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SEO Fundamentals
to 80% ignore paid ads on the SERPs
users are organic results
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
illion global searches conducted each month on average
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Higher traffic share compared to the paid search results:
In some categories, the click through rate of the first webpage on the organic search results can be as high as 94.95%.
Generates highly relevant and high quality traffic:
Users who search and click through your site are actively looking for information and more likely to engage and convert into customers.
Boosts your content marketing efforts:
Search engine optimisation campaigns complement your content marketing efforts by optimising content (e.g. blogposts, articles, listicles) to rank better on search engines.
Key Features and Advantages
Drives brand awareness and visibility:
Websites ranking on the first page of the search results enjoy great visibility and brand awareness.
Long-term return on investment:
Search engine optimisation activities may take awhile to produce returns. However, the results (i.e. ranking on the top
Positions your brand as the authority in your industry:
Ranking prominently for multiple search terms across the consumer buying journey establishes brand authority and puts your brand in the forefront of consumers’ minds.
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Constraints
Dependent on a content marketing strategy for long term maintenance:
One of the main ranking factors is the off-page link acquisition rate, which depends on how well a content marketing strategy is executed.
Delayed Results:
Rank jumps typically take an average of 10 weeks to 6 months, but it can also take a few years to rank on the top of Google for highly competitive keywords.
Requires technical expertise:
Organisations may not have the required technical expertise in- house and have to hire SEOs or outsource technical SEO implementation to a third party.
Can be very costly to implement and maintain:
Depending on how large the website is, technical expertise can cost quite a bit in order to optimise the website on a large scale. The more competitive an industry is, the larger the scale of content marketing and online PR activities are required and the higher the costs involved to continuously run these campaigns.
Can get very competitive:
Since organic search traffic costs nothing, competition can get very steep and achieving top rankings can take a long time and get very costly.
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Touchpoint 1 Touchpoint 2 Touchpoint 3 Touchpoint 4 Touchpoint 5 Touchpoint 6 Touchpoint 7
Search Engine Optimisation Content Marketing Digital Marketing Analytics Digital Marketing Analytics Digital Advertising Content Marketing Content Marketing Email Marketing Social Media Marketing Mobile Marketing
Prospect searches on Google for digital marketing articles and interacts with Digital A’s content for the first time. Prospect then leaves the website. Digital A targets display ads on websites that prospect browses, enticing prospect to download a free ebook. Prospect receives the ebook and other educational content on digital marketing topics via email and feels the need to learn more about digital marketing. Digital A deploys marketing automation to deliver relevant content to client based on client’s historical behavioural
engages Digital A for multiple services. While considering whether to engage Digital A, prospect sees a digital marketing event advertised on Facebook by Digital A and registers for the event. Tracking is set up via Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Measures traffic volume, user behaviour, and attributes credit to the different touch points of the customer journey. Prospect receives an SMS reminder for the event and attends it. During the event, prospect downloads an app by Digital A that provides digital marketing tips.
Start End
Search Ads
Conversion Rate Optimisation
Post-Purchase
Prospect searches on Google for “top digital marketing agencies”, clicks through Digital A’s website, and is convinced after reading many successful case studies by Digital A.
Purchase Evaluation Awareness
Customer Journey Every touchpoint is an opportunity to move the prospect/ customer further down the customer buying journey.
Content Marketing Content Marketing Search Engine Optimisation Digital Advertising Marketing Automation
Company: Digital A Nature of business: Marketing agency Goal: To acquire new and repeat clients by delivering content that offers true value to prospects and clients Main Client Profile: Marketing Executives Pain Points: Don’t know enough about digital marketing Goal: To gain more knowledge on core digital marketing channels and hit KPIs
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How to conduct keyword research like a pro
Keyword research is finding out what search terms your potential customers are using, so that you can
Your job is to know what those keywords are and optimise your website for them. Your customers use keywords/ search terms to search for your business.
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Chapter 2: Keyword Research Brainstorm Build Organise Prioritise
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Chapter 2: Keyword Research
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.)
