06-12-2012, 11:59 AM
There has been a lot of fuss about post penguin SEO lately... some said SEO is dead, some said BH techniques won't work.
In this series of SEO threads, I'll try to address different issues that have risen after the Penguin and Panda updates.
Note : This thread is targeted more towards newbie SEOers who are thinking too much about this Penguin / Panda crap... So don't blame me if you don't find the secret magic to rank your sites in this thread. That said, I'm sure many experienced users will find it useful to refresh their knowledge.
Lets get started...
Okay, so first let me bust some SEO myths that a lot of people might have in your mind.
Myth 1 - SEO is dead
A lot of people seem to think that Penguin update is the end of SEO... tell you what, this is the funniest sh*t I've read about SEO.
Blackhat SEO is NOT dead... and it will NEVER die... PERIOD!
You still can rank your sites on top of Google and you still can make TONS of money with SEO... outranking sites like Amazon and Wikipedia is still very much possible... I've done it and you can do it too.... read on!
Myth 2 - SEO Tools have become useless
Again, with the recent Google updates, many people think tools like XRumer/Scrapebox/AMR have become useless... this is completely wrong. These tools are still very useful and I use all of them on daily basis.
Myth 3 - Blog Networks are dead
Even though Google screwed BMR and ALN too got a big chunk of their network deindexed, blog networks are still profitable and still very effective. Its all about quality... Having your own blog network is your best bet if you have the budget. Just don't post spun gibbering and DO NOT leave any footprint at all... you'll be fine!
Myth 4 - You can't rank a new site without getting sandboxed
I was talking to a client (not from BHW) who just launched a site the other day and he was like... "start the backlinking and we'll monetize the site after it comes out of sandbox"... I was like "WTF" lol. Seriously, stop worrying too much about that stupid sandbox thing... I have successfully ranked quite a lot of micro niche sites that were one week old without getting any sandbox or 'over-optimization' whatsoever. Read on and I'll tell you how.
Myth 5 - On page SEO doesn't matter anymore
Since Google's Penguin update was mostly about off page SEO and had a lot to do with your anchor text, pages linking back to you, footprints... mostly off page stuff.... most of the people started to forget about the on page basics that are still very important. There were blog posts by some SEO 'gurus' spreading misleading information that on page SEO "doesn't matter anymore.. Google can detect what the page is about itself.... blah blah".
Sure G have improved (or should I say "messed up") their algorithm but that doesn't mean you should stop caring about your on page tactics. On page SEO is still very relevant... in fact, more relevant than it ever was.
Now that you have your doubts clear, we can move on to the first section of this guide which is...
Section 1 - On page SEO
Like I said above, on page SEO is still very relevant and it is one of the most important building blocks of your SEO campaign.
Having that said, bear in mind that G's algo is way smarter than it used to be a few years ago. Gone are the days when you could rank your site by just stuffing a bunch of keywords in your title and meta description. There is way more than that to on page SEO now...
Section 1a - The basics
Clean HTML and CSS code:
Pretty simple... bad code = bad site rankings or even a penalty... If you're using wordpress, use themes that are clean and do not contain any malware.
The <title> tag:
Your page's title is one of the most important on page factors. A good title is what describes what your page is about and at the same time, smartly uses your target keyword in it.
Do not make it look spammy or you'll leave your site to be vulnerable to a Google Penalty.
For example, if you're targeting "make money online" a good title would be
"Discover different ways to make money online at *yoursite*"
And a bad title would be
"Make money online - make money on the internet - make money taking surveys"
See the difference? In a nutshell, do not stuff your keywords in there... Google's bots are smart enough to detect that kind of crap in a blink of an eye. And besides that, a Good title helps you get a better clicks-through rate. A user is more likely to click on something that actually makes sense than some spammy gibberish.
The meta <description> tag
Pretty much the same story here... Be smart and summarize your page in approx. 155 characters while using your target keyword at least once.
This, again, is not only important for your SEO but also helps you get more clicks in Search Engine Ranking Pages.
The meta <keywords> tag
Stop worryin about it... Google does NOT use the keywords tag as a factor to rank your sites.
Thats it for this section... in a nutshell : DO NOT MAKE YOUR SITE LOOK SPAMMY BUT AT THE SAME TIME, DO USE YOUR TARGET KEYWORDS IN YOUR TITLE AND DESCRIPTION.
---------------------------------------------
Section 1b - The Content
It has been said before and I'll say it again... content plays a great role in your SEO campaign and not only that, its also crucial to make money from your site.
