Search Engine Optimization

Do you need an SEO?

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SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer." Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Review of your site content or structure</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Content development</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Management of online business development campaigns</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Keyword research</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">SEO training</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Expertise in specific markets and geographies.</li>
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Keep in mind that the Google search results page includes organic search results and often paid advertisement (denoted as "Ads" or "Sponsored") as well. Advertising with Google won't have any effect on your site's presence in our search results. Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results. Free resources such as <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Search Console</a>, the official <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Webmaster Central blog</a>, and our <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/webmasters?" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">discussion forum</a> can provide you with a great deal of information about how to optimize your site for organic search.</div>
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Before beginning your search for an SEO, it's a great idea to become an educated consumer and get familiar with how search engines work. We recommend starting here:</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/answer.py?answer=35769" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Google Webmaster Guidelines</a></li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/answer.py?answer=70897" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web.</a></li>
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If you're thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you're considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.</div>
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Some useful questions to ask an SEO include:</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What's your experience in my industry?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What's your experience in my country/city?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What's your experience developing international sites?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What are your most important SEO techniques?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">How long have you been in business?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?</li>
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While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site's presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from our index. Here are some things to consider:</div>
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One common scam is the creation of "shadow" domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client's behalf. However, if the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor's domain. If that happens, the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO.</div>
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Another illicit practice is to place "doorway" pages loaded with keywords on the client's site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious, however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO's other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content.</div>
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If you feel that you were deceived by an SEO in some way, you may want to report it.</div>
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In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint, visit: <a href="http://www.ftc.gov/" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">http://www.ftc.gov/</a> and click on "File a Complaint Online," call 1-877-FTC-HELP, or write to:</div>
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Federal Trade Commission<br />CRC-240<br />Washington, D.C. 20580</blockquote>
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If your complaint is against a company in a country other than the United States, please file it at <a href="http://www.econsumer.gov/" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">http://www.econsumer.gov/</a>.</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:</div>
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<em>"Dear google.com,<br />I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."</em></blockquote>
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Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our <a href="http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Add URL</a> page or by submitting a <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156184" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Sitemap</a> and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or "throwaway" domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it's best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to "help" you. If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site.</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>You should never have to link to an SEO.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>Choose wisely.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that, of course. You might also seek out a few of the cautionary tales that have appeared in the press, including this article on one particularly aggressive SEO: <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html</a>. While Google doesn't comment on specific companies, we've encountered firms calling themselves SEOs who follow practices that are clearly beyond the pale of accepted business behavior. Be careful.</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>Be sure to understand where the money goes.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they "control" other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn't work with Google because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you're considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter?</strong></li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>What are some other things to look out for?</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It's far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO:</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">owns shadow domains</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">puts links to their other clients on doorway pages</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">offers to sell keywords in the address bar</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">doesn't distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">gets traffic from "fake" search engines, spyware, or scumware</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">has had domains removed from Google's index or is not itself listed in Google</li>
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Do you need an SEO?

SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer." Deciding to hire an SEO is a big ...

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

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What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?</h2>
SEO is a marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in 
organic (non-paid) search engine results. SEO encompasses both the 
technical and creative elements required to improve rankings, drive 
traffic, and increase awareness in search engines. There are many 
aspects to SEO, from the words on your page to the way other sites link
 to you on the web. Sometimes SEO is simply a matter of making sure your
 site is structured in a way that search engines understand.<br />

SEO isn't just about building search engine-friendly websites. 
It's about making your site better for people too. At Moz we believe 
these principles go hand-in-hand.<br />

This guide is designed to describe all areas of SEO—from finding 
the terms and phrases (keywords) that  generate traffic to your website,
 to making your site friendly to search engines, to building links and 
marketing the unique value of your site. If you are confused about this 
stuff, you are not alone, and we're here to help.<br />

