SEO Training

Do you want the content you have written for the internet to rank higher than your competitors?  Of course you do.  In order to rank highly you must first understand how Google works.  This should be a starting point for any SEO training.

Understanding How Google Search Algorithms Work in Simple English

Here is a simple version of how Google works in laymans English.  If you know how Google looks at a page then you can make sure that your content is written in a way that is complementary and therefore help you to rank higher on Google and other search engines.

At the core of Google is a set of mathematical algorithms.  Their purpose is to  try to determine the relevance of your page as opposed to other pages for a specific search term.  Imagine being given a billion pages of text in a language you don’t understand and having to give back the most relevant page for information on a word you also don’t understand.  You may know that there are pictures, but you can’t see them.  That is what it is like for the algorythm!

I am going to describe the process the Google search algorithms have to go through as if I was the algorithm.

If somebody was to do a search for “flabrat” then I am first going to look at URL’s to see if any of them have “flabrat” in them.  This is because flabrat.com is more likely to have information on “flabrat” than “globsheen.com”.  However, globsheen.com/flabrat.html is also highly likely to have some relevance.

Unfortunately there is no guarantee that a pages content has any relevance to its name without going and reading it.

Meta Title

The first information I will find on a page is the Meta Title.  This is the text that will be displayed in my search results.  Does this say “flabrat” in it?  If it does then I could be on the right track.

Meta Keywords

I’m going to take a cursory look at the Meta keywords too if they exist.  Not that I am going to put any weight behind them at all.  I’m just checking to see if they look spammy to me.  If they do I’m going to assume that the rest of the page is also trying to pull the wool over my eyes a bit.

H1 tag

Next comes the H1 tag.  This is really really really important.  The h1 tag is the heading for the whole page.  It is the heading that people will actually see when they view the page.  If the word “flabrat” is used in the h1 tag then there is a good chance that the page is actually about flabrat. See The importance of h tags for more information.

Other Header tags (h2, h3 etc)

These are sub-headings and should relate to the content in the text that comes after them.  They are not as important as the h1 tag but are still useful, particularly for breaking up your text and making it more readable for us humans.  The header tags used in these segments are h3 tags.

p tags

Not content with just looking at the title, like Google, I will then look at the actual content of your text contained in p tags or paragraph tags.  The first paragraph is particularly important, but if it was me I would be looking for the word flabrat throughout the entire document.

I would become suspicious if it appeared a lot though, so don’t overdo your keyword density.

Pictures

Google can’t actually see pictures.  Google can however read text associated with pictures.  For this reason your picture file names and alt text should both reflect your keywords.  Think of it as another way of getting your keywords onto the page without being overly spammy.  Without alt text in your images (img src=”images/picture.jpg” alt=”a flabrat in full bloom”) your pictures are doing precicely nothing for your Search Engine Optimisation.

Google search algorithms are a lot more complicated than that.

What I have just described is a very simplified version of what actually goes on to choose which page gets ranked highest in Google.  There are over 200 factors involved in Google’s search algorithm and nobody knows exactly what they all are or what weighting is applied to each one.

What I have done in this post is give you a foolproof method of ensuring your on-page SEO is good enough to help you get ranked higher.  Depending on what market you operate in, it could even be enough to get you ahead of some of your competitors.

On-page SEO is only half the battle though.  You will need to do some off-page or external SEO too if you want your page to rank in any but the very least competitive of markets.  My next post will be describe off-page SEO in simple terms.

On-page SEO is massively important.  It is the foundation to getting found online.  It is always my starting point.  Get it right and everything else you do will work better too.

All heading tags are important, but it is a serious offence to omit your h1 tag

I thought I’d write a little about H tags and how important they are to SEO.  This was highlighted to me recently when I was given a very small budget to do some SEO work on a site.  I would have liked to do a complete redesign, but there were very good reasons for keeping the budget low.

