b y : S E O E X P E R T AL GOMEZ

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1 b y : S E O E X P E R T AL GOMEZ

2 1 You are about to discover how awesome is search engine optimization. SEO Guide: Leverage your SEO techniques, is especially created for website owners to have easier understanding on SEO and be able to apply this knowledge as guide in creating effective search engine optimization techniques. I am Al Gomez, your SEO Consultant in the house and the author of this guide. I am truly thankful that I can able to share my knowledge in SEO to you. Having a deeper understanding on search engine optimization can able to give you an idea on how to have a strategic plan for you Search Engine Optimization Strategies, or simply giving you an idea on what should be the proper SEO. In this challenging industry, where in changes or updates is inevitable and guidelines must be follow, it only shows that you truly need understanding on SEO. And this guide can be your perfect companion. It also serves as a reminder that it is essential to get updated. SEO is not as easy as before, what used to work Remember having top rankings is also gaining a 100% free VISIBILITY on Google Search (just think of 100% percent free advertisement on major search engine like Google) plus opportunities in traveling to many avenues of marketing. before is not effective anymore. And I always believe that if you truly understand what SEO is and if you able to leverage your long term SEO techniques you will able to continue dominating the search results in the future. It s now the right time for you to discover this SEO Guide.

3 2 WHAT IS INCLUDED IN THIS GUIDE? Understanding Basic SEO Concepts Website Ranking Factors: In and Out Influence of. Search Results Google Algorithm I: Penguin The Scraper. Google Algorithm II: Panda The Farmer. Be curious always for knowledge will not acquire you; you must acquire it. -Sudie Back

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5 UNDERSTANDING BASIC SEO CONCEPTS 4 HOW SEARCH WORKS? Before understanding the basic SEO Concepts, it is truly essential that you are familiar on how search works. And below is a diagram from Google on how this search engine works. S O U R C E : h t t p : / / w w w. g o o g l e. c o m / i n s i d e s e a r c h / h o w s e a r c h w o r k s / t h e s t o r y /

6 U N D E R S T A N D I N G B A S I C S E O C O N C E P T S 5 THEREFORE SEO Search engine optimization or SEO is a practice of promoting website visibility. It is about matching a website to a relevant query and worthy of being on the rank. SEO focused on keywords, links, relevance and reputation. It is not enough to build links wherever in the web because search engine tries hard to eliminate no value content on its results. SEO should be ORGANIC. It should not manipulate the ranking system. At some point, black hat SEO was effective in modifying the ranking system. However, through integration of different clean up algorithms, black hat seemed to be eliminated to push through cleaner results from white hat SEO. SEO CREATES RELATIONSHIPS. Though SEO is associated with keywords and links, its primary purpose is to link relevant websites with quality contents to enhance readership value. Relationship can be in terms of website to website and website owner to user. It emerged as an important aspect of ethical SEO, because websites linking each other in the same niche can build reputation. SEO should be USER-FRIENDLY. One common problem that rises when optimizing is spamming. Nobody loves spam and as search engine scrapes out spam in the web, an optimizer must create a distinction between building natural links that will benefit user than simply building links to create bulk of links to manipulate rankings. A user-friendly SEO generate links for user purpose simultaneously for search engine and not for search engine alone. SEO is an ONLINE MARKETING STRATEGY. SEO emerged as a vital strategy for business competition. As people tend to do more activities using the web, it is not surprising that advertisements and marketing campaigns will be indulge with it. SEO needs DETERMINATION & COMMITMENT. SEO efforts take time to be realized. One must wait 2-3 months to see how SEO improved website performance and its impact to business in terms of customers, sales, brands, and authority in the industry.

7 U N D E R S T A N D I N G B A S I C S E O C O N C E P T S 6 AND LINKS SHOULD BE Keywords are word or group of words used by users when making a query through a search engine such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Query is an action taken to look up information about a specific product, service, or simply to learn about a topic that will be used for different purposes. Choosing the right keywords is the heart of an SEO campaign. Links are simply elements that will allow you to run another program. The keywords are the physical specification of the link. The keyword and the program to which it is linked should be relevant to make it non deceptive, thus building a reputation online. Keywords and links are found in a website or direct to a website which is document presenting information that will match to a query of a user. The goal of SEO is to ensure that a certain website will be seen first upon user query. It can only happen when right search engine optimization is manifested.

