Seo starter-guide-equinet-academy

Search Engine Optimization
Starter Guide

Table of Contents
Part 1: Introduction to SEO
Search Engine Optimization Theory
- What is SEO? 1
- Push Vs. Pull Marketing 2
- How do Search Engines Work? 3
- White-hat Vs. Black-hat SEO 4
- Summary 6
Part 2: Internal SEO
Writing Unique and Engaging Content
- Planning Your Keywords 7
- Writing Unique and Engaging Content 8
- Examples of Engaging Content 10
- Quality Deserves Freshness (QDF) 11
On-Page SEO
- Keywords 12
- Use Synonyms 13
- Title & Header Tags 14
- URL 15
- Main Content Area 16
- Meta Description 17
- Image Optimization 18
Advanced On-Page SEO
- Robots.txt 19
- Index and Noindex 20
- Rel=”Nofollow” 21
- Canonicalization 22
- Rich Snippets 23
Site Structure
- Planning Your Site Navigation 24
- Main Navigation Menu 25
- Extended Site Links on SRPs 26
- Breadcrumbs and Pagination 27
Other Internal SEO Factors
- Site Speed 28
- Avoid Broken Links (404 Pages) 29
- Avoid Duplicate Content/Titles 30
- Sitemaps 31
- Do Not Overload Site with Ads 32
Part 3: External SEO
PageRank and Site Authority
- PageRank 33
- Site Authority 34
Backlinks
- Backlinks 35
- Anchor Text 36
- PageRank and Relevancy 37
- Location of Backlink 38
- Site Identity 39
- Reciprocal Linking 40
- Link Diversity 41
- History of Inbound Links 42
Introduction to Link Building
- Link Building Strategies 43
- Link Schemes 44
- High Quality Directory Listings 45
- Participate in Niche Discussions 46
- Link Baiting 48
End

Part 1: Introduction to
SEO
What Is SEO?
Copyright © All Rights Reserved ®SEO Guide
Why Should You Learn SEO?
SEO or Search engine optimization is the process of
affecting a website’s visibility on the search engine
results pages for a target set of
keywords/keyphrases.
There are millions of people using search engines to
search for information - from general information to
information on businesses, products, and services.
If you have a website featuring your company's
products and services, search engine optimization can
make your site more visible to your customers.
Better Visibility = Increased Sales
Research has shown that 87% of consumers in the
“research phase” use a search engine (over 60% use
Google) to gather information on a product or service
before making a purchase decision.
If you owned a business providing car repair services
in your area, and there were over a thousand searches
a month for the term “car repair services in [your
location]“, wouldn’t it make a lot of sense to be on the
1st page of the search results where you’ll be visible
and prominent to your target customers?
Hell yes!
1
Part1:IntroductiontoSEO

Push Vs. Pull Marketing
Attraction Marketing
Back in the old days, traditional marketing methods, or
rather push marketing, were very effective.
Launch a newspaper ad back then and you’ll get a ton
of responses the following day. Sadly, they are no
longer as effective as they were in the past.
Today's ideal marketing strategy is “attraction” or
“pull” marketing, and search engine optimization is one
of the most effective attraction marketing strategies
you can apply to virtually any business!
The Effectiveness of Search Marketing
People who search for your industry-related
keywords/keyphrases and discover your website are
more likely to convert into customers than people
who receive your promotional fyers.
Notice the use of the word “discover”. Today’s
consumers don’t like the idea of being marketed to or
sold to. They prefer to be the ones who “make the
discovery” or make the decision of a purchase.
By making your website visible on the search results
where potential customers are searching for
information, you are marketing your business in an
indirect and subtle manner.
2

How Do Search Engines Work?
Crawling and Indexing
Search engines work to deliver the most relevant
results for any search query keyed in by the user. They
do so by sending millions of tiny robots or spiders to
crawl millions of webpages.
The data is then fetched back to the database, sorted
out, indexed, and displayed on the search results
pages.
Search Engine Algorithms
Search engines use a complex set of calculations or
algorithms to determine which pages to display for any
given search query.
Yes, we are looking at hundreds of ranking factors.
These algorithms are constantly improved and
updated to combat web spam also known as black-hat
SEO. We will take a further look at the difference
between white-hat and black-hat SEO.
What is PageRank?
What is PageRank? PageRank is basically what Google
assigns to a webpage to indicate how authoritative the
page is. Google crawls the web in decreasing order of
PageRank.
What this means is, the higher your PageRank, the
more often Google will crawl your site, and the quicker
your pages will be found and indexed.
PageRank is calculated on a scale of 0-100 and is
determined by the number and importance of other
websites linking to your site.
3

White-hat Vs. Black-hat SEO
Black-hat SEO
Web spam is known as black-hat SEO and search engines are on a never ending battle against
web spam. Let’s take a look at some examples of web spam:
Keyword Stuffng
Here’s a visual example of keyword stuffng:
Trying to rank for target keywords – “Cake decorating tutorial” and “How to decorate a cake”.
Cloaking
Cloaking refers to displaying different content to search engine bots and humans. An example
would be making some text white on a white coloured background in an attempt to cloak the text
and fool search engines. Unfortunately, this only screams “penalize me!” to search engines.
Comment Spam
Comment spam is one of the oldest and dumbest black-hat SEO techniques and surprisingly it is
still used very frequently by web spammers today. Comment spam is commonly executed by bots,
but some do it manually. An example of blog comment spam would be a completely unrelated
comment with keyword-stuffed sentences and a link back to the spammer’s website.
We’ve only scratched the surface of the common types of black-hat SEO techniques. We’ll cover
more examples of black-hat SEO as we go along.
View Google’s Webmaster Tools guidelines on Link schemes.
4

