Difference between revisions of "Search Engine Optimization"

Revision as of 06:39, 25 April 2019

Search Engine Optimization (commonly abbreviated SEO) is a technique for manipulating the search results of the top Search Engine services (Google, Yahoo!, Lycos, DogPile, WebCrawler, Mahalo, Wikia, Cuil, etc...).

Criteria

The following criteria contribute to ranking in search engines:

1. page title
2. META description
3. META keywords
4. content (keywords and/or keyphrases appear at a ratio of 1:3, or once every third of content... for example it should appear in the first paragraph if you have three, the first and fourth if you have six, etc)
5. categories
6. tags
7. links (title, rel)
8. images (title, alt)
9. media (title, alternate DIV or P tags)
10. iframe (noframes text)
11. script (noscript text)
12. links (outbound links from your site linking to references or other external sites)
13. backlinks (number of sites linking in to your's)
14. searches (number of searches using keywords that pull up relevant pages of your site's content already)
15. authority (reliability of your top-level domain for a given topic)
16. freshness (frequency of updates)
17. traffic (visitations over time)

Techniques

Directories

Getting listed in the main Yahoo!, DMOZ and other business directories is essential. This could require substantial original content or establishment and recognition of authoritative position for given material or subject.

Link Building

The process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. A hyperlink (usually just called a link) is a way for users to navigate between pages on the internet.

• The Beginner's Guide to Link Building: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building

Link Sharing

As long as a majority of in-bound links are from non-reciprocated sources, certain targeted link-shares can be extremely beneficial to SEO and Search Engine ranking on a particular subject.

• wikipedia: Link exchange

Link Buying

No longer a viable alternative (in bulk) due to Google's Search Engine algorithm changes. May still make sense in a smaller more focused manner.

• Buying Links is Shallow, Short-Term Thinking. Buying Blogs? Now that's a Strategy: http://moz.com/blog/buying-links-is-shallow-buying-blogs-now-thats-a-strategy
• Google Webmaster FAQ on Link Schemes: http://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

Roundups

Top 10 Lists, Best-Ofs, Greatest Hits (of own content or others'), etc...

How-Tos

Writing tutorials or how-to guides is a great way to share your knowledge and expertise, and generate traffic, especially when done for a niche or specialized topic.

Link Checking

You should avoid publishing a website or webapp with dead links. The technique of "Link Checking", literally going through all the pages and looking for any dead links, malformed URLs, missing images, moved content redirects not working correctly, etc. This is a light version of full-fledged "Spidering" the website/webapp, where a Web Spider will run through all the links it finds on your site until it doesn't find any new links (i.e. one page that links to another page that has one or more links on it, all links will be visited on all pages).

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Tools

• SEO Tools (140 SEO Tools): http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html^[3]
• SEO Tools for Excel: https://seotoolsforexcel.com/download-seotools/
• Search Engine Analysis: http://www.searchengine-analysis.com
• Google - Keyword Tool: http://www.adwords.google.com/keywordtool
• SEO Keyword Difficulty Tool: http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-difficulty/ (how tough is it to get ranked for certain keywords)^[4]
• 30+ More Tools to Automate Your Link Building: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2073995/30-More-Tools-to-Automate-Your-Link-Building
• iBusiness Promoter (IBP): http://www.ibusinesspromoter.com/
• WooRank: http://www.woorank.com/
• SERP Fox: http://www.serpfox.com/
• W3C Link Checker: https://validator.w3.org/checklink | SRC
• LinkChecker: http://wummel.github.io/linkchecker/ (GUI tool for checking links for 404s, broken images, etc)
• Xenu's LinkSleuth: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
• Screaming Frog - SEO Spider tool: http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
• Ninja Site Crawler & Broken Link Checker: https://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/google-sitemap-generator/

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Resources

• The Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors: http://searchengineland.com/seotable
• GOOGLE - Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (OFFICIAL): https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf^[6]
• SEO - The Free Beginner’s Guide From SEOmoz: http://guides.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization
• The Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet: http://static.seomoz.org/user_files/SEO_Web_Developer_Cheat_Sheet.pdf
• Google vs Yahoo! vs MSN Search - Comparing Search Algorithms on RELEVANCY: http://www.seobook.com/relevancy/#
• Search Engine market share (GLOBAL %): https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4&qpcustomd=0^[7]
• SEO - How To Get Your PHP Pages Indexed on Google: http://www.seo.com/blog/seo-tips/how-to-get-your-php-pages-indexed-on-google/
• SEO Finder - Pick up valuable older sites for pennies: http://www.merchantos.com/sitefinder301/
• iBusinessPromoter (promises Top 10 rankings on selected keywords): http://www.ibusinesspromoter.com/optimize/top-10-rankings.htm
• Wordpress built-in Sitemaps: http://en.support.wordpress.com/sitemaps/

