Fundamentals of Great SEO

The Fundamentals of Great SEOA guide on how to increase rankings & traffic from search engines Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz | March 2012

SEO?Bah, Humbug 

The Use of Search Engineshttp://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Search-and-email/Report.aspx

Growth of Google Queries Currently, there are more than 3 billion searches/day on Googlehttp://www.quora.com/How-many-search-queries-does-Google-serve-worldwide-every-day

Value of Search Engine Traffic

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/illustrating-the-long-tail

Yes, You Can Compete with the Big Guys

Good SEO is Easier than It Looks

You Have to Get These Right

Before You Get These Right

Making Your Site SEO-Friendly

Using Wordpress? You’re 80% of the Way There “(Wordpress) is a fantastic piece of software, it makes your site easily crawlable by search engines, solves some 80-90% of mechanics of SEO and is the first big step anyone can take towards creating a popular online business.” From a talk given by Google’s Matt Cutts at Wordcamp: http://www.howtomakemyblog.com/seo/googles- matt-cutts-wordpress-the-best-blogging-platform-for-seo/

If You Use Wordpress, Read Thishttp://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/ - I also recommend Joost’s plugin “Wordpress SEO”

Other SEO-Friendly Platforms Include:http://drupal.org/, http://joomla.com and http://www.squarespace.com are all good choices ifWordpress isn’t a match.

These Are Less Ideal for SEOI wouldn’t recommend these platforms as a first choice for SEO-friendly blogging, though some (likeTypePad and Tumblr) can be customized with enough elbow grease.

Tools to Help with Accessibilityhttp://www.google.com/webmasters/

Tools to Help with AccessibilityShameless Plug: http://pro.seomoz.org/

RSS: Essential for Bloggers (and anyone producing regular content)Via Google’s Feedburner: http://feedburner.google.com/gfb/, an ideal tool for setting up, managingand tracking feeds

XML Sitemaps – Recommend, But Not Always a Must I wouldn’t go so far as to say I recommend against it, just that for many, relatively basic sites and blogs, you don’t need to worry about submitting these (unless you use video, in which case there’s some cool options; we’ll chat about that later in the deck)

Keyword Research

A Simple Process for Choosing Good Keywords High Volume (many searches/month) Low Competition Ideal Keywords! (weak sites/pages in the top 10) High Value (large % of visitors convert) More on this here: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research

AdWords: The Best Choice (Most of the Time) The AdWords Keyword Tool Can Be Found Here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Use Exact Match! Be Careful About Phrase + Broad Note the much higher numbers!

Google Insights: Interesting Trend Data http://www.google.com/insights/search/ shows that the food blogging movement likely gained widespread popularity and interest around 2007 

Analyzing the Top 10 to Determine Difficulty Strong, popularsites w/ targeted titles + content

Analyzing the Top 10 to Determine Difficulty Weaker, lesser known sites andnon-targeted titles

Keyword Difficulty ToolAnother shameless plug as this is an SEOmoz tool: http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty/

Value of Visits? Use Analytics Data Good proxies for the value of traffic from these sourcesVia Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics) which is free!

A Simple Process for Choosing Good Keywords High Volume Google AdWords (many searches/month) Low Competition (weak sites/pages in the top 10) Gut Feel (or KW Difficulty Tool) High Value Gut Feel (or Analytics Data) (large % of visitors convert) Picking keywords doesn’t have to be a chore, and the process can often help you find topics for content you haven’t yet tried/thought of!

How Great Writing and Great SEO Go Hand-in-Hand

High Volume Keywords = Content People Want People really want to know this stuff!

Not Everything Needs to Be Keyword-Targeted http://www.everywhereist.com/budding-bromances-in-peru-10-photos/

The Better Your Content, The Better Your SEO Good process for getting to great content: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/great-content-for-seo- simpler-than-you-ever-imagined

Great Content + SEO + Social Really Works. Great SEO Social Link + + +Content Friendly Sharing Building = Higher More More MoreRankings Readers Followers Influence = Virtuous Cycle of Inbound Marketing!

Link Building

Why Links Matter to Search EnginesWhat You Say What Others SayAbout Yourself. < About You. Good primer on link building basics here: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing- popularity-and-links

What Matters in a Link? Editorially given From a trusted source Uses descriptive anchor text Points to the right pagehttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links

What Matters in a Link? Rel=“Nofollow” URL (a tag that indicates search (the link target) engines shouldn’t trust/count this link) <p><a href=http://www.seomoz.org rel=“nofollow”> SEOmoz’s Website </a> is a good resource for those seeking to learn more about search engine optimization.</p> Surrounding Text Anchor text (may provide context on(tells the engine what this link is about) the link’s relevance) All of these elements are good to understand when thinking about links

Manual Link BuildingTactics like discovering the links of competitors, getting listed in directories, resource lists,submitting content, building profiles, etc. are all in the “manual link building” category (above viahttp://opensiteexplorer.org)

Link Building through Outreach + Networking Geraldine emailed the Salt Museum folks to let them know about her post (or maybe she just tweeted at them, I can’t remember), and they wrote this lovely blog!

