Search

Engine
Optimization

MKT 905
 Putting Search Engines in Context
In This Chapter
• Identifying search engine users
• Discovering why people use search engines
• Pinpointing elements for getting high keyword
rankings
• Defining relationships between search engines
• Identifying Search Engine Users
• Figuring out how much people spend
• Knowing your demographics
Figuring Out Why People Use Search Engines
• Research
• Shopping
• Entertainment
Discovering the Necessary Elements
for Getting High Keyword Rankings
• Ordered and unordered lists • Meta Keywords tag
• JavaScript/CSS externalized • Heading tag(s)
• Robots text (.txt) file • Textual content
• Web analytics • Alt attributes on all images
• Keyword research (technically a • Fully qualified links
process — see Book II) • Sitemaps (both XML and HTML,
• Link development as explained in Book VI)
• Image names • Text navigation
• Privacy statement • Canonical elements
• Contact information • Structured data markup
• Dedicated IP address • URL structure (file naming,
• Title tag limiting parameters)
• Meta Description tag
• Defining a clear subject theme
• Focusing on consistency
• Building for the long term
Understanding the Search Engines: They’re a
Community
Finding the Common Threads among the
Engines
• Content
• Popularity
• Architecture
South Korea
• Google: 84.41%
• Bing: 4.84%
• Baidu: 4.84%
• Shenma: 2.42%
• Yandex: 1.88%
• Yahoo!: 0.81%
 Search Engine Statistics 2018
• What is the market share of search in different
search engines
• How many searches are made on Desktop vs
Mobile vs Tablet?
• Google SERPs features by % of queries
• What is the Google non-brand keyword
minimum bid?
• Clickthrough rates on AdWords by position
 In 2017 46.8% of the global
population accessed the internet
and by 2021 this figure is projected
to grow to 53.7%.

Using the above Market Share chart and the data from Internet live stats, we can
see the number of daily searches on Google - 3.5 billion, which equates to 1.2
trillion searches per year worldwide.
How many searches are made on
Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet?
Google SERPs features
 Recognizing and
Reading Search Results

Chapter-3
In This Chapter
✓Reading the search engine results page
✓Understanding the search results page and why
rank position matters
✓Identifying how mobile users search
✓Discovering the effects of blended search
✓Understanding the effect of Google’s Knowledge
Graph
✓Discovering the impact of semantic search and
Hummingbird
Reading the Search Engine Results
Page
 Reading the Search Engine Results
Page
• Search Box
• Search Verticals
• Page Count
• Time Search Took
• Organic Results
• Ads
• Local Map Results (“local pack”)
• Map
• Images
• Related Searches
• Pagination
• Sign In
Understanding How People Look at
Search Results
 Identifying Mobile Users’ Search
Patterns
• Mobile SERP
• Mobile’s impact on ranking
 Discovering the Features of a Search
Results Page
• Blended results
Getting Your Site to
Appear in the Right
Results
Chapter-4
In This Chapter
✓Seeking traffic as your real goal
✓Avoiding spam
✓Understanding how behavioral searching
impacts your ranking
✓Introducing intent‐driven search
✓Using vertical search engines to your advantage
✓Getting into local search results
✓Signing up for paid ads in the various search
engines
 Search Engine SPAM
• Seeking Traffic, Not Ranking
• Avoiding Spam
• Definition Excessive manipulation to influence search engine rankings,
often for pages which contain little or no relevant content.
• Information -Search engine spamming often gets confused with legitimate
search engine optimization (SEO). While there is much gray area between
the two extremes, in their most clear cut forms the terms are very
different. Spamming involves getting a site more exposure than it deserves
for its keywords, leading to unsatisfactory search experiences.
Optimization involves getting a site the exposure it deserves on the most
targeted keywords, leading to satisfactory search experiences.
• Examples Include:
Irrelevancy – targeting keywords unrelated to the site/page.
Hidden Text – putting keywords where visitors will not see them, used to
increase keyword count.
Hidden Links – putting links where visitors will not see them, used to
increase link popularity.
Doorway Clutter – mass production of low-quality doorway pages,
sometimes of the machine-generated variety.
 Search Engine SPAM
In digital marketing and online
advertising, spamdexing (also known as search
engine spam, search engine poisoning, black-
hat Search engine optimization (SEO), search
spam or web spam) is the deliberate manipulation
of search engine indexes. It involves a number of
methods, such as link building and repeating
unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or
prominence of resources indexed, in a manner
inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing
system
Understanding Personalized Search’s
Impact on Ranking
Search engines can individually customize search
results based on the user’s
✦ Recent search behavior
✦ Location
✦ Web history
✦ Demographic information
✦ Community
Using News, Images, Books, and Other Search
Verticals to Rank
VIDEO
• Place keywords in the metadata of a video
• Place keywords in your video’s filename.
• Use YouTube (www.youtube.com) to host your video
• Link from your video to your website.
• Include text about the video in the page area surrounding the
video link, if possible.
• IMAGES
• NEWS
• SHOPPING
• BOOKS
• APPS
• MAPS
• Getting into Google My Business
Getting into Google My Business