<img _cdn="true" alt="Search Engine Market Share" src="https://dc8hdnsmzapvm.cloudfront.net/assets/images/beginners/monkeys.png?3de8da1" />
    </div>
<h2>
Why does my website need SEO?</h2>
The majority of web traffic is driven by the major commercial search engines, <a href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a>, <a href="http://www.bing.com/">Bing</a>, and <a href="http://www.yahoo.com/">Yahoo!</a>.
 Although social media and other types of traffic can generate visits to
 your website, search engines are the primary method of navigation for 
most Internet users. This is true whether your site provides content, 
services, products, information, or just about anything else. <br />

Search engines are unique in that they provide targeted traffic—people looking for what you  offer. Search engines are the roadways
 that make this happen. If search engines cannot find your site, or add 
your content to their databases, you miss out on incredible 
opportunities to drive traffic to your site.<br />

<strong>Search queries</strong>—the words that users type into 
the search box—carry extraordinary value. Experience has shown that 
search engine traffic can make (or break) an organization's success. 
Targeted traffic to a website can provide publicity, revenue, and 
exposure like no other channel of marketing. Investing in SEO can have 
an exceptional rate of return compared to other types of marketing and 
promotion.<br />

<h2>
Why can't the search engines figure out my site without SEO?</h2>
Search engines are smart, but they still need help. The major 
engines are always working to improve their technology to crawl the web 
more deeply and return better results to users. However, there is  a 
limit to how search engines can operate. Whereas <a href="https://moz.com/products/pro" target="_blank">the right SEO</a>
 can net you thousands of visitors and increased attention, the wrong 
moves can hide or bury your site deep in the search results where 
visibility is minimal. <br />

In addition to making content available to search engines, SEO  
also helps boost rankings so that content  will be placed where 
searchers will more readily find it. The Internet is becoming 
increasingly competitive, and those companies who perform SEO will have a
 decided advantage in visitors and customers. <br />

<h2>
Can I do SEO for myself?</h2>
The world of SEO is  complex, but most people can easily 
understand the basics. Even a small amount of knowledge can make a big 
difference. Free SEO education is widely available on the web, including
 in guides like this. Combine this with a little practice and you are 
well on your way to becoming a guru.<br />

Depending on your time commitment, your willingness to learn, and
 the complexity of your website(s), you may decide you need an expert to
 handle things for you. Firms that practice SEO can vary; some have a 
highly specialized focus, while others take a broader and more general 
approach.<br />

In any case, it's good to have a firm grasp of the core concepts. <br />

<h2>
How much of this article do I need to read?</h2>
If you are serious about improving search traffic and are unfamiliar with SEO, <strong>we recommend reading this guide front-to-back</strong>. We've tried to make it as concise as possible and easy to understand. There's a printable PDF version for those who'd prefer, and dozens of linked-to resources on other sites and pages that are also worthy of your attention.<br />

<br />
    Each section of this guide is important to understanding the most effective practices of search engine optimization.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? SEO is a marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine...