I love a challenge, so I thought I’d see what could be done with the site as it was.

The first thing that struck me was that there was a complete lack of H1 tags on the site.  It had been built using a CMS and the content had been written by the business owners themselves.  The second major problem with the on-site SEO was that nearly all the pages had the same title.

The coding was verbose but I could do nothing about the page structure (no access to files on the server – just the CMS).

Do H tags make a measurable difference to position on Google?

The short answer is “yes they do”.  I made several changes to the site’s content.  H tags were at the core of what I did though.

The Results

Original Position on Google for local search terms (ie. “industry locality“): Page 3 at highest.

New Position on Google for the same terms: Nearly all page 1 with some at position 2.  Those on page 2 were in the top position there.

How I went about achieveing a page 3 to page 1 jump in rank without any inbound linking.

For on-page SEO I usually start with determining a keyword or two.  This was a local business targeting the local area.  The search terms that would be most likely used to find it seemed obvious and checking with Google Trends confirmed this.

Keywords chosen, relevance must be established within the page.  What I am looking for here is continuity.

• URL : Try to get a keyword into the URL
• Page Title (Meta) : Use the same keyword in the Page title (this appears on the tab of your browser)
• H1 tag: Use the keyword here too.
• H2, H3, H4 tags: Less important, but same principles apply.
• p tag: Use the keyword in the body of your text, but not too much.  How much is too much?  As a rule of thumb, if it doesn’t read like good english then it is too much.

Basically, if you do hot have a h1 tag on your page it is like handing up a college thesis without a title at the top.  You are going to lose marks for it (or in this case SERPs rank).

SEO for Dummies does exist, you can buy it. It is far from the best book on the subject though. If fact, books are generally outdated nearly as soon as they go to print!

SEO for Dummies. It is an attractive prospect.  It brings to mind a quick, easily digestible way to get your website to the top of Google. There are lots and lots of sites and people proclaiming to be able to show you how to do this.  These are the snake oil salesmen and women of our modern world.

Is there an easy way to learn SEO?

Frankly there is no easy way.  This site “SEO training” will be going for years and will never cover everything completely.  There are a few reasons for this:

1. SEO is a huge topic
2. The SEO goalposts keep moving

I really want to learn SEO though.  How can I get started?

The starting place for every budding SEO practitioner should be Googles’ Webmaster Guidelines. Go and follow all of the advice they set forth and you will be half way there.  I do mean all of it by the way.  There is no point picking and choosing which bits suit you.  This is the “white hat” SEO way.  It means that you are doing what Google want you to do.  Your reward shall be no penalties.  This does not guarantee you better ranking though….. Google Webmaster Guidelines are just a starting point!

Following Google guidelines looks like tons of work!

Indeed.  Making sure that your site is structured as Google would like it to be can be a lot of work depending on how  well your site was put together in the first place.  In some instances it is easier to start from scratch!

Google Guidelines seem very technical, is there an easier to understand version?

No. There is no easier version.  The Google guidelines are the easy version.

You said this article was about SEO for Dummies!

This article is about SEO for Dummies.  The point is that if you go and look at Google Webmaster Guidelines and find it too technical or do not have the time to put into learning everything there then you are better off hiring a professional SEO consultant. They do not have to do all the work for you, but they should be able to at least give you the tools you need and the understanding to be able to tackle the job yourself.  More importantly, they can bring you to the next level and bring you from conforming to performing.  To do otherwise would be dumb.  Here is the reason:

SEO starts with diagnosis

In the last post I wrote I mentioned the importance of SEO analysis.  You need to know what is wrong with your site before you can fix it.  When my car breaks down I sometimes have a fair idea of what is wrong, but I will bring it to a mechanic to find out for sure.  He is a professional.  He knows more about it than I do.  If I fiddle about with my car I am likely to spend money on parts I don’t need, waste time “fixing” the wrong thing and end up with a car that may be fixed, but in my case is more likely to be more damaged than it was originally.

