What You Need To Know About SEO
Barry Schwartz kicked off our morning with some insights about SEO. Barry is the Founder of Search Engine Roundtable and has been covering Search for over 12 years.
On Page SEO = Content, Site arhitechture, HTML
Off Page SEO = Trust, Links, Personalization, Social
On Page SEO Factors – Content
Content Quality – The most important thing for your website – Are your pages well-written & have substantial quality content? EXPERT KNOWLEDGE.
Keyword Research – Have you researched the keywords people may use to find your content? The customer isn’t necessarily searching for YOUR business, so, think about what they are searching for.
Content Keywords – Do pages use words and phrases you hope they’ll be found for?
Content Freshness – Are pages fresh and about “hot” topics?
Content Verticals – Do you have image, local, news, video or other vertical content?
Content Answers – Is your content turned into direct answers within the search results
Featured Snippets – Content Answers (Write the Question & Write the Answer)
Knowledge Cards – Content Answers
Live Results – Content Answers
Architecture
Crawlability – Can search engines discover and index your content?
- Sitemaps – Crawlability
- Blocked page – Crawlability
Duplicate Content – Does the site manage duplicate content issues well?
- Canonical & Rel Next/Prev – duplicate content
Https vs http & www vs non www
Mobile Friendly – Does your site work well for mobile devices and make use of AMP and app indexing?
- Accelerated Mobile pages – Mobile Friendly
- Firebase App Indexing – Mobile Friendly
Page Speed – Do your pages load quickly?
- Page Speed tool – Page Speed
Descriptive URLS – Do URLs contain meaningful keywords to page topics?
HTTPS & Security – Does site use HTTPS to provide secure connection for visitors?
HTML
Title Tags – Clickable & has keywords
HTML Descriptions – Do meta description tags describe what pages are about?
Structured Data – Do pages use structured data to enhance listings?
Headers – H1, H2, etc
OFF PAGE
Trust Authority – Do links, share and other factors make a site a trusted authority?
Ranking for Competitive Keywords
Trust Engage – Do visitors spend time reading or bounce away quickly?
Trust History – Has site or its domain been around a long time, operating in the same way?
Trust Identity – Does site use means to verify its identity and that of its authors?
Link Quality – Are links from trusted, quality or respected websites?
Link Text – Do links pointing at pages use words you hope they’ll be found for?
Anchor Text Power – Link text
Link Number – Do many links point at your web pages?
Personalization Country – What countries are searching?
Personalization Locality – What city or local area is someone located in?
Personalization History – Has someone regularly visited your site?
Personalization Social – Has someone or their friends socially favored the site?
Social Reputation – Do those respected on social networks share your content?
PENALTIES AND VIOLATIONS
ON PAGE
Thin Content – Is content thin or shallow & lacking substance?
Cloaking – Do you show search engines different pages than humans?
Tricking bots & humans – Cloaking
Keyword Stuffing – Do you excessively use words you want pages to be found for?
Hidden Content – Do colors or design hide words you want pages to be found for?
OFF PAGE
Piracy/DMCA – Has your site been flagged for hosting pirated content?
Top Heavy Ads – Is your content ad heavy? Especially above the fold?
- AdSense itself promotes top ad heavy content
Paid Links – Have you purchased links in hopes of better rankings?
Link Spam – Have you created links by spamming blogs?
