Top 10 Off Page #SEO Techniques That Will Boost Your #Ranking

Top 10 Off Page SEO Techniques That Will Boost Your Ranking Hello friends, today I am going to share a few off page SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques that you should know if you want to rank your blog up the Google search engine results pages. Take each point under advisement, as going nuts and doing them ... read more20 things you need to know about video SEO To find out how to maximize video visibility in search results, we queried search professionals and digital marketing experts for their best video SEO tips. High-quality video has a better chance of ranking ... it on its own page on your website, according ... read more

5 SEO Tips To Boost Page Speed Got 10 seconds ... drop and engagement will never fall off. We all love speed, and if your site is blazing fast, we will all love you! How has page speed affected your rankings? Got any page-speed boosting tips and tricks? Please share them here. read moreA Simple Guide to Bing SEO 29 to how a site ranks, 52 to 53% of the backlinks of websites that ranked among the top 30 Bing results contain keywords in the anchor text (this is 10% ... modify your on-page keywords and SEO, only where it makes sense – not just for ranking higher ... read moreOn Page SEO Techniques To Rank On First Page – 2016 Edition These two factors are Onpage optimization and Off page optimization. Today's article, remain focused around On page optimization and I will be sharing some good on page SEO techniques ... in your blog post. Adding videos will not only increase the ... read more10 Quick Fixes For Lasting SEO Benefits Test and improve page speed. Page speed is one of the few factors that has been officially confirmed to be used for ranking ... top 10 quick SEO hacks that can make a real difference in your rankings. Combined with your long-term SEO efforts (both on- and ... read moreWeb Design Buyer s Guide: Tips to Improve Your Website The Web Design Process Five Steps For Writing For The Web Creating Links And Copy For Your Website Choosing A Web Designer Top 10 Web Design ... this type of web page is its ability to increase your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ranking. read moreOn-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page (2016 Update) Includes 2 bonus on-page SEO techniques ... your target keyword. 5. Dazzle with Multimedia Text can only take your content so far. Engaging images, videos and diagrams can reduce bounce rate and increase time on site: two critical user interaction ranking ... read moreSEO Website Audit Case Study: About Pet Rats We've analyzed About Pet Rats and conducted a 10-point website audit covering content, SEO best practices, and technical tips ... your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn page. Recommendations: Add social sharing buttons to the ... read more7 Easy, Call to Action Hacks that You may Be Missing Out On You think that you've done everything in your power to boost ... these techniques can come in handy for you. Questions? Comments? Let's talk in the comments section below. We curate the best of inbound marketing news and send over the top 10 we know ... read more

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SEO Bootcamp for Beginners

This article is part of an SEO series from WooRank. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the collection of strategies, tactics and techniques used to rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs) in order to increase the amount of traffic to a website. That's the traditional answer you'll find in featured snippets when you Google "what is SEO?" And it's not wrong — it's just a little incomplete.

The better, more accurate definition would be "the strategies, tactics and techniques used to rank highly in search engine results for the keywords used by your target audience in order to increase your conversions and reach."

Think of it this way: You own a pizza restaurant in your neighborhood, so you go about optimizing your site for pizza-related keywords. You do a really good job and now you rank in the top ten Google results for the keyword "pizza". The problem is, you're a local shop and your site isn't optimized for local search, so people looking for recipes, or the history of pizza, or the nutritional information of pizza are finding you, but maybe not people looking to order pizza in your neighborhood. This is a disaster because your customers aren't finding you when they are most likely to convert into a sale.

Making sure the right people find you at the right time is what SEO is really all about.

Do I Really Need to Do SEO?

Yes.

Since you're reading about how to get started on SEO, you've probably already realized that you need it. But, if you're still on the fence, here are some numbers that should convince you:

So search optimization is really important in getting your audience onto your site. But there is another really important reason for you to be doing SEO: your competitors are doing it too. That means not only is our poor pizza restaurant missing out on current sales, its better-optimized competitors are forming relationships with customers, improving brand recognition and repeat sales.

How Do You Do SEO? Get Your Site Indexed by Google

Since the goal of SEO is to rank highly in search results, your first step is to get your site crawled and indexed by Google. Submit your site to Google via Google Search Console, which doesn't require you to have an account. If you do have a Google Search Console account, use the Fetch as Google tool in the Crawl section. When Googlebot successfully fetches your page, click the "Submit to index" button.

You can have Google index just the page you submitted by checking the box for URL, or have it index your whole site (assuming all of your pages can be reached by following your internal links), beginning with the submitted URL, by checking "URL and all linked pages".

You can submit your URL to Bing, which requires you to have a Bing Webmaster Tools account.