The thing I am missing is an accurate diagnosis.  This holds for SEO too.  If I start tinkering with a site without knowing what I am doing then I am in danger of actually causing damage as well as not fixing my problems.  I need to know what to fix and why.

As a professional SEO consultant, the first thing I do is analyse the website I am going to work on.  That tells me where the sites strengths and weaknesses are and helps to ensure I target the areas that need it most.

SEO knowledge can be learned.  That is what this site is for.

I do not want to be negative about learning SEO.  It is not rocket science.  It does take time to learn though.  This post is really aimed at business owners or management who think it is a good idea to do their SEO in-house with no help from a professional source.  It is not a good idea.  I say that from experience.  I had to learn too.  I got as far as I could by reading everything I could and following guidelines.  Then it was time to get somebody to teach me.  I realised at that point that I could have saved a lot of time (and time is money) by using a consultant in the first place.

Since then I have learned a lot more from a lot of different sources, but the point is that using a GOOD SEO consultant is expensive, but prudent – it saves money in the long run.

It’s happened again.  I got another one of those emails.  Somebody claiming to have ‘inside knowledge’ that could help me beat the competition.  They all share a common theme…. “We work with/ are friends with/ once worked with / are a trusted partner of/ sleep with Google, or people who work there.  The implication is that these people can help you to rank higher than your competition because they are in possession of information that others do not have.

If you get one of these emails RUN AWAY!

There is no such thing as a Google Trusted Partner for SEO!

They are at best treading a fine line between legal and illegal in their claims.  Google does not have ‘trusted SEO partners’.  SEO is an annoyance to Google and to other search engines.  Google made it as big as they are by providing better (for better read more relevant) search results than the competing search engines.  They did this by building algorithms that catch people trying to ‘cheat’ their way to the top of the rankings and not showing them prominently – or indeed at all sometimes.

Google publish webmaster guidelines.  This is a list of what they deem to be acceptable behaviour when it comes to SEO.  What it boils down to is that they want website owners to publish useful material for their human visitors – not search engines.  What this essentially amounts to is a cap on what is acceptable in terms of SEO efforts.  Breach that cap and your website can fall like a rock into complete obscurity.

Any company that offers SEO services and is willing to claim that they have some association with Google is not likely to be ethical enough to use practices that will not get your site into hot water.  They are preying on ignorance.

In my last post I mentioned that I am not an electrician.  There are cowboy electricians out there.  Luckily there are also regulations in place to ensure some standards (even though I bet some of you can tell me some stories!).

On the web, and particularly with SEO there are no common standards to adhere to.  There is no SEO qualification (not by a recognised body at least).  There is just experience and results. This lends itself very nicely to the sort of people who like to take your money in return for little or nothing that you think you are paying for.  In the real world we call them con artists.

How do you know your SEO consultant is not a con artist cowboy?  I’ll get to that in a future post.  For now though, the easiest way is to talk to several SEO consultants.  There are quite a few SEO consultants in Ireland.  Some are very good, some are excellent, and some are good at talking, but not so much at producing.  By that I mean offering things like directory submissions, which frankly don’t hold a lot of weight these days (although they did years ago).

Please don’t be fooled by the “Google Trusted Partners” line though.  That is a blatant lie.

SEO is not too technical. Sometimes just because things are presented in a different way they seem more complex than they really are

Search Engine Optimisation is quite technical.  After all, it all boils down to mathematics.  Search engines have their equations for working out what page is most important on any given subject.

This site is about SEO training, so therefore it is more important for that term than other sites that do not concentrate on this one topic alone.  There is also surprisingly little competition for training.  SEO in general has plenty of competing pages.

Those are just two factors though.  There are over 200 ranking factors that Google take into consideration when ranking a web page.  To make matters more complicated, nobody has the actual equations (algorithms).

