COMPETITIVE SEO AND CONTENT MARKETING
COMPETITIVE SEO AND CONTENT MARKETING
While many view Search Engine Optimization as a purely speculative process, the reality is that SEO's know quite a lot for near certain these days. Through rigorously studying Google's patent filings, direct recommendations to webmasters, and statements made at various search industry conferences by actual Google representatives like Matt Cutts, and scientific testing, we are able to gain a much better understanding of how Google ranks websites in it's search results.
Though a number of these concepts can become very complex and advanced, and we highly recommend allowing our professional SEO analysts to apply these rules and the methods they have helped to forge on your company's web presence, the following is intended as a brief outline of what Google considers when ranking your website. This should serve as a conceptual outline for non-SEO's, and a quick reminder checklist for experts.
Contents |
| Factor | Details |
|---|---|
| Keywords in Domain | Phrase acceptable as one word, or separated by hyphens. |
| Keyword IS Domain | Much greater effect; dubbed "all-in-domain bonus", where the domain is an exact match. |
| Domain Name Extension | .edu and .gov given high trust. Free ccTLD's like .tk are given much less. |
| Age of Domain | Older domain names are worth more. |
| Domain Registration | Not expiring in the next 12 months (many believe longer registration worth even more). Not anonymous. |
| Keywords in URL | Earlier appearance in URL given additional weight. |
| URL Length/Friendliness | Shorter is better for users. Keep it < 8 words, minimize urlencoded characters, spaces (restful URL's are preferred to GET variables). |
| Keywords in Title Tag | 1st 1/3 worth most. Separated by "-" or "|". Do not exceed 60 chars. |
| Good 'Description' Meta | Should be descriptive and under 156 chars. Effect of meta tags has diminished, but is still used. |
| Good 'Keywords' Meta | Should be succinct, relevant, words appearing no more than twice, and mirrored in page body. |
| H1/H2/H3 | Use appropriately. Words in H1 worth more than H2. Words in 1st 1/3 of tag also do more. |
| Overall Content Quantity | Not too thin, not to long. Around 250 words is generally best. Google will usually stop processing longer pages. |
| Keyword Emphasis | Bold, italic, and larger font sizes have all been proven to be understood as more important by Google. |
| Keyword Density | Percentage a word/phrase appears in the body of a text is one of the most significant on-page ranking factors. |
| Keyword Location | 1st 1/3 of a sentence, paragraph, and a page is always best. |
| Keyword Proximity | Distance between two keywords in a phrase matters. Order of words in a phrase matching the search query matters. |
| Phrase Diversity | Google analyzes synonyms and stemming (+s, +ing, etc.) in what they refer to as Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). |
| Body Text Quality | Is best to have short, fast-paced paragraphs without misspellings or grammatical errors. Google can and does analyze your English. |
| Keywords in ALT tags | Relevant, but for usability's sake (screen readers). "Florida" update made it very easy to be penalized for hidden ALT text. |
| Internal Link Text | Anchor text used in internal site links helps determine relevancy. |
| Internal Link Popularity | Quantity of internal links to more important pages matters. |
| Internal Link Quantity | Google employees have repeatedly recommended under 100 per page. Many SEO's recommend as few as 1 link per 100 words for optimal quality scoring. |
| Efficient Navigation | Ideally no page of a good site is ever more than 2-3 clicks away. |
| Smart Inter-page Links | Try to link individual pages to one another where most relevant. Tree and breadcrumb structures work well. |
| External Link Relevance | Use good anchor text, don't link to unrelated pages/sites. |
| External Link Quality | Never link to low-quality sites, "sketchy" SEO'd sites, irrelevant sites, redirect pages, or to 404/dead sites. |
| External Link Quantity | Don't create too many external links (try to limit to 2-3 per page max). |
| Page Speed | Users prefer faster sites, so does Google. Aim for < 2 second load times. |
| Static v. Dynamic Content | Static content is preferred to dynamic. Avoid sending surprises to search spiders. |
| Site Size | There is lots of evidence towards Google preferring larger, content-rich sites; however content that's big+too thin sees big penalties. |
| Fresh Content | Fresh content displays healthy activity. Well-exhibited by a blog or other strategies. More important where QDF is at play. |
| Old Content | In direct contradiction to the above, very old content will also rank well by displaying stability. Ideal world- both will exist. |
| Rich Content | Rich content includes a healthy enough variance of images, video, and text formatting to be pleasing the end user. |
| Factor | Details |
|---|---|
| Affiliate Links | Sites with lots of affiliate links have been heavily demoted by the Florida update and others. |
| Bad Neighborhood Links | Google frequently describes links to 'bad neighborhoods' as being very harmful. Be careful who you link to. |
| Redirects | Avoid meta and javascript redirects. Avoid linking to redirected URL's. Always 301 redirect moved pages. |
| Text in Graphic Form | Text in image form is generally not processed by search spiders. |
| Keyword Stuffing | Be extremely careful in appearing like you are trying to use hidden areas such as ALT and META tags for keyword benefits. |
| Excessive Keywords | Over-optimized sites with too high of a keyword density or clear intent to spam keywords are hit hard. |
| Offensive Content | Potentially adult-oriented and vulgar content tends to have a much harder time being trusted by Google. |
| Separate site Versions | Never, ever, ever serve a different website to Google than normal visitors. Very fast ban, defined as 'cloaking'. |
| Color Contrast | Always consider that your foreground color has a high contrast on the background to avoid hefty cloaking penalties. |
| Stolen Content | Make your content as unique as possible. Copied content is at worst a copyright violation, at best, adds little to the search user experience. |
| Canonical Confusion | Avoid your site ever being seen as having a differing URL while displaying the same content. |
| Poor Code | Can cause usability penalties. Always make sure your sites are valid and w3 complaint. |
| Missing ALT tags | Blind users behind screen readers will not be able to reach some content. Google considers your site to be of lower quality. |
| Factor | Details |
|---|---|
| Relevant Anchors | The content of your anchor text strongly effects the overall SEO benefit that you receive from a link. |
| Varying Techniques | There are lots of link building strategies. Employing one too aggressively appears unnatural and will only yield short-term results. |
| Relevant Backlinks | While not always possible, links from sites that are in a similar niche as yours will help your SEO efforts considerably. |
| Trustworthy Backlinks | Backlinks coming from sites that have built up substantial trust with Google over time are worth much more. |
| Direct Link Popularity | No two links are created anywhere close to equal, however at the end of the day, more links are still often better than less. |
| Indirect Link Popularity | Sites that link to yours should a great variety of high quality backlinks themselves. |
| Old Links | Web spam and paid links tend to get removed by webmasters on a long enough timeline. Great backlinks do not. Google knows this. |
| Factor | Details |
|---|---|
| Link Buying Schemes | Paying for links can be effective, however Google does ask users to report link buying, and may devalue such links if it's obvious. |
| Spam Blasts | Black hat SEO is a short term game. Hitting your site with blasts of blog comments or other spam is easily recognized and typically completely disregarded. |
| Unvarying Anchors | Building links to your web site using the same anchor text again and again with no variance is a sure sign of a spammer. |
| Unnatural Spiking | Sometimes a big news story hits, a new product comes out, etc. that warrants a lot of links at once, but overall, search spiders are slow to trust too many links appearing at once. |
| Content Farms | Rings of private blog networks and 'content farms' that are created only for the purpose of backlinks have been targeted HARD, especially by the Google Panda update, and continue to be devalued as time goes on. |
