Fundamentals
#1: If you think the phrase “content is king” is a cliché, think again. Content is value in the SEO industry; even if you have invested on all the technical SEO you can get your hands on, without quality content, your rankings won’t budge.
#2: Quality first, not quantity. If traffic means your reputation gets abused and vandalized by nuisance visitors, then it’s not worth it.
#3: Focus on catering to the needs of human beings, not search robots.
#4: Google is a bit overrated so don’t be gung-ho on it. Google may be the biggest search engine, but focus your rankings on other search engines too, like Bing.
#5: Don’t be overconfident. Ranking well means your competitors are working round the clock to beat you.
#6: Never attempting to trick search engines. Search engines always have a way of catching up with cheats.
#7: Do not use SEO as a stand-alone campaign. Integrate it with your advertising and social campaigns.
#8: Don’t hesitate to link up with good, authoritative sites. The Internet is built for relationships and fostering good relations with other sites can get you quality inbound links.

Targeted keywords
#9: Target relevant keywords. Also: don’t experiment with popular but less relevant search terms.
#10: Try localized optimization in order to drive more relevant traffic toward your website.
#11: Target highly specific and niche keywords.
#12: Monitor how the volume and quality of your search terms are driving traffic by using Google Analytics.

Website
#13: Internal link building is crucial so use highly descriptive anchor tags to emphasize to search engines how relevant your site is.
#14: Tone down on Flash animations; they are not entirely useful to SEO.
#15: Page titles are a relevant on-site factor so construct title tags using target keywords.
#16: Don’t rely heavily on meta-tags; search engines aren’t as impressed by them.
#17: Provide alternative text to images so make it accessible to visually-impaired users.
#18: Provide an XML sitemap to aid indexing and to troubleshoot indexing issues.
#19: Use unique content. If you must replicate, rewrite the text and give attribution to the original source.
#20: If possible, your headlines should feature keywords and use h1 and h2 tags to improve layout and relevance to search engines.
#21: Make sure your header tags are well-organized. Use only single tags to avoid penalties.
#22: Every URL should be descriptive and not functional, i.e. use www.anydomain.com/here-is-an-example and not www.anydomain.com/117665.
#23: If you have a page that features interesting links, do not call the entire page “Links” as this may be mistaken for link farming.
#2; Use Google’s Webmaster Tools to guide your optimization.
#25: Use Webmaster tools to check and fix broken links on a regular basis.

While Google still holds the lead in terms of overall market share, Yahoo! has been making adjustments and has since been performing strongly against its competition.

Google and Yahoo!’s Differences

Though both are playing in the same field, lots of differences set Google apart from Yahoo! and vice versa. For web developers, it is especially important to take note of the differences between the two search engines’ criteria when it comes to ranking websites and giving relevance to web pages. Here are some of the differences between the two:

1. Number of backlinks on the website

For Yahoo!, it focuses more on the actual quantity of backlinks a webpage has. There are some websites that have a massive amount of backlinks that rank high in Yahoo! SERPs but whose rank in Google is abysmal.

The difference is that Google’s focus is more directed towards the quality of the backlinks involved. They take note of the IP domains and protocols used by the sites linking back to you. If they see that several links come from just one domain then they usually disregarded it in their counts.

2. The issue of using multiple domains for backlinks

Furthering the issue discussed above, Google has a very keen eye with regards to websites using multiple domains that relatively have the similar content as backlinks. They stress this fully on their SEO policy and guidelines.

Though Yahoo! seems to have a softer eye towards the said issue, the company has also stated that duplicate and mirror domains are prohibited in their search engine rankings. In general, creating multiple domains with similar content is never a good SEO strategy.

3. On link relevance

The quality of links is what’s most important for Google. No matter how many backlinks your website might have, if it’s not quality then you might as well throw away your hopes of getting higher page rankings. Yahoo! also puts weight on the quality of backlinks present in your site but they also focus more on the quantity involved. This makes Google stricter that Yahoo! in terms of link relevance in the SEO process.

4. On SEO

The differences with regards to the basic onsite SEO techniques between the two search engines is pretty much zero.

If you are thinking of ways with which to maximize your presence in both search engines, you will have to take note that Google has the larger market share at the end of the day. Plus the focus that Google gives on the actual quality of links means that their guidelines will be pretty much applicable to Yahoo! and the other lesser known search engines. The SEO process is still a pretty complicated endeavor to do. Being guided accordingly is a must for every web developer out there.

Google Maps is a tool that enables users to search for the exact address of establishments not only in the United States but also from other countries in the world. Just recently, Google Maps has officially launched an updated version that will allow business owners to tag their establishments in local result pages.