So not only is SEO technical, it is blindfolded too!  Makes you want to throw your hands up in despair doesn’t it.  It’s not really that bad though. Particularly here in Ireland.  Because of our smaller population SEO in Ireland is that much easier because there is just less competition.  That said though, it is getting harder all the time, as Irish companies become more and more aware of the power of the internet.

Many people, when faced with terms like keyword density, link building, page loading speed, and domaining, just shut off.  I’m not an electrician.  When I hear people talking about amps, kilowatts and maximum loads I switch off a bit too.  It is a natural human reaction to avoid conversations that sound technical in an area we have no experience with.  I can change a plug though.  I can put in a new lightbulb.  I have learned the skills that I need to have my house functioning.

In the same way you can learn to have a functioning website that actually shows up in search results without having to have an in depth knowledge of what is going on behind the scenes.  It does not have to get too technical. You can learn to do the basics yourself, and call in a SEO consultant like me for the rest.

SEO consultants like myself can analyze your current website, and then either train you and your staff to do what is necessary to improve its performance, or do the work for you.  Sometimes a bit of a mixture is the ideal solution.

Are your pages straining under the weight of keyword density and struggling to climb the Google ranks?

Keyword density is the number of keywords as a percentage of the total text on a web page.  Too little density and the search engine algorithms will presume that the page is not important for that keyword.  Too much density and the page will get penalised for keyword stuffing.

Since nobody has access to the search engine algorithms, how do we determine what the bounds are for keyword density?  What is the correct or optimum keyword density for your page?

If you have gone searching for the answer online you will have found the answer to be stated as anything between 1% and 8% (in general).  The truth is that keyword density is old news.  It just does not matter as much as it used to.  Nobody knows for certain, so this is just my opinion.  It is an opinion however, that is based on experience and experimentation.  Here is my view on Keyword density:

Forget about Keyword Density! The only check I do around density now is to make sure I have not gone too high.  I like to stick to not going over about 6% in general.  However, if the article reads well to me, then I’ll let it slide so long as it’s under 8%.  I do not have a minimum density.

Keyword Positioning is far more important than the number of times it is repeated.  I generally have the keyword in the title, and in the H1 / H2 tags and again in the body text.  This is particularly true of text immediately after headings.  I do not always keep the same word order, or even use exactly the same words.  I want what I write to be legible for humans.

Certainly I have repeated the words “keyword density” a fair bit in this post, more so than usual.  It is just how this particular post has gone.  I find it harder to write “SEO training” in posts, simply because it does not fit into the general flow of what I write.

A word of caution.  If you have a density that is too high, it may work for you.  It may get you up there in the google ranks… but not for long.  Keyword Stuffing is bad bad bad!  It worked back in the 90’s, and many SEO consultants in Ireland are still recommending it on a smaller scale than before.  I completely disagree with this.  Keyword stuffing is outdated now to the same extent that travel by horses has been replaced by cars!  Keyword densities are a factor still, but are not something to be pushed to extremes and do not hold the same weight as they once did.

You are certainly not the first to ask why your site is not showing up on Google, and you definitely will not be the last.  The whole point of SEO training is to try and avoid this very situation. The trouble is that it is hard to answer the question without more information.

If your website did show up on Google previously and has since disappeared or just fallen significantly in the Google rankings, then it is clear that something has happened to change how your sites importance is viewed by the worlds largest search engine.  If it has never shown up scroll on down towards the end of this article.

Website Dropped By Google? Don't worry, it can be fixed!

Have you changed anything on your website recently?  If so, have you got a backup of your website as it was before the changes?  I’m willing to bet you don’t.  I’ve been guilty of that cardinal sin myself on occasion!

So what are the factors that could cause your website to drop or disappear suddenly?  There are a lot.  I’ll cover the most obvious.