SEO Tutorial For Beginners 2015

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<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is SEO?</strong></div>
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A simple definition of search engine optimisation in 2015 is that it is a technical and creative process to improve the visibility of a website in search engines, with the aim of driving more potential customers to it.</div>
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These free seo tips will help you create a successful seo friendly website yourself, based on my 15 years experience making websites rank in Google. If you need optimisation services – see my <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">seo audit</span></span>.</div>
<div style="background-color: #fefefe; border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">An Introduction</strong></div>
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This is a beginner’s guide. I deliberately steer clear of techniques that might be ‘grey hat’, as what is grey today is often ‘black hat’ tomorrow, as far as Google is concerned.</div>
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No one page guide can explore this complex topic in full. What you’ll read here is how I approach the basics – and these are the basics – as far as I remember them. At least – these are answers to questions I had when I was starting out in this field. And things have changed since I started this company in 2006.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The ‘Rules’</strong></div>
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Google insists webmasters adhere to their ‘rules’ and aims to reward sites with <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">high quality content</strong> and <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">remarkable ‘white hat’ web marketing techniques </strong>with<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> high rankings.</strong> Conversely it also <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">needs</em> to penalise web sites that manage to rank in Google by breaking these rules.</div>
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These rules are not laws, only guidelines, for ranking in Google; laid down <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">by</em> Google. You should note that some methods of ranking in Google are, in fact, actually illegal. Hacking, for instance, is illegal.</div>
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You can choose to follow and abide by these rules, bend them or ignore them – all with different levels of success (and levels of retribution, from Google’s web spam team). <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">White hats</em> do it by the ‘rules’; <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">black hats</em> ignore the ‘rules’.</div>
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What you read in this article is perfectly within the laws and within the guidelines and will help you increase the traffic to your website through organic, or natural search engine results pages (SERPS).</div>
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While there are a lot of definitions of SEO (spelled Search engine optimi<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">s</strong>ation in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, or search engine optimi<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">z</strong>ation in the United States and Canada) organic SEO in 2015 is mostly about getting free traffic from Google, the most popular search engine in the world (and the only game in town in the UK):</div>
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<img alt="Top Search Engines in the UK" class="alignnone  wp-image-17023" height="378" src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2014-01-11-01.17.50.png" style="border: 1px solid rgb(203, 204, 205); clear: both; display: block !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; margin-top: 25px; max-width: 100%; padding: 3px; text-align: center !important; vertical-align: baseline;" width="568" /></div>
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The guide you are reading is for the more technical minded.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Opportunity</strong></div>
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The art of web seo is understanding how people search for things, and understanding what type of results Google wants to (or will) display to it’s users. It’s about putting a lot of things together to look for opportunity.</div>
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A good optimiser has an understanding of how search engines like Google generate their natural SERPS to satisfy users’ <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">NAVIGATIONAL</strong>, <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">INFORMATIONAL</strong>and <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">TRANSACTIONAL</strong> keyword queries.</div>
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A good search engine marketer has a good understanding of the short term and long term risks involved in optimising rankings in search engines, and an understanding of the type of content and sites Google (<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">especially</em>) WANTS to return in it’s natural SERPS.</div>
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The aim of any campaign is increased visibility in search engines.</div>
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There are rules to be followed or ignored, risks to be taken, gains to be made, and battles to be won or lost.</div>
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A Mountain View spokesman once called the search engine ‘<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">kingmakers</em>‘, and that’s no lie.</div>
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Ranking high in Google is VERY VALUABLE – it’s effectively ‘free advertising’ on the best advertising space in the world.</div>
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Traffic from Google natural listings is STILL the most valuable organic traffic to a website in the world, and it can make or break an online business.</div>
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The state of play STILL is that you can generate your own highly targeted leads, for FREE, just by improving your website and optimising your content to be as relevant as possible for a customer looking for your company, product or service.</div>
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As you can imagine, there’s a LOT of competition now for that free traffic – even from Google (!) in some niches.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Process</strong></div>
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The process can successfully practiced in a bedroom or a workplace, but it has traditionally involved mastering many skills as they arose including diverse marketing technologies including but not limited to:</div>
