Advanced SEO

Advanced SEO

with Ash NallawallaTwitter: @ashnallawalla

www.trainsem.comwww.twemps.com

PESA Internet Conference

Copyright © TrainSEM Pty Ltd 2007 - 2012

Ash Nallawalla - @ashnallawalla

• SEO Consultant and trainer• CEO, National Training Centre of Australia P/L (an RTO)

– Online training: www.trainsem.com

– Social media outsourcing: www.twemps.com

1 June 2012 2www.trainsem.com

What is “Basic SEO”?

• “On-page” SEO – the stuff you can see and the stuff behind the page (code).– Information architecture choices– On-page content must be topical, focussed and fresh.– Page coding decisions– Page linking (internal and to other sites)– Title, Description and image tags

• Web server– Speed/Page size– Broken pages– URL length and makeup

• “Off-page” SEO – quality inbound links– Who links to you (and who links to them)– Webmaster Tools (Google and Bing)

1 June 2012 www.trainsem.com 3

So what’s wrong with Basic SEO?

• Nothing – that’s the least everyone must do.• Not sufficient if you’re a motel/jeweller/etc in

a large city or popular destination.• Worse if your SEO did things that Google

doesn’t like now:– Spun articles and submitted to article directories– Auto-submitted comments to blogs with a link– Auto-submitted comments to forums with a link– Exact-match anchor text links en masse e.g.

“cheap motel gold coast”


Some questionable practices

• SEO is risky if done wrong/on the cheap. What “works” today might not work tomorrow.

• Let’s look at some practices to eliminatethem from inclusion as “Advanced SEO”– Black hat tactics

• Comment spam• Link saturation• Article spinning• Keyword stuffing


Examples of comment spam


Examples of anchor text links

• These are site-wide on a blog (usually seen in the sidebar)

• One is no-followed (probably hasn’t renewed)


Examples of anchor text links

• These are spun articles and contain keyphrase-anchor-text links


Artificial link saturation (not advisable)

• Xrumer– Automated posts to forums and blogs– Bypasses CAPTCHA– Uses proxies to avoid IP address blocks– Creates forum profiles with a link in the

signature– Generate email accounts on some services

• Link sellers


Spinning an article

• The tool is marked up with synonyms


{As you|When it comes time to|When the day arrives to|While you} {prep|prepare|set up} your {home|property|real estate property|real-estate property|house} for your {first|1st|initial} {open house|openhouse event}, {try|be sure|make sure} to {look at|view|see|envision} it {through the eyes|from the point of view|from the perspective} of a {potential|possible|likely} {buyer|purchaser}.

While you set up your home for your first open house event, make sure to see it from the perspective of a potential buyer.

When the day arrives to prepare your property for your initial open house, make sure to look at it from the point of view of a possible purchaser.

While you set up your house for your first open house, try to envision it from the perspective of a possible purchaser.

Example of keyword stuffing

• (Sad example of optimising for a keyphrase by repetition – so 1998…)


Negative SEO

• To lower a ranking• How done:

– Remove quality links to competitor– SEO 3rd party site for same search term– Flood competitor’s site with spammy links– Dob a competitor for buying links– Copy competitor site and get it indexed first– Technical attacks on server


Now we finally come to the “advanced SEO” slides…

What is “Advanced SEO”?

• Stuff you must do (as applicable) if you are in a competitive niche.

• Anything you don’t know.– Get training to keep in touch– Attend conferences– Participate in the better SEO forums– Subscribe to SEO blogs and Twitter accounts– Deep, technical knowhow– Legal/Professional rules, e.g. Dentists

• Overcoming internal politics• Costs more to outsource.


Inbound marketing = engagement

• Many of these tactics will attract customer comments – engage with them.


Website

FB, forumsTwitter etcBlogs

Video, Podcasts Micro sites

Google+ Link Bait

Links ain’t links

• Not all links are equal– Clean links

e.g. <a href=“http://www.ibm.com”>IBM</a>– No-followed links

e.g. <a href=“http://www.ibm.com” rel=“nofollow”>IBM</a>

– Redirected linkse.g. Link > Intermediate site > Ultimate site

– Citationse.g. “www.ibm.com” (in a block of text online)


AnchorText

No-follow links

• Searchstatus add-on for Firefox browser shows no-follow links with a pink background.

• Shows PageRank• Social links are

usually no-followor redirected.


Google’s Panda Update (2011)

• Quality content update known as Panda. It targeted:– Keyword stuffing– Spun articles– Content spam

• Panda continues to be rolled out in phases, even now.


Google’s Penguin Update (2012)

• “Webspam” update known as Penguin. (24 April). It targeted:– Unnatural backlinks– Sudden influx of backlinks– High incidence of anchor-text backlinks.

• Some innocent sites were hit.– Check with the query followed by –amazon.com

• Solutions for sites hit by Penguin:– Wait and see (if you are innocent).– Undo the bad tactics (if possible).– Build a new site and start again.


