Current SEO Best Practices

Introduction to Search Engine Algorithms

All search engines share the goal of providing relevant, timely information.

• As an SEO, our job is to look for the factors and optimize our website according to those, which affects an algorithm.
• Some factors are verified, some are secretive.
• Moz, an SEO tool, provides lists of possible factors, an algo looks for, every year.
• Google algos, Panda, Florida, caffeine. There are constant updates and shift using modern technology by algos to provide better results.
• Over 500 updates annually to Google algos. Only small percent of that updates are released, other info remain vague.

MOZcast

An SEO algorithmic tool created by MOZ, which is based upon turbulence.

“Turbulence means high ranking fluctuations, represented by temperature changes”

Algorithms Updates: History, Part 1

• Thousands of updates every year.

  So what you need to do is:

• Spot patterns
• Predict what Google may do next.
• Forms your recommendations and strategies.
• Look for case studies, how algorithm changes affected the different websites.

Algorithms Updates: History, Part 2

Major Algorithm updates

• Panda (2011)
  • Impacted 12% of search results.
  • Improved user experience.
• Targeted:
  • Duplicate content
  • Thin content
  • Low quality
  • Machine generated content
  • Pages with lots of ads
  • Substantial content
  • Content relevancy
• Penguin (2012)
• Changes related to links handling
  • Directory related links
  • Links from spammy or unrelated sites
  • High percentage of anchor text links Targeted to a specific keyword
  • Purchases links

Semantic Indexing

“Looks at usage of synonyms and relevant words or phrases for topical relevance.”

• Hummingbird (2013)
• RankBrain (2015)

Mobile Friendliness

• Mobilegeddon (2015)
• Mobile-first (2018)

Other Updates

• Personalized Search
• Caffeine – focused on speed and building a faster web
• Voice search – impacts how users are discovering your content

SEO Best Practices and Ranking Factors

• Don’t over-optimize
• Highly content
• Outside links increase authority
• Site must be visible in search
• Cloaking (users can see the website content but search engine not) may result in penalties
• User first
• Clear hierarchy (clear webpage structure)
• Only some info is public by Google itself, how algorithms work.

Three Major Types of Ranking Factors

• 1) On Page
  • Title tags
  • Keyword Usage
  • Keyword Placement
  • Heading tags
  • Content quality
  • Content length
  • Content freshness
• 2) Off-Site
  • Inbound links (relevancy/quality)
  • Outbound Links (relevancy/quality)
  • Brand Mentions
  • Social Engagement
• 3) Domain
  • TLD
  • Domain History
  • Domain registration
  • EMD (Exact Match)
  • Site Speed
  • Site structure
  • User Engagement

Panda: The Game Changer for Content

• Not a one time change, continues to update.
• Prevents low-quality sites from ranking highly.
• Negative impact can be reversed by improving content.
• Ongoing updates allow Panda to catch sites that have escaped past changes.
• Updates roll out gradually over several months, as opposed to previous daily updates.

Targeted: Think/Low Quality Sites

• Few pages with useful content
• Largely similar material
• Pages with no content, just links to forms
• Content scraped from other sites

Targeted: Duplicate Content

• Pages duplicated on site or replicated from another
• Duplicate pages cannibalize each other and steal ranking
• Site that publishes first receives credit/rank
• Too much duplicate or scraped content can lead to penalization

Targeted: Excessive Ads

• Low content, high amount of ads

Targeted: Poor Navigation

• Un-intuitive, doesn’t link to all content

Others

Panda also looks at;

• Auto-Generated Content
• Squeeze Pages: One main page contains all content, user must scroll for more information.
• Doorway Pages: Pages built for search engines, not users.
• Meta-Refresh: Once you “land” on the page, it will refresh to another site before you can exit.

Cleaning Up Links with Penguin

• Penguin aims to stop spammy links, is re-run periodically.
• Manipulative link Practices (unethical or spammy ways to generate links)

Penguin Targets: Link networks

• Sites built for the sole purpose of linking to each other
• Could be hosted on different servers, registered to different owners

Penguin Targets: Link Trading

• Involved standard reciprocal linking as well as advanced, unethical techniques

Penguin Targets: Comment spam

• Comments on blogs or articles that link back to site
• Often flattering or innocent comments followed by link
• Often made by bots, can also be more direct and overtly spammy

Penguin Targets: Bad anchor text

• Building links containing exact keywords to boost rank

Penguin Targets: Paid Links

• Paid links can be hard to detect, but there are clues
  • Link surrounded by ads or certain words, or items/business reviews

Penguin Targets: Irrelevant links

• Links on low quality sites
• Unrelated links may be paid or obtained through manipulation
• Algorithm update have made link building more complex and risky

Poor Link building

Link building methods of the past are no longer valid and may incur penalty

• Poor link building: Multiple directories
  • Directories are like a phone book for links and not ranked highly
• Poor link building: Spammy widgets
  • Free widgets, forms, or apps that contain a link to your site
• Poor link building: Free templates
  • Free templates and themes for blogs and websites with link to site
• Poor link building: Forum post links
  • Create multiple accounts with link in signature