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Knowing who your buyers are will give you a broader idea of search terms to conduct keyword research on.
From a keyword researcher’s perspective, different buyer personas key in different search terms. For example, a marketing director looking to hold a conference with partnering companies would key in “conference room rental”, whereas a business consultant looking to hold a meeting with his client would key in “meeting room rental”. Researching your buyer personas and understanding what keywords they are most likely to enter is the first step to effective keyword research.
Chapter 2: Keyword Research
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Brainstorm with your team Set up a meeting with your team to brainstorm and list down all possible buyer personas.
Conduct market survey Invest in paid market research data, conduct surveys with 3rd party and existing customers, visit forums and attend community events where your potential customers hang out. Conduct keyword research Use keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner to identify buyer personas. Analyse existing customer enquiries & profiles Looking through your past customer enquiries and existing customer profiles can help you identify buyer personas.
Refer to buyer persona worksheet
Chapter 2: Keyword Research
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Going into the personas of your buyers Our earlier example (“conference room rental” & “meeting room rental”) where different buyer personas keying in different keyword variations that essentially mean the same thing shows that it is important to go into your customer’s minds in order to
keyword variations. If one of your buyer personas are event planners, think about what words they would search for in
services. What content do they digest? Where do they hang out on the web? What sites do they frequent? Asking these questions will help you to discover even broader (awareness) keywords. For example if your customers are mainly event planners looking to rent function rooms for their clients’ birthday parties, they’d probably use search terms such as “function room rental”. You can also create “awareness” articles such as “20 Amazing Birthday Ideas to Celebrate Your 21st” to increase brand awareness. Conduct keyword research with that title in mind and you will probably discover keywords such as “birthday party ideas.
meeting with your client
party for a customer
showcase your products
your students
corporate training workshop
Chapter 2: Keyword Research
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How to use Google Keyword Planner Step 1: Sign into Google AdWords with your Gmail account.
Chapter 2: Keyword Research
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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.
Chapter 2: Keyword Research
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Step 3: Click on “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category”.
Chapter 2: Keyword Research
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Step 4: Enter a seed keyword (e.g. “training room rental”) and click “Get ideas”.
Chapter 2: Keyword Research
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Some examples of keywords in various buying stages: “Awareness” keywords:
“Interest” keywords:
“Desire” keywords:
“Action” keywords:
Image Courtesy of
Hubspot
Informational Content Product- Centered Content
Chapter 2: Keyword Research
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Short Tail, Long Tail, Location Based Keywords
There are short tail (generic), long tail (specific), and location based keywords to consider when choosing your target keywords. Long tail (specific) and location based keywords tend to perform better than short tail (generic) keywords. The example on the left showcases a training room rental company based in Singapore and the keywords gathered through keyword research. Another type of keyword would be brand keywords. Brand keywords require very little optimisation and tend to be very easy to rank for.
Short tail Long tail Location based
room rental
room rental
rates
in bugis
in singapore
singapore
rooms for rent A consumer searching for “room rental” could be looking for an apartment to stay in, not specifically a training room to conduct business activities. The above keywords are more targeted to a specific audience. A consumer searching for “training room rental rates” has a high probability in enquiring on rental fees. Location based keywords are high potential keywords and tend to convert very well. A consumer searching for “training room rental in bugis” most likely only wants to rent a training room in that specific area.
Chapter 2: Keyword Research
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What is a good search volume? Is there a minimum search volume I should use as a guideline? - It depends on the type of keywords and the buyer intent. Through our Google AdWords reports, we have noticed conversions on long tail keywords with a local search volume as low as 40 monthly average searches. Typically for long tail, actionable keywords, and location based keywords, you shouldn’t worry about a minimum search volume. Take note of the search trends. The average monthly searches is 170, however in certain months there are less than 170 searches.