The next best way to get your site crawled by search engines is to get links to your site in as many (reputable) places as you can. Put a link to your website in the About section of your social media pages, particularly your Twitter profile. Make sure to link your website with your Google+ profile and set up a Google My Business account to link to your website. Not only will this increase your chance of getting your site crawled, it will help your chances of appearing in the Google Answer Box and optimize your knowledge graph rich snippet. If you've got a YouTube account for your business, add a link to your channel's About page and your video descriptions.

The vast majority of these links will be nofollow, so they won't actually help your ranking via improved link juice, but that's not the point here. Crawlers still follow those link and will index the sites they land on.

Finally, consider adding a blog to your site. People typically think of blogs as tools for content marketing and on page SEO, but they can also provide a steady stream of fresh content. Sites with blogs have an average of 434% more indexed pages than those without.

Find a more detailed look at getting crawled and indexed by Google here.

Keyword Research

Despite rumors to the contrary, keywords are still very much relevant to SEO and picking the right keywords to optimize your site around is a core component of a successful SEO strategy. The process by which you find those keywords to target is called keyword research. Here are the basic steps to keyword research:

First, discover how people are currently finding you via search engines using Google Search Console, and which keywords are driving your best converting users via Google Analytics. If your site is really new, or doesn't get much organic traffic, get ideas from your products, categories or by answering the question "What is my website about?" or "What does my business do?" Find new keyword possibilities using a tool such as AdWord's Keyword Planner from Google or Bing's keyword research tool, among several other options.

Once you have a nice, long list of keywords you want to target, narrow it down to the those that have enough search volume to make them worth the effort. Google now prevents accounts that don't reach a certain, unspecified spend threshold, from accessing estimated search volume data, giving only a range of monthly searches. However, you can still access keyword volumes using WooRank's SERP Checker.

If you don't have a WooRank Pro or Premium account, you can use Bing's keyword research tool to find search volume. However, as Bing accounts for less than 10 percent of the market share of search, this data will only unlock the tip of the iceberg. Bing & Google's keyword tools use PPC data. It won't be 100% accurate, but it's close enough to draw accurate conclusions.

When finalizing your keyword strategy, make sure your portfolio has a nice mix of head and long tail keywords. Don't go overboard with either type. Head keywords will bring you lots of traffic, but it won't convert very well right away and there's a good chance you won't rank very well for them unless you're a rather big and well-established website. On the other hand, too many long tail keywords can convert like crazy, but won't bring in enough users to be viable.

Learn more about forming a keyword strategy and doing keyword research here.

Technical SEO

Keywords are a core part of SEO, but there's more to it than that. You also need to build your site with search engines in mind. Here are the basic technical elements your site needs to improve its search engine optimization.

Robots.txt

A robots.txt file is a simple text file in your website's root directory. It tells search engine bots which pages can and cannot be crawled. It's used mostly to keep search engines from indexing pages you don't want to show up in search results like temporary folders or your legacy site after a redesign or migration. You can block all user-agents, none or individual bots. A very basic robots.txt file that blocks all user-agents looks like this:

User-agent: * Disallow: /

Allowing all robots to crawl your whole site looks like this:

User-agent: * Disallow:

You can disallow specific user-agents from accessing specific folders, subfolders or pages by including them as disallow lines under the relevant user-agent line. Some search engines will recognize the 'allow' parameter so you can give access to specific files in disallowed folders.

Be very careful with your robots.txt file. Accidentally disallowing all bots, or certain user-agents to the entire server, is a relatively common, and easy-to-make, mistake that can cause huge headaches for SEOs. For an in-depth look at how to use robots.txt, check out our guide here.

XML Sitemaps

Sitemaps are xml files that include every URL on a website and give a few basic details about each page. A simple sitemap for a website with just one page could look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/html"> <url> <loc>https://www.example.com/</loc> <lastmod>2016-8-01</lastmod> <changefreq>monthly</changefreq> <priority>0.9</priority> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://www.example.com/fr/"/> </url>

Here's a rundown of what that all means:

<urlset> is the current protocol for opening and closing sitemaps. It tells crawlers that the sitemap is starting.

<loc> indicates the URL of the page. It's required for every page on your site, while the rest of the parameters are technically optional. Always write your URLs uniformly and use the canonical version — i.e. protocol, www resolve, etc.

<lastmod> is the date your page was last updated or modified.

<changefreq> tells how often you update your page, which can encourage search engines to recrawl your site when you update pages. Don't lie though — if search engines see the value in <changefreq>doesn't match up with actual changes, they'll just ignore it.

<priority> tells how important that URL is compared to the other URLs on the site.

<xml:html> lets you list alternate versions of the URL, like if you have a multilingual or international site.

Your site will work and can get indexed without a sitemap, and they're not a ranking signal. But having a sitemap makes the whole process easier and faster. Plus, the more information you give about your pages, the more intelligently search engines can crawl your site, meaning bots are less likely to waste their crawl budget looking at unimportant pages. Sitemaps are especially important when you're adding new pages or launching a new site that doesn't have many links, or any links at all. For an in-depth look at XML sitemaps, check out this guide here.