White-hat Vs. Black-hat SEO
White-hat SEO
Now let’s take a look at some white-hat SEO examples:
Quality Content
The foundation for effective SEO is writing quality content that is engaging and encourages
readers to share it on their own.
Quality content isn’t 100 words or less with a ton of target keywords hamburgered into every
paragraph. It’s 300-1000 or more words with the target keywords mentioned throughout the
article in a natural-sounding way.
Natural Links from Topic-related Websites
Acquiring backlinks from websites that share the same topic or from the same industry as yours
will help push your search engine ranking results. The key to getting natural links is having value-
added content on your website and getting in touch with other webmasters in your industry.
Well-designed Site Structure
Use HTML for your webpages and use less of javascript, fash, or any other code language that is
diffcult for search engine bots to crawl through. Site navigation also plays an important role in
crawlability for search engines and ease of navigation for users.
Here’s a good rule of thumb. If your users are having a hard time fnding the inner pages of your
site, very likely will search engine bots as well. Make sure that the inner pages of your site are
adequately linked to by other related pages within your site.
5

Summary of Part One
Build Your Website For the User, Not For Search Engines
The conclusion is to build your site for the user, not for search engines. Search engines were created with
the user experience in mind – to provide the most relevant search results for any given search query. So
if you follow this rule of thumb, you'll be well on the right track!
6

Part 2: Internal SEO
Planning Your Keywords
Relevancy
Relevance is one of the most important and
heavyweight factors that Google uses to determine
which position a particular page should show on the
search results for a given keyword search query.
It is also important to put yourself in the minds of your
potential consumers and anticipate what they might
type in to search for something on Google.
Use Google Keyword Planner
Let’s go back to our cake decorating tutorial example.
If you are a cake decorating tutorial website and plan
to write an article promoting a cake decorating class,
frst do some keyword research using
Google’s Keyword Planner to see what search queries
people are typing into Google.
Key in a short keyphrase to start off i.e. “decorate a
cake”.
In this section, we will cover internal ranking factors of a website and how to
optimize your site internally to rank better on the Search Results Pages (SRPs).
Tip:
If you are just starting out, a good strategy would be to aim to rank for long-tail keywords
(3 or more words in a search query) frst. There are two reasons for this:
1. Long-tail keywords are usually more targeted and specifc search queries resulting in
higher conversion rates. i.e. (Buy a cake online).
2. It is more often easier to compete in the SRPs rankings with longer tail keywords.
7
Part2:InternalSEO

Planning Your Keywords
Google Keyword Planner Data
As we can see, Google’s Keyword Planner gives you a
couple of keyword ideas that are related to your
original search term and even provides you with the
monthly average number of searches for each related
keyphrase.
Notice how users type in search queries such as “How
to decorate a cake”?
Build a List of Keywords
The next step is to list these keywords down
somewhere and insert them into your content
wherever appropriate, preferably in the title tags if
you want to rank for a specifc keyphrase.
Repeat this step as many times as you need until
you’ve gathered a sizable list of keywords that your
page can potentially rank for.
Relevancy is Key
Remember, the key here is relevance.
If your article title is “How to Decorate a Cake”, your
content should be talking about cake decorating and
giving tips on how to decorate a cake. You want it to
sound as natural as possible.
The key is to let it fow naturally as you write, not
worrying about when or where to insert the keywords.
Then once you’ve fnished writing the article, go back
and insert the keywords wherever appropriate.
Tip:
You also want make sure that you diversify your target keywords, and you do that by looking
out for synonyms of your targeted keywords. For example, a synonym of “Cake baking classes”
can be mentioned as “Cake baking courses“.
8
Part2:InternalSEO

Writing Unique & Engaging Content
Importance of Quality Content
Content. Content. Content. You’ll hear this over and
over again.
Quality content is important not just for SEO, but also
for getting repeat visits to your site and ultimately
achieving your conversion goals. It is the foundation
and pillar of your site’s success.
Writing quality content is so essential that even if you
ranked on the 1st page of the search results, you may
not achieve your expected conversion rate if users do
not fnd any importance in staying on your website.
The Key to a Successful SEO Campaign
is to Focus on Quality Content
Creating useful and engaging content will naturally
encourage readers to share your content and create a
word-of-mouth buzz.
They may post links to your site through their own
blogs, social media platforms, forums, or other means
which could build your site’s reputation and authority
with both the user community and Google.
Tip:
Note that Google takes into account(a ranking factor) how long a user stays on your page and
how many internal pages of your site the user navigates through after clicking and landing on
your page from a search result.
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Part2:InternalSEO

Examples of Engaging Content
Create List Posts
Here’s an example of a headline that will catch your readers’ attention – “Top 10
Ideas of Starting Up a Business From Virtually No Investment”. If you’re going to
write on something that sounds really compelling and unbelievable, great! But be
sure you’re able to deliver your promises.
Gather a list of interesting points and expand on it. People love reading list posts,
especially if the content is compelling and engaging.
Interview Experts in Your Industry
Find an expert in your industry and email them, politely requesting that you would like to interview them.
Be sure to mention that you respect that their time is valuable and that you would really appreciate if
they could take fve minutes to read your email and answer a few questions.
After you've interviewed them, create a post quoting your interviewee and expressing your opinions.
Don't forget to link back to your interviewee and shout out/tweet him/her a thanks.
Create Fresh, Unique Content on Trending Topics
If you ever run out of ideas on topics to write about, do some research using Google Trends to fnd out
what are the trending search terms in your related industry.
If you own a car website and are looking for trending topics to write about, you can do a search on Google
Trends by keying in a car brand name, which will return different related trending search terms such as a
particular car model, then do a fresh and unique review post on it. Which leads us to the next point –
Query Deserved Freshness (QDF)
Below is an example of a Google Trends report:
10
Part2:InternalSEO