The service will cost businesses a total of $25 a month but the pay back will be so much more. Not only will they be able to help their customers locate their stores or franchises correctly, Google has also given businesses the chance to update their customers about the latest promos that their businesses are having.

The tagging service will come in play here. The yellow tag prices, aptly named Posts—info that can be seen on the result pages just below your establishment’s name—will contain anything regarding your business that you want advertised. These posts will entirely be on the business owners’ discretion. These posts can include sales, discounts, happy hour specials, and many others.

Before its full launch, this tool was only provided in 11 states but now that Google has fully launched this service in the market, it will be available in all of the United States. With many business owners turning more and more to the internet for their marketing needs, Google is leveling up and making sure that they provide their users what they want and need.

Other countries will also be involved in this massive Google Maps upgrade. These countries include Austria, Belgium, France, and Germany among others. Now, advertising your business has never been easier.

Google addresses this by their introduction of the Webmaster tools. Just recently, they upgraded their service so that users will be able to receive better 404 reporting. A bad 404 reporting is otherwise known as a soft 404. 404 is a response code usually given by web crawlers to indicate that a website does not exist given a URL. A soft 404 happens when a non-existent website is recognized as existing by a web crawler when in fact it does not. Crawlers usually give a 200 code response for pages found successfully. With the soft 404, a site that has already changed URLs or simply does not exist anymore is still given a 200 code.

Instead of a web page together with its contents, users are given a page that says the page does not exist anymore but is still recognized by the crawler. This can pose the problem of significant customer traffic being directed to that non-existent URL instead of the site’s latest one.

Google upgraded their Webmasters tool and gave their users a chance to filter these soft 404s themselves. Eliminating 404s are easy and important in the success of your whole SEO strategy. Here are some tips that Google has for webmasters to decrease their soft 404 occurrence:

1. Regularly check if there are soft 404s or soft 404-like URLs listed on your Webmaster tools.
2. Determine if the URLs of your soft 404s have the right content and is actually not a soft 404.
3. For your actual soft 404s, they should 301-redirect the correct site URL which means that if a URL is really dead, visitors should be directed properly to its latest existing URL.
4. Confirm all of your changes by using the “Fetch as GoogleBot” feature in your Webmasters tools. Also, set-up your 404 pages in such a way that your customers will be directed accordingly in their searches.

Google, one of the major players in the SEO realm, has constantly been on the development process to make sure that they keep their rankings as accurate as possible. They have also increasingly tracked down websites and meticulously inspected them to keep the sanctity of their search results pages.

Get Excited with Google’s Caffeine

Google’s latest invention is aimed at furthering the cause of accurate search engine optimization. Released early in 2010, Google Caffeine is intended to fix the glitches and holes that many web developers have learned to exploit over time.

It tracks down sites that are utilizing misleading reciprocal links in order to get ahead of the competition. This tactic results in them having surging ahead of those who painstakingly labor through the process of natural link building.

The release of Google Caffeine does not discredit those websites that employ paid and reciprocal link building. Not at all! Caffeine is intended to clean up the SEO mess brought about by too much bad and spam links. Caffeine aims to reward those who work hard in their link building processes and penalize those who cheat in their processes.

Technical Details about Google Caffeine

Back in November of 2009, Matt Cutts, a Google engineer working for the company’s Search Quality Group, said that Google will be introducing Google Caffeine in a gradual pace. This resulted in many web developers having no idea when Caffeine would be fully implemented at that time.

Caffeine is basically a newer and much improved version of the Google search engine. Its algorithms differ to those of the older versions because it is intended to provide a faster and more comprehensive search engine results to its users. Google caffeine relies more on keyword phrases rather than the traditional keywords to provide searchers with more comprehensive results and options that would make the users searching easier.

Also with Google Caffeine, real-time search results are suddenly pushed into the limelight. This development from Google gives more attention, not only to the relevancy posted by a website, but also as important is the freshness of the content posted.

With Google Caffeine, latest results would include updates from social networking sites or recently published articles about the topic being searched for. Taking advantage of Google Caffeine would now mean that you not only post relevant content but also post content that are up to date and fresh.

Here are some of the basic things web developers may want to know about Google Caffeine:

1. Speed matters, always

With the older version of Google, speed is not necessarily a major part of the SEO equation. On the other hand, Caffeine places relevant consideration to page speed or how fast a website can load up for their visitors. This has been a baffling development for many web developers since how fast a page loads would mean upgrading their servers to be able to hasten up their loading process.