https://www.google.com/intl/en_in/business/
 Knowing What
Drives Search Results

Chapter-5
 In This Chapter
✓Searching like a power user
✓Using advanced operators to supercharge
your search engine optimization
✓Finding specific file types in the vertical
search engines
✓Capturing more conversions using the long-
tail approach
✓Using Google Instant search suggestions as an
intelligence tool
Using Advanced Search Operators
 Combining operators for
turbo‐powered searching
For example, say you want to determine how many pages on a site have a
particular keyword phrase in their Title tag (one of the HTML tags contained
in the HTML code that appears at the top of a web page). Because Title tags
are weighted quite heavily in most search engines’ algorithms, this
information would be very useful in your search engine optimization work.
Fortunately, you can combine multiple search operators to find information
such as keyword phrases in Title tags.

To find out how many pages on a site have a particular keyword

phrase, you could type the following query in either Google or Yahoo:
[site:www.sampledomain.com intitle:keyword phrase].

Your query is basically asking, “Within the site, how many pages have this
keyword phrase in their Title tags?”
 Old story
• Searching for images
• Searching for videos
• Searching for news
• Searching with maps
Understanding Long‐Tail Queries
Using Predictive Search as a Research
Assistant
Spam Issues: When
Search Engines Get
Fooled
Chapter-6
 In This Chapter