Query Deserves Freshness (QDF)
What is Query Deserves Freshness?
(QDF)
What in the world is Query Deserves Freshness?
If you’ve ever done a search on any trending topic, you
may have noticed a couple of webpages topping the
Google search results pages, then disappearing all of a
sudden and are nowhere to be seen after a few days.
That’s what Google does from time to time – apply the
QDF algorithm to fresh content on trending topics.
How QDF Works?
1. Whenever there is a spike in the number of searches
for any given period of time, Google kicks in the QDF
algorithm. As we can see in the “BMW i3” example
above, the number of search queries spiked around
July the 29th and if we do a search on the “BMW i3″ ,
we see fresh content ranked above older content on
the 1st page of the search results.
2. Next, Google starts looking for related fresh content
that fulflls an array of freshness attributes. For
example how recent were inbound links pointing to
the fresh content.
3. Google then calculates the freshness score and
displays the most appropriate results for the trending
search term.
“Google Loves
Fresh Content!”
11
Part2:InternalSEO

Keywords
Plan Your Keywords Before Writing
Always identify potential keywords that could drive
traffc to your site before you begin writing your
article. Use Google's Keyword Planner.
You don't have to include your target keywords in
your article straight away, you can always go through
the article after you're done writing and slot them in
wherever appropriate.
Having your target keywords in mind will give you a
better idea of what to write and also help you to create
a more relevant article to your keyword topic.
Keyword Density Myth
Have you heard about the keyword density myth? Is it
fact or fction? Here’s the answer.
It’s fction.
Back in 2007, keyword density was one of the ranking
factors in Google’s algorithms. But many web
spammers started abusing it, trying to game Google,
hence you started to see many instances of “Keyword
Stuffng” on many webpages across.
The keyword density situation got worse when SEOs
started speculating the “appropriate” percentage of
targeted keywords that should be on a page in order to
rank higher on the search engine results pages (SRPs)
– 2%, 5%, 7%, 10%.
None of this is true today. Even just mentioning the
keyword once in the main content section can get
you ranked on Google for that keyword.
“Fiction!”
12
Part2:InternalSEO

Use Synonyms
Use Synonyms of Your Target
Keywords
Contrary to what you may think, Google actually
understands synonyms associated with your target
keywords.
Take for example the keyword “automobile”. Google
recognizes its synonyms and automatically associates
“cars”, “transportation”, and “vehicles” with the
original keyword “automobile”.
If you are dealing with car spare parts and want your
website to rank well on Google for “car spare parts”,
be sure to include “car spare parts” as well as
“automobile spare parts” throughout your webpages.
Finding Synonyms
So how do we fnd synonyms?
One of the easiest ways is to go to
www.thesaurus.com and type in your target keyword
and you'll get a couple of synonyms.
Another way is to go to Google’s Keyword Planner,
key in your target keyword, and search for some
related keyword ideas.
Once you’ve identifed a couple of synonyms with
acceptable search volume, form a list.
13
Part2:InternalSEO

Title & Header Tags
Title Tags
<title>Title Tags</title> should not be confused with
<h1>Header Tags</h1>.
Title tags should be placed in the <head></head>
section of your page to let search engines and users
know what your page is about.
WordPress automatically does this for you, and even
adds a <H1> header tag to your title. Including your
target keywords in your <H1> tag is good SEO.
Header Tags
<H1>, <H2>, <H3> are sorted not just by order of
font size, but also by order of importance.
Search engines pay attention to which header tags
you use and whether you include your target
keywords in the header tags.
A rule of thumb – try to avoid using the <H1> tag
more than once on a page unless you have good
reason to. If unsure, use <h3> and you should be in
good shape.
Title Tags
14
Part2:InternalSEO

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
How to Write Your URLs
Your URL i.e. (http://www.example.com/page-title-with-keywords/) should be short, descriptive, and have
your target keywords inserted into it. It also good practice to keep your URLs in good structure by creating
descriptive categories and parent pages.
If your URLs contain more than one word, put a dash or an underscore to separate the words. Dashes are
recommended.
Should Target Keywords Be Included in the Primary Domain Name?
The answer is - not necessarily.
Exact keyword match domain names used to have a high ranking factor. Such as “www.onlineshopping.com”
had a high chance of ranking for the search term “Online Shopping”.
Not anymore.
As long as the keyword is within the entire URL (i.e. www.shoponline.com/online-shopping”), it is still
calculated into the overall page ranking factors.
15
Part2:InternalSEO

Main Content Area
Tips For Your Main Content Area
1. Include your target keyword high up in your opening
paragraph. (In the frst one or two sentences)
2. Write as naturally as you can with the reader in
mind. If you write for users, not search engines, you
will future-proof your SEO efforts as that is what
search engines are heading towards.
3. Include synonyms of your target keywords
throughout your main content.
4. Write 300 words or more. There is no fxed rule, use
it only as a guide. If you go over 2000 words, it may be
a good idea to separate the content into two or more
different pages.
5. Separate different sections of your content into
catchy, descriptive headings.
6. Make your content easy to read by using HTML text
and standard font-size.
7. Add pictures or any visual imageries whenever
appropriate
8. Try to keep each paragraph at 3 – 4 lines as a guide.
The longer a paragraph, the lengthier it seems to the
reader, and this might scare away wordy-paranoia
people before they even begin reading the frst
sentence.
Main Content Area
16
Part2:InternalSEO