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<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">website design</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">accessibility</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">usability</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">user experience</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">website development</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">php, html, css etc</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">server management</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">domain management</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">copywriting</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">spreadsheets</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">back link analysis</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">keyword research</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">social media promotion</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">software development</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">analytics and data analysis</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">information architecture</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">looking at Google for hours on end</li>
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It takes a lot, in 2015, to rank on merit a page in Google in competitive niches, and <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the stick Google is hitting every webmaster with (at the moment, and for the foreseeable future) is the ‘<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">QUALITY USER EXPERIENCE</em>‘ stick</strong>.</div>
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If you expect to rank in Google in 2015, you’d better have a quality offering, not based entirely on manipulation, or old school tactics.</div>
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Is a visit to your site a good user experience? If not – beware <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MANUAL QUALITY RATERS</strong> and <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BEWARE the GOOGLE PANDA</strong> algorithm which is looking for signs of poor user experience and low quality content.</div>
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Google raising the ‘quality bar’ ensures a higher level of quality in online marketing in general (above the very low quality we’ve seen over the last years).</div>
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Success online involves HEAVY INVESTMENT in on page content, website architecture, usability, conversion to optimisation balance, and promotion.</div>
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If you don’t take that route, you’ll find yourself chased down by Google’s algorithms at some point in the coming year.</div>
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This ‘what is seo’ guide (and this entire website) is not about churn and burn type of Google seo (called webspam to Google).</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What Is A Successful Strategy?</strong></div>
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Get relevant. Get trusted. Get Popular.</div>
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It’s is no longer just about manipulation. It’s about adding quality and often utilitarian content to your website which meet a PURPOSE that delivers USER SATISFACTION.</div>
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If you are serious about getting more free traffic from search engines, get ready to invest time and effort into your website and online marketing.</div>
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Google wants to rank QUALITY documents in its results, and force those who want to rank high to invest in great content, or great service, that attracts editorial links from other reputable websites.</div>
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If you’re willing to add a lot of great content to your website, and create buzz about your company, Google will rank you high. If you try to manipulate Google, it will penalise you for a period of time, and often until you fix the offending issue – which we know can LAST YEARS.</div>
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Backlinks in general, for instance,  are STILL weighed FAR too positively by Google and they are manipulated to drive a site to the top positions – for a while. That’s why blackhats do it – and they have the business model to do it. It’s the easiest way to rank a site, still today. If you are a real business who intends to build a brand online – you can’t use black hat methods. Full stop.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Rankings Are In Constant Ever-Flux</strong></div>
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It’s Google’s job to MAKE MANIPULATING SERPS HARD.</div>
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So – the people behind the algorithms keeps ‘moving the goalposts’, modifying the ‘rules’ and raising ‘quality standards’ for pages that compete for top ten rankings. In 2015 – we have ever-flux in the SERPS – and that seems to suit Google and keep everybody guessing.</div>
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Google is very secretive about its ‘secret sauce’ and offers sometimes helpful and sometimes vague advice – and some say offers misdirection – about how to get more from valuable traffic from Google.</div>
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Google is on record as saying the engine is intent on ‘frustrating’ search engine optimisers attempts to improve the amount of high quality traffic to a website – at least (but not limited to) – using low quality strategies classed as web spam.</div>
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At its core, Google search engine optimisation is about <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">KEYWORDS</strong> and <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LINKS</strong>. It’s about <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">RELEVANCE</strong>, <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">REPUTATION </strong>and<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> TRUST</strong>. It is about <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">QUALITY OF CONTENT</strong> & <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VISITOR SATISFACTION</strong>. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A</em><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Good USER EXPERIENCE</em></strong> is the end goal.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Relevance, Authority & Trust</strong></div>
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Web page optimisation is about making a web page being relevant enough for a query, and being trusted enough to rank for it.</div>
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It’s about ranking for valuable keywords for the long term, on merit. You can play by ‘white hat’ rules laid down by Google, or you can choose to ignore those and go ‘black hat’ – a ‘spammer’. MOST seo tactics still work, for some time, on some level, depending on who’s doing them, and how the campaign is deployed.</div>
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Whichever route you take, know that if Google catches you trying to modify your rank using overtly obvious and manipulative methods, then they <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">will</em> class you a web spammer, and your site will be penalised (normally you will not rank high for important keywords).</div>
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These penalties can last years if not addressed, as some penalties expire and some do not – and Google wants you to clean up any violations.</div>