Also, page speed depends on a variety of factors, some of which the web developer has no control over. This includes factors such as CSS, HTML Content, JavaScript, domain hosting, usage of images, graphics, and other files.

With speed being a relevant factor to a page’s search engine rankings, many website owners and developers have began to take action and upgrade their systems to ensure faster web page loading and higher rankings for their sites.

2. Think domain authority

A particular domain possesses a certain authority that search engine crawlers take into consideration when determining the ranking of your website. In Google Caffeine, this factor takes an even more important role in page rankings besides the quantity of incoming links or the former page rankings of your website.

Factors to consider when choosing domains for your site would include exact-matching domain names and significant amounts of anchor texts from diverse domains. Websites featuring all these would sometimes trump in the SERPs known authority websites such as Wikipedia, Amazon or BBC.

3. Expanded search results

With Google Caffeine, popular social networking sites are now given as much importance as regular blogs and web pages. Google Caffeine shows results coming from websites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and others, a significant change from the older Google version where updates from these websites are not really given prime consideration.

4. Domain age or longevity of domain existence

Since the SEO and SERP game is all about establishment and authority, brand new domains would have to wait their turn and build up their reputations first before they actually move up the search engine rankings. Especially with the new Google Caffeine, brand new domains would have a harder time being on top since this new development takes into consideration the time with which the domain of a certain website has existed. Already established domain names have the advantage here over the newly-made ones.

5. Domains that have exact matching names

Though a very simple factor, this is the one often ignored by many web developers. Having an exact matching domain name will make it easier for your website to be found by search engine crawlers. For example, having the domain name Financialconsultants.com will almost always shoot this website up the SERPs when visitors search for “financial consultants”. Take this into consideration the next time you plan on building a new website.

6. Google Caffeine now returns increased results

Due to the faster time with which crawlers can find and index websites, Google Caffeine has the ability to return and index a larger number of website per search.

7. Relevant Content always matters

Despite all of these other considerations, nothing is still as important as relevant content. Google may have tweaked a bit on their search algorithms in order to accommodate to this host of other factors, relevant content will still be the most important factor among them all.

Without relevant, fresh, and unique articles or posts in our website, despite all the upgrades you may have made, search engine crawlers would just bypass your website or worse even put it in a bad light. Outstanding content attracts search engine crawlers more than fancy upgrades or domain names. You can do all the upgrades that you want but always remember the bottom line of the whole search engine optimization process: CONTENT IS ALWAYS KING!

Taking Full Advantage of Google Caffeine

With real-time search results in the equation, web developers should take note that posting fresh and unique content is important in generating enough traffic and links back to their sites. Strategy is important here. Since it’s real time, web developers can take advantage of this by posting content just in time and in sync with the trending topics among search engines.

Aside from continually posting relevant content for Google Caffeine to see, web developers can also upgrade their servers to be more in line with Caffeine’s new criteria of fast browser loading. These updated search engine spiders do not like to wait for domains to load so they can search them. Almost always, they will ignore these and go to another faster website. This will not bode well with your SERP process.

All in all, the key to maximizing Google Caffeine and make sure you keep you rankings on the positive side is to always be an authority source, relevant and reputable. Provide great content. Content should be information rich and helpful to your visitors. Do this and the good search engine rankings will eventually come.

However, there are situations when these elements won’t be giving optimal results. It may be possible that the site is still not able to attract more incoming traffic that it is supposed to do. In this case, your site may still be lacking the necessary fundamentals that are needed before it can fully benefit from search engine optimization. The following sections will guide you through several basic aspects of your site that you have to scrutinize.

The Need for More Quality Content

Before anything else, your website should be carefully well-planned when it comes to site content. Content is one of the biggest determinants of SEO success. To make sure that your site is prepared for an SEO campaign, you have to fill your site with great content. And when we say great content, it means that you have the responsibility of giving the site fresh high quality content that can attract a reader’s interest and more importantly, a search engine’s attention. This requires constant effort; you have to update your site with unique content regularly. You have to focus on quality and quantity. This will surely get a search engine’s attention.

Search Engine Friendly Content Management Systems

Your site should be able to receive all the content its needs without difficulty and in an organized manner so that it can get picked up and indexed by search engines such as Google. You can only do this if your website has organization among its various pages. Using a content management system will certainly help. A content management system, or CMS, enables a user to crank out content and deliver content to a site efficiently and effectively so that it gets noticed by a search engine. It makes the pages within your site search engine friendly by adding permalinks or search engine friendly URLs. A CMS also allows you to edit or modify a URL to reflect the keywords in your title or topic.

