Introduction 1
About This Book 1
Foolish Assumptions 2
Icons Used in This Book 3
Beyond the Book 4
Part 1: Getting Started with SEO 5
Chapter 1: Surveying the Search Engine Landscape 7
Investigating Search Engines and Directories 8
Search sites, indexes, and engines 9
Search directories 9
Spidered directories 11
Pay-per-click systems 11
Keeping the terms straight 12
Why bother with search engines? 13
Where Do People Search? 14
It's all the same! 16
Search Engine Magic 16
How do they do it? 17
Stepping into the programmers' shoes 17
Gathering Your Tools 19
Chapter 2: Search Results, Deconstructed 21
The Big Two: Organic and PPC 22
Looking at Local Results 24
Checking Out Shopping Results 25
Staying Current with News Results 26
Viewing Video and Image Results 27
And Plenty More 28
Getting Friendly with Social Results 29
Collecting Bits n' Pieces 30
Chapter 3: Your One-Hour, Search Engine-Friendly Website Makeover 33
Is Your Site Indexed? 34
Google 34
Yahoo! and Bing 36
Taking Action If You're Not Listed 36
No links 37
Unreliable Web Server 38
robots txt is blocking your site 38
robots meta tags are blocking pages 38
Unreadable navigation 39
Dealing with dynamic pages 40
Bad domain name 41
The canonical tag 42
Picking Good Keywords 42
Examining Your Pages 43
Using frames 43
Looking at the TITLE tags 45
Examining the DESCRIPTION tag 46
Giving search engines something to read 47
Getting Your Site Indexed 50
Chapter 4: Beating the Competition: Planning a Powerful Search Engine Strategy 53
Don't Trust Your Web Designer 54
Understanding the Limitations 55
Eyeing the Competition 56
Getting a gut feel for the competition 57
Why is my competitor ranking so high? 59
Going Beyond Getting to #1 60
Highly targeted keyword phrases 60
Understanding the search tail 61
Controlling Search Engine Variables 63
Keywords 63
Content 64
Page optimization 64
Submissions 65
Links 65
Time and the Google sandbox 65
Determining Your Plan of Attack 67
Look Away a Few Minutes 68
Two Things to Remember 69
Chapter 5: Making Your Site Useful and Visible 73
Learning from Amazon 73
Revealing the Secret But Essential Rule of Web Success 75
The evolving, incorrect secret 76
Uncovering the real secret 76
Showing a bias for content 77
Making Your Site Work Well 78
Limiting multimedia 79
Using text, not graphics 79
Don't be cute 80
Making it easy to move around 80
Providing different routes 81
Using long link text 82
Don't keep restructuring 82
Editing and checking spelling 83
Ugly doesn't sell 83
Panda - Google Endorses Good Design 86
Keep It Fresh (Perhaps) 88
Part 2: Building Search Engine-Friendly Sites 89
Chapter 6: Picking Powerful Keywords 91
Understanding the Importance of Keywords 92
Thinking Like Your Prey 95
Starting Your Keyword Analysis 96
Identifying the obvious keywords 96
Looking at your website's analytics 96
Examining competitors' keyword tags 97
Brainstorming with colleagues 97
Looking closely at your list 97
Using a Keyword Tool 101
Making Sure You Understand Your Tool 104
Working with Your Tool 105
Choosing Your Keywords 106
Cam again? You might be missing the target 107
Ambiguous terms 107
Very broad terms 107
Picking combinations 108
Using Your Keywords 109
Chapter 7: Creating Pages That Search Engines Love 111
Preparing Your Site 112
Finding a hosting company 112
Picking a domain name 112
Site speed 114
Mobile readiness 114
HTTPS 115
Seeing Through a Search Engine's Eyes 118
Understanding Keyword Concepts 121
Picking one or two phrases per page 121
Checking prominence 122
Watching density 122
Placing keywords throughout your site 123
Creating Your Web Pages 123
Naming files 124
Creating directory structure 125
Viewing TITLE tags 125
Using the DESCRIPTION meta tag 127