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Google does not want you to try and modify your rank. Critics would say Google would prefer you paid them to do that using Google Adwords.</div>
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The problem for Google is – ranking high in Google organic listings is a real social proof for a business, a way to avoid ppc costs and still, simply, the BEST WAY to drive REALLY VALUABLE traffic to a site.</div>
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It’s FREE, too, once you’ve met the always-increasing criteria it takes to rank top.</div>
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In 2015, you need to be aware that what works to improve your rank can also get you penalised (faster, and a lot more noticeably).</div>
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In particular, the Google web spam team is currently waging a pr war on sites that rely on <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">unnatural links</span></span> and other ‘manipulative’ tactics (and handing out severe penalties if it detects them) – and that’s on top of many algorithms already designed to look for other manipulative tactics (like keyword stuffing).</div>
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Google is making sure it takes longer to see results from black <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and</strong> white hat seo, and intent on ensuring a flux in it’s SERPS based largely on where the searcher is in the world at the time of the search, and where the business is located near to that searcher.</div>
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There are some things you cannot directly influence legitimately to improve your rankings, but there is plenty you CAN do to drive more Google traffic to a web page.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ranking Factors</strong></div>
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Google has HUNDREDS of ranking factors with signals that can change daily to determine how it works out where your page ranks in comparison to other competing pages.</div>
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You will not ever find them all. Many ranking factors are on page, on site and some are off page, or off site. Some are based on where you are, or what you have searched for before.</div>
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I’ve been in online marketing for 15 years. In that time, I’ve learned to focus on optimising elements in campaigns that offer the greatest return on investment of one’s labour.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Learn SEO Basics….</strong></div>
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Here is few simple seo tips to begin with:</div>
<ul style="background-color: #fefefe; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21px; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you are just starting out, don’t think you can fool Google about everything all the time. Google has VERY probably seen your tactics before. So, it’s best to <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">keep your plan simple</strong>. GET RELEVANT. GET REPUTABLE. Aim for a good, satisfying visitor experience. If you are just starting out – you may as well learn how to do it within <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Google’s Webmaster Guidelines</span></span> first. Make a decision, early, if you are going to follow Google’s guidelines, or not, and stick to it. Don’t be caught in the middle with an important project. Do not always follow the herd.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If your aim is to deceive visitors from Google, in any way, Google is not your friend. Google is hardly your friend at any rate – but you don’t want it as your enemy. Google will send you lots of free traffic though if you manage to get to the top of search results, so perhaps they are not all that bad.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">A lot of optimisation techniques that are effective in boosting sites rankings in Google are against Google’s guidelines. For example: many links that may have once promoted you to the top of Google, may in fact today be hurting your site and it’s ability to rank high in Google. Keyword stuffing might be holding your page back…. You must be smart, and cautious, when it comes to building links to your site in a manner that Google *hopefully* won’t have too much trouble with in the FUTURE. Because they will punish you in the future.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t expect to rank number 1 in any niche for a competitive without a lot of investment, work. Don’t expect results overnight. Expecting too much too fast might get you in trouble with the spam team.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">You don’t pay anything to get into Google, Yahoo or Bing natural, or free listings. It’s common for the major search engines to find your website pretty easily by themselves within a few days. This is made so much easier if your website actually ‘pings’ search engines when you update content (via XML sitemaps or RSS for instance).</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">To be listed and rank high in Google and other search engines, you really should consider and largely abide by search engine rules and <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">official guidelines for inclusion</span></span>. With experience, and a lot of observation, you can learn which rules can be bent, and which tactics are short term and perhaps, should be avoided.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google ranks websites (relevancy aside for a moment) by the number and quality of incoming links to a site from other websites (amongst hundreds of other metrics). Generally speaking, a link from a page to another page is viewed in Google “eyes” as a vote for that page the link points to. The more votes a page gets, the more trusted a page can become, and the higher Google will rank it – in theory. Rankings are HUGELY affected by how much Google ultimately trusts the DOMAIN the page is on. BACKLINKS (links from other websites – trump every other signal.)</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve always thought if you are serious about ranking – do so with ORIGINAL COPY. It’s clear – search engines reward good content it hasn’t found before. It indexes it blisteringly fast, for a start (within a second, if your website isn’t penalised!). So – make sure each of your pages has enough text content you have written specifically for that page – and you won’t need to jump through hoops to get it ranking.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you have original quality content on a site, you also have a chance of generating inbound quality links (IBL). If your content is found on other websites, you will find it hard to get links, and it probably will not rank very well as Google favours diversity in it’s results. If you have <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">decent original content</span></span> on your site, you can let authority websites, those with <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">online business authority</span></span>, know about it, and they might link to you – this is called a <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">quality backlink</strong>.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Search engines need to understand a link is a link. Links can be designed to be ignored by search engines with the <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">rel nofollow</span></span> attribute.