There are available content management systems out there, such as Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress, all of which allow you to assign tags or tag clouds to your posts. In turn, this will enable you to establish categories within your site in which to organize your content. Also, using a CMS permits you to control a title tag and meta content description of your pages.

Fixing Internal Navigation Issues

A content management system, as described above, can help you avoid several internal navigation problems you might encounter. If you don’t have this tool, your pages would scatter all over your site, leaving your site disorganized especially if your site has tons of material. It would give search engine crawlers more difficult time to index your site. As a result, your site would not be recognized and ranked by a search engine properly.

Also, aside from a CMS, you can use Xenu to help you solve internal navigation problems. Xenu, or Xenu’s Link Sleuth, is a link-checking software that can help you verify your entire website for broken hyperlinks. It provides you a detailed overview of your website’s internal linking structure and diagnoses any problems related to it. This will surely help you fix your site’s broken internal link so you can create a new XML sitemap that you can submit to Google and help your site get indexed by the search engine properly.

One Homepage Policy

It is important that a search engine like Google can only find your website in one location. It is possible that your site can be in multiple locations or URLs. However, it would give your site some SEO problems if you are not careful with establishing your home page URL appropriately.

For instance, your site home page can be usually seen in http://www.mywebsite.com. However, you can also type in mywebsite.com without the preceding WWW in the address bar and your same home page will also appear. Actually, there can be other ways to type in your URL, like adding a trailing slash or none, among many others:

http://www.mywebsite.com

http://mywebsite.com

http://www.mywebsite.com/index.html

http://mywebsite.com/index.html

http://www.mywebsite.com/index.htm

http://mywebsite.com/index.htm

http://www.mywebsite.com/default.asp

http://mywebsite.com/default.asp

Ideally, all of these URLs will all lead to the same home page. However, even if it seems that they lead you to one place, there’s a problem with how the address bar and search engines interpret them. For instance, if you key in your URL mywebsite.com without the WWW and you are lead to your site, there’s a possibility that what appears in the address bar is still the non-WWW version of your URL. Now there lies the problem.

A search engine reads URLs very literally and does not make any distinction with how you type in a URL. Search engines consider the given links above as different pages since the URLs are different, even if they seem to all work out to point to the same page. Without doing any corrections, you now have multiple duplicate pages on your site. Search engines would interpret it as different sites with link and thus, splitting up all the link juice and PageRank values which would be more effective if focused on one site.

To solve this issue, you need to be prepared for the possibility that multiple URLs can be used to direct to your site. First, you have to select your preferred primary URL for your site. The preferred URL for a homepage is www.mywebsite.com. Then ensure that every variation of the URL ends up leading to your primary URL and uses the same URL structure. For the Google search engine, you can do this using the Tools section of Google’s Webmaster Central, where you can assign your preferred URL.

Next, you need to setup 301 redirects for those URL variations. There are other ways of redirects to other URLS that are not your primary, like JavaScript or meta redirects, but they could give you more complications. Using 301 redirects is the surest and safest method for the SEO process. A 301 redirect is permanent and maintains search engine rankings. It also passes the search engine ranking score of the URL variation to your primary URL, helping your main URL appear and gradually rank in search engine results pages. Lastly, you should also check your site navigation to make sure that your internal links will also point to your primary URL.

When it comes to choosing your URL, it’s up to you how your URL looks like. You can opt for either the www or the non-www version, to have trailing slash or none, and opt for any top-level domain (albeit .com is the most commonly used). The important thing is to designate one and be consistent with it.

The Importance of a Smooth Link Structure, Site Architecture, and Hierarchy

To make the most out of your SEO efforts, you should also consider how your site is built and how you design your site’s navigation. How you lay your foundations like a website’s architecture and its overall linking structure will also determine the success of your website and your business bottom line. If your website is confusing to navigate, you will lose visitors. Not only that, search engine spiders will also have a difficult time crawling over your pages. Therefore, this will hurt your site’s search engine rankings badly, since the way your links are structured is also given significant weight aside from the anchor texts present within your pages.

Building Your Site like a Silo

It is important to make sure that your site structure makes sense, meaning that your website allows all your visitors to find what they need conveniently and search engine to index all your pages properly. Make sure that your site navigation is search engine friendly as well.

The best way to optimize your site, make it more search engine friendly, and attract more targeted visitors is to establish a solid website architecture, or a “silo website architecture.” Silo structured websites will surely give your site the needed boost in the search engine results pages.