Chapter 2: Keyword Research
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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:
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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Using more than one keyword research tool for keyword research There are many great tools to conduct keyword research. However, like most other softwares
Using only the Google Keyword Planner for example, you can gather a decent keyword list. However there will be long tail search queries that Google Keyword Planner will miss. Using Google Suggest and other keyword tools will help you pick up any missed long tail keywords.
Keyword research data is rather limited using just Google Keyword Planner Using Google Suggest provides extended keyword data
Chapter 2: Keyword Research
Refer to keyword research worksheet
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Analysing AdWords CPC range and keyword competition level Looking at the suggested bid and competition at the keyword level, we can assume that since advertisers are bidding heavily on paid search ads, they are likely investing on SEO as well, thus increasing the competitiveness of a group of keywords in the organic search ranking results.
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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:
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
rank on the top 5 positions of Google such as:
search result
Title Tags URL
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Keywords found on page In the example on the right, Regus appears to be optimised for multiple related keywords (conference room and meeting rooms are used interchangeably). As a result, Regus outranked We Are Spaces for the search term “conference room rental” at
to the fact that it had optimised its title to include “conference room rental”. Search results for term: meeting room rental Search results for term: conference room rental
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Quality and Usefulness of Content Can you beat your competitors’ content in terms of quality and usefulness? The key to achieving high rankings on Google is to create high quality pages that achieve their purpose. As stated in Google’s official Search Quality Rating Guidelines, “High quality pages are satisfying and achieve their purpose well. High quality pages exist for almost any purpose, from giving information to making you laugh.” What makes a High quality page? A High quality rating requires at least one of the following high quality characteristics:
topic of the page.
In addition, the page and website should have most of the following:
information, Contact or Customer Service information, etc.
experience on the page and website.
SC as desired.
Source: Search Quality Rating Guidelines
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How relevant are those links?
It is also important to look at the quality of the backlinks. A camera blog linking to another website’s article on camera tips has more link relevancy than a general business directory linking to a camera blog.
Uniqueness of backlinks
How many unique websites a.k.a referring domains are linking to a particular website. According to a survey and correlation data report by Moz, a higher number of unique IPs linking to a domain correlated to higher rankings. Number of back links and quality
A study on the importance of backlinks published by Cyrus Shepard from Moz highlighted that more backlinks correlated to higher rankings.
Chapter 2: Keyword Research
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How to fix internal site issues and optimise your pages to boost rankings.
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, page 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.
Without fixing your on-page SEO issues, it can be difficult to rank well even with good
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO Url: www.webdesign.com/ecommerce-web-design/
1) Keywords in URL
<title>E-commerce Web Design Service</title></head> <h1>E-commerce Web Design Service</h1> We provide the best custom e-commerce web design services
Image Keyword inserted into Title and/or Alt Text
<h3>Why We Provide The Best Website Design Package</h3> Designing a site requires… Website creation process… View our other web design packages -> <head><meta name=“description” content=“We provide the best and most affordable commerce web design packages in the market.”>
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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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
Ensure it is wrapped around the title tags <title>Example title</title>
Recommended reading:
Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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Ensure it is wrapped around the title tags <title>Example title</title> To check whether your title is wrapped around the title <title> tags:
Chrome browser
source”
Cmd + F (Mac)” on your keyboard and search for “title” Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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Place the keyword as closer to the front of the title. Moz tested and concluded that this increases the likelihood of a user clicking on the search result and also helps in search engine rankings. Ensure your title is unique, outstanding, and appealing. Cross check with competitor sites and your own internal page titles. Consider the searcher intent and make your title appeal to their emotions. The more appealing the title, the higher the click-through-rate. Search engines also place importance in the uniqueness of your title. Keep the length of your title between 50 - 60 characters / 512 pixels wide. If the title is too long, search engines will truncate the titles and show an ellipsis. Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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Include your brand name in the title tag It is good practice to place your brand name in front on the title tag for the homepage and at the back for internal pages of your site. This increases brand exposure and the likelihood of a user (who has repeated seen the brand’s name) clicking on a particular brand’s search result. Optimise for multiple keywords. Optimising for multiple keywords increases the chances of ranking for more than one keyword. For example, business cards and name cards share similar meaning and can both be included in the title tags if there is sufficient space. Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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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:
Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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Keep all sections of your site in one domain or subdomain and avoid nesting folders into deep layers. It is recommended to keep your important webpages in sub directories (e.g. example.com/blog/post/ as
as search engines use different ranking metrics for domains and subdomains. Avoid nesting folders into deep layers e.g. (www.example.com/folder1/ folder2/folder3/example-content) as search engine spiders may have trouble crawling deeper into your site, Search engines also tend not to crawl deeper into your site if you have a low domain authority.