Tutorials

• SEO - A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-guide/
• Search Engine Optimization for Site Owners and Small Businesses: http://www.seo-blog.com/tutorial.php
• Actionable Link Building Strategies: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/actionable-link-building-strategies
• A Campaign Prep Checklist For Link Builders: http://searchengineland.com/a-campaign-prep-checklist-for-link-builders-77681
• 5 Ways to Qualify Great Links: http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/qualify-great-links/
• Why YouTube's Keyword Tools is amazing for Link Building: http://searchengineland.com/why-the-youtube-keyword-tool-is-so-amazing-for-link-building-173766
• 'Yoast WordPress SEO - Titles & Metas template variables: http://kb.yoast.com/article/146-yoast-wordpress-seo-titles-metas-template-variables
• All about SEO on Wordpress: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/seo-on-wordpress-com/
• The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For WordPress Sites: http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/
• How do I check for valid (not dead) links programatically using PHP?: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/244506/how-do-i-check-for-valid-not-dead-links-programatically-using-php
• How to find broken links on a website: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/65515/how-to-find-broken-links-on-a-website
• How to check URL for 404 using Selenium WebDriver?: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1453527/how-to-check-url-for-404-using-selenium-webdriver
• Checking HttpResponse OK (200) with Selenium WebDriver: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14537336/checking-httpresponse-ok-200-with-selenium-webdriver/14547168
• The UNIX Philosophy, WebDriver and HTTP Status Codes: http://blog.rocketpoweredjetpants.com/2013/06/the-unix-philosophy-webdriver-and-http.html
• Using page speed in mobile search ranking: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/01/using-page-speed-in-mobile-search.html
• Improving Search Rank by Optimizing Your "Time To First Byte" (TTFB): https://moz.com/blog/improving-search-rank-by-optimizing-your-time-to-first-byte^{[8][9][10][11][12][13]}

External Links

• Search Market Share 200 -- Google Grew, Yahoo & Microsoft Dropped & Stabilized: http://searchengineland.com/search-market-share-2008-google-grew-yahoo-microsoft-dropped-stabilized-16310
• New Google SEO Starter Guide Published -- Perfect for Beginners: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/seo/new-google-seo-starter-guide-published-perfect-for-beginners/538?tag=nl.e539
• 10 Organic Google boosting tips you should know [now]: http://bakermedia.com/site/news/organc-google-seo
• Scribe 3.0 - SEO (for your documents) Made Simple: http://www.copyblogger.com/scribe-3/
• How To -- Allow Google to Crawl your AJAX Content: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
• Google Hummingbird - Evolutionary becomes Revolutionary: http://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-when-evolutionary-becomes-revolutionary-173740
• Is it worth spending time on creating tags and categories?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A96yDPqa2rs
• What are some of the most ingenious ways to increase traffic to a website?: http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-most-ingenious-ways-to-increase-traffic-to-a-website
• Will SEO die?: https://www.quora.com/Will-SEO-die
• Death of SEO greatly exaggerated (INFOGRAPHIC): http://www.seobook.com/learn-seo/infographics/death-of-seo.php
• SEO vs. React -- Web Crawlers are Smarter Than You Think: https://medium.freecodecamp.org/seo-vs-react-is-it-neccessary-to-render-react-pages-in-the-backend-74ce5015c0c9
• Breaking News - Google Mobile Speed Update Algorithm Ranking Factor: https://seoexpertbrad.com/google-speed-update/
• Google Shows Preference To Quicker-Loading Mobile Pages: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/321556/google-shows-preference-to-quicker-loading-mobile.html
• Google URL Inspection Tool Shows Marketers What The Search Engine Sees: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/321288/google-url-inspection-tool-shows-marketers-what-
• Consolidate duplicate URLs by identifying "CanonicalURLs": https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

References

1. ↑ Google Webmaster - Crawl Errors report (websites): https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35120?hl=en
2. ↑ How to Crawl site getting URL and status code: https://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/135567/crawl-site-getting-url-and-status-code/135579
3. ↑ 10 Ugly SEO Tools that Actually Rock: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-tools-that-rock
4. ↑ SearchBliss - Keyword Difficulty tool: http://www.searchbliss.com/seo-tools/keyword-ranking-difficulty-check.asp
5. ↑ 5 Tools To Check For Broken Links On Your WordPress Site: http://www.wpuniversity.com/blog/5-tools-find-broken-links
6. ↑ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en
7. ↑ Search Engine Market Share in Asia – January 2016: https://www.ajpr.com/search-engine-market-share-in-asia-january-2016/
8. ↑ First Byte Time (back-end processing): https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/75045/first-byte-time-back-end-processing
9. ↑ How to reduce the “Time for the first byte” on my website?: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8539784/how-to-reduce-the-time-for-the-first-byte-on-my-website
10. ↑ CDNs Won’t Improve Your SEO (unless…): https://www.imperva.com/blog/using-cdn-to-improve-seo-and-ttfb/
11. ↑ Stop worrying about Time To First Byte (TTFB): https://blog.cloudflare.com/ttfb-time-to-first-byte-considered-meaningles/
12. ↑ What Is Time To First Byte, And How To Improve It: https://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/16081-time-to-first-byte-seo.html
13. ↑ The strange case of Mr. "Time To First Byte": https://serverfault.com/questions/350062/the-strange-case-of-mr-time-to-first-byte

See Also

Search Engine | Analyics | Microdata | RDFa | Microformats | OpenSearch | Sitemap | Robots.txt | User Agent