Here are a few things you should keep in mind when creating/outsourcing content for your site.
Who to write for... humans or search engines?
Now, all white hats will tell you to write for humans and not search engines... don't care about your keyword density etc etc... Guess we're on BHW right? So lets do things the smarter way and kill two birds with one stone.
The answer to this question is... BOTH! Yes, write for both... the search engines and humans at the same time.
Like I said before, the good old days when you could rank a site with just a spammy title, a crappy article and a few thousand XRumer links are long gone... Google has become much smarter and that in turn requires you to be smarter than G... which is really easy!
So.. back to the topics, your content should be engaging as well as perfectly optimized for your target keyword(s). Here are some pointers for optimization.
Keyword density
With all the over-optimization thing going on lately, you have to be very careful about your keyword density. From my tests, it seems that 0.5-1% seems to be a good idea... just use your keyword wisely and smartly in your article.
LSI keywords
LSI stands for "latent semantic indexing" and you can Google it to read more about what the term is about... but to give you an idea, LSI keywords are the ones that are closely related to your main keyword. For example,
If your main keyword is "weight loss" then some of the LSI keywords would be... 'lose weight fast' 'how can you lose weight' 'weight loss supplements' 'tips to lose weight'.... you get the idea.
The key is to use a lot of LSI keywords in your article WITHOUT losing the flow of it... make sure your article is still perfectly readable by humans after using LSI keywords a few times in it.
Types of content:
Okay so you've got the basics covered.. now its time to learn how to create good quality content (articles) that will attract a lot of long term traffic.
There are different types of content... some of them are:
1) Informational : this includes 'general' informational articles like "5 tips to burn fats in two weeks"... the kind of articles we all read everyday.
2) Factual : a very good example of factual content is this - notice how they've layed out FACTS about the sun? It is absolutely possible to create factual content in almost every niche out there... just takes some research.
3) How-to's and tutorials : Pretty self explanatory. Some examples would be "How to fix registry issue in Windows 7" or "Your 11-step guide to baking a cake".
4) News and evens : Like "Miami Heat beat Boston Celtics in Game 7" or "Osama Bin Laden killed in Pakistan"... this type of articles seem to get a lot of traffic but that traffic is not long term and will eventually die off in a few days/weeks.
Your best bet is to create a lot 1st, 2nd and 3rd type of content discussed above. Its still a good idea to post the 4th type to get your website some exposure.
Questions and Answers
How many articles?
Many of you would be asking yourself how big your site should be? Well... the bigger, the better. It makes a lot of sense to have 100s of articles on your site since one article costs you only $5-7 and you'll most likely make that money back within two or three months from that single article (on average)... anything you make from that specific article on your site is pure profit.
Search engines seem to hate thin 'one-page' sites so be sure to expand your site as much as possible... it'll pay off in the end.
How long should the articles be?
I keep my article length to be AT LEAST 450-500 words... not a word less. And many experienced SEOers would agree that 600-800 word articles tend to rank very well... you can make your article longer than 800 words but I suggest splitting them into two for the sake of your site's size.
how to avoid sandbox? And how quickly get out of it?
With the last site:
Site 2 month was in the TOP2 by many KWs. Then I changed the domain. Made a redirect 301. The site has lost position. I started to add links to new domain and ended up in the sandbox - the site has taken off from the TOP50 on all of the KWs.
To avoid Sandbox, build your links slow and steady... I've never experienced sandbox myself (call me lucky) but I've read a lot about and dealt with quite a few clients with sandboxed sites. What I did to get their sites out of it was this:
1. Add at least 1000 words of unique content.
2. Create backlinks to the newly added content.
3. Once the new articles have been indexed, create backlinks to site's homepage and 3-4 inner pages at the same time... Slow and Consistent!
so when it comes to meta description.
lets say i have a wordpress site with 500 articles and all in one SEO installed.
is it worth it to go back and personally re-write each meta description out myself?
would the difference be significant?
Re-writing meta descriptions for 500 articles would be a pain in the neck... I'd rather spend that time on adding new content with better descriptions.
Even though description plays a little role in SEO, changing 500 descriptions just for the sake of SEO would not be worth it... there are better things to do
But like I said in the original post, a good title and description is what affects your SERP CTR a big deal. Even if you rank #1 for a great keyword, no one would click your site on the search result page if it doesn't grab their attention. So you might wanna consider that too.
AIO SEO plugin has an option to use 'templates' for description for all posts/pages... I'm sure with a little brainstorming, you could come up with a nice template to have for all pages/posts on your site.