Tapping into the KEYWORDS meta tag 130
Using other meta tags 131
Including image ALT text 133
Adding body text 133
Creating headers: CSS versus tags 134
Formatting text 136
Creating links 136
Using other company and product names 137
Creating navigation structures that search engines can read 139
Blocking searchbots 139
Chapter 8: Designing for Speed 143
The Importance of Speed 143
What Is Site Speed? 144
So How Is My Site Doing? 145
Speeding Up Your Site 147
Picking the right host 148
Using HTTP/2 149
Fixing your site 150
Site-speed plug-ins and caching 151
Using a CDN 151
Speeding up mobile pages 152
Chapter 9: Designing for Mobile 153
How Mobile Affects SEO 153
Is Your Site Mobile Friendly? 154
Making Your Site Mobile Friendly 157
Mobile-First Indexing 158
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) 159
Web Light - Google's Trick for Speeding Up Pages 160
Chapter 10: Using Structured Data Markup 161
Creating Rich Snippets 163
A Special Case: Video and Images 167
Pick Your Data Format 168
Providing Knowledge Panel Information 169
Getting Help 170
Data Highlighter 170
Markup Helper 171
The Structured Data Testing Tool 171
The Structured Data Dashboard 171
CMS plug-ins 172
Chapter 11: Avoiding Things That Search Engines Hate 173
Understanding Content Value and Thin Content 174
Avoiding Image, Video, and Animation Problems 176
Avoiding image problems 176
Keeping content out of video? 177
Flush the Flash animation 178
Links That Aren't Links 178
Avoiding Complicated URLs 180
Managing Dynamic Web Pages 181
Understanding dynamic-page URLs 182
Fixing your dynamic web page problem 183
Avoiding Session IDs in URLs 184
Foregoing Frames 187
The HTML nitty-gritty of frames 189
Handling iframes 190
Considering JavaScript and AJAX 191
Fixing Bits and Pieces 192
Avoid the urge to copy and paste from MS Word 192
Forwarded pages 192
Special characters 193
Chapter 12: Dirty Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap 195
Tricking Search Engines 196
Deciding whether to trick 196
What the Search Engines Want to See 197
Do these tricks work? 198
Concrete Shoes, Cyanide, TNT - An Arsenal of Dirty Deeds 199
Keyword, stacking, stuffing, and spamming 199
Hiding (and shrinking) keywords 200
Big lists of keywords 203
Hiding links 203
Duplicating pages and sites 203
Page Swapping and Page Jacking 204
Doorway and Information Pages 204
Using Redirects and Cloaking 206
Understanding redirects 206
Examining cloaking 207
Structured Markup Strategies 209
Much, Much More 210
Tricks Versus Strategies 210
Link Tricks 211
Paying the Ultimate Penalty 211
Chapter 13: Bulking Up Your Site: Competing with Content 213
Creating Content Three Ways 214
Writing Your Own Stuff 215
Summarizing online articles 216
Reviewing websites and products 216
Convincing Someone Else to Write Content 217
Using OPC (Other People's Content) 218
Understanding Copyright - It's Not Yours! 219
Hunting for Other People's Content 221
Keywords 221
Product information 222
Websites and e-mail newsletters 223
Government sources 224
Content Syndication 225
Traditional syndication services 229
RSS syndication feeds 229
Open content and copyleft 231
Search results pages 232
Press releases 232
Q&A areas 233
Message boards 233
Blogs 234
A Word about Duplicated Content 235
Content Is King 236
Chapter 14: Finding Traffic Through Local Search Marketing 239
Why You Shouldn't Skip This Chapter 240
Understanding Local Search Marketing's Importance 240
Looking through Local Search 241
How Does Local Search Work? 243
Search terms 243
Partner and localized sites 243
IP numbers 244
Two Ways to Reach People Locally 246
Localizing Your Web Pages 247
Keywording the pages 247
Use the Geo meta tags 249
Registering for Local Search 250