Canonical URLs

Canonical URLs help websites to prevent issues caused by duplicate content. They tell search engines where to find the original version of content that can be found at multiple URLs, showing them which one to list in the search results, and to combining link juice at a single URL.. There are all sorts of legitimate reasons you could end up with duplicate content: content management system, e-commerce product platforms and syndicated content. Search engines will see the rel="canonical" tag, know the content is a copy of the canonical URL, and pass on ranking information to the original page.

Rel="canonical" is implemented in the <head> of HTML pages and the HTTP header for non-HTML pages:

HTML: <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com"/>

HTTP: Links: <https://www.example.com>; rel="canonical"

When you choose a canonical URL, pick the one that's best optimized for users and search engines, and has content that is well optimized. Make sure you've set a preferred domain in Google Search Console.

This works as a www resolve and Google will take this into account when it encounters links to your site out in the wild. It will pass link juice, trust and authority to your preferred domain, maybe with www, even when someone else uses a link without the www.

Learn more about rel="canonical" and dealing with duplicate content here.

URLs

Writing URLs for both human and search engine usability is important — both have an impact on SEO. Use URLs to create a clear hierarchy of information so users always know where they are. Always use the canonical version of your URL (www resolve, https, etc.) and include folders, subfolders and the page, in that order.

URL structure is important to search engines because it helps them understand how that page relates to the rest of the site. Ideally the URL will be similar to your title tag, so it should include your keyword early on. Search engines look for keywords in URLs to determine the topic and relevance of a page.

Optimizing URLs will also help your backlink profile as people are more likely to use relevant anchor text for URLs that are well-structured and include keywords. This can help you to rank for these keywords. For a detailed look at optimizing URLs, check out this guide.

HTML Headers and Subheads

<H1> – <H6> tags, also known as headers and subheads, denote the headlines and subheads on your page. These tags, especially the <H1> tag, are very important for SEO. Search engines use HTML headers to establish:

Relevance: Search engines compare words in the header and subheaders to the keywords used in the search. So it's really important you use keywords here. They especially rely on your <H1> tag, treating it as an on page title.

Keyword Consistency: Search engines check for consistent keyword use between headers, subheads and body text on the page. Inconsistent keyword use, like using multiple unrelated keywords in subheadings, will make your page look off-topic.

User Experience: Headers and subheads give your page order and structure, which is important for human readers. It's also helpful for visually impaired readers who have to use screen readers. Search engines want to provide their users with the best pages, so having a good user experience is important for ranking.

When using HTML header tags, there a couple of basic rules to follow. First, maintain the hierarchy of <H1> – <H6> tags. That means use the <H1> tag at the very beginning of the page, before any other, and then make sure more important headers have lower numbered tags. You don't want to bury section headers in an <H6> tag. Second, only use one <H1> tag per page. Since search engines rely so heavily on keywords in the header, using more than one could make it look like you're trying to manipulate your ranking. This is not good for SEO. (Note: You can use multiple <H1> tags as section headers if your pages uses HTML5. However, if it doesn't or you're not sure, stick to just one header.) And third, write your headers and subheads naturally. Search engines are pretty good at interpreting natural language, so over optimizing your HTML headers by keyword stuffing will hurt more than it helps.

For more information on using HTML headers for SEO and usability, read through this guide.

On Page SEO

Finally, it's time to get into how best to optimize your pages to rank for your target keywords. On page SEO is probably the most well-known part, and is usually what people are thinking about when they talk about SEO. Here are the basic components to optimize on your pages.

Meta Tags

There are two meta tags in the HTML head of your page that are very important for SEO: title tags and meta descriptions. Title tags technically aren't meta tags, since they're not optional, but they're similar enough that they're included in the description.

Title tags, as you could probably guess, define the title of your page. They go in the <head> of the page like this:

<title>This is the Page Title</title>

Search engines use these as a clue to determine what a page is talking about. In fact, they rely on title tags maybe more than any other on page factor, so they're really important. Optimize your title tags by:

Including your keyword at the beginning.

Keeping it between 50 and 60 characters, spaces included. 65 should be considered an absolute upper limit.

Writing to appeal to human users. Search engines are looking for the best pages for their users, so stuffing title tags, or writing to appeal to the algorithms won't help.

Limiting your tag to one keyword, maybe two if they're very closely related. If you're using more than one, or including your brand/business name, use the pipe character (|) as a separator. If you rely on local search, include your location, business name and industry.

Making them unique. Every title tag should be different, theoretically at least, because none of your pages are the same. Duplicate title tags are an indication of duplicate content, which will hurt your rankings.

