what is SEO?

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization, and there is nothing really mystical about it. You might have heard a lot about SEO and how it works, but basically what it is is a measurable, repeatable process that is used to send signals to search engines that your pages are worth showing in Google’s index.<br /> Basically Google uses a complex mathematical formula called an algorithm to give a score to every website and every search people to do in Google to figure out which website should rank best for what people are looking for. Think of the algorithm like a collection of empty buckets. One bucket gives you a score for the quality of your site, one bucket gives you a score for how many sites link to you, one bucket gives you a score for how people trust you. Your job is to fill up more buckets in the algorithm than any other website. You can affect your search engine ranking by having the highest score in terms of quality of your site, of having the highest score in terms of authority of your website, of having the highest score in terms of the most trusted store for that search that people are looking for. The good thing is that there are hundreds of buckets, and for every single one of these buckets these scores put together in the algorithm to figure out where you rank is an opportunity for you to fill it up and rank better. So optimizing your site for search results really means getting the highest score in as many of these points as you can.<br /> Now, some buckets are worth more than others, and the three main buckets that you need to be aware of for search rankings are quality, trust and authority. So quality: what Google is trying to measure when they’re trying to figure out what sites should rank is offering something valuable or unique or interesting to googles searchers. For example: good content - if you are selling t-shirts and you are using the same description that every other t-shirt seller is using on their website then you are not offering anything unique to Google’s searchers. Even though your t-shirts might look pretty cool, the content is the same as everybody else’s, so Google has no way of telling that your t-shirts or your t-shirt site is better than anybody else’s. Instead, offer people interesting content. For example: offer them the ability to personalize their t-shirt. Give them information on how to wash it. What’s the thread count? Is it stain resistant? Is this something you should wear in the summer or is it more heavy for winter? Give people information, or even be more creative. Get people to share pictures of themselves wearing the t-shirt. Create a community of people who are interested in your product. Get a famous person to wear it and share that picture online. Do something different, do something unique. Show Google that you are different and better than the other search results.<br /> Trust is another important bucket that you need to be aware of when you are trying to get your site to rank in Google. Google doesn’t want to show just any website to it’s searchers, it wants to show the best website to its searchers, and so it wants to show sites that are trustworthy. One thing Google has indicated it likes to do is penalize sites or stores or companies that consistently have poor reviews, so if you have many poor reviews, in time Google is going to figure out not to show your site in their rankings because Google doesn’t want to show those sites to their searchers. So prove to Google’s algorithm that you are trustworthy. Get other highly authoritative websites to link to you. Get newspaper articles, get industry links, get other trusted sites to link to you: partners, vendors, happy customers - get them to link to your website to show that you are highly credible and trustworthy.<br /> And finally, the other really important bucket is authority. Google wants to show sites that are popular. If they can show the most popular t-shirt seller to people looking to buy t-shirts online, that’s the site they want to show. So you have to convince Google - send them signals that your site is the most popular site for the kind of t-shirts that you sell. Fill this bucket by building a fan base. Build a social network, get people to link to you, get people to share your t-shirt pages on their social network saying ‘I want this!’, get people to comment, leave testimonials, show pictures of themselves wearing the product or using the product, Create a fan-base and then rally them to link to you and talk about you. That’s how you prove to Google that you are trustworthy and authoritative.<br /> So if you think about it, SEO is really just a process of proving to search engines that you are the best site, the most authoritative, the most trusted, the most unique and interesting site that they can offer to their customer - the searcher. Get people to talk about you, produce good quality content, get people to link to you, and Google will be more confident that you are the best result that they can offer to their searchers, and that’s when you will start ranking on the first page of Google.

what is SEO?

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization, and there is nothing really mystical about it. You might have heard a lot about SEO and how i...