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Include your keywords in your URLs. https://example.com/classroom-for-rent/ With that said, exact match domain names (EMD) like classroom-rental.com no longer have significant direct impact on rankings after Google turned the knob down on EMDs in the recent years. However having an EMD can indirectly impact rankings when external sites include a naked hyperlink (e.g. <a href=“http://classroom- rental.com>classroom-rental.com</a>) to your site, since keywords in the anchor text are considerably an important ranking factor.
Recommended reading:
guide-and-best-practices-for-emds
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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. This makes it easier for users to remember and type into the browser. Some users may not be exactly sure whether they have gotten the correct spelling of the domain name. Thus they would search for the domain name on Google instead of typing the full address. Similarly, shorter URLs allow users to easily remember and type the full URL.
Avoid using uncommon TLDs such as .info, .name, .biz, etc. Uncommon TLDs tend to be used by spammers and don’t tend to rank as well as .com domains. Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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Avoid rewriting dynamic URLs into static URLs e.g. (www.example.com/ index.php?page=icdl-module&id=31) Though it is advisable to use static URLs as much as possible, in cases when you have dynamic content, it is recommended not to remove information (hiding parameters) to make them look static. To check whether Google has problems crawling your dynamic URLs, you can check for any issues/ alerts in your GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) account.
Recommended reading:
googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.sg/ 2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html
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Use hyphens and underscores as word separators but avoid hyphens
Using hyphens and underscores (hyphens preferred) on your URLs is
search engines the number of keywords used in the URL. E.g. example.com/rentalounge/ should be written as example.com/rent-a- lounge/ On the other hand, domain names should avoid using hyphens as this is common practice among spammy
rent.com)
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO HTTPS secured Google has confirmed the use of HTTPS as a ranking signal. However it is only a very lightweight signal compared to other signals such as high-quality content. It is still good practice to adopt HTTPS
decide to strengthen this signal over time.
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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. Chapter 3: On-Page SEO 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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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:
Include your images into your sitemap and submit your sitemap to search engines. Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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Use a descriptive image file name i.e. (car-showroom.jpg instead of DM9902.jpg) Including your target keywords in your image file names can increase your page’s overall relevancy score as search engines are able to pick up the keywords used there within. Make your alt tags descriptive of the image and include your target keywords when possible (do not stuff keywords) Search engines factor the image alt tags into their ranking
tags can help your rankings as well.
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Reduce your image file sizes and use the right image file type. There are a couple of popular graphics formats (e.g. PNG, JPEG, GIF) used on the web. For more information on which file types to use, read this article. You can reduce your image file sizes by selecting “Save for web” if you’re using a photo editing like Adobe Photoshop. Alternatively you may use a free tool on the web such as jpeg-optimizer to reduce your JPEG file sizes.
Recommended reading:
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Use unique, high quality, custom graphics/photos where possible to increase chances of people embedding/ citing your images. Which image are you more likely to trust or link to?
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Images sitemaps Ensure your sitemap has information about your images, otherwise you can also use a separate sitemap for your images. This helps Google to discover images on your site that they might
able to find. In your image sitemap, you may indicate which images you want Google to crawl and index. Upload your sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools.