Meta descriptions are a short explanation of your page's content. Use them to tell users what they should expect to get out of visiting your page. Search engines use this meta tag as part of a page's search snippet – the title, URL and description that's displayed in SERPs. When optimizing your meta descriptions be sure to:

Include keywords. They won't help you rank higher, but they will show up as bold text in your search snippet, which can help draw users' attention to the fact that your page is relevant to their search.

Make it accurate. Inaccurate descriptions will cause visitors to leave quickly without interacting with your site. This means low time on site and high bounce rate – two things that will make you look bad to Google.

Use enticing language to encourage click throughs. High click through rates (CTRs) tell search engines that your page is relevant to the keyword, which will help your ranking.

In your page's code, the meta description looks like this:

<meta name="description" content="A short description of your page, 150-160 characters long, including spaces. Use this opportunity to encourage click throughs."/> Page Content

Your page content is the backbone of your SEO, both on page and off page (more on this later). When optimizing your page content, you need to use your keywords of course, but there's a lot more to it than that. Keep these principles in mind when writing your page content:

Keyword consistency: There's no number of times you should use your keyword, and the idea of keyword density has gone out the window. In fact, optimizing your content like this could very well make you look bad and even incur a penalty. Instead, focus on writing about your topic naturally, and include keywords consistently at every level of content: title, <H1> tag and subheads. Using natural language, written for human consumption, will help you use your keywords and related words several times throughout your content, which is what search engines are really looking for.

Quality & Unique: In our post-Panda world, you can't get away with repeating content for SEO. Using copied, or spun, content may not cause a penalty, but you won't rank very well and if you do it a lot it will affect your whole site. You also really need to focus on providing a high quality experience for your user, so check it over for spelling, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation before publishing.

Answers: Search engines like long, in-depth, and authoritative content that answers user's questions or solves their problems. When creating content, ask yourself what question it answers for your audience, or what problem it will help them solve. Approaching content this way can have the added benefit of getting your page into Google's Answer Box.

Get the most out of your content marketing by following our guide to creating evergreen content.

Image Optimization

Search engines can't "see" images, but you can still use them to help your page rank for target keywords. This is done through the HTML alternative attribute (sometimes also called the alt tag or alt text). When you look at your page code, the alt attribute looks like this:

<img src="example-image.jpg" alt="Alt text describing the image"/>

The alt attribute helps search engines determine if the image, as part of the page content, is relevant to a keyword. They are also used by screen readers to help the visually impaired, as well as showing up if an image fails to load. Use them to describe what's going on in your image, being as specific as you can. There's no real character count for alt text, but try to keep it to a half dozen words or so. Alt attributes will also help your images rank highly in image search results, which will open another channel for traffic acquisition.

For a more detailed look at optimizing your images, check out our guide.

Links

After you've optimized your page and content around your target keywords, you're ready to move on to links. Links are an important, maybe the most important, SEO signal. They essentially operate as a vote system for websites — each link is a little endorsement by someone that the linked page is valuable enough that their readers should check it out. These votes then pass on a little bit (or a lot, depending on the authority of the linking page) of value known as link juice. The more links a page has coming in, the more link juice it gets.

The nice thing about link juice is that you can spread it around your site via internal linking. Put links on pages that have lots of link juice, like your homepage, and point them at your important pages, like product or category pages. For more information on how to use links to improve your search ranking, check out this guide.

So what does this mean for your SEO? It means that building and maintaining a quality link profile is a major part of any search optimization campaign. There are three main components of any link building strategy:

Content: Content quality is the number one factor that determines whether or not you get a link — no one is going to link to a page that their users won't get anything out of. To maximize your chances of success, find out what your audience is already linking to and sharing. You can use Buzzsumo or Ahrefs to find opportunities to improve, expand or redesign popular content to attract links.

Outreach: Despite rumors to the contrary, link building is not dead. The idea that link bait content will earn links on its own simply doesn't reflect reality. Therefore, really hone in on the right audience to increase your chance of building quality editorial links (links that appear within the page content). Find the most popular blogs in your niche using AuthorCrawl or BlogDash, or use Majestic to find your competitor's links to try to take them for yourself.

Individuality: You might be tempted to automate your outreach, but that's a bad idea. People can tell when they're getting form letters, and sending out mass mailings is a good way to wind up in spam folders. Instead, write your emails manually, and include your personal details to improve credibility. You can streamline your process by creating a few outlines or templates to tailor your messaging.

It also means that you'll be conducting link audits fairly regularly. Since Google's Penguin 4.0 was incorporated into its core algorithm, you especially need to keep on top of your link profile to make sure you're only building quality links – Google now devalues low quality links so building these will only waste time. Google still issues manual link penalties, so if your link profile is made up of spammy links you may have some bad news coming. If you have a young site without a lot of links, you could also be at risk for negative SEO. It's pretty rare, but it does happen.