In this series of SEO threads, I'll try to address different issues that have risen after the Penguin and Panda updates.
Note : This thread is targeted more towards newbie SEOers who are thinking too much about this Penguin / Panda crap... So don't blame me if you don't find the secret magic to rank your sites in this thread. That said, I'm sure many experienced users will find it useful to refresh their knowledge.
Lets get started...
Okay, so first let me bust some SEO myths that a lot of people might have in your mind.
Myth 1 - SEO is dead
A lot of people seem to think that Penguin update is the end of SEO... tell you what, this is the funniest sh*t I've read about SEO.
Blackhat SEO is NOT dead... and it will NEVER die... PERIOD!
You still can rank your sites on top of Google and you still can make TONS of money with SEO... outranking sites like Amazon and Wikipedia is still very much possible... I've done it and you can do it too.... read on!
Myth 2 - SEO Tools have become useless
Again, with the recent Google updates, many people think tools like XRumer/Scrapebox/AMR have become useless... this is completely wrong. These tools are still very useful and I use all of them on daily basis.
Myth 3 - Blog Networks are dead
Even though Google screwed BMR and ALN too got a big chunk of their network deindexed, blog networks are still profitable and still very effective. Its all about quality... Having your own blog network is your best bet if you have the budget. Just don't post spun gibbering and DO NOT leave any footprint at all... you'll be fine!
Myth 4 - You can't rank a new site without getting sandboxed
I was talking to a client (not from BHW) who just launched a site the other day and he was like... "start the backlinking and we'll monetize the site after it comes out of sandbox"... I was like "WTF" lol. Seriously, stop worrying too much about that stupid sandbox thing... I have successfully ranked quite a lot of micro niche sites that were one week old without getting any sandbox or 'over-optimization' whatsoever. Read on and I'll tell you how.
Myth 5 - On page SEO doesn't matter anymore
Since Google's Penguin update was mostly about off page SEO and had a lot to do with your anchor text, pages linking back to you, footprints... mostly off page stuff.... most of the people started to forget about the on page basics that are still very important. There were blog posts by some SEO 'gurus' spreading misleading information that on page SEO "doesn't matter anymore.. Google can detect what the page is about itself.... blah blah".
Sure G have improved (or should I say "messed up") their algorithm but that doesn't mean you should stop caring about your on page tactics. On page SEO is still very relevant... in fact, more relevant than it ever was.
Now that you have your doubts clear, we can move on to the first section of this guide which is...
Section 1 - On page SEO
Like I said above, on page SEO is still very relevant and it is one of the most important building blocks of your SEO campaign.
Having that said, bear in mind that G's algo is way smarter than it used to be a few years ago. Gone are the days when you could rank your site by just stuffing a bunch of keywords in your title and meta description. There is way more than that to on page SEO now...
Section 1a - The basics
Clean HTML and CSS code:
Pretty simple... bad code = bad site rankings or even a penalty... If you're using wordpress, use themes that are clean and do not contain any malware.
The <title> tag:
Your page's title is one of the most important on page factors. A good title is what describes what your page is about and at the same time, smartly uses your target keyword in it.
Do not make it look spammy or you'll leave your site to be vulnerable to a Google Penalty.
For example, if you're targeting "make money online" a good title would be
"Discover different ways to make money online at *yoursite*"
And a bad title would be
"Make money online - make money on the internet - make money taking surveys"
See the difference? In a nutshell, do not stuff your keywords in there... Google's bots are smart enough to detect that kind of crap in a blink of an eye. And besides that, a Good title helps you get a better clicks-through rate. A user is more likely to click on something that actually makes sense than some spammy gibberish.
The meta <description> tag
Pretty much the same story here... Be smart and summarize your page in approx. 155 characters while using your target keyword at least once.
This, again, is not only important for your SEO but also helps you get more clicks in Search Engine Ranking Pages.
The meta <keywords> tag
Stop worryin about it... Google does NOT use the keywords tag as a factor to rank your sites.
Thats it for this section... in a nutshell : DO NOT MAKE YOUR SITE LOOK SPAMMY BUT AT THE SAME TIME, DO USE YOUR TARGET KEYWORDS IN YOUR TITLE AND DESCRIPTION.
---------------------------------------------
Section 1b - The Content
It has been said before and I'll say it again... content plays a great role in your SEO campaign and not only that, its also crucial to make money from your site.
Here are a few things you should keep in mind when creating/outsourcing content for your site.