Meta Description
What is Meta Description?
Description meta tags give Google a summary of
what your page is about. Google may or may not
use your meta description on the search results
pages (SRPs). It really depends on what the user
search query is.
If the search query matches some of the keywords
in your meta description, then Google may show it.
Otherwise, Google will automatically generate a
snippet from your page content to show on the
SRPs.
Meta Description Code Example
A meta description is always a good option to
include in your page’s HTML code. Heres an
example of the code:
Meta Description for WordPress Users
If you are using WordPress, you may install the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast.
The meta description box will be on every page and post editor. See example:
17
Part2:InternalSEO

Image Optimization
Why Should You Optimize Your
Images?
Optimizing your images may bring you some
additional traffc from Google Images Search. It is also
considered a ranking factor for your page's overall
ranking.
Image File Name
Include your targeted keywords in your fle name
(i.e. “bmw i3 car model.jpeg”).
It is also a good practice to store all your images in one
directory, so that the path to your images is simplifed
and easier for search engines to crawl through.
(i.e. http://example.com/images/bmw-i3-car-
model.jpeg/”)
Title and Alt Tags
You will also have the option to include the title image
and alt tags. Include your target keywords in both of
them but pay closer attention to the alt tags, as Google
will look at your image alt tags to have an idea of what
your images is about.
So make your alt tags more descriptive.
Your title tags will show up when the cursor hovers
over the image.
18
Part2:InternalSEO

Robots.txt
What is a Robots.txt?
Search engines use bots or spiders to crawl the web,
and if there are certain pages on your site that you do
not want these bots to crawl through, you may use a
robots.txt fle to instruct search engines not to crawl a
particular page.
However, only some bots obey the robots.txt fle (i.e.
Google Bot and other major search engines), so there
may be spam bots that could still crawl your content.
For this reason, we recommend privatizing or
password-protecting content that you want to keep
confdential.
How to Create a Robots.txt
To generate a robots.txt, you may create it manually ,
or use a robots.txt tool generator. Once your
robots.txt fle is generated, upload it to your domain’s
root server via cPanel or ftp. If you are unsure, contact
your web hosting provider.
Robots.txt
19
Part2:InternalSEO

Index and Noindex
Index or Noindex?
When search engines like Google crawl your pages,
they will look to see whether you want your pages to
be indexed in their search results or not.
If for some reason you do not want any page in your
site to show up on the search results, you may add a
robots meta tag to an individual page to prevent
search engines from indexing it on the SRPs.
How do You Noindex a Page?
You can add a robots meta tag on any page to tell
Google not to index any particular page.
Example of a robots meta tag in your page’s <head>
section to tell search engines not to index your page:
Noindex a Page on Wordpress
If you're using Wordpress, you can skip the technical
process and easily select noindex from the page editor
of any particular page.
However you frst need to install the
Wordpress SEO plugin by Yoast.
20
Part2:InternalSEO

Rel=”Nofollow”
What is Rel=”Nofollow” Tag Used For?
Whenever you link to another website with an anchor
text, you are passing some PageRank to the page you
just linked to.
PageRank will be further explained in the External
SEO section of this course.
Basically the more links a webpage gets, the higher the
PageRank (measured on a scale of 1 to 100) of the
webpage.
Now there are some instances when you do not want
to pass PageRank to a particular source you link to. For
example your blog comments section. Blogs are always
a target for web spammers trying to put links into
comments.
Google has link policies about linking to unrelated,
spammy websites and if you are found linking
extensively to spammy websites, you could get
penalized by Google.
To prevent any link juice from passing on to a spammy
website, the rel=”nofollow” tag is used.
How to Use the Rel=“Nofollow” Tag?
There are two ways to use the Rel=”Nofollow” attribute.
1. To block all links on a page from passing page rank, the following code is place the in the <head> section:
<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow” />
2. To block a specifc link from passing page rank, the following code is used when creating an anchor text:
<a href=”http://examplelink.com” rel=”nofollow”>example link</a>
21
Part2:InternalSEO

Canonicalization
What is Canonicalization?
What is canonicalization? “Canonicalization is setting
the preferred version of a set of pages with highly
similar content.” – as defned by Google.
www. or no www.
When you create a site, you have to option to set a
preferred domain either:
http://www.example.com or
htpp://example.com
If you are using WordPress, you can navigate to the
Settings => General and set your preferred domain.
You can also setup a Google Webmaster Tools account
and tell Google which is your preferred domain.
Types of URLs You Should Canonicalize
Example of a set of pages with dynamic url and highly
similar content:
http://example.com/product-category/web-
tools/wordpress-themes/?flter_license=20
http://example.com/product-category/web-
tools/wordpress-themes/?flter_format=template
Why is Canonicalization Important?
When Google crawls your site and fnds several pages
with similar content, it may only index one version to
display on the search results.
Therefore, if you want to specify to Google which page
is the one you them to index, you can do so by adding a
html code:
<link rel=”canonical”
href=”http://example.com/shop/product.php?
item=psd-download”/>
in the <head> section of your page.
22
Part2:InternalSEO

Rich Snippets
What Are Rich Snippets?
What are rich snippets? When you do a search on
Google, you may notice that certain search results
have different elements such as review ratings, date of
post, video preview, etc.
Why use rich snippets? Rich snippets present your
content more attractively on the SRPs, increasing your
click-through rate and ultimately driving more traffc
to your site.
How Do You Apply the Markup?
There are a couple ways to create rich snippets:
1. Microformats
2. Microdata
3. RDFa
We will go through Microformats for this example.
The following HTML code is a review of a basic
fondant cake recipe:
<div>
How to prep and execute a basic fondant cake.
You will need: … The frosting may be pushed out
by the weight of the top tier but this if fne. … 3 …
Rating: 5
Stars based on 30 ratings
</div>
What Are Rich Snippets?
What are rich snippets? When you do a search on
Google, you may notice that certain search results
have different elements such as review ratings, date of
post, video preview, etc.
Why use rich snippets? Rich snippets present your
content more attractively on the SRPs, increasing your
click-through rate and ultimately driving more traffc
to your site.
The markup code will look something like this:
<div>
<h1 class=”title fn”>Basic Fondant Cake</h1>
<span class=”author”> by <a
href=”/member/MVMann/” title=”view MVMann’s
profle”>MVMann</a></span>
<span class=”review hreview-aggregate hidden”>
<span class=”rating”>rated <span
class=”average”>5</span>
stars based on <span class=”count”>30</span>
ratings
</span></span>
</div>
For more examples on how to create rich snippets, visit this link.
For WordPress users, you may install a variety of plugins to generate rich snippets.
23
Part2:InternalSEO

