Intro to digital marketing - Chapter 4: On site SEO

URL

Gets heavy ratings in relevance calculation, and thus keywords should be used

e.g. If an owner picks the keyword of chicken for a category page, then the page’s URL should be http://www.foodworld.com/chicken.html

On-site

Formatting of content on the website

Search engine optimization

Designing and making a site with webpages that are relevant to consumers are searching for (search terms)

The goal of search engine optimization

The goal is naturally rank webpages as highly as possible in the search engine results page to make traffic

The goal of search engine optimization (con’t)

To rank well for as many searches as possible by improving a site’s search ranking on already existing searches, as well as begin new rankings on new searches

Title tag

Shows up at the top of a browser when one gets to that page; also gets heavy weightings in calculating relevance

e.g. Women’s Sandals + FREE SHIPPING | Shoes | Zappos.com

Main content

Using a target keyword at least once in the page’s main content

Keyword stuffing

An ineffective tactic of inserting a keyword phrase too often

Image alt text and file name

Properly labelling images so search engines can “see” the content of an image

Alternative text

A label/tag that indicates an image’s content and should describe the image as well as incorporate keywords

Anchor text

An objective third-party description of a web page

Internal link

Links from one page to another; should use the linked to page’s target keyword phrase as the anchor text of that link

How should sites use links

A site should use several links among its pages for SEO purposes and to increase navigability of the site

Ranking

The position a site shows up in the SERP within the natural search results

The first step in conducting on-site SEO

Picking a list of search phrases to target for improvement in search rankings

The 4 factors choice of target search phrases should be based on

1. Relevance of Search Intent

2. Traffic

3. Competition

4. Current ranking

Relevance of search intent

A site that sells one thing shouldn’t try to rank for the search phrase of another thing

Relevance of search intent (con’t)

A company that sells sheds would want to rank highly in relevant search phrases like “Quality sheds.”

The desired phrase should be relevant to the product but broad enough to capture a large number of searches

Traffic

Balancing keyword relevance with keyword search demand

Google’s Keyword planner

Provides free estimates of the monthly search volume of a search phrase

How to gage competition

1. See what sites show up

2. If the links to those sites are optimized perfectly for a keyword

Small websites and competition

Smaller sites have more chances of success when going after long-tail keyword phrases

e.g. Gold Rolex watch

Long tail keywords

Multi-word phrases which are extended or more specific versions of fat head terms; sites can rank similarly for multiple long tail terms when the words are alike

e.g. White Nike shoes

Fat head term

Highly popular, short, and broad keywords that receive a massive amount of search volume; has more competition

Current ranking

Work on improving the key phrases that will yield higher rankings and search results

Mapping keywords to pages

Matching each target keyword phrase to a page in the website to maximize the relevance of the page to the keyword, or sometimes making entirely new pages dedicated to keywords

Mapping keywords to pages example

A jeweller would place handmade earrings on the homepage and product categories (e.g. hoop earrings, drop earrings, etc) on the category pages, which would further link to a subcategory page that eventually go to product pages

Three reasons for importance mapping individual keyword phrases to individual pages

1. Reminds the site devs which keywords need to be put into the page content to ensure high relevancy scores

2. Ensures the right web page is displayed for the right search

3. Ensures a site isn’t unintentionally multiple pages for the same keyword (keyword cannibalization

Original content

Use the rel=”canonical” tag in the page code to signify the original version of content to avoid punishment for unoriginal content from search engines

Meta descriptions

A short, 160 character description of a web page’s content; is included in the <HEAD> data and is hidden from viewers; unique metas are a quality signal

Short load times

Cater to the short attention span of users by finding the cause of and fixing long load times

Fresh content

Providing users with news and regular updates to show search engines that the site belongs to active and regular users

Quantity content

Having at least 100 words of content, as users are likely to find good info on a site with lots of content

Bounce rate

The % of sessions that start on a page that has only 1 view, should be kept low by having good content on the site and search relevance to the search term

