The three Important components of SEO is keywords we've got on-page optimization and then the last component here is off Page SEO.
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| Off-page SEO (source:maxpixel) |
OFF Page optimization now you can see my little I explain you with an example what represents popularity on the web it's when someone links to you a link to you is like a vote that you are popular.
I've got a post there I've circle that saying how do you improve website user experience so that actually links off to another website.
so that's a vote for me voting for another page and let's take an example I did an interview with Robert and I linked over to Robert's website from my personal blog and that would be me giving Robert a vote like a coolness vote.
And it's all of that cumulative and these cumulations of links that really make Google realize that yes, this is a great website and it should be coming up when people search for a particular phrase.
So that's the off-page optimization now and as I mentioned Google's been getting smarter and we're seeing a lot of different changes happen perhaps over the last 18 months.
we've seen more changes in the last 18 months than we've seen in the entire history of google and these changes are getting quicker because people started to figure out the way that the search engines worked.
And they started to try and game it so you might have heard of some of these updates there was the penguin update which particularly character targeted backlinks because people were over-optimizing their backlinks.
They were pointing all of the links through to their website saying blue widgets but in google's eyes, it's not natural to have all of your links saying exactly the same thing.
You know there should be some that say click here and there should be some that say find out more and others that link to your website with the URL so one of these big significant updates was called penguin.
Another big significant update was one called panda which had had to do with the usability of a website and making sure that you had a great user experience.
I have just prepared this blog for you so you can learn that way it was right up to speed but hummingbird has to do with a change fundamental change in the way that google's algorithm works where they're trying to understand how people search the web.
And people Search the web with almost like a query string they go to google and ask Google a question and then google comes back with the answers.
So instead of thinking in terms of just you know exact keywords Google are now starting to think in terms of keyword strings so if someone is looking at how where do I find the best video production house in Melbourne.
That's more of a string and that's how people are asking questions of Google and I think that will only be accelerated by the use of things like Siri and as people start to you use google voice and start to talk into their phones.
They will be asking questions rather than using keywords so I think Google spotted this trend and that's just in the early day so that this is pretty cutting-edge stuff.
So how do we get over this when it comes to building links and trying to improve our popularity. The best thing that you can do and I'm going to teach you some different strategies is to not focus on it too much.
What you want to be doing is just build links naturally we want to build a variety of links from a variety of different places with a variety of different anchor texts which are the actual keywords that point to your website.
And point them to a variety of different places on your site now that's basically me just saying mix it up doesn't follow a particular formula or strategy and when I get into the strategy that we use and which we're about to dive into.
You don't even have to think about this because this is inherent in a way that the strategy actually works but this is what was triggering or tripping a lot of people.
There are some people that you know have simplified things with regards to linking and just say you know always have incoming links and try to avoid having outgoing links or links to other websites.
Is that a bit of a myth that we should always have more inbound and outbound and try not to link to people if you can I suppose it breaks your rules that you just said about acting natural?
Because we're trying to manipulate the system and also if the second question is the importance of linking internally between different pages on your website.
So if one of your page's links to your contact, our page or you've got a blog that links to another blog post that you've done in the past that somehow related how important is that as well.
Yes internal linking is definitely a really great strategy for larger websites if you have a small site so under 50 pages you're really not going to be able to get too many benefits from your internal linking.
I wouldn't internally link though because think about the user experience if someone wants to contact us you should probably have a link there that says contact us.
So they can very quickly and easily find you so having that internal linking for a site that's less than 50 pages won't influence the search engine rankings that much.
but it's good to have it because of usability that said though if you've got a larger website the basic rule is you link to those pages that you want to have ranked.
So if it is a particular a couple of pages on your site that you know convert incredibly well and you would like to get more traffic to it you might channel some of your internal linking to almost boost up those sites
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| Off-page optimization (source:maxpixel) |
That basic rule of a link to what it is that you would like to have ranked is important but you just need to be careful not to overdo it.
If it's done in a way that enhances user experience and makes sense and it kind of would pass the sniff test if Google reviewer got to your website then by all means do it.
But if you're doing it purely for manipulation purposes and that is the only benefit like sometimes you look at some websites and down in the footer they've really aggressively over-optimized and they've just got lists and lists of different keywords.
That they're trying to link through from their homepage to try and boost them up in Google's eyes that actually a bad thing.
Now you might get away with it for a little while but we need to think about what the end game plan is for here for Google and we need to think about where the puck is going.
Rather than going for some short-term strategies and fixes that might work right now and when we think about what it is that Google's looking at doing and making sure we follow their guidelines.
So that way our website stays in Google's good books for the long haul so that's the first question the second question you had was with regards to and should we be linking out to other websites.
It's a case of what happens naturally I don't think that it is necessarily going to harm your website if you link out to other sites unless you're linking to what you know it.
Considered a bad neighborhood or a website that in Google's eyes is a really bad website but if you're linking to good quality stuff then it's not necessarily going to hurt you.
If anything you could probably argue that it looks natural so the takeaway and what we're seeing with a lot of these changes now is a shift away from really trying to manipulate the search engines and start to give the search engines what they want.
Then, as a result, we get rewarded for that now there are a few fundamental rules we can do and follow which I'm kind of outlining to make sure that we stack the deck in our favor.
You don't want to necessarily overdo it and there are a few ways that people do overdo it and one of them being and that keyword stuffing I was talking about with blue widgets.
Some people over-optimizing their links sending all of their links with the exact same anchor text or maybe they're trying to use duplicate content on their website.
There are a few big noses in the eyes of Google once you try and start to do some of those things you'll be much safer off.
If you avoid that and really not consciously thinking about trying to manipulate the search engines just follow the basics I talk about one keyword per page and make sure that the keywords you know good keywords that your target market is searching for.
Then put it in the relevant places on your site just that alone will set you in front of a lot of the competition