To get a detailed look at building links or conducting a link audit, read our guides here and here.

Wrapping It Up

As you can see, there's a lot going on when it comes to optimizing your pages for search engines. And this isn't even an in-depth look at everything you need to do to improve your search rankings to reach your audience online. However, if you follow the advice in this guide you'll be able to start improving your rankings and traffic quickly. If you want to take things to the next level, be sure to read the linked guides so you can really boost your website's performance in search results.

Source: SEO Bootcamp for Beginners

20 things you need to know about #Video #SEO

The 10 things in advertising you need to know today Here's everything you need to know in the world of advertising today ... CEO Eric Eichmann told Business Insider that the company has marked more than 20 quarters in a row of a 90% or higher retention rate and that it has two big new revenue opportunities ... read moreMorning Mix: New leader for New Haven schools, a holiday tree's arrival and more things you need to know Here's what you need to know for ... of the treeand watch video of its arrival. Monday marked a changing of the guard at the top of the Elm City's school district but the system will be led temporarily by someone residents know well. read more

Scott Michael Greene: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know They were killed in two shootings about 20 minutes apart in Urbandale ... Greene also posted a 10-second video featuring only a still photo showing him in the stands of the high school holding American and Confederate flags. You can see that photo above. read moreNintendo Switch: five things you need to know about Nintendo's new console In a statement, Nintendo said the device would allow users to play "the same title wherever, whenever and with whomever they choose", and that the system offered "unprecedented new video game play ... at home now travels with you. The Nintendo Switch ... read moreWhat Marketers Need to Know About Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality You'll get search results like the ones below. I don't know about you ... As an entrepreneur, you need to automate repetitive tasks to improve your efficiency. Producing content is no different. As per Gartner, 20% of business content will be authored ... read more15 Things to Know About Ragnar Kjartansson, the Most Famous Icelandic Artist Since Björk Here's what you need to know about the art world's newest ... 70's and she died in '96, when I was 20. She's such a big influence — an amazing singer." 14. He sees performance as sculpture and video as painting. "I'm very old school in ... read more10 Sessions We Can't Wait to See at INBOUND 2016 (& You Should Register for Right Now) He's tested every SEO tactic known to man and he understands Google's search engine almost as well as they do. Rand's session is going to cover everything you need to know, from beginner ... how and why you should slow things down when it matters most. read moreBeyond Likes: 9 Facebook Analytics You Must Be Measuring Was it a video ... you know you need to ramp up the promotion on your site. You could install a 'like box' or place a banner advert leading people to your Facebook page. If you're lacking referrals from Google, it's time to step up your SEO ... read moreThe 20 Blogs You Need to Learn a Language to Fluency Well, I've found 20 ... Things Ultra-productive Language Learners Do Differently" and pick up learning gems that you can apply in your own journey. (And check to see if you indeed finish reading it in under five minutes!) As you may already know ... read moreAll you need to start your new online venture: 10 tools & 10 useful resources Maybe you have had an idea for a profitable venture for a while, but are only now diving in? Good news! There are quite a few excellent tools and resources out there to help you along the way. From the first steps to the last, these 20 links are must ... read more

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Source: 20 things you need to know about #Video #SEO

8 ways SEO has changed in the past 10 years

Everything you need to know about SEO, delivered every Thursday.

Few marketing channels have evolved as quickly or as dramatically as search engine optimization (SEO). In its infancy, SEO was the shady practice of stuffing keywords, tweaking back-end code and spamming links until you started ranking well for the keywords you wanted. Thankfully, Google stamped out those practices pretty quickly, and its search algorithm has never really stopped evolving.

Much of Google's foundation was in place by the mid-2000s, but how has its algorithm — and as a result, our approach to SEO — changed in the past 10 years?

1. The rise of content

First, there's the rise of content marketing as part of a successful SEO strategy. Google has steadily refined what it considers to be "good" content over the years, but it was the Panda update in 2011 that served as the death blow to spammy content and keyword stuffing.

After Panda, it was virtually impossible to get away with any gimmicky content-based tactics, such as favoring a high quantity of content while forgoing quality and substance. Instead, the search engine winners were ones who produced the best, most valuable content, spawning the adoption of content marketing among SEOs — and content is still king today.

2. The death of link schemes

Google has provided its own definition of what a "link scheme" actually is, along with some examples. Many find the guidelines here somewhat ambiguous, but the simplest explanation is this: Any attempt to deliberately influence your ranking with links could qualify as a scheme.

By the late 2000s, Google had worked hard to stamp out most black-hat and spam-based link-building practices, penalizing participants in link wheels and exchanges and paid linkers. But it was in 2012, with the Penguin update, that link building really became what it is today. Now, only natural link attraction and valuable link building with guest posts will earn you the authority you need to rank higher.