“Natural” Link Building Many of these blogs will use the badge and link to the list, because it makes them look good!The AdAge 150 is a brilliant example of link building through the creation and sharing of a resource.

Link Building & Social Sharing Resources• Beginner’s Guide: Chapter 7 – Growing Links & Popularity• Link Building Blog Posts on SEOmoz• Webinar on Link Building Strategies• 101 Ways to Build Links from SEOBook• Link Building Presentations on Slideshare• The Science of Retweets from Dan Zarrella There are literally infinite numbers of ways to build links – creativity is your only limitation!

Social Media & SEO

How Social Media Helps SEO DirectlyPeople you’re connected to in social networks can help content rank thanks to Google’s use of social annotations(Bing does this too with Facebook shares!) http://www.seomoz.org/blog/social-annotations-in-search-now-your-social-network-rankings

Indirect Impacts of Social on SEO All these shares lead to visits, which may lead to links, comments and positive user/usage signalsThis handy tool can be found at http://sharedcount.com

Twitter & Google

Google UK Result #42

Google US Result #13

Facebook Correlation of Social Media-Based Factors (data via Topsy API & Google Buzz API) Amazing: Facebook Shares is our single highest correlated metric with higher Google rankings.But correlation is not causation! http://www.seomoz.org/blog/does-google-use-facebook-shares-to-influence-search-rankings

Facebook and Binghttp://searchengineland.com/bing-linked-pages-better-people-search-results-112501

Google+http://www.seomoz.org/blog/using-google-plus-ripples-to-connect-with-influencers

Google+ Anyone logged-in to any Google service will see results like these. Time to get on G+!http://searchengineland.com/examples-google-search-plus-drive-facebook-twitter-crazy-107554http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-every-marketer-now-needs-a-google-strategy

LinkedInSome good tips here: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/linkedin-seo-campaign.html

Other Networks to Consider14mm Millions 14mm 6.5mm2.5mm 500mm 1.5mm 10mm There are many social networks potentially worthy of participation

A Few Specific SEO Questions

What Was Panda? Do I Need to Worry About It? Check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-googles-panda-update-changed-seo-best-practices-forever-whiteboard- friday for more on how Panda imapcted SEO and http://www.seomoz.org/blog/beat-google-panda for tips on how to beat it.

Should I Worry About Spam Comments? Oh man does this stuff suck  But remember, it’s NOT SEO!!

Are Scraper Sites a Danger to My SEO? Via Google’s Head of Webspam

Can Links from Low Quality Sites Hurt Me? http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-if-my-competitors-point-spammy-links-to-my-site

What About Image Search SEO?http://www.seomoz.org/blog/image-seo-basics-whiteboard-friday

What About Local/Maps SEO? NormalAlgorithm MapsAlgorithm http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

What About Recipe Search?http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/02/google-recipe-search.html

Really?

How Do I Get These Cool Results!?That’s my face! http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author

What About Those Awesome Video Results?! These are great fordriving clicks http://wistia.com/doc/video-seo

Want to Dive Deeper on SEO? I Recommend: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Just For Fun:Some of My Favorite Google Suggestions & Results!

Thank You! Want to get in touch?@randfish on Twitter or by email - rand@seomoz.org Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz | March 2012

http://jankorbel.cz	578
http://seopergoogle.wordpress.com	341
http://www.conseilsmarketing.com	262
http://www.scoop.it	223
http://coolmarketingstuff.com	177
http://pinsoftstudios.com	128
http://marcolinu.de	110
http://mulas.de	100
http://comosepuedehacer.wordpress.com	49
http://feeds.feedburner.com	31
http://www.stonepower.fr	28
http://bsocialsmart.pbworks.com	22
http://www.techgig.com	19
http://training.myprojectplans.com	15
http://localhost	14
http://law.ussit.ru	13
http://www.vipclientpro.com	11
http://www.linkedin.com	8
http://imvoxx.blogspot.it	8
http://fugo.folkuniversitetet.se	8
http://imvox.blogspot.com	7
https://twitter.com	6
http://www.paperblog.fr	6
http://imvoxx.blogspot.co.at	6
http://www.facebook.com	5
http://www.mosaichub.com	5
http://yakerty.co.nz	5
http://seocolombia.com	4
http://imvox.blogspot.co.at	4
http://us-w1.rockmelt.com	4
http://www.michaelgrabham.com	3
https://app.360learning.com	3
http://www.coolmarketingstuff.com	3
http://www.tribalpress.co.uk	2
http://neu.mulas.de	2
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	1
https://twimg0-a.akamaihd.net	1
http://paper.li	1
http://tweetedtimes.com	1
http://www.sharewales.com	1
https://si0.twimg.com	1
http://zootool.com	1
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	1
http://thisninja	1
https://www.facebook.com	1

Fundamentals of Great SEO

by Rand Fishkin on Mar 27, 2012

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