Quality content

Creating quality content instead of crafting content for search engines in light of AI and other similar tools

URL Inspection Tool

A tool in the Google Search Console site that allows webmasters to assess if Google is properly loading pages

Insufficient internal linking

If pages on a site have no inbound links from other pages which may lead to engines not having a way to find those pages

Punishment for past crimes

When a site receives consequences for manipulating a search engine into giving it good rankings, can be fixed by complying with search engine guidlines

Dirty sitemaps

If XML sitemap (a map that helps search engines properly index a site) is broken or otherwise has errors, then it can be a sign the site isn’t trustworthy or poorly managed

Poor mobile optimization

A site that has poor usability on mobile devices won’t rank well on searches done on a mobile device; sites that aren’t mobile-optimized will be at a disadvantage, given the rise of mobile web traffic

The three core web vitals

1. Large colourful paint (LCP)

2. First input delay (FID)

3. Cumulative layout shift (CLS)

These three metrics should be kept as low as possible

Large colourful paint (LCD)

How long it takes for a site’s content to appear

First input delay (FID)

How long it takes for a user to interact with anyone

Cumulative layout shift (CLS)

If the content is shifted when another piece loaded later on the page

Poor security

When a site doesn’t have transport layer security encryption and is marked as “non-secure”

Local intent

When a user wants search results which are close by

Local pack

A list of three local businesses that match the search and are shown on the map

Local pack (con’t)

It can vary depending on what’s searched up

e.g.

• Snack local pack (for restaurants),

• ABC local pack (Branded terms like Starbucks and Gas stations)

• Sponsored local pack

Organic search results and the results page

A results page will show organic results, but in a usual but localized manner

e.g. A search on Richmond Pizza joints will show a local pack on top, but have the second result be a Yelp article on Richmond Pizza joints

Reviews

Companies should get reviews from customers, as reviews have great weight in local rankings

Structured citations

References and listings from other websites; consistency is important and thus firms should check for it and ask for corrections when inaccuracies are found

e.g. Yelp

Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP)

Providing similar info about a firm across locations

e.g, Toys R Us, shouldn’t be referred to as “Toys r us”

My Business

Registering and verifying a business with Google so they know of the firm’s validity and thus show the firm on search results

The Panda Update

An algorithm change that collects data from users to see what makes a page appealing, and then ranks sites accordingly after running that info through machine learning algorithms

The Pigeon Update

An overhaul of Google’s local rankings by improving the accuracy of results based on the user’s locations and including traditional quality signals like links in local search results

The Hummingbird Update

An algorithm replacement that’s faster and more precise by interpreting the intent and meaning of a search phrase (contextual interpretation)

e.g. If you looked up Mount Everest’s elevation, Google will see that you want to know it’s actual elevation

RankBrain

Helps determine a site’s ranking

Mobile-first ranking

Giving favour to mobile-friendly sites by showing them in search results and removing sites that weren’t mobile-friendly

Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)

An algorithm made by AI researchers at Google that provides more accurate search query responses

Knowledge graph

An info repository about people, places, and topics that can be shown directly on the results page

Featured Snippets and their caveats

Needs a lot of sophistication as the search engine needs to understand the specific piece of info being searched up by the user and separate it from the other info about that topic

Featured Snippets and their caveats (con’t)

Firms can format their info in plain HTML text and add schema mark-up to ensure featured snippets provide accurate info about their business

Voice search

Using the voice to input searches and give commands like “Focus on long tail keywords” and “Keep Google My Business up-to-date

Crawling

Finding and updating web content

Caching

The HTML code of a webpage that gets sent to a repository

Indexing

Reconfiguring each web page as a hit list

What determines Google’s SERP rank?

Relevance + Quality

Breadcrumbs

Shows were you came from and how you initially got to the page

How to locate alt text

Right click on any given image, header, or anchor text and selecting “inspect to bring up the HTML code