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How to SEO your website

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> <img src="http://image.slidesharecdn.com/howtoseoyourwebsite-130831071348-phpapp02/95/how-to-seo-your-website-1-638.jpg?cb=1396487082" /><br /> It was once said that "there are some that <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">talk</i> SEO and there are some that <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">do</i> SEO, but there are very few who <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">talk and do</i> SEO"</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> And it is all too true that you arrive at the website of some Search Engine Optimisation companies because you clicked on a paid link, not because they were in the first few results of a genuine search. So never forget, before you hire and part with money, ask where they rank and for what keywords.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Do not be easily fooled into accepting an example that because 'Big Bills Search Engine Service' ranks highly for 'Big Bills Search Engine Service' he is any good at search engine optimisation. We're looking for something other than a brand name, a genuine keyword that a normal user might search for.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> You should also be cautious when accepting advice online from certain websites that may only want to sell you software or a book, unless they can prove what they have done in a real life SEO example to.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> <b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">So sorting the <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">talkers</i> from the <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">doers</i> is an essential first step.</b></div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> With this in mind we set out to create our own example. We chose the phrase <b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"How to SEO your website"</b> because according to the Google Keyword Tool this had medium competition from other websites.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Searching this phrase bought up about 45,000,000 results so the challenge was "How long would it take to create a page that would rank better than the 44,999,990 others already indexed by Google?"</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> The answer? 12 (yes twelve) days for this example.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> From the outset we had some handicaps that could not be changed:</div> <ul style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">The website had just been rebranded to link2light which meant our domain name was very young (which search engines don't like)</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">The actual pages we wanted to optimise were in a subdomain (howtoseo.link2light.com) and search engines prefer main domains before sub domains.</li> </ul> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> But in reality our clients rarely have a perfect situation either so some challenges presented a much more real life example.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Here is the diary of events:</div> <h2 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 24px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;"> Diary of a SEO example</h2> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> <b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Please note</b> - we have had a number of emails asking us how we did this. In reply we followed our internal system which we openly publish and can be found on the pages <a href="http://howtoseo.link2light.com/how-to-seo-your-website.php" style="color: #da0000; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">How to SEO your website</a></div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> February 2011</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Created the subdomain and content which comprised of a handful of pages with minimal graphics:</div> <ul style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">Home page</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">'How to SEO' Website pages</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">A page about search engine rankings</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">A page on the time and costs of search engine optimisation</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">A handful of frequently asked questions with answers</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">A page on how to choose a search engine optimisation company</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">A few pages with stories on common mistakes</li> </ul> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> We carefully crafted the website from start to end with the same process that we use for our own clients.</div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> 10th March 2011</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Uploaded the sitemap.xml to Google.</div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> 18th March 2011</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Top 20 on <b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">google.com</b> and <b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">google.co.uk</b> for <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">How to SEO your Website</i>.</div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> 21st March 2011</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> According to Alexa the site was number 27,511,203 in the world. In other words there were 27,511,201 websites more popular than this one.</div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> 22nd March 2011</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Top 10 on <b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">google.co.uk</b> and top 20 <b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">google.com</b> for <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">'How to SEO your Website'</i>.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> <b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">So on Google's UK pages (and the UK is where our server is based so we should perform better there) it has taken 12 days to enter the top 10 and outperform 45 million other websites.</b></div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> 30th March 2011</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Alexa ranking of 8,466,596. In other words we had overtaken 19,044,607 other websites in terms of popularity in the space of twenty days!</div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> 31st March 2011</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Article <a href="http://ezinearticles.com/?Keyword-Tools-for-SEO-That-Dont-Work&id=6102983" style="color: #da0000; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Keyword Tools for SEO That Don't Work</a> published on ezinearticles.com creating the first fully independent link to the website. This was also the first time we had used any 'true' off-site search engine optimisation techniques so <b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">up to this point the website had risen to the top of the ranks simply because of it's content and it's coding</b>.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> EDIT JULY 2013: If we did this again we would not bother with the ezine article. Almost all article directories are now ignored by the major search engines as <a href="http://howtoseo.link2light.com/what-does-content-farms-mean.php" style="color: #da0000; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">content farms</a>.</div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> 6th April 2011</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Launched this page (Seo Example) and uploaded new sitemap.xml to Google.</div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> 8th April 2011</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> This page goes top 5 in Google for the search term "real seo example".</div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> 12th April 2011</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> For the keywords "How to SEO your website" we settle in the top 10 on Google.com and Google.co.uk. This is it's likely 'natural' position without off-page SEO although there is potential to climb as the average user spends over 10 minutes on the site.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> This page goes into the top 20 of the Google SERP for "seo example".</div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> 1st May 2011</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> The website rises to Google's top 5 for the search term "How to SEO your website". Much of this is down to increased links from other websites (links made by other webmasters, not us) and a consistancy in positive visitor behaviour (the average visitor spends 9+ minutes on the website.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> This page rises to appear in Google's top 20 for the search term "SEO example", above 89,000,000+ other websites.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Alexa ranking is now 4,659,245. An improvement of 22,851,956 over a 6 week period.</div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> 10th October 2011</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> It has been an incredibly busy summer at Link2light Design so a slight gap in our online diary but let's bring it up to date.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> This page is now number one on Google for "real SEO example" ahead of 230,000,000 other websites and averaging position 8 for "SEO example".</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> The Alexa ranking has risen to 550,152 from it's original position of 27,511,203 - in other words in terms of traffic it has overtaken 27,000,000 websites in the space of 6 months.</div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> 5th January 2012</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Getting into Google's top 10 is one thing. Staying there is another. So ten months on from the launch how are we doing ... ?</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> According to Google Webmaster Tools here are a few of the terms for which we are in the top 10:</div> <ul style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">'real seo example' - Postion 1 : ahead of 111,000,000 other sites</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">'seo your website' - Postion 2 : ahead of 201,000,000 other sites</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">'how to seo your website for free' - Postion 3 : ahead of 205,000,000 other sites</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">'how to seo your website' - Postion 4 : ahead of 183,000,000 other sites</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">'seo my website' - Postion 4 : ahead of 72,000,000 other sites</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">'seo example' - Postion 5 : ahead of 211,000,000 other sites</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">'rate my website SEO' - Postion 6 : ahead of 12,900,000 other sites</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">'how to do your own SEO' - Postion 9 : ahead of 145,000,000 other sites</li> </ul> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Many of these have been consistant performers but it is also worth noting we have made very few changes to the site over the last six months and have carried out no 'link building' work.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> This is how SEO should be - a website structured to perform and attract links from other sites with no effort ....</div> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> Summer 2012</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> One of the actions we took, <b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">but only after we were a Google Top 10</b>, was to push this website to the top of Google by adding backlinks, links from other websites that we own. In all it is fairly easy for us to create about 20,000 backlinks just from using our own portfolio of pages.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> So what happens when you remove those links? Well that's exactly what we did over the summer and yet search engine rankings were not affected - why?</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> To put it simply it is all about user behaviour. Links can get you to the top but</div> <ul style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">If user behaviour says your site is no good (for a keyword or phrase) you will loose your ranking despite the links</li> <li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://howtoseo.link2light.com/images/bullet-arrow.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 8px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 35px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 35px;">If user behaviour says your site is good (for a keyword or phrase) you will keep your ranking even if you loose your links</li> </ul> <h3 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"> Autumn 2013</h3> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> We started to note a drop in some rankings and a rise in others around the time Google started rolling out its new Hummingbird algorithm. For "how to seo your website" we dropped to #18 while for terms like "how seo is done" we moved up to #7.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> It was generally a mixed bag which didn't change the traffic volume of the site in general.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Google Hummingbird is hoping to match questions people ask more accurately to answers, and more accurately to the people it believes have the most authority to provide those answers. As such for terms like "how to seo your website" the top 10 is now dominated by big names.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> That's a shame because there were some very useful sites that ranked alongside us in the old top ten which I believe provided better material than the current line up.</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> Still hummingbird is in its very early days so we can expect further changes shortly ...</div> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> <b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">... to be continued ....</b></div> <h2 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 24px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;"> Seeing different results in Google?</h2> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> We take our ranking figures from Google Webmaster Tools which gives 'global averages'. Each person's search results are skewed to reflect their geographical location and past browsing history so you may see our pages positioned slightly higher or slightly lower than we claim here.</div> <h2 style="color: #033a7f; font-family: Arial; font-size: 24px; line-height: 24px; margin: 20px 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;"> Can we do the same for you?</h2> <div style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Droid Sans', arial_rounded_mt, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px; padding: 0px;"> If you would like to contact us about your website please visit our <a href="http://howtoseo.link2light.com/seo-quote.php" style="color: #da0000; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">SEO quote</a> page.</div> </div>