Planning Your Site Navigation
Importance of Easy Site Navigation
Navigation is very important not just for search
engines to understand your site better, but also for
your visitors to fnd content they are looking for easily.
If all your pages are well connected to each other and
easily found within a few clicks, you will fnd that your
pages get indexed faster and do better on SRPs.
Planning Your Site Navigation
A good guide to follow is to plan out your site’s
navigation starting from the homepage. Can the
deeper and more nested content be found within 2
clicks or less from the homepage? Take a look at the
example:
Each page is within 2 clicks from the home page
(i.e. Home => Products => DIY Tools)
Interlinking Your Posts and Pages
Every new page created should have at least one link
to it, either from the main navigation menu, sidebar, or
another page/post.
When your posts and pages are well interlinked, not
only will you fnd that your content gets indexed
better, your visitors will also stay longer on your site.
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Part2:InternalSEO

Main Navigation Menu
Importance of Main Navigation
When a user lands on your site, one of the frst few
things he or she looks at is your main navigation menu.
Just looking at the items on the main navigation menu
can give the user a good basic idea on what your site is
about.
What to Include in the Main Navigation
Your main navigation menu should include the most
important pages of your site such as your about,
contact, and products/services pages.
Organizing Your Main Navigation Menu
If you need to include more than 10 links, it would be
recommended to include drop down bars or a
secondary navigation menu placed below your
primary menu.
Drop-down Menu
25
Part2:InternalSEO

Extended Site Links On SRPs
Extended Sitelinks on Search Results
If your site navigation is very well structured, search
engines like Google may add sitelinks to your search
results pages.
Having sitelinks can have a positive effect on the Click-
Through Rate (CTR) of your site’s pages, generating
more visits to your site.
How Do I Get Extended Site Links?
Sitelinks are automatically generated. There are some
factors that Google uses to determine whether a
sitelink should show or not.
One of the factors is the popularity of the page (how
many visits on a particular page).
If you’d like to remove a sitelink from the search
results, Google Webmaster Tools allows you to submit
a request to “demote” the sitelink.
26
Part2:InternalSEO

Breadcrumbs and Pagination
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are a row of internal links located at the
top or bottom of the page that allow visitors to easily
navigate back to the root page or previous section.
Having breadcrumbs also allows search engines to
understand your site structure better.
Pagination
Pagination are usually seen in blog categories or
resource lists.
The same theory applies to pagination as to
breadcrumbs – better ease of navigation for both
users and search engines.
27
Part2:InternalSEO

Site Speed
Does Site Speed Matter?
Site speed is one of those things you don’t really have
to worry about, unless your pages take 10 minutes to
load. No, actually 8 seconds or longer and Google may
start to take notice.
Research has shown that people have an average
attention span of 4 seconds for a page to load before
navigating away to another page.
If your site takes longer than 8 seconds to load, you
may want to take a couple of steps to ensure that your
page loading time is reduced.
How to Analyze Your Page Speed?
First, let’s check out how to analyze your page speed.
1. Navigate to Google Page Speed Insights.
2. Enter your webpage url.
Page Speed will give you insights on how you can
optimize your page speed by solving a couple of issues
such as minifying HTML, CSS, optimizing images, etc.
For WordPress users, it is recommended you install a
plugin such as W3 Total Cache to reduce your page
load time.
28
Part2:InternalSEO

Avoid Broken Links (404 Pages)
Broken Links (404 Pages)
Broken links will take the user to a 404 page – a page
notifying the user that “The page cannot be found”.
If you have one or two broken links within your
website, you shouldn’t have too much to worry about.
But if they aren’t fxed after some time and your 404
broken links start to increase, then your rankings will
start to drop.
How to Check for Broken Links?
Use a free broken link checker tool such as
Broken Link Check to spot and fx any broken links
found within your entire site.
29
Part2:InternalSEO

Avoid Duplicate Content/Titles
Avoid Duplicate Titles
Creating unique, short but descriptive page titles
increase your chances of any of your pages ranking on
the 1st page of the SRPs.
Avoid having duplicate titles or duplicate content, as
this confuses the search engines and either duplicate
pages may not get indexed at all.
Taking Measures
If for any reason you decide to have duplicated
content, then you can take measures by adding
noindex / nofollow to the page.
Instead of having two pages with the same title (i.e.
“Introduction”), expand the title a little bit (i.e.
“introduction to SEO” and “Introduction to Social
Media”)
DuplicateDuplicate
ContentContent
30
Part2:InternalSEO