3. The reshaping of local

Compared to 2006, local SEO today is a totally different animal. There have been dozens of small iterations and changes to the layout (such as the local carousel, and today's modern "3-pack" layout), but the biggest recent change to ranking factors was in 2014, with the Pigeon update.

With this update, Google more heavily incorporated traditional web ranking signals into its ranking algorithm, giving well-optimized websites a major edge in local search. Google also boosted the visibility of high-authority directory websites in its search results.

More generally, local searches have become more common — and more location-specific — over the last few years, thanks to mobile devices.

4. SERP overhauls

I can't tell you how many times the search engine results pages (SERPs) have changed, and not many people could; some of these changes are so small, it's debatable whether to even count them. But take a look at a SERP screen shot from 2006 and compare it to today, and you'll see how different your considerations must be.

Google search results in 2006. (Source)

5. The rise of the Knowledge Graph

Another major influencer in modern SEO has been Google's Knowledge Graph, which first emerged on the scene in 2012. The Knowledge Graph attempts to give users direct, concise answers to their queries, often presenting them with a box of information about a general subject or a succinct answer to a straightforward query. This is great for the user but often takes precedence over organic search results.

Accordingly, optimizers have had to compensate for this, either by avoiding generally answerable keyword targets altogether or by using Schema.org microformatting to make their on-site content more easily deliverable to the system.

6. Mobile prioritization

Mobile devices have exploded in popularity since the iPhone first emerged back in 2007, and Google has done everything it can to emphasize the importance of optimizing websites for those mobile users. Indeed, in 2015, mobile queries officially surpassed desktop queries in Google search.

Optimizing for mobile has become not only common, but downright required these days, in no small part due to Google's continuing and escalating insistence. Its mobile-friendly update, which occurred in two separate phases, has been a major enforcer of this new standard.

7. The soft death of keywords

Panda and Penguin killed off the practice of keyword stuffing, but a smaller, more curious update in 2013 spelled the "soft" death of keyword optimization altogether. Hummingbird is the name of the update that introduced semantic search, Google's way of deciphering user intent rather than mapping out individual keywords and phrases.

Today, Google attempts to understand meaning rather than matching keywords, so keyword-centric optimization doesn't work the same way. However, keyword research is still relevant, as it can help guide your strategic focus and provide you with ranking opportunities.

8. Update pacing and impact

It's also worth noting that for a time — in the few years following Panda — Google stressed out search optimizers by releasing seemingly random, major updates to its search algorithm that fundamentally changed how rankings were calculated. However, now that the search engine has reached a strong foundation, the significance and pacing of these updates have declined. Today, updates are smaller, less noticeable, and roll out gradually, giving them a much less dramatic impact on the industry.

Final thoughts

Understanding where SEO has come from and where SEO stands today will help you become a better online marketer. Hopefully, by now you've long ago eliminated any black-hat techniques in your strategy.

Google — and we, as marketers alongside it — are constantly pushing this now-fundamental element of our lives forward, so if you want to stay relevant, you'll need to keep focused on the next 10 years of search engine updates.

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author Jayson DeMers is the founder & CEO of AudienceBloom, a Seattle-based content marketing & social media agency.
Source: 8 ways SEO has changed in the past 10 years

#Google Says No More Penguin Releases –- What Does it Mean?

Google says no more Penguin releases–what does it mean? Google announced in September that their most recent Penguin release will be their last. For the uninitiated, Penguin is a four-year-old initiative that Google introduced to directly reduce spammy websites in the search results. Penguin targets over ... read moreThe marketers' guide to Google Penguin 4.0 Google recently rolled out a travel-planning tool, Google Flights, which it says will help users "be more confident that ... as a result of prior updates had no choice but to wait for Google's next release. But Penguin 4.0 is faster. read more