How to SEO your website

It was once said that "there are some that  talk  SEO and there are some that  do  SEO, but there are very few who  talk and do  SEO...

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SEO Tutorial

<div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Open Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0em 0.2em 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; word-wrap: break-word;"> Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the activity of optimizing web pages or whole sites in order to make them search engine friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Open Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0em 0.2em 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; word-wrap: break-word;"> This tutorial explains simple SEO techniques to improve the visibility of your web pages for different search engines, especially for Google, Yahoo, and Bing.</div> <h1 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #121214; font-family: 'Open Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 2.2em; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 30px; margin: 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; text-shadow: rgb(204, 204, 204) 2px 2px 3px;"> Audience</h1> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Open Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0em 0.2em 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; word-wrap: break-word;"> This tutorial has been prepared for beginners to help them understand the simple but effective SEO characteristics.</div> <h1 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #121214; font-family: 'Open Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 2.2em; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 30px; margin: 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; text-shadow: rgb(204, 204, 204) 2px 2px 3px;"> Prerequisites</h1> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Open Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0em 0.2em 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; word-wrap: break-word;"> We assume you are aware of simple web technologies such as HTML, XHTML, Style Sheet, etc. If you already have developed any website, then it is an added advantage and it will help you understand the concepts of SEO explained in this tutorial.</div>

SEO Tutorial

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the activity of optimizing web pages or whole sites in order to make them search engine friendly, thus ...

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