Sitemaps
What is a Sitemap?
Sitemaps for a website are similar to internal
directories in a shopping mall. Sitemaps help tell
Google and other search engines the overall structure
of your site, as well as deep pages into your site that
search engine bots may not otherwise discover.
It would be recommended to create 2 types of
sitemaps – One for the user, and one for the search
engines.
How to Create a Sitemap
A sitemap for users may just be a simple page with
headers and links to help the user navigate through
your website at anytime. A sitemap for users can be in
HTML format. A sitemap for search engines is in XML
format (XML Sitemap).
For reference on how to create a sitemap manually,
view this guide.
To generate a sitemap for your site automatically,
click here.
For WordPress users, installing the
Wordpress SEO Plugin by Yoast will auto generate a
sitemap for your WordPress site.
Submit Your Sitemap to Search Engines
To submit your sitemap to Google, create a
Google Webmaster Tools account and submit your
sitemap through the admin panel.
To submit your sitemap to Bing, create a
Bing Webmaster Tools account and submit your
sitemap through the admin panel.
There are a lot of things to take in to consideration when it comes to optimizing your site internally for search
engines. Google itself calculates hundreds of ranking factors before deciding which page is the most useful and
relevant to a user search query.
We’ve just gone through several major ranking factors, now let’s look at a couple more internal SEO factors to
take note of and/or avoid.
31
Part2:InternalSEO

Do Not Overload Site With Ads
Avoid Overloading Your Site with Ads
Have you ever been to a site that is full of ad display
banners, ad text links, ad popups and pop-unders?
Overloading your site with ads provides a poor user
experience and Google has measures in place to
devalue pages that are overloaded with ads.
General Rule of Thumb
Cap your ads at 1 to 3 per page
Keep your ads out of the main content body. Place
them in the sidebar or header area.
32
Part2:InternalSEO

Part 3: External SEO
PageRank
What is PageRank?
PageRank is a measurement of the relative importance
of every page on the web. (PageRank is measured on a
scale of 0 to 100, 100 being the highest.)
The higher the PageRank of a given web page, the
more trustworthy or important it must be.
A web page’s PageRank is mainly calculated by the
number of citations (links pointing from other
websites to the web page) it has, and how important or
trustworthy the citations are.
If a web page has one link pointing to it from a Yahoo
page with PageRank 7, it will be deemed more
important and trustworthy than a web page with a
hundred backlinks from low quality sites with
PageRanks of zero.
PageRank Flow Diagram
Let’s take a closer look at how PageRank fows.
Looking at the diagram on the right, we can see that a
page with a PageRank of 100 has two outgoing links.
Each of the outgoing links are carrying diluted
PageRank (50 and 50) to the linked page.
A page with PageRank of 9 with three outgoing links
pass a page rank of 3 to each linked page.
What we are looking at is a simplifed representation
of how PageRank fows throughout the web.
In this section, we will cover external SEO and link building strategies that you
can apply to rank your site better on the Search Results Pages (SRPs).
33
Part3:ExternalSEO

Site Authority
What Determines the Authority of a Site?
What separates a useful, informative, and trustworthy
page from a useless page that’s packed with junk info and
jargon?
The answer would be – The majority of votes by users.
The more useful or valuable a particular content is, the
more naturally people would want to share and
recommend others to it. And search engines use this
signal as a very strong ranking factor.
The key to becoming an authority in your niche is to try
and acquire as many links from as many trustworthy
sources as possible.
To understand in detail how Google crawls the web and
calculates site authority, read this report.
34
Part3:ExternalSEO

Backlinks
What is a Backlink?
Well, what is a backlink? A backlink is a text link from
website A pointing to website B. The words in the text
link are also known as anchor text.
Typically, you want the anchor text to contain the
keywords that people are searching for on Google.
This will help Google better understand the context of
the backlink.
Factors of a Quality Backlink
A backlink from a particular page is considered highly
valuable if the following components match:
High domain authority
High PageRank
Page title relevance
Content topic relevance
Keyword relevance of anchor text
Backlink is placed within the main content body
Dofollow links
Age of the page
Age of the backlink
.edu and .gov sites
Spontaneous/Natural reference as opposed to
unnatural linking pattern
How Do I Get Backlinks?
There are a lot of ways to get backlinks. Creating
quality content and sharing it on social media sites can
increase the exposure of your content and increase
the likelihood of people linking to your content.
More examples will be discussed in the link building
section later in this guide.
35
Part3:ExternalSEO

Anchor Text
Importance of Anchor Text
Before there was SEO, links were just links. Until
Google and other search engines counted the anchor
text of a link as a ranking factor.
The anchor text in a backlink indicates to Google that
the context of the linked website is related to the
keywords in the anchor text.
Therefore, if a website has a lot of backlinks with the
target keywords included in the anchor text, it will
rank better on Google for the target search keyword.
Anchor Text for SEO
If a musical instruments store (i.e.
www.musicinstrumentstore.com) had ten PageRank 3
websites linking to their website with the anchor text
“musical instrument store”, this website would do
pretty well on the Google SRPs for the keyword search
phrase “Musical Instrument Store”.
Anchor Text for SEO
Diversify your anchor texts with synonyms and
variations of the same word.
For example, instead of having 10 anchor texts with
“Musical Instrument Store”, having “Music
Instruments Shop” for 5 of them would seem more
natural.
Tip:
Keyword variations and synonyms in your anchor texts will look more natural in terms of
white-hat SEO. 1000 backlinks from 100 PageRank 0 websites with the same anchor text (i.e.
“Musical Instrument Store”) is a signal of black-hat SEO.
36
Part3:ExternalSEO

PageRank and Relevancy
PageRank of a Backlink
Google takes the PageRank of the page linking to your website into account when crawling your site’s
backlinks. If an authority site is recommending your site, that must mean that your website has some
importance.
Relevancy of a Backlink
The second factor is relevancy. Is this authority site that’s linking to your site related to your niche? Is a high
authority shoe review website recommending your shoe store? If you have lots of links from relevant authority
sites in your niche, you will stand a high chance in ranking for keywords that you are targeting in your niche.
Wikipedia Example
If you Google the search query “shoe”, you’ll fnd
wikipedia on the very frst position of Google’s
search results.
Let’s take a look at a backlinks report for
[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe] from MajesticSEO.
(We will go through MajesticSEO more in section
3 – Spying on Your Competitors with Advanced
SEO Tools.
Let's take a look at the top 10
sites with the most backlinks
linking to
[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe].
Almost all of them are shoe
websites.
Wikipedia is on the 1st page
search results for two main
reasons:
1) Wikipedia.org itself has a
very high PageRank of 97.
2) Coupled with many niche
related sites linking to its shoe
page,
[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe]
gets the 1st place on Google’s
search results.
37
Part3:ExternalSEO