A silo—for this discussion—simply means “category” or categorizing. Silo architecture is a vertical page linking design that organizes your content into structured themes while the content of each page, including titles, headers, and URLs, all synergize to reinforce the overall theme of your site. It is the method of linking your pages and designing your site so that all major search engines can be easily drawn to your site. Through this structure, you create distinct sections for each category that are all related to the overall site’s theme. Cross-linking between silos or categories should be designed in such a way that links lead to the landing pages of other silos if your content contains keywords or anchor texts that reinforce those silos’ themes.

The silo architecture has been proven to boost your search engine rankings because the way how your pages are linked to your home page and vice versa gives your pages more link juice, telling search engines that they are important. It signals search engines the overall theme and significance of your site while providing a convenient navigation for your visitors.

When you carefully plan your site’s navigation from the very beginning, your site will be able to rank better with less effort and address a specific topic of interest, therefore attracting more visitors.

Do you remember the time when you unknowingly clicked a link to a website you want to check out and patiently waited for the page to load when you realized it was taking a bit long to appear? And adding to your annoyance, an ad banner of a dating site comes out of nowhere? Maybe you told yourself, “Hey, this is NOT what I am looking for!” and searched for another related website that had no annoying pop-ups.

Does anyone miss the dismal age of pop-ups? Nobody does. Nobody wanted their browsing experience be spoiled by a flood of advertisements that they weren’t even interested in. More often than not, users close the pop-ups the moment they appear.

Clearly, pop-ups used to be the mainstream of online marketing, but users didn’t like it. When most Internet users think of pop-ups, they think of the irritating ad that comes out of nowhere, making the web experience more inconvenient and annoying. Moreover, pop-ups can create trouble not only to users, but also to the websites, their owners, and their search engine optimization efforts.

Bad for the User

Pop-ups are used to display information or advertise products and/or services. At times, they may look like browsers of normal web pages and can cause confusion to the users. A pop-up may not be even related to the site itself, thus annoying the user with its irrelevance to the site and its obstruction to the browsing experience. People tend to close the pop-up down, or worse, close the websites by mistake because the pop-up looks like a regular browser. More often than not, people would click away from your site and never come back because the website confused them or the site did not give the necessary content that users expected from the site and needed immediately.

Some pop-ups appear as a result in the site being reloaded, causing loss of information for the users. Some appear to install software and clicking on some may also cause additional windows to open. On some occasions, pop-ups have victimized users to the extent that a pop-up keeps on appearing or regenerating even after it was closed, or it just stays in front of the browser unless the pop-up is closed manually.

Pop-ups have become a source of Internet hostility and are a major turnoff for users. People may develop resentment and mistrust towards websites that abuse pop-ups as they utterly spoil the browsing and learning experiences.

Bad for the Website

Pop-ups have become a mainstay of the Internet’s dark side. Statistically, pop-ups have been 50% more noticeable than regular ad banners, according to a Statistical Research Report. However, it has also been proven that pop-ups have been 100% more likely to be seen as disruptive and unhelpful. Simply, pop-ups make you more effective in advertising a product or service, but it also makes you TWICE more annoying than ad banners, thus hurting the reputation of your website and driving away MORE visitors in the long run.

Pop-ups do more harm than good as they create more obstacles between your viewers and your pages, leading to less traffic conversions. A clear indication of this is the emergence of more pop-up blockers, such as the Google Toolbar pop-up blocker, that prevent pop-ups from being displayed on your screen. They are now widely available for anyone to download for free. With the widespread use of pop-ups, pop-up repulsion has clearly developed overtime amongst users. This in turn has paved the way for a growing number of pop-up countermeasures users can freely utilize.

Moreover, a growing number of assisted technologies, such as screen reading software that allow blind computer users to access information despite their disabilities by reading aloud what is on the computer screen, do not support pop-ups. Thus, it leaves these potential users incapable to enter your site. Lastly, having pop-ups on your site can decrease the loading speed of your pages, irritating your users and driving them away to look for other websites to get the information they need faster.

Bad for SEO

From an SEO perspective, using pop-ups on your pages can create SEO problems and can be a clear disadvantage for your site. As pointed out earlier, there are pop-up blockers that have been developed to prevent pop-ups from appearing on the screen. This is more evident especially with Google’s own toolbar with a built-in pop-up blocker. This in itself can already harm your rankings for selected keywords in search engines, especially in Google’s. Google has been clear with its message that its search engine only indexes and serves high quality pages to its users at the fastest possible time. Even if a page has remarkable content but is bombarded with many pop-up ads, Google wouldn’t bother dealing with the content. Google is strict with quality and they don’t want Adword landing pages that contain pop-ups. They always prefer clean and pop-up-free websites to index.