✓Finding out about the different types of

search engine spam
✓Understanding the consequences of using
spam
✓Avoiding search engine penalties
✓Being wary of guaranteed results and other
false promises
✓Understanding ethical SEO
 Discovering the Types of Spam
Hidden text/links
✦ White text/links on a white background: Putting white text and links on a white
background renders the text invisible to the user unless the text is highlighted by
right‐clicking on the mouse. Spammers can then insert keywords or hyperlinks that the
spiders read and count as relevant.
✦ Text, links, or content that is hidden by covering it with a layer so that it is not
visible: This is a trick that people use with CSS. They hide spiderable content under the
page that can’t be seen with the naked eye or by highlighting the page.
✦ Positioning content off the page’s view with CSS: This is another programming
trick spammers use.
✦ Links that are not clickable by the user: Creating a link that has only a single
1‐x‐1 pixel as its anchor, that uses the period on a sentence as the anchor, or that has no
at all. There’s nothing for a user to click, but
anchor
the engine can still follow the link.
Doorway pages
• A doorway page is a web page submitted to search engine spiders
that has been designed to satisfy the specific algorithms for various
search engines but is not intended to be viewed by visitors
Cloaking
• Another nefarious form of spam is a method called cloaking.
Cloaking is a technique in which the content presented to the
search engine spider is different from that presented to the user’s
browser, meaning that the spiders see one page while you see
something entirely different. Spammers can cloak by delivering
content based on the IP addresses (information used to tell where
your computer or server is located) or the User‐Agent HTTP header
(information describing whether you’re a person or a search engine
robot) of the user requesting the page.
• Unrelated keywords
• Keyword stuffing
• Link farms
 Reporting Spam
Google
• Google has two ways to submit a spam report:
✦ Registered Search Console users can submit an
authenticated spam report form at
www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ spamreport?pli=1.
Google promises to investigate every spam report submitted
by a registered Search Console user.
✦ Anyone can fill out an unauthenticated spam report form
located at www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html. Google
reportedly assesses every unauthenticated report in terms of
its potential impact and investigates “a large fraction” of these
reports, as well.
 Avoiding Being Evil: Ethical Search
Marketing
✦ White hat: This includes all SEO techniques that fall into the ethical
realm. White‐hat techniques involve using relevant keywords, descriptive
Alt attribute text, simple and clear metadata, and so on. White‐hat
techniques clearly comply with the published intent of the various search
engine quality guidelines.
✦ Black hat: These are the SEO techniques we describe in this chapter
(among others that we haven’t covered). Black‐hat techniques are sneaky
and devious, and they attempt to game the engines to promote content
not relevant to the user. These techniques are deceptive and generally
break (or at least stretch) the search guidelines, commonly leading to
spam penalties that are painful at best and devastating at worst.
 Following the SEO Code of Ethics
✦ Do not intentionally do harm to a client. Be honest with the client and
do not willfully use technologies and methods that are known to cause a
website’s removal from a search engine index.
✦ Do not intentionally violate any specifically published and enforced
rules of search engines or directories. This also means keeping track of
when policies change and checking with the search engine if you’re unsure
of whether the method or technology is acceptable.
✦ Protect the user visiting the site. The content must not mislead, no “bait
and switch” tactics (where the content does not match the search phrase)
should be used, and the content should not be offensive to the
targeted visitors.
✦ Do not use the continued violation of copyright, trademark,
servicemark, or laws related to spamming as they may exist at the state,
federal, or international level.
✦ All pages presented to the search engine must match the visible
contentof the page.
✦ Don’t steal other people’s work and present it as your own
 Following the SEO Code of Ethics
✦ Don’t present false qualifications or deliberately lie about your
skills. Also, don’t make guarantees or claim special relationships
with the search engine.
✦ Treat all clients equally and don’t play favorites.
✦ Don’t make false promises or guarantees. There is no such thing
as a guaranteed method of reaching the top of the results page.
✦ Always offer ways for your clients to settle disputes. There will be
competition among your clients’ websites. Make sure there’s a way
to mediate conflict if it ever comes up.
✦ Protect your clients’ confidentiality and anonymity of your clients
with regard to privileged information and any testimonials supplied
by your clients.
✦ Work to the best of your ability to honestly increase and retain
the rankings of your client sites.
Employing Keyword
Research Techniques
and Tools
Chapter-1
 In This Chapter

✓Discovering your site theme

✓Brainstorming for keywords
✓Creating a keyword‐based outline
✓Choosing related keywords
✓Researching keywords by niche
✓Evaluating keywords
 Discovering Your Site Theme
• Remember, relevancy = higher ranking = more
traffic for your website
• You also need to think about your service
area.
• Are you a local‐only business OR Could you
take things to a national or international level?
• Try to break it down in very specific terms.
 Brainstorming for keywords
✦ Natural language: What would I search for to
try to find my product?
✦ Customer mindset: How do regular people
talk about the products or services I offer?
✦ Industry jargon: What do the experts call my
products or services?
Building a subject outline
• Choosing theme‐related keywords
 Brainstorming for keywords
• Doing Your Industry and Competitor Research
• Researching Client Niche Keywords
• Checking Out Seasonal Keyword Trends
 Evaluating Keyword Research
• Google Keyword Planner
• Search Engine Optimization/KSP
• SEOToolSet
• Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com)
• Keyword Discovery
(www.keyworddiscovery.com): Made by
Trellian
Selecting Keywords