Who to write for... humans or search engines?
Now, all white hats will tell you to write for humans and not search engines... don't care about your keyword density etc etc... Guess we're on BHW right? So lets do things the smarter way and kill two birds with one stone.
The answer to this question is... BOTH! Yes, write for both... the search engines and humans at the same time.
Like I said before, the good old days when you could rank a site with just a spammy title, a crappy article and a few thousand XRumer links are long gone... Google has become much smarter and that in turn requires you to be smarter than G... which is really easy!
So.. back to the topics, your content should be engaging as well as perfectly optimized for your target keyword(s). Here are some pointers for optimization.
Keyword density
With all the over-optimization thing going on lately, you have to be very careful about your keyword density. From my tests, it seems that 0.5-1% seems to be a good idea... just use your keyword wisely and smartly in your article.
LSI keywords
LSI stands for "latent semantic indexing" and you can Google it to read more about what the term is about... but to give you an idea, LSI keywords are the ones that are closely related to your main keyword. For example,
If your main keyword is "weight loss" then some of the LSI keywords would be... 'lose weight fast' 'how can you lose weight' 'weight loss supplements' 'tips to lose weight'.... you get the idea.
The key is to use a lot of LSI keywords in your article WITHOUT losing the flow of it... make sure your article is still perfectly readable by humans after using LSI keywords a few times in it.
Types of content:
Okay so you've got the basics covered.. now its time to learn how to create good quality content (articles) that will attract a lot of long term traffic.
There are different types of content... some of them are:
1) Informational : this includes 'general' informational articles like "5 tips to burn fats in two weeks"... the kind of articles we all read everyday.
2) Factual : a very good example of factual content is this - notice how they've layed out FACTS about the sun? It is absolutely possible to create factual content in almost every niche out there... just takes some research.
3) How-to's and tutorials : Pretty self explanatory. Some examples would be "How to fix registry issue in Windows 7" or "Your 11-step guide to baking a cake".
4) News and evens : Like "Miami Heat beat Boston Celtics in Game 7" or "Osama Bin Laden killed in Pakistan"... this type of articles seem to get a lot of traffic but that traffic is not long term and will eventually die off in a few days/weeks.
Your best bet is to create a lot 1st, 2nd and 3rd type of content discussed above. Its still a good idea to post the 4th type to get your website some exposure.
Questions and Answers
How many articles?
Many of you would be asking yourself how big your site should be? Well... the bigger, the better. It makes a lot of sense to have 100s of articles on your site since one article costs you only $5-7 and you'll most likely make that money back within two or three months from that single article (on average)... anything you make from that specific article on your site is pure profit.
Search engines seem to hate thin 'one-page' sites so be sure to expand your site as much as possible... it'll pay off in the end.
How long should the articles be?
I keep my article length to be AT LEAST 450-500 words... not a word less. And many experienced SEOers would agree that 600-800 word articles tend to rank very well... you can make your article longer than 800 words but I suggest splitting them into two for the sake of your site's size.
how to avoid sandbox? And how quickly get out of it?
With the last site:
Site 2 month was in the TOP2 by many KWs. Then I changed the domain. Made a redirect 301. The site has lost position. I started to add links to new domain and ended up in the sandbox - the site has taken off from the TOP50 on all of the KWs.
To avoid Sandbox, build your links slow and steady... I've never experienced sandbox myself (call me lucky) but I've read a lot about and dealt with quite a few clients with sandboxed sites. What I did to get their sites out of it was this:
1. Add at least 1000 words of unique content.
2. Create backlinks to the newly added content.
3. Once the new articles have been indexed, create backlinks to site's homepage and 3-4 inner pages at the same time... Slow and Consistent!
so when it comes to meta description.
lets say i have a wordpress site with 500 articles and all in one SEO installed.
is it worth it to go back and personally re-write each meta description out myself?
would the difference be significant?
Re-writing meta descriptions for 500 articles would be a pain in the neck... I'd rather spend that time on adding new content with better descriptions.
Even though description plays a little role in SEO, changing 500 descriptions just for the sake of SEO would not be worth it... there are better things to do
But like I said in the original post, a good title and description is what affects your SERP CTR a big deal. Even if you rank #1 for a great keyword, no one would click your site on the search result page if it doesn't grab their attention. So you might wanna consider that too.
AIO SEO plugin has an option to use 'templates' for description for all posts/pages... I'm sure with a little brainstorming, you could come up with a nice template to have for all pages/posts on your site.