Penguin 4 has landed! Is this the calm before the storm? Penguin 4 now works in real-time and changes occur almost immediately, leading to a super-speedy recovery time. Yay - no ... Google has made it clear it won't be announcing future Penguin updates. So, what does that mean for us? We'll have to pay ... read moreAuthority & link building with real-time Penguin Google ... (though Panda does not run in real time), so it's possible that the weight of the various known ranking factors may have changed as a result. One other interesting nugget is that there will be no more notifications for Penguin updates. read moreRoundup: All of Google's jokes for April Fools' Day 2014 In short, you no longer have to operate your own mobile device: the magic hand does all the hard ... Except that Google says it is working with "developers of 'paw-friendly' apps to build Chromecast support into more of the apps and websites both ... read moreMajor 2013 Penguin Update coming - Matt Cutts But there is a new Penguin update, big one, coming... (Q) Duane, do you plan on any penguin/panda updates? (A) We take a different approach to this. It is less noticeable when we release them because we test them. A diss at Google? Maybe the dissavow data ... read moreA Thirty-Day Plan for Gaining 100 Authoritative and Relevant Backlinks to Your New Website Google put a stop ... the algorithm was that "Penguin doesn't penalize for bad links." The conversation among the SEOs suggested as much: What does this mean for link building? First, don't be afraid of link building. No, you shouldn't be ... read moreGoogle's Matt Cutts Says Press Releases Don't Have SEO Value; Or Do They? But on December 26th, Matt Cutts, head of Google's webspam team, announced that press releases have no value ... only adds more noise to an already cluttered Web. Could this be the reason for Cutts' announcement? Google's Panda and Penguin updates ... read morePenguin 4.0: How the Real-Time Penguin-in-the-Core-Alg Model Changes SEO - Whiteboard Friday Penguin 1.0 to 3.x, it used to run intermittently. So every few months, Google would collect a bunch of information, they'd run the algorithm, and then they'd release it out in the ... It would basically say, "No, you're spamming to those pages, I'm ... read moreGoogle's Panda 4.0 Launch and How It Affects SEO What Does It All Mean ... releases or updates, then you know it's time to batten down your hatches, weather the release storm and assess the damage as it appears. Search Engine Watch is even venturing the prediction that we are likely to see a Google ... read more

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The Right SEM Strategy for Schools

Getting your school found online is an ongoing battle that requires different strategies for different goals. Search engine marketing (SEM) is comprised of both search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. You can use both these strategies to direct traffic to your school's website, blog, or other digital assets you have, e.g. a landing page/microsite promoting a new school program. 

While both strategies can drive traffic, they have different virtues. To maximize your spend and get the best return, you want to use the right strategy for the right reasons.

Where SEO and PPC Differ

SEO is about building a strong content foundation that earns you more attention as time goes on. It's a long-term investment that has a lower cost with slower rate of return. Yet there comes a tipping point at which your SEO-optimized digital assets provide exponential returns. Its value doesn't reside in only a few specific high performing pages — the collective value starts boosting newer content as well. The more authority your site builds over time, that authority applies to other content you post on your site. Your SEO-optimized pages create a perpetual flow of traffic.

Infusing all your digital assets with SEO best practices should be part of your standard practice for every piece of digital content your school publishes.

You can download our full ebook on SEO for schools here >>

In contrast, a PPC campaign is fixed-time campaign that will have high upfront costs, but can get you quick, valuable returns. Your PPC campaign will be designed around a keyword strategy, just like your SEO. Unlike SEO, the PPC campaign only brings in returns for the time you're paying for the ad space. There's no long term benefit or exponential growth. That doesn't mean PPC doesn't have its role to play in getting your school found. It just means you want to pick your spots.

How and When to Use SEO

Really, the answer to "when" is "always." As mentioned earlier, SEO is the foundation that will push your website and blog higher and higher in the search engine results page (SERP). Virtually all searchers click on a first page link in their search results rather than a PPC ad.

Of course, getting ranked for "culinary school" isn't going to be easy (it's a very competitive term). And the truth is, you don't want to. That's far too broad a keyword. Your SEO strategy will return the most relevant visitors to you if work with long tail keywords (LTKs) that are queries containing the language your ideal students use to search for what they want. So if you're a school with a culinary management program that offers an online learning component, you might find "online culinary management degree program" more effective.

The more relevant your long tail keywords are to your personas, the more interested and qualified an audience you'll attract. 

After researching and identifying the most relevant collection of long tail keywords, you need to execute your SEO strategy through on-page and off-page optimization.

On-page SEO

This where you have the most control. On-page SEO uses all the smart ways to embed a page's keyword throughout the page. This doesn't mean repeating the keyword over and over in your text. Those days are long gone. Instead, you'll use the keyword a few times in your text. You'll write naturally as Google also looks for the phrases it expects to see if your program page is truly about an "online culinary management program." So Google might also expect to see other culinary related phrases such "back of the house" or "restaurant operations." 

You also have a variety of tags (i.e. title tags, meta tags, heading tags, and descriptions), where you can use your selected keywords. Some of these tags (e.g. your URL, title tag, and meta description) appear in the search results, so are critical to getting the click. Other tags, (e.g. alt-text tags — used to optimize images), don't always get seen by visitors. But the search engine bots deciding where to rank your page see and use them. Your title tag is probably the most important tag in terms of SEO, but don't overlook any of them.

Google has recently changed a number of its properties for on-page tags, such as giving you more room in titles and descriptions. When these changes happen, it's a good time to give your pages an SEO refresh.

Other on-page tactics to remember are: give the page a quick loading time and incorporate your social sharing buttons so visitors can spread your awesome content.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is when high authority sites link back to your awesome content. You have no control over this, because it requires external sites to like your content and link to it. However, you can encourage this process by sending a lot of social sharing signals in your content.