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9 WEBSITE RANKING FACTORS: IN AND OUT INFLUENCE OF SEARCH RESULTS 8 WHAT YOU SHOULD CONSIDER? Learning the basic elements of SEO generally informs you the coverage and the fundamental aspect of building links, relationship and reputation. However, the main purpose of optimizing is to ensure that your website will show on top of others matching to a certain query keyed in by users. The truth is there are a lot of search engines available in the web however yet only Google, Yahoo and Bing are commonly used. As Google is the most popular among all other search engines, practically, we are following the guidelines of Google. What does it take to RANK? It's not easy to rank in search engine results page. It takes time, patience and proper monitoring. Also, because search engine algorithm tends to roll out refreshes, SEO must learn to adapt to changes it poses from time to time. Here are website ranking factors that can leverage your website performance in search results. Simply consider the following:

10 W E B S I T E R A N K I N G F A C T O R S : I N A N D O U T I N F L U E N C E O F S E A R C H R E S U L T S 9 ON PAGE OPTIMIZATION This is an aspect of SEO where the physical and internal structure of the website should pass through the guidelines set by search engine. Under on page optimization, you must improve website's HTML structure, Content and architecture. These elements are directly controlled by the web owner. HTML STRUCTURE CONTENT This refers to the codes that made up your website live and viewable. The core components of website that are essential to on page optimization is title tag and meta description. Title Tag is about 65 characters that will appear boldly in SERP. It will alert search engine about the relevant information present on your website to be matched on a certain query. Aside from that a good title tag will compel users to click the website, thus increasing possibility of high click through rates (CTR). Secondly, Meta descriptions are also important because it summarizes the content of the website. It served as an advertisement copy to lead users what the website is all about. Search engine always look relevant content on the website before it will be shown up above SERP. Contents must be fresh, unique, engaging, done with research and contain keywords. Yet, it should not be a keyword stuffed content. ARCHITECTURE This refers to the crawlability of the website. Will the search engine bots easily find it? It may also refer to the speed of its loading when opened to different browsers. A website that loads slow will irritate users and will compel them to exit without further browsing. What is not good to users will not be good to search engine as well. It also refers to the URL structure of each page. URL should be short and meaningful so that it will be relevant to the topic of its content. OFF SITE OPTIMIZATION Offsite literally means out of the website. It is an effort that is influenced by users, readers, customers, and even competitors. There are 3 major factors that will affect offsite optimization. It includes Links, social media, and trust. LINKS This is very critical to Google. One link can take you out of competition. It is a make or break strategy to be on the rank. Links should be linked to a quality website. It must use anchor texts that will be anticipated to be used by a searcher. Lastly, three must be a balanced number of links pointing to your site. No too many is good for the website.

11 W E B S I T E R A N K I N G F A C T O R S : I N A N D O U T I N F L U E N C E O F S E A R C H R E S U L T S 10 SOCIAL MEDIA OPTIMIZATION Social signals tend to help a website build brand, image and reputation on the industry it belongs. If your contents are worth sharing, it can gain plenty of shares sending signal to search engine algorithm. CO-MARKETING It takes a lot of marketing before you compel somebody else to market your content. That s why guest posting emerged. It will allow you to have access with somebody else's market, customers, users that will definitely extend your reach. VIOLATIONS Violations are subject to penalties. When a website is penalized, it will certainly be kicked out of Google thus losing your rank in SERP. Violations are non-adherence to the webmaster's guidelines. Generally, each search engine is run by its own algorithm and it is guided by set of guidelines. Google guidelines are well adapted and made into algorithms which are called Panda and Penguin. LOW QUALITY CONTENT Contents should be fresh and unique. With Panda algorithm employed by Google, thin, shallow, unsubstantial or low quality content or any site affiliated to it shall be subjected to penalties. KEYWORD STUFFING CLOAKING SPAM SEO is expected to be organic, natural and user friendly. Keyword stuffing intends to manipulate ranking system. That is when contents are stuffed with keywords that don't actually need to be incorporated in it. Penguin updates do not allow keyword stuffing and a lot of websites have been penalized because of it. This is a technique of hiding the original content of the website to search engine. The search engine bots see a different site compared to those of the users. Nobody likes spam. These are irrelevant content and links that appear in the website of in its affiliate website. There are other violations subject to penalties that can greatly affect website ranking. These penalties are also changing as updates and refreshes are rolled out by search engines at unpredictable time periods.