Also, as mentioned earlier, pop-ups slow down the loading time of your web pages. Remember that your loading speed is a major factor that determines the overall site experience and rankings of your pages in search engines. The slower the loading time of your page due to pop-ups or poor server speed, the greater the damage done to your search rankings.

If your page loads too slowly, users would leave your site. Additionally, if your site takes much longer to respond to search engine crawlers, you might face the risk of your site not getting indexed. Search engines such as Google’s would always make sure that high quality pages deserve high rankings. And a page that has poor page quality carrying a high bounce back rate due to heavy pop-up activity gets much poorer search rankings.

Not Worth It

Let’s face it: using pop-ups is just not worth it. Indeed, it would make your site more noticeable, but for the WRONG reasons. It would not only annoy your users and drive them away from your site in the long run; you are damaging the overall browsing experience of your users and the reputation of your site. And ultimately, things will backfire; you thought that throwing so many ads on the face of your viewers will make you more popular or will reap you greater profits. But the truth is, users would not only condemn you for the annoyance and inconvenience you brought to them, the big fish of the online world like Google would ensure you get mark downs in rankings and visibility.

Beefing up the PageRank He revealed some secrets on how webmasters can practice SEO effectively without inadvertently affecting a website’s visibility in a negative manner. Cutts elaborated on the basics of SEO by starting off with the importance of putting many relevant links on your website. He emphasized that the more links your website contains, the more pages you will get crawled, indexed, and interpreted. This is because of the direct relationship between your site’s PageRank and the number of links it has. A search engine is more inclined to crawl within a website and index its pages if it has a better PageRank. The PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that measures crawl depth and assigns the weight of a website’s relevance in the Internet. To increase PageRank, a webmaster has to create more pages or secure more relevant links for the site.

Duplication Issues Duplicating page contents from other sites or within the website is a no-no; this could distort the site’s PageRank. For example, creating a product description in your business website and resorting to copy-paste methods to distribute it to other venues online like various blogs, forums, and affiliate websites would not improve its PageRank. Duplicated page contents would be repeatedly ignored by search engines and would not help in increasing your site’s search rankings. It would also cost your PageRank if a certain page were also linked to its duplicated page; your website would suffer from link attrition. For instance, putting the product catalogue with the exact product descriptions in the main Products Section of your website and linking it to the About Us section where you have also decided to put the exact same content about your products is not advisable. This is what webmasters call “canonical conflict.” To reduce canonical conflict, it is advised to use a rel=canonical tag on your website when duplicating content so search engines could index the pages without problems.

The Importance of Inbound and Outbound Links Moreover, putting links from affiliate sites within your website would not do any good to your PageRank. According to Cutts, what would beef up the PageRank are the relevant inbound and outbound links that lead to the most significant and commercially valuable pages of your website, the ones that you would want to have better rankings in search engines, such as the site’s home page. After all, search engine optimization is about integrating the appropriate links throughout the website.

Getting the Best Quality Cutts also shared to us another golden rule in page creation: the more, the merrier. The more quality content you put in a page, the more searchable it would be. Ensure your website has enough content; it is always better to have more texts in a page so the search engines could have more content to crawl and index. But of course, do not just put any random material in your pages or spam too many links; make sure they are of high relevance and quality. Other quality criteria that one should not overlook would be the bandwidth, server speed, and the website’s loading time. Factors like whether your website is being hosted on a shared or a private server play important roles. Websites being hosted on shared servers are usually slow, thus the speed and scope of the pages being indexed might decrease. Having a dedicated, private server for a website would deliver faster loading time with more bandwidth at your disposal.

301 Redirect Cutts also pointed out that 301 redirects do not have the same PageRank power. What precisely is a 301 redirect? In HTTP protocols, a 301 redirect is a command that causes the Internet browser to go to another web location. There are also other status codes beginning with “3” that indicate different methods of redirection. A 301 redirect denotes moving the page to a new location permanently and shows the new address of the changed location.

Through the 301 redirect, a webmaster can move the page by changing a part of the page’s address, putting it in a new directory or changing the entire domain name of a website, while leaving a forwarding address. This status code moves a page to another location within a site or a website to an entirely new domain without breaking the link flow to the new address and without dropping the page from the search engine’s index. This also allows search engines to update their records for a page/website, thus transferring the PageRank and inbound links of the original location to the new one. However, Cutts revealed that doing so could not guarantee the page’s PageRank and incoming link preservation. Using 301 redirects from old pages could cause minor decay in PageRank and could break some of the link flow directing to the new destination page.

