The Good and Bad Of SEO Techniques by Leonid Singha

Anyone who is familiar with search engine optimisation (SEO) will know that the practice has undergone a number of changes over the years, many of them a result of people failing to use the techniques properly. Whilst SEO is a popular way of getting your website to rank higher in search engine results, it is of the utmost importance that you have used the techniques correctly, otherwise you risk your website becoming banned or blacklisted.

Keyword Research

Good – It is considered a good SEO technique if you strategically place keywords throughout your website, providing that they are relevant to the information on the page and they haven’t been used so many times that they are considered spam.

Bad – Targeting a single keyword on every page throughout your site is considered spam, as is hiding keywords in the background (by making the font the same colour) and using the keyword way too many times than would be considered natural.

Meta Tags

Good – Creating user friendly meta title tag using a relevant keyword phrase and that is 60 characters or less is considered good SEO, as is keeping your website traffic in mind so that your message can be heard when people read your description.

Bad – Stuffing your meta tag with keywords will not work in your favour when trying to rank higher in search engine results. If you forget about the user experience and just try to spam Google, you will quickly find your ranking lowered.

Content

Good – For the optimisation of your content to be considered ‘good’, you will need to include keywords into it in a way that is understandable and relevant to the website. SEO is all about making the content users want much easier to find.

Bad – If you have so many keywords jammed into your content that it is nearly impossible to read, however, this is considered spam. It is also considered bad SEO if you have used keywords that aren’t relevant to the information on the page.

Directory Submission

Good – When listing your website on directories that will make it easier for people to find you, you should only choose highly trafficked and respected websites. This will ensure that you are getting relevant and high quality links back to your site.

Bad – Using a software program that promises to distribute your website to thousands of directories is essentially useless for SEO if no one looks at the listing and it can actually be detrimental if the directory is proven to be less than reputable.

Facebook Marketing

Good – Building a Facebook fan page that is inviting for your audience and allows you to spread your message is very handy for SEO, as engagement is something that plays a major role in optimisation today. It also gives you another place for links.

Bad – If you attempt to send thousands of friend requests from a personal Facebook profile that has been structured to come from a business, however, you will damage your SEO efforts and Facebook may even shut your account down.

Whilst there are good and bad approaches to many other SEO techniques (such as blog commenting, video marketing and the use of Twitter), the five areas that we have outlined above tend to be the most abused. When it comes to getting your website to rank higher in search engine results, it is important that you ensure you have used the correct SEO techniques in the right way otherwise you will run into a few problems.

Courtesy of  Business 2 Community

How should success in SEO be measured in 2014 by Pierre Zarokian

January 14, 2014

Google has definitely made it much harder to rank naturally via SEO. Not only their algorithms have become much better at detecting unnatural links and SEO tactics, but also the layout of their search results have changed so that there are more components resulting in natural results to show up lower. In addition, the discontinuation of keyword data in the Google Analytics has created further issues in tracking success based on keywords.

The success for an SEO campaign should not be measured by having many #1's but should be measured on overall visibility and traffic to the website. SEO should be done not only for the website, but also for your social media sites and Youtube videos. The more content you can get in the search engines the better your results will be. Sometimes Youtube videos or social media content may rank highly for your keywords, which may result in traffic to your site.

The goal should be to get traffic to your site any way you can via any channel, not just SEO. Google is now looking at social activity as a factor, so not only social activity may result in traffic by itself, but also it may result in better natural rankings.

In some cases it might be easier to make a YouTube video rank for a keyword than a regular site, especially if there are very little videos about the subject that already rank in Google. If you create videos for this purpose, make sure to include links to your website from the description of the YouTube video and have a call to action in the video itself, which may be asking visitors to call you or visit your website.

If you search for a local business with a city name, you would most likely see a mix of 7 results from Google Local, which means natural results are pushed even further down. If you are a local business, you have to also optimize your Google Local profile and get as many reviews as possible. Local SEO has its own techniques, so make sure to hire someone that knows how to do this or do further research if you are going to do it yourself.

Since Google discontinued providing keyword data in Google Analytics, it has become much harder to track SEO success based on keywords. Therefore, here is another reason why marketers need to think of other ways to track success.

Ultimately the goal of each site is to get as much traffic as possible and also have descent conversion. Therefore, tracking traffic and conversation is probably the best way to measure SEO success going forward. Web stats need to be carefully analyzed to see where exactly the traffic is coming from. For social media, use tracking URL’s such as goo.gl or bit.ly to see exactly how many people are clicking on certain links.

Courtesy of Clarity Digital Group LLC d/b/a Examiner.com

JPC does NOT rely solely on Google Analytics to provide website traffic reporting and analysis for their clients. 
We use companies like Web-Stat for FULL reporting!!
Contact us and visit: http://www.janetpennconsulting.com/website_traffic.html

Goodbye, Keyword Data: Google Moves Entirely to Secure Search by Thom Craver

Originally posted on September 23, 2013---BUT worth re-posting!

The day many SEO professionals hoped would never come, but feared eventually would, apparently has arrived today. It appears that Google has cut off keyword data altogether.

Nearly two years after making one of the biggest changes to secure search that resulted in a steady rise in "(not provided)" data, Google has switched all searches over to encrypted searches using HTTPS. This means no more keyword data will be passed to site owners.

Encrypted Google searches don't pass the keyword data through to websites, thereby eliminating the ability to track users by their keyword searches. The biggest impact for many site owners has been not being able to segment users by keywords within their web analytics software.

To publish any intention of Google's motives for this move would be pure speculation. Not wanting to feed the rumor mill or feed any false speculation, Search Engine Watch has reached out to Google for a comment.

"We added SSL encryption for our signed-in search users in 2011, as well as searches from the Chrome omnibox earlier this year," a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Watch. "We’re now working to bring this extra protection to more users who are not signed in."

When encrypted search initially launched in May 2010, Google initially had encrypted search on a separate URL. A year later, in late 2011, Google started redirecting all U.S. users who were signed into their Google Accounts to the encrypted version at https://google.com. This led to the now-infamous "(not provided)" row in keywords data in Google Analytics and other web traffic software packages.

When questioned, Cutts was quick to respond that it was estimated that the amount of "(not provided)" visits "even at full roll-out ... would still be in the single-digit percentages of all Google searchers on Google.com."

As time rolled on, the conversion to encrypted search expanded globally to all signed-in users then even further to include default searching in Firefox

Just last month, BrightEdge released a study fining the percentage of "(not provided)" data was over 50 percent for some industries.

There are methods around determining "(not provided)" data via Webmaster Tools. While the method isn't fullproof, it can be useful to determine trends.

At this point, it seems even when you aren't logged in, using private browsing (or incognito mode) and forcibly type HTTP://www.google.com, you are being redirected to the HTTPS version, thereby encrypting your search and no doubt leading to a total removal of keyword data – at least from Google search visitors. Remember, keyword data from other search engines – like Bing, for example – still send keyword data through.

Courtesy of Incisive Interactive Marketing LLC.


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