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Conduct keyword research for “Video Keywords” using Keyword Planner and Google Search. Create an awesome video that engages viewers. Good viewer retention sends quality signals to Google. Include Keywords in the video file name, video title, description, and tags. Promote your video on Social Media, Forums, and influencers to increase views. (Views need to be authentic) Video embeds and backlinks pointing to your video send positive ranking signals to Google.
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Recommended reading:
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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:
searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf
Link out to relevant internal pages of your website or relevant external websites where appropriate. Chapter 3: On-Page SEO 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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Mention your primary and secondary keywords early on in your copy. It is good SEO practice to mention your primary and secondary keywords in the first paragraph of your copy. Primary and secondary keywords should be included in subheadings. This helps to minimise “pogo- sticking” (where a visitor bounces back to the search results pages right after clicking on a search result), as visitors expect to see a relevant content after clicking on a search result. Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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Primary and secondary keywords should be distributed evenly throughout your copy. This sends signals to search engines that your content is relevant to your target keywords mentioned in your title. Include keywords that are closely related to your main keywords (also known as Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords) throughout your copy. LSI keywords are synonyms of your target keywords and related keywords that are often mentioned
keywords around the web. Examples of LSI keywords of “classroom rental” are “classroom rental rates”, “seats 4 pax”, “training room rental”. Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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Ensure main content (MC) and supplementary content (SC) serves its purpose well and is relevant to your target keywords and searcher intent. Main Content (MC) is any part of the page that directly helps the page achieve its purpose. MC is (or should be!) the reason the page
a very large role in the Page Quality rating of a webpage. Supplementary Content (SC) is also important. SC can help a page better achieve its purpose or it can detract from the overall experience. Source: Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO Ensure your content is unique and has E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and main content (MC) and supplementary content (SC) serves its purpose well. In this example, www.xe.com ranks
“currency converter”. Analysing the search query, we can derive that the user is searching for a tool to convert currency. On www.xe.com, the MC appears prominently and above the page fold. This tool has also been around for many years and has gained authority and trustworthiness.
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO Link out to relevant internal pages
external websites where appropriate. To improve your pages’ relevancy score and help search engines understand the topic of your pages and index them better, link each page back to its category or subcategory pages, related internal pages of your site, and external relevant and reputable sources.
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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 < 3 seconds). Page is browser and device responsive.
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO Page layout is designed with the enduser in mind. Google knows when users click on a search result and immediately bounces back to the search results pages a.k.a. pogo sticking, and not fixing this issue can affect your rankings. Always put yourself in the position
pages.
Recommended reading:
youll-never-hear-from-successful-ux- designers/
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO Main content elements stand out while supplementary content are displayed in a more subtle manner, making page easy to scan through. The main content should be displayed prominently on the page’s real estate. For tabbed content for example, display the main content in the display-by- default tab. No excessive placement of ads above the page fold. Ads are not to be disguised as content or be intrusive to users. Don’t use ads that pop/slide out and block the page’s content when the user’s mouse hovers over it, or text ads that trick the user into thinking it is part of the page’s written content.
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO Use breadcrumbs, submenus, navigational menus to provide users a better user experience when navigating through your site. Though it is not necessary to include all of the above site navigational elements, it is good practice to include at least one or two of them. Text is readable, images and multimedia are high quality. Font-family, text colour, and font size should be clear and easy to scan through. Images and multimedia such as videos should be of high quality and optimised for speed.
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO Page renders fast (optimal loading time < 4 seconds). Page loads from server and renders fast with an optimal server response time of < 0.5 seconds and a completely loaded page of < seconds. You may check for any issues hindering your page speed with a free tool provided by Google - Pagespeed Insights.
Recommended reading:
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO Page is browser and device responsive. Following the Google Mobile Friendly Update a.k.a. Mobilegeddon since April 2015, pages that aren’t mobile friendly may not rank as well on mobile searches, though this issue does not affect desktop searches. Note: This only affects pages on an individual basis. Meaning that if a site has certain pages that aren’t mobile friendly, it will not affect the
pages. To test whether your page is mobile friendly, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool.