Proper Site Architecture and Navigation According to Cutts, their search engine prefers to index websites with proper site architecture and navigation. Visible web content should be easily crawled and indexed by search engine spiders. It means that the site possesses qualities that increase PageRank and search engine visibility; such as,

1. having a lot of relevant, quality content
2. cohesive internal links
3. proper keyword placement.

To create highly searchable content, one has to first research on keywords that are relevant and are a commonplace in your industry.

1. The keywords should be aligned and connected to the content used in the various pages of the site as a whole. For instance, if you are planning to use the keyword “chocolate pie”, you have to structure your navigation and create content for other kinds of pies to increase rankings.
2. Your web address should not be an exemption — it is a major factor for web visibility. Your domain name should contain your targeted keyword or a portion of it to enhance search rankings. If your targeted keyword is the example above, you should acquire a web address like “chocolatepiebakers.com.”
3. More importantly, to create fluidity within your website, a webmaster should use internal links. Utilizing numerous internal links to connect the parts of a site altogether would enhance the PageRank of the most valuable pages. It should be understood that while the home page can be the most important page of a site, one should also consider the number of links leaving a certain page and the placement of the links (whether it’s in the main navigation) while structuring the site.
4. Placing the right keywords in the right places is crucial for PageRank enhancement throughout the site. The most important information should be consolidated wherever possible, especially in the home page, so that users could easily see the contents and navigate through it smoothly. Also use relevant keyword phrases related to the topic or product as your links throughout the navigation section. Ideally, your site should have a site map, since this would make it easier for search engine to index your pages.

The Don’ts During his interview, Cutts did not encourage the use of JavaScript links since their search engine could not execute JavaScript completely, therefore, if you created some links using JavaScript, Google could not index them. He suggested a tiered approach that Google would recognize, where you take your page’s PageRank and guiding it to pages that are more effective. Moreover, using paid links or advertisements in your page would not help increase its search ranking. Google and other search engines detect paid links, but at the same time they filter them out to make the playing field fair and square.

The link building process involves two steps: integration and accretion. Integration requires the consolidation of relevant elements into a whole Web site, while accretion is the use of several methods in order to increase links to your site and boost page rankings. The end result of any link building campaign is increased link popularity and better search engine rankings.

• Link Popularity

To understand the relevance of link building, it is crucial that we understand exactly what search engines are looking for in a site and what factors influence a site’s page ranking and link popularity. The theory of link popularity assumes that if search engines view other sites linking to yours, your site must be a winner and consequently, deserves an upperhand in rankings. After all, people are more likely to link to sites they find interesting or relevant. It is a common misconception that the Google Page Rank is equivalent to link popularity. In reality, Google PR is merely a subset of link popularity.

PR focuses on the quantitative side while link popularity emphasizes on the qualitative factors. Building link popularity is considered one of the most tedious tasks in SEO. Unlike before, search engines now have quality control mechanisms in place that boot out “artificially created” or useless links so that today, strategies that result to artificial links can earn penalties or point negations in a web site’s rankings. Search engines today require links that come from authoritative sites or sites that focus on the same areas as your web site. Major search engines consider link popularity in their ranking algorithms to measure a site’s importance.

There are two types of links that give a boost to link popularity:

1. Links from other sites using like keyword phrases as your site
2. Links from relevant categories from industry-specific portals and major directories

Experts warn about paying for submission on free-for-all, or FFA, sites that are not viewed as quality links by major search engines. Moreover, getting links from sites that are completely outside the range or field of interest of your Web site will not earn you high points on the rankings.

• Link Acquisition Strategies When launching a link building campaign independently or when you are using a link building service or hiring a link building company, you have to take note that while many strategies exist that could help you acquire links, abusing these strategies will downgrade your search engine rankings.

Among the top SEO techniques that have been prone to abuse or manipulation include:

1. Link Buying. Many bloggers and webmasters buy links in order to boost their page rankings. It is also the easiest way to build link popularity. Link buys are frowned upon by major search engines like Google and SEO experts advise against link buys. However, some have found ways to buy links without getting into the search engine’s radar and others find link buying useful in launching viral, social media campaigns that have a specific end date.
2. Link exchange. A link exchange is a network of websites operating as a web ring by registering under a central organization running the exchange and in turn, receiving an HTML code to be inserted into their web pages. This HTML code runs a display of banner advertisements on member web sites. Link exchanges, or reciprocal linking, are the most common link acquisition approach for bloggers and webmasters.
3. Link Farming. Link farms are made up of a bogus network of blogs, and from that fake network, they create links to their web site. Though an effective link popularity builder in the past, stricter quality control mechanisms of search engines have prompted an avoidance of this strategy.