12 W E B S I T E R A N K I N G F A C T O R S : I N A N D O U T I N F L U E N C E O F S E A R C H R E S U L T S 11 EXTERNAL FACTORS Some factors that influence ranking may not be controlled by SEO or web owner. Sometimes, it is brought by competitors and other people who wanted to extort benefit from the site resulting to an adverse condition on the owner's part. MALWARES AND HACKERS When websites are infected by malwares, it is tagged as critical by Google and a threat to users. The entire website may not be seen in the SERP. NEGATIVE SEO. This is what your competitors may do to your site. They will be badmouthing and build unnatural links to make your website appear spammy to Google. Pulling it out to SERP. Negative SEO cannot be prevented but you can always find a way to protect your website from the danger it poses. Ranking in SERP is influenced by several factors. You as the web owner, your users, and other people who may have some hidden agenda against your site must be vigilant in every SEO strategy that affects the performance of your website. Following the webmaster guidelines is just 75% of the components before you master SEO. You have to be conscious of the trends and updates in the search engine world. It will allow you to generate proactive and reactive SEO technique to protect and maintain top spot in Google search engine results page

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14 GOOGLE ALGORITHM I: PENGUIN THE SCRAPER 13 THE COVERAGE OF THE PENGUIN ALGORITHM Penalties create dismantling in the SERP. When the website is penalized it can be a single page only or the entire website. Google employed different algorithms to have a focused task in cleaning up the Google SERP. One of these is Penguin Algorithm. It aims to eradicate spammy and over optimized websites. It promotes natural and organic way of ranking in the SERP. It was first rolled and felt on April 24, What does it TARGET? LOW QUALITY LINKS Basically, Penguin works on websites with huge low quality links. Websites are penalized because of unnatural links that aims to manipulate the ranking system. It scraped out spammy and worthless links that crowd the internet. UNNATURAL INBOUND LINKS These are also known as incoming links, or links that point back to the website. Natural links pertain to user generated links that are organic and purposely made to inform or affiliate a relevant site. Unnatural links are intended to manipulate the ranking system. This happens because Google put weight or votes on each link that will be the basis for gaining spot in SERP. Unnatural links are spam in nature. It doesn't give meaning and does not give value to users. It violates the webmaster's guidelines. HIGH NUMBER OF SITE-WIDE LINKS Site-wide links are links that repetitively appear on a webpage. It can be usually found on the sidebar or footer of a website. Site-wide links also try to deceive the algorithm as a website can have thousands of pages where the same link with same anchor texts appears. AGGRESSIVE INTERNAL LINKING A website with multiple pages can be internally linked especially if one page is relevant to another. However, internal linking should not be large enough to alert the algorithm that it looks spammy. Internal linking should be limited to pages that when linked together will give users better understanding of the contents of the website. EXCESSIVE LINKS FROM LOW QUALITY SITES Google does not want to be prejudice about a website yet the reputation of the website where it is linked to can affect its own reputation. Domain authority, page rank, traffic and content/ads ratio of a website are some of the determinants to consider that it is a low quality site.

15 G O O G L E A L G O R I T H M I : P E N G U I N T H E S C R A P E R 14 LOW QUALITY DIRECTORY LISTING AND ARTICLE MARKETING There are lots of directories in the Internet. However, not all of these are beneficial to the website; also some of these directories allow multiple submissions that can create useless links. Multiple same links from one domain is considered spam. Contents weigh a lot to algorithm. Unethical SEO practice includes auto generated articles where a link will be inserted even if it's not needed. This black hat SEO technique will put danger to a website. IRRELEVANT TO THE WEBSITE Links are supposed to build a relationship and not a mere connection. When the website where your link is coming from is not related to your website, it will be tagged as quality link. A link should be generated to make the contents of the website supported, meaningful and clear to users. OVERUSING OF MATCH ANCHOR TEXT This refers to keyword over optimization. Google requires diversity and over optimization of keywords will result to penalty. That's why long tail keywords have been introduced to avoid over optimization. Google is employing Latent Semantic Indexing, so that a long tail keyword where the target keyword is affiliated will also be given credits to the same website prioritizing the target keyword. So, when you are optimizing SEO Expert, you also have to optimize the brand name or domain of your website and long tail keywords such as local SEO Expert, or California SEO expert. OVERUSED EXACT MATCH DOMAIN Google's algorithm put much weigh on the keywords keyed by a searcher. Unethical SEO includes manipulating the websites structure to let it match with the query. Exact Match Domain or EMD is penalized because domains that do not give valuable content simply made use of its domain name to be the optimized keyword which is also mostly used by its target market. KEYWORD STUFFING Penguin algorithm punish website stuffed with its keywords. It also manipulates the ranking system because it deceitfully creates credits for its website to be shown up in SERP. SEO used to follow keywords density that even it's not needed in the content, it is purposely inserted to complete the density required. DOORWAY PAGES This is an intuitive spamming wherein a website will be created for spamdexing. It means that a user will see a different page that has been indexed by Google but he or she will be sent to a different page. This is black hat tactic that takes the credit of another website to direct users to a low quality website.