Penguin image by Larry Ewing, Simon Budig, Anja Gerwinski via Wikipedia

SEO firm de-indexed

• Latest firm to be removed from Google:


So easy to make the alleged connection…


Anchor text in links

• Old linking tactic, say for a fictitious Luxor Motel: 1.Use a popular keyphrase as your anchor text e.g.

“cheap motel in Cairns”.2.Rinse and repeat (on many websites).3.Enjoy improved ranking for that phrase.

• New (post Penguin update) linking principles:1. Use branded anchor text, e.g. “Luxor Motel” most

often, relative to keyphrase anchor text (max. 60%).2. Some anchor text should be “www.luxormotel.com”

or even “Click here”.3. Get links slowly, preferably unsolicited.4. Do not spam forums and blogs.5. Few good links are better than many dubious ones.


Site-in-the-middle technique

• Anchor text variations(2011 experiment)


Intermediate (but old) site

Site to be rankedfor “cheap motel in cairns”

Link providing site

“L”

“I”

“T”

Additional facets

• You also need to integrate Basic and Advanced SEO with:– Local Search SEO– Video SEO– Social Media

Optimisation– Video SEO– Micro Sites– etc


Local Microsite

Social Video

Basic + Advanced SEO

A brief look at patents

• Example: PostRank patent


What PostRank does

• A high-quality blog post attracts:– Comments– Links from other sites– Mentions in social networks– Bookmarks in social bookmarking

sites


Blogpost

Comments

Links

MentionsScore

Facebook EdgeRank

• Algorithm that determines if your content will be seen by others.


Klout.com score

• Don’t obsess over score but learn about your social visibility.


Social signals and Bing

• Bing uses Twitter and public Facebook (FB) information to improve their search engine.

• Bing does look at the number of followers you have.

• Bing looks at the number of people you follow relative to the number that follow you.

• The relevance of the followers is also noted.• Retweets (and who RTs and their relevance) also

noted.• Facebook friends who like a page are shown in

the search results page.


From an interview between Eric Enge and Paul Yiu of Bing (Microsoft)

Twitter followers

• Maintain a high followers:following ratio• Keep your Twitter profile relevant to your

niche.• Example of an automated Twitter follow:


Authorship - Influencers

• Mainly Google+ but Bing also uses author signals.

• Getting popular.• Easy to do.


Makes your page stand out

• Rel=“author” tag is associated with your Google+ profile

• Your image shows up next to your page in search results.

• Might help to get clicks.


Authorship – how to

• Create a Google+ profile1. Go to google.com2. Get a Google Account, e.g. sign up for Gmail

• Go to http://plus.google.com/authorship1. Sign up with your Google Account2. Verify the account.– (Or link your content to your Google Profile)

• Test via http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets


Editing Google+ profile

• Edit visibility in profile.• Add your sites to

“Contributor to”


Rel=“canonical”

• Easy to create duplicate content inadvertently, e.g. – pages also available as PDFs – IIS server set to case-insensitive– IP-address URLs in the index– Copies of files on CDNs

• You could block the PDF pages but you want any link juice that points to them.

• Solution is rel=“canonical” header.• Handy plugin available for WordPress.


Local Search

• Get listed in Google Places:– Add details, ask for

testimonials, add photos.• Use schema.org

vocabulary with microdata format on your web pages.


Video SEO

• Host on your own site first, not on YouTube, Vimeo etc.

• Choose player – Wistia, Brightcove, etc• Title, Description, VideoObject schema,

URL, embed code• Transcript, closed captions• Surround video with relevant text• Video XML sitemap


Image SEO

• Use the right images for the content – Unique better than stock.– 300x300 px or bigger

• Use alt tags with short descriptions.• Specify HTML dimensions for faster loading.• Include in sitemap.xml• They help press releases• They help social engagement, esp Pinterest

and Facebook sharing


Micro Sites

• Very easy to put up a WordPress site.• Make more than one, with each focusing

on one topic.– MyStore.com.au

• Watches.com.au (blog that links to watches)• Jewellery.com.au (blog that links to jewellery)• etc

• Each site deep-links to the main website for its money term.


Social Networks

• Forums – check rules before dropping URLs in content or in signatures.

• Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter –links are no-followed, but search engines do take note of these links.

• Such links may also have value as citations.


Takeaways

• Don’t rely on free traffic– Create your own loyal following by providing

something of value. Encourage bookmarking. Get others to talk about you.

• Pay for ads where it makes sense.• Don’t be impressed by your Follower count:

– Connect– Engage– Influence– Integrate

• Enhance your technology – content, code, server.


Thank you

Ash Nallawalla: @ashnallawalla

TrainSEM: Online SEO traininghttp://www.trainsem.com/

Twemps: Outsourced community managershttp://www.twemps.com/


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