Effective methods in getting links include link baiting, directory submissions, comments, article submissions, and writing testimonials or reviews. There are several specialized SEOs and link building service that are capable of helping you perform some of the above-mentioned strategies.

• Ideal Link Profile There are ideal ways to ensure that your web site is rated positively by the search engines. Among the important things to consider are:

1. One link per linking domain. Try getting one or two links from a website that wants to link to yours.
2. Fewer Reciprocal Links. Reciprocal links are easily detectable and subject to point negations. It is best to keep reciprocal links below 5% of your site’s total linkage.
3. Varied Anchor Text. Vary keywords in the anchor text to avoid red flags from search engines.
4. Related Links. Acquire links from web sites that share relevant content to get better page rankings.

What is PageRank? PageRank is a numerical value that is assigned to a site for the purpose of measuring its importance or relevancy. PageRank was developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The concept was inspired by citation analysis conducted on scholarly journals or articles to measure its credibility. The more times a paper gets cited, the more important or credible it is to its peers.

PageRank computes the probability of finding a web page if a person randomly surfs the Internet. Google uses the mathematical formula, PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn)), where: A = Linked Page tn = Linking Page C/(tn) = Number of outbound link on v d = damping factor, normally set to 0.85 Despite its intimidating appearance, the mathematical formula has several implications for obtaining the link popularity of a web site:

1. If a web page links to another page, it is essentially casting a vote in favor of that page.
2. If several pages link to a web page, it means it has more votes and deserve a higher rank.

How does Google assign PageRank? Google PageRank is highly dependent on the quantity of backlinks. An experiment conducted by SEOWatch concludes that the more backlinks a website has, the higher the PR will be. This is logical since the PageRank was designed as a type of balloting system among Web users where site owners “vote” by linking to a particular page to show support. This explains why PR is often referred to as a measure of link popularity. However, because mere reliance on quality of links have made spamming and search engine manipulations a link building tool in order to influence a site’s positioning, Google’s algorithm includes the quality of backlinks associated to a website in its calculation.

If the pages linking to your site have high PR and are considered “high authority” sites, then your page shares a piece of their reputation and improves its link popularity. Google PageRank considers other factors in assigning values to web sites. These include site age, back link duration and back link relevancy. The fact that Google considers back links’ relevancy helps warn site owners: bad sites can harm your overall total PageRank and your link popularity.

Is there only one type of PageRank? There are variations of PageRank used by Google in order to measure importance or relevancy. Google Toolbar PageRank. This feature projects a page’s PageRank as a whole number ranging between 0 and 10, 10 being the highest. In order to restrict and disallow search engine manipulations, the accurate procedure on how Google calculates PageRank is not disclosed. However, there is always stress on the quantity and quality of backlinks to produce higher PR and higher link popularity. Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Rank. Link building campaigns are built around this type of ranking. It returns the actual result produced when a search engine responds to a keyword query.

A web page’s SERP rank is indicated by a link’s placement on the SERP. If the page can be found on the top positions in a SERP, the higher its SERP rank. It must be noted that while PageRank plays a vital part in SERP, a myriad of factors are included in its computation. Any link building campaign should be geared towards achieving the highest SERP ranking for a website or websites. In order to deter search engine manipulation, Spamdexing, and spoofing, as a means of building link popularity, Google is mum on how factors influence PageRank specifically.

What are some tips to improve PageRank? The encouraging thing about being able to understand PageRank is that webmasters, site owners, or a link building company can determine how to adjust some factors in order to optimize PageRank and improve link popularity. A high PR to add to other link building methods will drive you ahead of competitors. There are three basic areas to consider when optimizing PageRank:

1. The quality of links you choose to have link to your site. The link you choose and the effort you put in to acquire them are essential in PR optimization. As explained before, quantity and quality of links are important considerations in PR and link building. Choosing link farms and banned sites to link to you would prove disastrous to PR and link popularity.
2. The site you choose to link out to from your site. In using outbound links, there is one golden rule: ‘Keep PageRank within your site.’ Linking out will decrease your total PageRank compared when you decide not to link out. However, if you choose to link out as part of your link building campaign, experts advise to choose pages that has both a low PR and a lot of links to your site.
3. The internal quality of your site. Your site’s navigational components and linkages must be able to distribute PageRank within the whole site. To accomplish this, Google’s algorithms must consider as much content in your site as worthy of being indexed. Developing quality content creates more PageRank and boosts link popularity.

While PageRank is a valuable tool, achieving link popularity through PR optimization must be combined with quality visitor experience. Gaining higher PageRank will not amount to any significance if users could not find content to enhance their experience when navigating your site.