Yahoo!'s Listing Confusion 250
Grabbing control of (or adding) your business listing 252
Increasing the odds 255
The Local Directory Listing Services 256
The benefits of business directories 257
Don't forget local directories 258
The Other Side of Local: Review Sites 259
Removing bad reviews 261
Diluting bad reviews 262
Identifying important review sites 263
Working with the Yellow Pages 263
Part 3: Adding Your Site to the Indexes and Directories 267
Chapter 15: Getting Your Pages into the Search Engines 269
Linking Your Site for Inclusion 270
Submitting to the Major Search Engines 271
Simple Link Submissions to the Major Systems 271
Working with the Webmaster Accounts 272
Submitting an XML Sitemap 273
Submitting URLs 278
Pinging search engines 279
Using If-Modified-Since 280
Using Webmaster Tools, Too 281
Submitting to Secondary Systems 283
Chapter 16: Submitting to the Directories 285
Pitting Search Directories Against Search Engines 285
Why Are Directories So Significant? 288
Submitting to the Search Directories 289
The General Directories 289
Finding Specialized Directories 290
Getting the link 291
Using Local Directories 293
Chapter 17: Product Search: Remember the Shopping Directories and Retailers 295
Understanding Where People Search for Products 296
Working with the Product Indexes 298
Google Shopping Ads 300
Connexity: Yahoo! Shopping, PriceGrabber,
Shopzilla, and more 301
Bing Shopping 303
Amazon product ads 303
Shopping com 303
Pricewatch 303
Exploring More Shopping Services 305
The Classified-Ad Sites 305
Working with E-Commerce Marketplaces 306
Working with eBay 307
Working with Amazon 307
Managing Your Data 308
The data you need 309
Formatting guidelines 310
Creating your spreadsheet 311
Getting those product URLs 311
Creating individual sheets 313
Creating and uploading your data files 316
Multichannel, automated data management 317
Part 4: After You've Submitted Your Site 319
Chapter 18: Using Link Popularity to Boost Your Position 321
Why Search Engines Like Links 322
Google: All about links 322
Links: The gift that keeps on giving 323
Understanding Page Value and PageRank 324
PageRank - One part of the equation 325
The PageRank algorithm 326
Measuring PageRank 329
Leaking PageRank 331
Pseudo PageRank Alternatives 332
Page Relevance 333
Hubs and Neighborhoods 334
Trust in TrustRank 335
Inserting Keywords into Links 336
The Googlebomb lives 337
PageRank versus Keywords 338
Get a good mix 339
Good Links and Bad 339
Recognizing Links with No Value 340
Identifying links that aren't links 341
Identifying nofollow links 343
Recalling a Few Basic Rules about Links 344
Chapter 19: Finding Sites to Link to Yours 347
Controlling Your Links 348
Converting good links to bad 348
The perfect link text 348
Doing a Link Analysis 350
Google 350
Link popularity software 351
Generating Links, Step by Step 353
Register with directories 355
Ask friends and family 355
Ask employees 356
Contact association sites 356
Contact manufacturers' websites 356
Contact companies you do business with 357
Ask to be a featured client 357
Submit to announcement sites and newsletters 357
Create a little linkbait 358
Find sites linking to your competition 358
Search for keyword add url 359
Mention your site in discussion groups 360
Working with blogs 361
Pursue offline PR 362
Give away content 362
Apply for online awards 362
Advertise 362
Use a service or buy links 363
Just wait 364
Fuggetaboutit 365
Be Careful Whom You Link To! 368
Chapter 20: Even More Great Places to Get Links 371
Got Content? Syndicate It! 371
The Duplicate Content Problem 372
Four syndication technologies 374
Getting the most out of syndication 376
Article libraries: Getting the word out 376
Syndicating Outreach and Guest Blogging 378