1. Your website has been hacked and malicious code has been inserted on your site.  If you suspect somebody has hacked your website, Check in Googles Webmaster Tools.  There may well be a warning there.  Remember it is not enough to just remove any offending code or hidden keyword stuffing.  You need to close the hole that made the hack possible in the first place.  Consult your hosting provider as a first point of call.  They should be able to steer you in the right direction.
2. You made an alteration that broke the structure of your website or made it otherwise difficult to read by a search engine. If you had a W3C compliant website to start with, simply running the site through the markup validation service should show you any problems fairly quickly.  If your website has more errors than words, then this in itself could be part of the problem!
3. Keyword stuffing or other “naughty” practices.  Have you been a bit overzealous in your SEO efforts?  Your website must must must read well to actual human beings.  After all, that’s who the site is for in the first place.  Do not repeat words ad nauseum in your title tags, description and again throughout headers and the general text.  Once in each will suffice (even that may be overdoing it in some cases).  If a search engine algorithm suspects you are trying to “cheat” you will pay for it.
4. Those other “naughty” practices. Text the same colour as your background (only readable to robots), text sized too small to read, serving different pages to users than to search engines, the list goes on.
5. Text content in Flash or Pictures.  Search engines cannot read text in a picture or flash presentation.  It may look…. well, “flash”, and wow your human viewers, but they will never get to see it if it does not show up in a search!  If you put text in flash, try to have the same text repeated in standard html tags elsewhere on your page.
6. Buying links.  I’m not talking about buying an ad on a website (although I would question the worth of doing so).  What I am talking about here is buying links in bulk as it were.  These links, once the link farm has been discovered are not just worthless, they can damage your site.  Short term gains are not worth the fall!  Getting out of that one is not easy, and sometimes the easier route is to start from scratch with a new domain!
7. Adult Content or references to Gambling or Pharmaceuticals. I don’t even like writing those words here!
8. Linking to “bad neighbourhoods”.  Be careful who you link to. Your website is judged, in part, on the quality of websites that link too you, and also on those you link out to. Neighbourhoods matter.  I always try to have as few outbound links as possible by the way.  If the link does not add to my users experience it does not happen.
9. Downtime. If your website is not hosted well or has a lot of downtime for some other reason, then it will have an adverse affect on how your site ranks on Google.  Why would they show a website that may or may not be accessible… it’s not like there is a shortage of websites to choose from!

What about if your site has never shown up on Google? This is quite normal initially.  There is also the famed “sandbox”.  It takes time for websites to be found by search engines.  It takes much longer for them to trust your website and want to list it in the position that you might like it to show up in.

Submit your sitemap to all the search engines.  Google tends to be the quickest to respond.  This tells them that your site exists and what pages are on it.  Check that you are following the guidelines with your site and then just be patient.

One other thing that can go wrong with a new site is its history. If Previous owners of the domain broke guidelines/trust, then you will probably have an uphill battle with getting your site to perform well.

If your site is not show up well, or at all on Google, then it is not the end of the world.  There will be a reason.  It may take time and tears to fix the problem, but it can be fixed…. no matter what!

Get found online

Getting found online is not all that difficult.  It is not incredibly easy either.  Of course it depends on how much competition you have.  Why do some sites show up above others? On Google it is a combination of over 200 factors!

In general these are split into two types of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – On page (the actual website itself) and Off page (links from other sites to your site).

For On-page SEO all you need to do is follow Googles Webmaster Guidelines.  Although, there is quite a bit to that, and it may take some time and patience to work your way through it.  There are other issues too.  Try looking up information on keyword density for example.  The web is full of different opinions.  The reason that some people will tell you not to exceed 4% density (4 percent of total text on the page) and others 8% density for example, is that nobody knows exactly how many keywords will get your page flagged for keyword stuffing.

Here is the problem…..