You want social sharing icons on all your pages, posts, and emails. And you can do more. You can craft copy to encourage people to share by reminding them to do so. You can also create pre-fabbed Tweets and Shares in your content for them to use.

Let's say you have a blog post of interviews with well-known restaurateurs sharing what personal and technical skills they look for when hiring a restaurant manager. Using the "birds of a feather" principle, you might add some copy to above your social sharing icons that says, "Know someone who's wondering if they have what it takes? Help them find out. Share this article." Or "Tweet this:  Graduate as a #Chef from this #Top-Ranked #CulinaryProgram @[YourSchoolTwitterHandle] [url]."

The more your blogs posts and web pages get out there, the more likely people will start to link back to them. 

How and When to Use PPC

While SEO is strategic and on-going, PPC is more tactical. PPC ads are those ads you see at the top of your search results. Since a PPC campaign only runs as long as you're willing to pay for it, you want to reserve for when you have something very specific you want to promote. 

Sticking with our culinary management program example, if this is a new program and you want to drive awareness as well as attract immediate potential students, a PPC program could be a good choice here. 

Another good use case for PPC is to support a specific enrollment priority. Perhaps your school wants to attract students with high musical ability to improve your band and orchestra. Your team has invested a lot of resources creating a report on how music education improves overall learning, which can help students in their future college admissions. You set up a detailed workflow, filled with smart lists and triggered email series to nurture the leads who download this report. Building a PPC campaign around promoting this report could be a valid expense to make this a wide funnel entrance point into your database.

A third place for a PPC campaign may be in growing your funnel numbers for the upcoming year when they're a bit low. If you need a boost in prospects to get the right number of school applicants, a PPC campaign may help. Keep in mind that in this case, you're not looking for people in the attraction stage (top-of-the-funnel). They will more likely already be in their consideration stage (middle-of-the-funnel). So select your promoted keywords and content appropriately.

Use this PPC ad calculator to find out if using a PPC campaign makes economic sense for a specific campaign.

In short: think of SEO as your "always-on" SEM, while PPC is your "special occasion" SEM. You need both, but in the right proportion and places.

Source: The Right SEM Strategy for Schools

How #Google Analytics 360 will help #SEO

How Google Analytics 360 will help SEO At a time when marketing has become a 'bruising battle,' companies are taking to different online strategies to reach clients, outdo competitors, and drive conversions. However, which of these strategies bring results a marketer wants? When Google ... read moreGoogle Analytics Introduces Surveys 360 To Address The User Intent Better To address the user intent even better, Google Analytics brings a new feature dubbed 'Google Survey 360'. The feature is now live and will help you figure about more about your users. Google surveys 360 will help marketers to go to the consumers and get ... read more

Google Surveys 360 for Analytics Suite Customers Debuts ... of Google Surveys 360 for enterprise customers of its suite of integrated marketing and data analytics products. Google Surveys 360 is designed to help companies make better business decisions by enabling new insight into consumer behavior and trends. read moreMarketing the TNW way #15: How TNW uses Google Optimize 360 In this blog series, we shed some light on our marketing approach at The Next Web through Web analytics, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Conversion Rate Optimization ... come to the market. So when Google Optimize 360 was quietly announced we reached ... read moreThe Best SEO Tools of 2016 We'll get into the factors and metrics to help you ... API before Google shut it down last year. An SEO expert could probably use a combination of AdWords for the initial data, Google Search Console for website monitoring, and Google Analytics for internal ... read more12 Free SEO Monitoring and Analysis Tools Every Business Needs Since Google insists that these links should be removed (or at least switched to no-follow), tools like Remove'em come in handy since they help ... SEO: This tool is an all-in-one SEO framework giving everything from SEO recommendations to SEO analytics. read moreHow To Make Your WordPress Site Multilingual Within 10 Minutes If you are using Google Analytics ... help in driving traffic. I will share the output & details after one month when I have some data to measure the progress. Personally, I reached out to their founder to learn more about how they are handling SEO. read moreThe Ultimate Guide to Creating Shareable Infographics Using PowerPoint or Keynote Just head over to Google Analytics (or dig into your HubSpot software ... you'll want to make sure to optimize your infographic for search engines. SEO won't necessarily help your infographic go viral, but it's extremely beneficial because it ... read moreThe complete guide to online marketing and strategy for independent hotels (part one) Be proactive in tracking via analytics tools: monitoring of keyword ranking visibility on an analytics platform (i.e. Google Analytics ... low hanging fruit of online traffic. This will help your overall SEO strategy gain more power. read moreGoogle Analytics 360 Suite: What You Need to Know Google Analytics 360 aims to help marketers get a holistic view of their online marketing efforts via fewer standalone tools. But the question is: Will Google Analytics 360 truly make online marketing a more seamless experience, or will users still be ... read more

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Source: How #Google Analytics 360 will help #SEO