Location of Backlink
Backlinks in the Main Content Area
Carry the Most Weight
Let’s say a page has 3 outgoing links. One in the main
content area, one in the sidebar, and one in the footer
area. The backlink in the main content area will carry
the most weight.
The reason is that links in the main content area are
somewhat like word of mouth referral. If you are
writing an article on a certain topic and you decide to
include a link to another source that contains more in-
depth information on your topic, it shows that you fnd
the other article helpful to your readers and it makes
sense to link to them.
Sidebar and Footer Links
Links in the sidebar don't carry as much weight as links
in the main content area.
The reason is that the same links on the sidebar are
present on almost every page, thus there is very little
recommendation value in these links.
Footer links are the least valued links.
38
Part3:ExternalSEO

Site Identity
Does Site Identity Matter?
Does the identity of the site matter? In other words,
will Google devalue backlinks from websites pointing
to another website that are all coming from the same
webmaster?
Yes.
Let’s say you own 3 websites, and you have 2 of your
websites linking to 1 of your websites. So Website B
and C are linking to A. That shouldn’t raise any alarms.
But if you have 10 websites and 9 of them are linking
to 1 website with the exact same anchor text
keywords, that will raise some alarms.
So how does Google know exactly who owns a ring of
websites?
Well they don’t actually know the identity of the
webmaster. But they do know if a cluster of websites
share the same IP or Class C Subnet, meaning the
website domains are all hosted under the same hosting
server of a single webmaster.
Unique IP and Class C Subnets
Using an SEO tool like MajesticSEO can tell you if a
cluster of websites belong to the same Class C
Subnets.
First, what is a Class C Subnet? Read
Moz.com’s thread answer.
Looking at a report generated by MajesticSEO can also
tell you how many referring IPs and Class C Subnets a
website has.
What you don’t want to see is 100,000 external
backlinks and 1 referring subnet. Basically, you want
to have a diverse portfolio of backlinks from a variety
of unique websites, not tons of links from the same C
Subnet.
39
Part3:ExternalSEO

Reciprocal Linking
Is Reciprocal Linking Bad for SEO?
Is reciprocal linking bad for SEO? Black-hat SEO?
The answer is – Not really.
If you have a couple of niche-related websites with the
same Class C Subnet and you link them together
(reciprocal linking), you should be fne.
But if you have 1,000 backlinks from 100 websites and
your website is linked reciprocally to every single one
of the 100 websites, it will look very suspicious.
Think about a scenario where people knew about the
value of acquiring backlinks. They would start trading
or exchanging backlinks with other webmasters.
Google sees this way of acquiring backlinks as
unnatural, and these reciprocal links will start to be
devalued by Google.
So if you were ranking on the top 3 positions due to a
large percentage of reciprocal backlinks in your
backlink profle, then you may start to see your
rankings drop after awhile.
40
Part3:ExternalSEO

Link Diversity
Diversify Your Backlink Portfolio
You want to make sure your site’s backlink portfolio is
well diverse.
You’ve heard the saying before – “Don’t put all your
eggs in one basket.” It's exactly the same when it comes
to link building.
Don’t just submit your site to 1432 directories and stop
there. In fact, limit your directory submission to around
5 a month, and focus the rest of your time on creating
great content.
Once you’ve gotten great content on your site, share it
on social networking platforms, join blogging networks
and interact with other bloggers in your related niche,
and participate in discussions in forums, groups, and
blog comments.
41
Part3:ExternalSEO

History of Inbound Links
History of Inbound Links
The historical pattern of your inbound links are also
taken into account. Does the historical pattern of your
backlinks look natural?
A good example of a natural backlinking pattern would
look something like this:
What Looks Natural?
As you can see in the graph, we have a somewhat
consistent wave of backlinks.
An unnatural backlinking pattern would have sharp
spikes in the number of backlinks at one time period,
and no down-sliding waves immediately after the
sharp spikes.
What if you purchased a domain name with a bad link
history caused by the previous owner? Will it have
trust issues with Google? Click here to see video.
42
Part3:ExternalSEO

Link Building Strategies
Introduction to Link Building
Link building can be a very long and tiring process. But with perseverance, the results can be very rewarding.
When doing link building however, be sure to avoid violating Google’s Content Guidelines. Violating any of
Google’s Content Guidelines will be considered as Black-hat SEO and get your site removed from Google’s
index.
Future-Proof Your SEO Efforts
In order to future-proof your SEO efforts against Google’s algorithm updates, you have to plan and execute a
successful link building strategy.
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. And for
that, constant algorithm updates are inevitable, as Google’s initiative to combat web spam and return only the
most relevant and useful results to any search query is imbued into their core mission statement.
In this following sections, we will go through some outdated link building strategies that have been used and is
still being used by web spammers today.
We will also be going through successful link building strategies, social media SEO, and some advanced link
building strategies.
43
Part3:ExternalSEO