Syndicating Utilities and Infographics 379
And More Link-Building Ideas 381
PR and Link Building 382
The nofollow Curse 382
Who's Going to Do All This Work?! 383
Chapter 21: Social Networking - Driven by Drivel 385
Just What Is Social Networking? 385
Beware the Social Networking Hype 387
The Drivel Factor 388
The SEO Benefits of Social Networking 389
Getting links through social networking sites 389
Grabbing search engine real estate 391
Promotional Benefit 391
The social networking sites are search engines 392
Social Networking - A Book in Itself 392
Chapter 22: Video and Images: Putting Your Best Face Forward 393
The SEO Benefits of Video 394
Videos on your site 395
Playing the video search engine game 398
Grabbing search engine real estate 399
Ranking Images 400
Chapter 23: Beyond the Basics 403
What's on the Page? 403
Organic Results 404
Sitelinks Below Organic Results 404
Search Boxes 406
Special Organic Formatting 406
Knowledge Panels 408
Featured Snippets 408
Local Results 410
Image and Video Results 410
PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising Results 410
Shopping Results 411
News Results 411
Twitter Results 411
Getting Multiple Results on the Search Results Page 412
Chapter 24: When Google Bites Back: A Guide to Catastrophe 415
How, and How Much? 415
Imposing a penalty 416
The Google spam team 417
Is It Really a Penalty? A Little Analysis 418
Is the site still indexed? 419
Check with Google Search Console 419
Has Google flagged your site as suspicious? 421
Has the number of pages in the index significantly changed? 422
What happens when you search for your domain name? 422
What happens when you search for the domain name minus the TLD? 422
What happens when you search for a text string in your tag? 422
What happens when you search for a text string in your home page? 423
Try a penalty checker 423
Pulling It All Together: Have You Been Penalized? 424
Dealing with Manual Actions 426
Reconsideration requests 427
Psychological warfare? 428
Dealing with Algorithmic Actions 429
Digging Your Way Out of the Hole 430
Finding on-page problems 432
Finding link problems 433
Finding domain name problems 433
Sitting and waiting 433
Part 5: The Part of Tens 435
Chapter 25: Ten-Plus Myths and Mistakes 437
Myth: It's All about Meta Tags and Submissions 437
Myth: Web Designers and Developers Understand Search Engines 438
Mistake: You Don't Know Your Keywords 438
Mistake: Building the Site and Then Bringing in the SEO Expert 439
Myth: $25 Can Get Your Site a #1 Position 439
Myth: Google Partners Get You #1 Positions 440
Mistake: You Don't Have Pages Optimized for Specific Keywords 440
Mistake: Your Pages Are Empty 441
Myth: Pay Per Click Is Where It's At 441
Mistake: Ignoring Site Usability and Aesthetics 442
Mistake: Believing Everything You Read 442
Chapter 26: Ten-Plus Ways to Stay Updated 445
Let Me Help Some More 446
The Search Engines Themselves 446
Google's Webmaster Pages 446
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide 447
Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines 447
Bing SEO Tips 448
Matt Cutts and John Mueller 448
Google's Webmaster Help YouTube Channel 449
The Official Google Webmaster Help Group 449
Search Engine News and Tips Sites 450
Chapter 27: Ten-Plus Useful Things to Know 451
Checking Your Site Rank 451
Checking for Broken Links 453
Assessing Traffic with the Alexa Toolbar 454
Finding Your Keyword Density 455
Analyzing Your Site's Traffic 455
Tracking Phone Calls 457
Checking for Duplication and Theft 458
Using 301 Redirects 458
You Need an Attractive Site 459
Using SEO Tools 460
Fixing Your Reputation 461
Working With Multiregional and Multilingual Sites 463
Partially Blocking Google 464
Index 465