16 G O O G L E A L G O R I T H M I : P E N G U I N T H E S C R A P E R 15 CLOAKING This is a process of deceiving Google bots or the algorithm crawlers. The website is differently seen by the bots and the users. Since Google will value what the bots have been indexed, it may disregard what the users can see. But with Penguin algorithm this underground tactic is punishable and considered as a violation to the web masters guideline. UNMODERATED SITE As a web owner you have the duty to protect your site against spammers. SEO strategy includes blog commenting or forum threading by which links are dropped anywhere in the website. When your website is not moderated, it enticed spammers to come into the page. It makes the website susceptible to spamming and when victimized by such, Google will take action not just on the spammer but to the website itself. Penguin Algorithm eliminates these links and spam on the SERP. It promotes organic linking, thus providing clean and organic results. When Penguin was rolled out, a lot of website has been affected. Since 2012, a series of Penguin updates were released.

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18 GOOGLE ALGORITHM II: PANDA THE FARMER 17 PANDA ALGORITHM'S IMPACT ON QUERIES Penguin algorithm targets links while Panda focuses on content. Websites with spun, auto generated, no added value, useless and non-worthy to read contents are kicked out by Panda. Yet, when does QUALITY CONTENT BECOME QUALIFIED TO GOOGLE? o o o o o o o Researched and Right Information Presented No Duplicate Contents No Grammatical Mistakes Content Reliability, relevancy and recency Fresh and Unique Eye-catching Content Made for users not for search engines Google regards contents as qualitative if it was created to inform and be valuable to users. Before Panda was implemented it was made to put more weight on links. What were THE VIOLATIONS UNDER PANDA? CONTENT FARMING It is a technique used by most web owners to simply satisfy the algorithm by providing large amounts of contextual content. Often, web owners hire writers to simply create mass amount of contents that can range from poor to very poor because these are not intended for users but to search engine crawlers. A website employing content farming will only generate low quality and unsubstantial contents. KEYWORD STUFFING It is actually part of Penguin algorithm, yet it is also considered a concern to Panda. Contents used to have keyword densities. Yet, with Panda on the row, densities are eradicated to make a content look natural. HIGH ADS CONTENT Websites having high ads/content ratio can irritate a user. These types of contents are serving the advertisements more than the users. Panda was implemented to get rid of websites having low contents that do not give user experience. It was first launched on February 24th, 2011; it targeted websites with thin content. As an algorithm update, it is expected to be rolled out periodically; however Matt Cutts, the head of Google Spam Detection Team announced that Panda will be integrated on Google's data refreshes that happen from time to time. Therefore, the strict implementation of valuable and quality contents should be also properly integrated in every SEO campaign.

19 G O O G L E A L G O R I T H M I I : P A N D A T H E F A R M E R 18 Still it aims for Through the employment of Panda algorithm, contents in the website are expected to be more meaningful, fruitful, valuable and useful than before. Though contents are not aimed to get links but it will be organically converted to a link bait'. A quality content can be shared by users and thus organically creating a backlink to the content of the website. In such case, organic rankings expected.

20 19 Since you re AWESOME you deserve a BONUS

21 20 Tools and Resources KEYWORD RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS FREE KEYWORD TOOL FROM GOOGLE WORDTRACKER SEMRUSH WEBSITE ANALYSIS OPEN SITE EXPLORER SEO QUAKE BE AWESOME! NEVER FORGET WHAT RULES AND GUIDELINES ARE GOOGLE WEBMASTER GUIDELINES BING WEBMASTER GUIDELINES SCREAMING FROG SEO SPIDER COPYSCAPE W3C LINK CHECKER GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOL GOOGLE ANALYTICS START PROPER SEO WITH GOOGLE SEO STARTER GUIDE BING WEBMASTER TOOL WEBPAGETEST GOOGLE PAGE SPEED AHREFS COMPETITOR ANALYSIS OPEN SITE EXPLORER DISAVOW BAD LINKS GOOGLE DISAVOW TOOL

22 21 For Technical Matters about SEO you deserve a personal consultation with me for FREE. JUST DROP ME A LINE. a l g o m e a l s e o b l o g. c o m