You want your site to get found online for specific keywords (SEO training in the case of this blog for example).  In order to show that the site is all about SEO training, it is tempting to use the phrase lots.  However, if I do that, then it will look like I am trying to influence search engines and they will penalise me for it.  This is not to say that it does not work…. but eventually the chances are your site will plummet down the rankings if for keyword stuffing.  I always advise clients to stick to the webmaster guidelines rigidly.

Off site SEO is where a lot of people come unstuck.  How do you get links to your site?  How many links do you need? Should you pay for links? Does it matter where the links come from?

It is a mine field.  Get it wrong and you will pay for it!  Get it right and your site will reap rewards.  By the way NEVER pay for links! It does matter where the links come from too.  What is more, external link building should be something that is an ongoing practice.  I will be posting more on link building in the future.

If you want to get found online, then it really does pay to get somebody who knows what they are doing to either train you, or do it for you.  This saves a lot of time.  Nobody knows it all (the search engines do not release the details of their criteria) but using a SEO professional who has gained experience from spending time on research as well as experimenting and finding out where some of the limits are pays off.

Mean Hearted SEO's add nofollow tags to their links for no good reason!

Recently Google admitted that no follows (rel=”nofollow”) on links do not actually stop “link juice” from leaving your site.  They just stop the target site from receiving any juice.

How long has this been going on?  Over a year!!!

Why didn’t they tell anybody?  Well, nobody actually noticed so they didn’t feel the need to announce it.

Is there any point in using no follows at all?  Yes.  There is if you do not want Google indexing a page (eg a dynamic form) because it could lead to you having duplicate content.  When it comes to linking to other sites though, if you were happy to link to them for your visitors, you may as well let Google follow.  You are taking the hit anyway.

What is really interesting is that Google were doing this for a year with nobody noticing.  To me that says that there is little damage done by linking out of your site without nofollow.  In fact, it’s just plain mean hearted.

Blogs in particular are full of outbound links.  They still rank pretty well in my experience!  I actually have a theory that the quality of the outbound links is important to SEO.  That is to say, that linking out to good, related pages can actually help your site, rather than hinder it.

This flies in the face of recognised SEO training but, while I have yet to prove it, I am quite convinced.

Be My Valentine ... Google

With Valentines day fast approaching I started thinking about what is wrong with how we think about SEO and Google in particular.

With SEO training Google tends to be the main focus with clients.  They want to climb the Google ranks.  That is because in many ways Google is the only search engine that matters.  However, romancing Google is not how we should view SEO.

Saying “be my valentine” to Google is much akin to saying “be my valentine” to your sweethearts mother.  You will not get the girl/guy by focusing your affections on their mother.  You will get the cold shoulder.

In SEO circles there is much talk of getting some Google love. But Google doesn’t love.  Google rewards the love that others give you.  They reward the relationships you build with other users.  Google are blatantly open about this.  The first three Google webmaster guidelines for content and design deal with making your site easy to navigate, easy to find (sitemap) and creating useful and information rich pages.  In other words they are telling us that we should create websites for people and not search engines.

Our focus should not be on romancing Google, but on romancing visitors and other webmasters (all of whom are human).  Of course you have to keep your would be mother in law happy too.  There is no harm in being charming with Google, but the way to Google’s affections is to concentrate on your content and your visitors.

Unlike most mothers I know, Google is quite happy to see you “sowing your wild oats” with as many people, across as many sites as possible.  Rather than utter “be my valentine” to just one user, it pays to shout it out with gay abandon across the entire universe that is the internet.

If your heart is true (your content is fantastic), you will attract the affections (links) of users across the world.  Human nature being what it is, more links means more visitors.  Charisma is infectious.  Once you gain the affections of some of your users more will come, just because you appear popular.  It’s just like in school, when people want to be associated with the “in’ crowd.  They put effort into getting close to them, creating links with them and boosting themselves through association.  So what have the “in” crowd got in internet terms?  Nothing more than great content.

What makes great content is another discussion entirely.

Don’t be my valentine Google.  I prefer humans to algorithms.