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Search engines can also find your site by other web sites linking to it. You can also <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">submit your site to search engines</span></span> direct, but I haven’t submitted any site to a search engine in the last 10 years – you probably don’t need to do that. If you have a new site I would immediately register it with Google Webmaster Tools these days.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google and Bing use a crawler (Googlebot and Bingbot) that spiders the web looking for new links to spider. These bots might find a link to your home page somewhere on the web and then crawl and index the pages of your site if all your pages are linked together (in almost any way). If your website has an xml sitemap, for instance, Google will use that to include that content in it’s index. An xml site map is INCLUSIVE, not EXCLUSIVE.  Google will crawl and index every single page on your site – even pages out with an xml sitemap.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Many think Google will not allow new websites to rank well for competitive terms until the web address “ages” and acquires “trust” in Google – I think this depends on the quality of the incoming links. Sometimes your site will rank high for a while then disappears for months. A “honeymoon period” to give you a taste of Google traffic, no doubt.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google WILL classify your site when it crawls and indexes your site – and this classification can have a DRASTIC affect on your rankings – it’s important for Google to work out WHAT YOUR ULTIMATE INTENT IS – do you want to classified as an affiliate site made ‘just for Google’, a domain holding page, or a small business website with a real purpose? Ensure you don’t confuse Google by being explicit with all the signals you can – to show on your website you are a real business, and your INTENT is genuine – and even more importantly today – FOCUSED ON SATISFYING A VISITOR.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOTE – <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">If a page exists only to make money from Google’s free traffic</span></span> – Google calls this spam.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">The transparency you provide on your website in text and links about who you are, what you do, and how you’re rated on the web or as a business is one way that Google could use (algorithmically and manually) to ‘rate’ your website. Note that Google has a HUGE army of quality raters and at some point they will be on your site if you get a lot of traffic from Google.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">To rank for specific keyword phrase searches, you generally need to have the keyword phrase or highly relevant words on your page (not necessarily altogether, but it helps) or in links pointing to your page/site.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ultimately what you need to do to compete is largely dependent on what the competition for the term you are targeting is doing. You’ll need to at least mirror how hard they are competing, if a better opportunity is hard to spot.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">As a result of other quality sites linking to your site, the site now has a certain amount of<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">real</em> <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">PageRank</span></span> that is shared with all the internal pages that make up your website that will in future help provide a signal to where this page ranks in the future.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yes, you need to build links to your site to acquire more PageRank, or Google ‘juice’ – or what we now call <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">domain authority </em>or<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> trust</em>. Google is a links based search engine – it does not quite understand ‘good’ or ‘quality’ content – but it does understand ‘popular’ content. It can also usually identify poor, or THIN CONTENT – and it penalises your site for that – or – at least – it takes away the traffic you once had with an algorithm change. Google doesn’t like calling actions the take a ‘penalty’ – it doesn’t look good. They blame your ranking drops on their engineers getting better at identifying quality content or links, or the inverse – low quality content and unnatural links. If they do take action your site for paid links – they call this a ‘Manual Action’ and you will get notified about it in Webmaster Tools if you <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">sign up</span></span>.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Link building</span></span> is not JUST a numbers game, though. One link from a “trusted authority” site in Google could be all you need to rank high in your niche. Of course, the more “trusted” links you build, the more trust Google will have in your site. It is evident you need MULTIPLE trusted links from MULTIPLE trusted websites to legitimately get the most from Google.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Try and get links within page text pointing to your site with relevant, or at least natural looking, keywords in the text link – not, for instance, in blogrolls or site wide links. Try to ensure the links are not obviously “machine generated” e.g. site-wide links on forums or directories. Get links from pages, that in turn, have a lot of links to them, and you will soon see benefits.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Onsite, consider linking to your other pages by <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">linking to them within text</span></span>. I usually only do this when it is relevant – often, I’ll link to relevant pages when the keyword is in the title elements of both pages. I don’t really go in for auto-generating links at all. Google has penalised sites for using particular auto link plugins, for instance, so I avoid them.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Linking to a page with actual key-phrases in the link help a great deal in all search engines when you want to feature for specific key-terms. For example; “seo scotland” as opposed to http://www.hobo-web.co.uk or “click here“. Saying that – in 2015, Google is punishing manipulative <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">anchor text</span></span> very aggressively, so be sensible – and stick to brand links and plain url links that build authority with less risk. I rarely ever optimise for grammatically incorrect terms these days (especially links).</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">I think the anchor text links in internal navigation is still valuable – but keep it natural. Google needs links to find and help categorise your pages. Don’t underestimate the value of a clever internal link keyword-rich architecture and be sure to understand for instance how many words Google counts in a link, but don’t overdo it. Too many links on a page could be seen as a poor user experience. Avoid lots of hidden links in your template navigation.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Search engines like Google ‘spider’ or ‘crawl’ your entire site by following all the links on your site to new pages, much as a human would click on the links of your pages. Google will crawl and index your pages, and within a few days normally, begin to return your pages in SERPS.