Chapter-2
 In This Chapter
✓Selecting proper keyword phrases
✓Reinforcing versus diluting your site theme
✓Selecting subject categories
✓Choosing high‐traffic and high‐conversion
keywords
✓Optimizing with keywords for natural
language‐based search
Selecting the Proper Keyword Phrases
• When putting keywords in the content of your
site, make sure the words surrounding those
keywords are also good, searchable keywords.
For example
• Classic car customization in Mumbai
• Love for classic ambassador
• Chrome, wheels, and paint for classic
automobiles
• Maharashtra state classic cars
Reinforcing versus Diluting Your Theme
Here are some things to remember when you’re picking
keywords:
• Clarity: Are the keywords clear and concise?
• Relevance: Do the keywords relate to what you’re actually
offering on your website? (False advertising is never a good
idea.)
• Categorization: Can the keywords be grouped into
understandable keyword phrases?
• Audience appropriateness: Do the keywords give a good
mix of both industry standards and what your clients use in
their searches?
• Targeted keywords: Are the keywords specific to your
product? Three‐, four‐, even five‐word phrases are best.
 Picking Keywords Based on Subject
Categories
• High‐traffic keywords
• High‐conversion keywords
• Understanding Keyword‐Based Search
versus Semantic Search
 How to optimize with keywords
in light of semantic search
Semantic search describes a search engine’s attempt to
generate the most accurate results possible by
understanding:
• Searcher intent.
• Query context.
• The relationships between words.
In layman’s terms, semantic search seeks to understand
natural language the way a human would. For example, if
you asked your friend “What is the largest mammal?” and
then followed that question up with “How big is it?” your
friend would understand that “it” refers to the largest
mammal: a blue whale.
Semantic search also allows Google to
distinguish between different entities (people,
places, and things) and interpret searcher intent
based on a variety of factors including:
• User search history.
• User location.
• Global search history.
• Spelling variations.
Assigning Keywords
to Pages

Chapter-4
 In This Chapter

✓Knowing what search engines see as

keywords
✓Planning your site’s themes
✓Creating landing pages that attract and hold
visitors
✓Organizing your site into subject categories
✓Consolidating themes for maximum ranking
value
 What a Search Engine Sees
as Keywords
• Web pages that contain the exact phrase.
• Web pages that have all the words of the phrase in close proximity to each other.
• Web pages that contain all the words, although not necessarily close together.
• Web pages that contain other forms of the words (such as customize instead of
customization). This is called stemming.
• Web pages that have links pointing to them from other pages, in which the link
text contains the exact phrase or all the words in a different sequence.
• External web pages that link to this site from a page that is considered to be about
the same keyword.
• Web pages that contain the words in special formatting (bold, italics, larger font
size, bullets, or with heading tags).
• What is keyword stemming?
The process of finding out new keywords from the root keyword from the search
query is referred to as keywords stemming. Adding a prefix, suffix, or pluralization
can be used to create the new keyword.
 Planning Subject Theme Categories
• Make sure your site theme is included in your
home page’s Title tag and Meta tags (HTML
code located at the top of a web page).
• Use your site theme in your page content so
that the search engines interpret the theme as
keywords for your web page. Making your
theme part of the keywords helps your web
page come up in searches for those keywords
• Organizing Your Primary and Secondary Subjects
• Choosing Landing Pages for Subject Categories
Here are a few recommendations for building landing pages:
• Keep each landing page’s content focused on its particular subject
category.
• Make the content engaging — consider including video, audio, images, or
dynamic elements along with highly relevant text (not in place of it!).
• Customize the keywords on each landing page to reflect that page’s
subject theme.
• Be sure to include the keywords in the page content as well as in the Meta
tags.
• Include links to secondary pages in the same category.
• Don’t include links to secondary pages under different subject categories.
 Understanding Siloing “Under the
Hood”
If you have a gigantic website with thousands of
pages that need to be reorganized, don’t panic.
You can do your siloing in two ways. Either can
be successful, but you get the most bang from
your buck by doing both:
• Physical silos
• Virtual silos
• Doing both
 Consolidating Themes to Help Search
Engines See
Your Relevance
If you want your site to rank for more than a single
generic term, is to selectively decide what your site
is and is not about. Rankings are often damaged in
three major ways:
• By having too little content for a subject on your
website
• By including irrelevant content that dilutes and
blurs your theme
• By choosing keywords that are not well matched
to your theme
Adding and
Maintaining
Keywords
Chapter-5
 In This Chapter
✓Figuring out keyword densities
✓Adjusting keywords
✓Updating keywords
✓Using tools to aid keyword
 Keyword Frequency and Distribution
• Keyword frequency refers to the number of times a
keyword is used on a web page. Any word (or phrase) is
considered a keyword if it’s used at least twice on the
page.
• Keyword distribution measures whether a keyword is
evenly distributed throughout the page and the site.
It’s important to make sure that your keywords appear
throughout the page but especially right up front
because search engine spiders generally put more
weight on the first 200 words, including words in your
navigation, headings, and so on.
 Keywords Maintenance
• Adjusting Keywords
• Updating Keywords
Using Tools to Aid Keyword Placement
• The Single Page Analyzer measures and
analyzes how effectively Meta tags are
written, how often you are using your
intended keywords compared to the total
number of words on your web page, and
other useful word metrics about the page.
 Selecting a Style
for Your Audience