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Configuration URLs Content Serving Responsive Design
One URL Serves the same HTML but uses CSS media queries to render content differently.
Dynamic Serving
One URL Displays different mobile & desktop versions depending on user agent.
Separate Mobile Site
Different URLs (e.g. m.domain.com) Redirects users to a different site depending on the user agent. Chapter 3: On-Page SEO Google recommends responsive or dynamic serving, but does not favour any particular URL format as long as all pages are assessable to all Googlebot user-agents. - Google Developers
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Recommended reading:
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Recommended reading:
AMP HTML is basically HTML extended with custom AMP properties.
How AMP Speeds Up Performance
All CSS must be inline and size-bound Don’t let extension mechanisms block rendering Size all resources statically Keep all third-party JavaScript out of the critical path
Allow only asynchronous scripts Font triggering must be efficient
Minimize style recalculations
Only run GPU-accelerated animations
Prioritize resource loading
Load pages in an instant
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Font size and words on images too small. Employing interstitials such as mailing forms and promotional popups. Inappropriate redirects such as redirecting all desktop internal pages to the mobile homepage version. Cross linking to inappropriate versions (desktop and mobile).
Multimedia content that are not compatible with mobile devices. Touch elements too close to one another, making it difficult to tap on a desired element e.g. a button.
Blocking Googlebot from accessing Javascript, CSS, and image files.
Recommended reading:
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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
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:
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Fruits Cabbage Lettuce Spinach Vegetables Apple Pear Orange Meat Raw Chicken Raw Beef Raw Fish
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO Fruits Cabbage Lettuce Spinach Vegetables Apple Pear Orange Meat Raw Chicken Raw Beef Raw Fish Supermarket
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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
Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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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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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO 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 hand tells robots not to index the content
links to follow. It is placed in a page’s <head></head> section.
User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /downloads/ Disallow: /
<html> <head> <title>...</title> <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> </head>
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO 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 passes100% 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:
using-301-302-30x-redirects-anymore-254608
#Redirect your website to another domain Redirect 301 / http://example.com/ #Redirect your one page to another Redirect 301 /index.html http:// example.com/
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO 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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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO Implements 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
In cases where you require similar content on 2
experiment), implement the rel=canonical tag
amount of link juice as a 301 redirect.
Recommended reading:
<head> <link href="http://www.example.com/ mainpage/" rel="canonical" /> </head>
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO XML Sitemap is submitted to Webmaster Tools. Submitting an XML sitemap to Google Search Console can help Google better crawl and index your website. It is also recommended to include a HTML sitemap
to access, especially if your site is huge and split into many main categories and subcategories.
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Chapter 3: On-Page SEO 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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Source: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors
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ccTLDs example.sg Subdomains Sub Directories sg.example.com example.com/sg
Google Webmaster Geotargeting Tool
Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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“The hreflang attribute signals that the page has an alternate language version on the specified url.” British English £ Variations of the same language regionally American English $ Different languages across entire site English i.e. (home) Chinese i.e. ()
You may list the hreflang in the on-page markup <head> section, HTTP header,
Also remember to specify all various alternate hreflang attributes on every page.
Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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Recommended reading:
Chapter 3: On-Page SEO
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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
At one point, Google tested removing links entirely from the core algorithms and they didn’t like the results.
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Domain Authority
Chapter 4: Link Building
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“PageRank is a link analysis algorithm used by Google to help determine the relative importance of a website. Every website is given a Google PageRank score between 0 and 10 on an exponential scale.” - Bruceclay Each link from one website to another is interpreted by Google as a vote. Depending on the number of outbound links a page has, the PageRank is split
which case no link juice is passed at all. PageRank is not… the ranking position of a page in the search results. PageRank is only one of the many ranking factors and it does not guarantee #1 position in the search results.
PR4 PR4
PR3
Recommended reading:
webmasters-11068
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Co-occurence: Notice “shoes” was mentioned near the link text “re-lace the shoes”. There we can make a statement that “shoes” co-occured with “re-lace the shoes”.