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">After a while, Google will know about your pages, and keep the ones it deems ‘useful’ – pages with original content, or pages with a lot of links to them. The rest will be de-indexed. Be careful – too many low quality pages on your site will impact your overall site performance in Google. Google is on record talking about good and bad ratios of quality content to low quality content.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ideally you will have unique pages, with <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">unique page titles</span></span> and <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">unique page descriptions</span></span> if you deem to use the latter. Google does not seem to use the meta description when actually ranking your page for specific keyword searches if not relevant and unless you are careful if you might end up just giving spammers free original text for their site and not yours once they scrape your descriptions and put the text in main content on their site. I don’t worry about <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">meta keywords</span></span> these days as Google and Bing say they either ignore them or use them as spam signals.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google will take some time to analyse your entire site, analysing text content and links. This process is taking longer and longer these days but is ultimately determined by your domain authority / real PageRank as Google determines it.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you have a lot of duplicate low quality text already found by Googlebot on other websites it knows about, Google will ignore your page. If your site or page has spammy signals, Google will penalise it, sooner or later. If you have lots of these pages on your site – Google will ignore your efforts.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">You don’t need to keyword stuff your text and look dyslexic to beat the competition.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">You optimise a page for more traffic by increasing the frequency of the desired key phrase, related key terms, co-occurring keywords and synonyms in links, page titles and text content. There is no<span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;"> </span></span>ideal amount of text – no magic <span style="color: #663399; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">keyword density</span></span>. Keyword stuffing is a tricky business, too, these days.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">I prefer to make sure I have as many UNIQUE relevant words on the page that make up as many relevant long tail queries as possible.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you link out to irrelevant sites, Google may ignore the page, too – but again, it depends on the site in question. Who you link to, or HOW you link to, REALLY DOES MATTER – I expect Google to use your linking practices as a potential means by which to classify your site. Affiliate sites for example don’t do well in Google these days without some good quality backlinks.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Many search engine marketers think who you actually link out to (and who links to you) helps determine a topical community of sites in any field, or a hub of authority. Quite simply, you want to be in that hub, at the centre if possible (however unlikely), but at least in it. I like to think of this one as a good thing to remember in the future as search engines get even better at determining topical relevancy of pages, but I have never really seen any granular ranking benefit (for the page in question) from linking out.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve got by, by thinking external links to other sites should probably be on single pages deeper in your site architecture, with the pages receiving all your Google Juice once it’s been “soaked up” by the higher pages in your site structure (the home page, your category pages). This is old school though – but it still gets me by. I don’t need to think you really need to worry about that in 2015.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Original content is king and will attract a “natural link growth” – in Google’s opinion. Too many incoming links too fast might devalue your site, but again. I usually err on the safe side – I always aimed for massive diversity in my links – to make them look ‘more natural’. Honestly, I go for natural links in 2015 full stop.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google can devalue whole sites, individual pages, template generated links and individual links if Google deems them “unnecessary” and a ‘poor user experience’.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google knows who links to you, the “quality” of those links, and whom you link to. These – and other factors – help ultimately determine where a page on your site ranks. To make it more confusing – the page that ranks on your site might not be the page you want to rank, or even the page that determines your rankings for this term. Once Google has worked out your domain authority – sometimes it seems that the most relevant page on your site Google HAS NO ISSUE with will rank.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google decides which pages on your site are important or most relevant. You can help Google by linking to your important pages and ensuring at least one page is really well optimised amongst the rest of your pages for your desired key phrase. Always remember Google does not want to rank ‘thin’ pages in results – any page you want to rank – should have all the things Google is looking for. PS – That’s a lot these days!</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is important you spread all that real ‘PageRank’ – or link equity – to your sales keyword / phrase rich sales pages, and as much remains to the rest of the site pages, so Google does not ‘demote’ pages into oblivion –  or ‘supplemental results’ as we old timers knew them back in the day. Again – this is slightly old school – but it gets me by even today.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Consider linking to important pages on your site from your home page, and other important pages on your site.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Focus on RELEVANCE first. Then, focus your marketing efforts and get REPUTABLE. This is the key to ranking ‘legitimately’ in Google in 2015.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Every few months Google changes it’s algorithm to punish sloppy optimisation or industrial manipulation. Google Panda and Google Penguin are two such updates, but the important thing is to understand Google changes its algorithms constantly to control its listings pages (over 600 changes a year we are told).</li>
<li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">The art of rank modification is to rank without tripping these algorithms or getting flagged by a human reviewer – and that is tricky!</li>
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Welcome to the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">tightrope</em> that is modern web optimisation.</div>
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Read on if you would like to learn how to seo….</div>
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SEO Tutorial For Beginners 2015