Chapter-1
 In This Chapter
✓Knowing your target audience
✓Looking at your current customers to understand their demographics
✓Interviewing and researching to analyze your target audience
✓Choosing the right tone to engage your audience
✓Using a blog to build a relationship with your audience
✓Using personas to define your audience
✓Understanding the benefits and drawbacks of using personas
It allows you to do the following:
• Differentiate your site from the masses
• Attract expert links to your site
• Develop a loyal site following and brand
• Launch your site higher in the search engine
rankings
 Knowing Your Demographic
• Finding out customer goals
• Looking at current customer data
• Researching to find out more
• Interviewing customers
Here are some good things to learn during your
interview:
✦ How they found your website
✦ What their impressions were of the site
✦ Whether they had any difficulty getting around your site, or whether they found it
easy to use
✦ Whether they were pleased with the service or response they received (if
applicable)
✦ What type of product or service they were looking for
 These facts are helpful in profiling
your target audience:
• Gender
• Age
• Location:
• Marital status:
• Education:
• Occupation:
• Beliefs:
• Lifestyle/situational:
• Much more:
 Using server logs and Analytics
• Your website’s server logs contain valuable data about your visitor counts
and their behavior.
• It’s also a good idea to have analytics embedded in your web pages, which
are program routines a website can use to track user behavior on the
website.
• Talk to your IT department or webmaster and see what they can tell you
about your web traffic and the user behavior on each page.
• Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics
• Adobe Marketing Cloud
(www.adobe.com/solutions/digitalmarketing.html)
• The Digital Analytics Association (www.digitalanalyticsassociation.org )
 Creating a Dynamic Tone
• Engage your target audience with an
appropriate style and tone.
• Lead visitors to the goal you have for each
web page.
• Meet the visitors’ needs with relevant content
as directly and quickly as possible.
 Using Personas to Define Your
Audience
• A persona is like a role, and it includes how a
person acts, talks, thinks, believes, and so on. The
customer web persona you create is a profile that
represents your target audience based on
calculated averages of your customers’ buying
processes, goals, and demographics.
Persona type scenarios
Scenario A: Alice at a technology‐related website
Scenario B: Alice at a non‐technical website
Establishing Content
Depth and Page
Length
Chapter-1
 In This Chapter