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Shoe Website Shoe Article Shoe Directory Shoe Website
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Google crawls and indexes Facebook and Twitter pages just like any other webpage
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.
Chapter 4: Link Building
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Source:
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Source:
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Check whether your site is indexed or deindexed by entering the search operator site:example.com into the search engine. If you used to rank first position for your
manual penalty. Go to your Google Webmaster Tools and/or Bing Webmaster Tools if you got penalised by both of the major search engines to check for reasons your site got penalised. Analyse all inbound links and identify spammy ones with a backlink checker tool like AHrefs or SEOSpyGlass. (This is usually the case of manual penalty resulting from unnatural backlinks) Send requests to the webmasters where you found those unnatural links, for the unnatural links to be removed. Disavow links. Send a reconsideration request to Google and/or Bing.
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Analyze Define Develop & Execute Measure Chapter 4: Link Building
Refer to:
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For a more complete list of link building strategies, visit http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies
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Use search operators to source for quality directories that have already listed other sites in your industry category. Observe the overall look and feel of the directory. Does it look spammy in nature? Do a brand name search of the directory in Google to be
be likely to have been hit by a penalty. Observe neighbourhood sites that your site is going to be listed together
the page’s source code. It is good to have a mix of both. Submit your listing for approval.
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Download SEOSpyGlass or use any 3rd party backlink checker tool such as AHrefs, MajesticSEO, or Opensiteexplorer. Do a Google search on the target keywords you aim to rank for and build a list of competitor URLs. Enter your top competitors’ URLs into your preferred backlink checker tool and analyse the backlink profile. Generate a list of target websites that you are most likely able to acquire links from and prioritise according to level of difficulty.
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Create an Event, Video, Infographic, or Slideshow. Find video submission sites like Youtube, Vimeo, slideshow submission sites like SlideShare, and more using search operators (i.e. “submit your video”, “submit your infographic”) Submit your Event, Video, Infographic, or Slideshow. Some submissions will require approval, so check from time to time if your submission has been approved and follow up if it hasn’t been approved.
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Sign up for Google Alerts. Monitor brand mentions or mentions of any of your authors. You can also use search operators (e.g. “brand name”) on Google search. If you discover any link opportunities, send an outreach email.
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Search for blogs that accept guest blogging Develop content ideas that are unique to each blog Outreach Create and submit the guest post Once approved, promote it.
Refer to Guest Blogging Checklist
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Comprehensive How-to Guide White Paper Infographic Gigantic List Case Study
Examples of Link Bait
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Find blogs that are blogging about relevant topics and that have already established some authority. Read their blog posts and comment on them, sharing your genuine insights, opinions, and building rapport with the author. Include your name and link back to your website. Comment regularly with influential blogs to open up other opportunities. Follow influential bloggers on social networks and interact regularly with them.
Chapter 4: Link Building
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https://moz.com/blog/the-ten-types-of-content-that-work-best-for-seo- whiteboard-friday http://www.mattpolsky.com/prospecting-for-links/ https://moz.com/blog/targeted-link-building-in-2016 https://ahrefs.com/blog/link-bait/ http://sharprocket.com.ph/link-building-tips/ http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies
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Ranking your website locally and internationally and miscellaneous
Setting Up Keyword Ranking Reports SEO Analytics
Managing/Outsourcing Your SEO Campaigns
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Chapter 5: Local & International SEO & Misc. 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? Read more at https://www.quicksprout.com/2015/07/20/ quantify-your-results-the-14-most-important-seo-metrics/
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Chapter 5: Local & International SEO & Misc.
Analysing goal completions from various sources/mediums through Google Analytics.
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Analysing estimate revenue/profit through goal completions from organic search.
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SEO Book’s Firefox Rank Checker
Recommended Tools:
SEO PowerSuite’s Rank Tracker
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SEO Head Technical SEO Content Manager PR / Link Builder SEO Analyst / CRO
customers & influencers