Link Schemes
Examples of Link Schemes
- Blog Comment Spam
- Forum Comment Spam
- Large-Scale Article Marketing or Guest Posting
Campaigns with Keyword-Rich Anchor Text Links
- Large-Scale Press Releases with Keyword-rich
Anchor Text Links
- Mass submission of Site to Low Quality Directory or
Bookmarking Site Links
- Buying or Selling Links that Pass PageRank
- Text and Graphic Advertisements that Pass
PageRank
- Use of Automated Bot Software or Services to
Create Links to Your Site
- Embedded and Widely-Distributed Links on Widgets
or Footers
- Excessive Reciprocal Linking
How to Request For a Recondsideration
If your site violates any of Google’s Content
Guidelines, you may still submit a reconsideration
request.
More details on how to submit a reconsideration
request here.
Say No to
Web Spam
44
Part3:ExternalSEO

High-Quality Directory Listings
Directory Submission
When your site launches, one of the frst things you
want to do is to submit your site to free high quality
directories.
Here’s a list of directories you can submit your website
to to get a head start in building backlinks.
Before you submit your site to any directory, do your
own assessment of whether a directory is low or high
quality
Do Your Own Assessment of Quality
Some ways to check whether a directory site is low
quality:
1. Read and assess the submission procedures. Does
the directory manually review and approve site listing
submissions or is it relatively easy for spammers to
submit without an review and approval process?
2. Do a Google search on the directory site’s domain.
Type in “www.directorysite.com” and if the site
doesn’t even show up on the search results, you can be
sure this site directory has issues with Google.
3. Manually go through some of the sites that are
already listed on the directory. Do they look like low
quality spam websites? If they are spammy-looking
websites, you don’t want your site listing nestled
among a bunch of links to spammy-looking websites.
If the directory you are planning to submit to doesn’t
raise any of the above alarms, then it should be okay
for submission.
Tip:
Submit your site to directories on a gradual basis. Do not submit to 10 directories every single
day.
45
Part3:ExternalSEO

Participate in Niche-Related
Community Discussions
Building Relationships in Your Niche
One of the best ways to build links and drive traffc
directly to your site is to be involved in the community
of your niche.
But frst, how do you fnd out where these discussions
and groups are hanging out?
Using Google Discussions Search and
Google Search Tools and Filters
If you are dealing with properties in Singapore and
want to fnd out where discussions on buying
properties in Singapore are taking place, you can use
Google’s Discussion Search.
1. Key in your search query i.e. Buying properties in
Singapore.
2. Select the “More” drop down and select
“Discussions” (Figure 1.1)
You’ll see a different display of search results. Mostly
Google Groups, forums and discussions taking place.
(Figure 1.2)
You also have the option to sort search results by
freshness or relevance with Google’s Search Tools and
Filters. (Figure 1.3)
Creating Relevant Blog Posts to Answer
Niche-Related Questions
From here, you’ll be able to browse and participate in
any niche-related discussions in the community.
An example of how to drive direct traffc and generate
potential backlinks would be to search for question-
related forum posts and answer only part of the
question, while linking out to a specifc blogpost of
yours in order to get the rest of the answer.
Figure 1.1
Figure 1.2
46
Part3:ExternalSEO

Participate in Niche-Related
Community Discussions
Creating Relevant Blog Posts to Answer
Niche-Related Questions
Here’s a detailed example:
1. Random forum user asks a question on a dating
forum such as, “How do I get my ex back?”
2. You reply with this, “Chances of getting your ex back
really depends on the nature of the breakup. However
here are a few tips to increase your chances of getting
your ex back.”
3. You give a couple of pointers, then stop at around 3,
and say something like, “read this post on 10 ways to
increase your chances of getting your ex back –
www.mydatingtipswebsite.com/how-to-get-your-ex-
back/“.
There are few things that could happen here to your
advantage:
1. You’ve just earned yourself some direct traffc from
a couple of forum readers who are read this post and
clicked on your link out of curiosity.
2. This forum post may get on the frst page of Google
SRPs and more traffc to this forum post means more
potential clicks on your post link.
3. After some time, you may notice other bloggers
linking to your post titled “How to Get Your Ex Back”.
Whether you get links or not really depends on how
valuable the information you provide is.
Figure 1.3
Tip:
Always focus on creating quality content. The more valuable and useful readers fnd your
information, the higher your chances of them linking to you and acquiring backlinks to your site.
47
Part3:ExternalSEO

Link Baiting
What is a Link Bait?
A link bait is any content or feature, within a website,
designed specifcally to gain attention or encourage
others to link to the website. Matt Cutts defnes link
bait as anything “interesting enough to catch people’s
attention.” A link bait can be an extremely powerful
form of marketing as it is viral in nature. – Wikipedia
Now that you have an idea of what link bait is, let’s
discuss some successful link baiting techniques and
examples. But frst, let’s understand the importance of
creating quality content.
Quality Content is Link Bait Itself
Creating interesting and useful content will
encourage sharing on its own. Take for example,
you’re writing a blog post and you’re doing a
comparison between commercial plastic bottles and
BPA-free plastic bottles for your ecommerce store
promoting BPA-free plastic bottles.
As you’re writing your post, pointing out how
commercial plastic bottles that aren’t BPA free can
increase the risk of cancer, you realize you need to
reference a reliable source to justify the claim.
So you do a search on Google and fnd a reliable source
– the FDA, a government website has written a
detailed report on the harmful chemical found present
in many hard plastic bottles.
What do you do then? You include a link to the report
to justify your claim. This is a classic example of
backlinks being acquired naturally useful content that
provides value to the reader such as the above
example (which is a health case study).
For a detailed guide and more examples on link
baiting, visit this link bait guide and
10 examples of effective link bait.
48
Part3:ExternalSEO

End of SEO Starter Guide
“Thank you for reading our SEO Starter Guide.”
We've come to the end of this guide. Visit our website www.equinetacademy.com
to register for our 2-day hands-on SEO course in Singapore or
www.aceclick.com.sg where we provide reliable SEO/SEM services.
49
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