✓Writing for maximum readability

✓Varying content to increase user interest and sear
✓Optimizing images and video
✓Enabling user‐generated content
✓Writing an effective call to action
 Developing Ideas for Content
• Brainstorming: You want to tap into your own creative juices
first. Get input from your employees and coworkers, too.
• Looking at competitors: Don’t copy them, but you can
definitely get ideas from them.
• Utilizing your offline materials: Repurpose what you’ve
already written.
• Listening to customers: Find out what they want to know.
 Mixing in Video
• Placement
• Descriptive text:
• Saving:
• Play
• Size:
• Quality
• Length
• Posting:
 Creating User Engagement
• Choose strong verbs that convey action
• Show, don’t tell.
• Use sensory words
• Be specific and give details
 Adding
Keyword‐Specific
Content
Chapter-3
 In This Chapter
✓Creating your keyword list
✓Developing content using your keywords
✓Including synonyms to widen your appeal
✓Deepening your content for semantic search
✓Optimizing your content for search engine
rankings
✓Finding the best tools for keyword integration
 Adding Keyword‐Specific Content
• Creating Your Keyword List
• Developing Content Using Your Keywords
• Keeping it relevant
• Including clarifying words
• Including synonyms to widen your appeal
• Dealing with stop words- Stop words are small, common
like a, the, at, to, will, this, and, with and others. Because
they typically add little meaning to a query, the search
engines used to ignore them almost entirely
• Freshness of the content
• Dynamically adding content to a page
 Optimizing the Content
• Setting up the HTML
• Title tag
• Meta description tag
• Meta keywords tag
• Heading tags
Finding Tools for Keyword Integration
• Single Page Analyzer
• Copyscape (www.copyscape.com): This free tool
lets you check for
duplicates of your web page text elsewhere on the
web.
• Keyword Activity
• Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome
Competitive Analysis Tools
• Single Page Analyzer
• Multi Page Analyzer
 Adapting Your
Content for Local
Search
Chapter-4
 In This Chapter
✓Exploring the formats of local results
✓Maximizing your visibility in organic local results
✓Understanding the need for local SEO
✓Meeting Google’s Pigeon algorithm
✓Optimizing content to be found in local searches
✓Creating local landing pages the right way
✓Answering common questions for the mobile
searcher
Taking Advantage of Local Search
You can do local searches in three ways:
• Logical local searches: Sometimes search queries
just logically bring up local businesses or services
(such as [dry cleaners] and so on). This is
especially true for mobile searches, because
search engines expect that if you’re out and
about, you’re likely to be searching for some
place nearby.
• Geographic search terms
• Map searches
Optimizing Content for Local Searches
• Creating region‐specific content
• Create local landing pages
✓ Mention the location.
✓ Include conversational local modifiers
✓ Talk about things related to the location
✓ Make it unique
 Dealing with
Duplicate Content

Chapter-5
 In This Chapter
✓Understanding duplicate content so that you
can avoid it
✓Recognizing how content can become
duplicated
✓Resolving duplicate content issues
✓Understanding how a federal copyright can
protect your site
✓Handling your content
 Sources of Duplicate Content
and How to Resolve Them
There are two basic types of duplicate content:
• Outside‐your‐domain duplicate content. This
type happens when two different websites have
the same text indexed in the search engines.
• Within‐your‐domain duplicate content. This
second type refers to websites that create
duplicate content within their own domain (the
root of the site’s unique URL, such as
www.domain.com).
• Multiple URLs with the same content
• Finding out how many duplicates in the search
engine thinks you have
 Avoiding duplicate content on your
own site
• Title tags, and Meta description and keywords tags
• Heading tags
• Repeated text, such as a slogan
• Sitemap
• Product pages
• Canonical tag
• Block indexing
• Consolidate similar pages
When consolidating two pages to make one your main version, follow
these steps to take some precautions:
✓ Check for inbound links
✓ Update your internal links
✓ Set up a 301 Redirect
 Stolen content
• Exact‐match search: Copy a long snippet of text
(a sentence or two) from one of your web pages.
Then paste it within quotation marks (“ ”) in a
search box to find any indexed web pages
containing that exact text.
• Copyscape: Another method uses the free service
at Copyscape (www. copyscape.com/). Figure 5-1
shows how straightforward Copyscape is to use;
you just type in your page’s URL in the text box
and click Go. If the page has been scraped, you
see the offending URL in the results.
Crediting Your
Content