What is SEO? A simple definition of search engine optimisation in 2015 is that it is a technical and creative process to improve the vis...

Meta Keywords Best Practice

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A hallmark of shady natural search engine optimisation companies – the meta-keywords tag. Companies that waste time and resources on these items waste clients money – that’s a fact:</div>
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I have one piece of advice with the meta keyword tag, which like the <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/title-tags/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" title="This is actually important!">title tag</a>, goes in the head section of your web page, <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: bold; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">forget about them</strong>.</div>
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If you are relying on meta-keyword optimisation to rank for terms, your dead in the water. From what I see, <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/definitive-guide-to-using-important-meta-tags/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Google + Bing ignores meta keywords</a> – or at least places no weight in them to rank pages. Yahoo may read them, but really, a search engine optimiser has more important things to worry about than this nonsense.</div>
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What about other search engines that use them? Hang on while I submit my site to those 75,000 engines first [sarcasm!]. Yes, 10 years ago early search engines liked looking at your meta-keywords. I’ve seen OPs in forums ponder which is the best way to write these tags – with commas, with spaces, limiting to how many characters. Forget about meta-keyword tags – they are a pointless waste of time and bandwidth. Could probably save a rain-forest with the bandwidth costs we save if everybody removed their keyword tags.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: bold; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tin Foil Hat Time</strong></div>
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So you have a new site….. you fill your home page meta tags with the 20 keywords you want to rank for – hey, that’s what optimisation is all about, isn’t it? You’ve just told Google by the third line of text what to sandbox you <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">for</em>  and wasn’t meta name=”Keywords” originally for words that weren’t actually on the page that would help classify the document? Sometimes competitors might use the information in your keywords to determine what you are trying to rank for, too….</div>
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If everybody removed them and stopped abusing meta keywords Google would probably start looking at them but that’s the way of things in search engines. I Ignore them. <a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167931" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Not even a ‘second order’ effect, in my opinion</a>.</div>

Meta Keywords Best Practice

A hallmark of shady natural search engine optimisation companies – the meta-keywords tag. Companies that waste time and resources on thes...