Chapter-6
 In This Chapter
✓Understanding intellectual property ownership
✓Knowing what to do when your content is
stolen
✓Filing for a federal copyright
✓Incorporating content from other sites
✓Giving credit to original authors
✓Protecting your images
• Factoring in Intellectual Property Considerations
What to do when your content is stolen
• Email a request.
• Report it to the search engines
• Report it to the offending site’s ISP. You can find out
which Internet service provider (ISP) is hosting the site
and contact the ISP.
• File a police report
• Send a cease‐and‐desist order
• File a lawsuit
Filing for copyright
 Using content from other sites
• Read the site
• Get permission
• Do not use the whole thing
• Excerpt or summarize it
• Set the other source’s content apart by using
quotation marks or a block quote.
Sourcing and protecting images
 Using SEO
to Build Your Brand

Chapter-7
 In This Chapter
✓Selecting keywords that help build your brand
✓Using search to maximize brand awareness
✓Distributing press releases effectively on the web
✓Increasing your chances of showing up through blended search
✓Creating Engagement Objects
✓Building an online community
✓Using social share buttons to promote your brand
• Selecting Keywords for Branding Purposes
• How to Build Your Brand through Search
 Using Engagement Objects to
Promote Your Brand
• Image
• Video
• Audio
• Flash
• News articles
• Blog posts
• Games
• Interactive applications
• Blogging to build community
• Using other social media to build community
• Connecting to your audience with social
networking
 Employing
Linking Strategies

Chapter-1
 In This Chapter
✓Theming your site by subject
✓Implementing clear subject themes
✓Organizing your content with silos
✓Making the most of outbound linking
✓Tackling link building
• Theming Your Site by Subject
• The best places to start to identify which
themes are your most relevant are your
keyword research and the data from your
website. You can start by examining the data
from the following sources:
• Web analytics
• Pay per click (PPC) programs
• Tracked keyword phrases
Making the Most of Outbound Links

• Link to other experts

• Make sure that the link is useful to your
users
• Relevancy is key
• Validate links
• Be selective
 Obtaining Inbound Links
• Link magnets
• Link baiting
• Link buying
 Structuring
Internal Links

Chapter-2
 In This Chapter
✓Theming your website by subject
✓Optimizing link equity
✓Creating and maintaining silos
✓Understanding sitemaps
✓Figuring out sitemaps
 Creating and Maintaining Silos
• If you’re like most businesses, you probably already have a website,
and you can’t exactly chuck the whole thing out the window and start
over from scratch. But there is a way to streamline and tweak your site
to build better silos. Just follow these steps:
1. Identify your main themes. These will become your main silos.
2. Identify the smaller sub‐themes. These sub‐themes become your
sub‐pages or support pages for your silos.
3. Identify the keywords for each page. We go over choosing keywords
more in depth in Book II. You should choose the broader keywords for the
main themes and the more specialized keywords for the sub‐pages.
4. After you have your pages organized, you can start linking them.

Silos contain three basic types of pages:

• Landing pages
• Sub‐pages
• Article pages
 Sitemap
A good sitemap does the following:
• Shows a quick, easy‐to‐follow overview of your
site
• Provides a pathway for the search engine robots
to follow
• Provides text links to every page of your site
• Quickly shows visitors how to get where they
need to go
• Utilizes important keyword phrases
Obtaining Links

Chapter-3
 In This Chapter
✓Understanding the benefits and risks of link building
✓Identifying quality links
✓Attracting links naturally
✓Creating link magnets
✓Fostering relationships with industry influencers
✓How not to obtain links
Understanding the Benefits and Risks
of Link Building
• Why links are important
• Why links are dangerous
Identifying Quality Links-- Here are the three
different types of quality links that you want to
attract:
• Complementary subject relevance links
• Expert relevance reinforcement links
• Quality testimonial links
 Many different types of content can
be used as link magnets:
• Top ten lists: These have nearly become cliché online, but
they can still be effective if they are new and fresh.
• How‐to guides: Explain how to do something in a clear and
easy way. Visuals, like images or videos, can be helpful.
• Articles about hot‐button issues: Debate a controversial,
industry‐related topic.
• Resources: Offer new research, information, tools, charts,
or graphs.
• Humorous and off‐beat material: Include funny stories and
topics.
• Games: They can be developed for fun, and they may or
may not be related to your industry.
Connecting with
Social Networks

Chapter-5