According to
Mattcutts, over optimized sites, using doorway pages,
cloaking pages, Low quality links, and also spammy, rarely-clicked footer links
with over-optimized anchor text, Manipulating and gaming the
SEO by blasting
their site with 1000 of
backlinks to rank higher will be thrown out from Seach
Engine Google. Yes, most of the well ranked sites were given minus 50 penalty
and many were deindexed.
Lots of people have come up with different theories about he Penguin Update, but almost everyone agrees
on one thing… this penguin update forcing all webmasters to shift into White
hat SEO.
Obviously people freaking out when they see these things happening,
especially thos who are new in SEO. What these people don’t realize is Google
Updates were always there and the SEO game is all about adapting and changing.
Here is an article written from BK071, a member of BHW
There has been a lot of fuss about post penguin
SEO lately... some said
SEO is dead, some said BH techniques won't work... blah blah.
In this series of
SEO threads, I'll try to address different issues that have risen after the Penguin and Panda updates.
Note : This thread is targeted more towards newbie SEOers who are
thinking too much about this Penguin / Panda crap... So don't blame me
if you don't find the secret magic to rank your sites in this thread.
That said, I'm sure many experienced users will find it useful to
refresh their knowledge.
Lets get started...
Okay, so first let me bust some
SEO myths that a lot of people might have in your mind.
Myth 1 - SEO is dead
A lot of people seem to think that Penguin update is the end of
SEO... tell you what, this is the funniest sh*t I've read about
SEO.
Blackhat
SEO is NOT dead... and it will NEVER die... PERIOD!
You still can rank your sites on top of Google and you still can make TONS of money with
SEO... outranking sites like Amazon and Wikipedia is still very much possible... I've done it and you can do it too.... read on!
Myth 2 - SEO Tools have become useless
Again, with the recent Google updates, many people
think tools like XRumer/Scrapebox/AMR have become useless... this is
completely wrong. These tools are still very useful and I use all of
them on daily basis.
Myth 3 - Blog Networks are dead
Even though Google screwed BMR and ALN too got a big chunk of their
network deindexed, blog networks are still profitable and still very
effective. Its all about quality... Having your own blog network is your
best bet if you have the budget. Just don't post spun gibbering and DO
NOT leave any footprint at all... you'll be fine!
Myth 4 - You can't rank a new site without getting sandboxed
I was talking to a client (not from BHW) who just launched a site the
other day and he was like... "start the backlinking and we'll monetize
the site after it comes out of sandbox"... I was like "WTF" lol.
Seriously, stop worrying too much about that stupid sandbox thing... I
have successfully ranked quite a lot of micro niche sites that were one
week old without getting any sandbox or 'over-optimization' whatsoever.
Read on and I'll tell you how.
Myth 5 - On page SEO doesn't matter anymore
Since Google's Penguin update was mostly about off page
SEO
and had a lot to do with your anchor text, pages linking back to you,
footprints... mostly off page stuff.... most of the people started to
forget about the on page basics that are still very important. There
were blog posts by some
SEO 'gurus' spreading misleading information that on page
SEO "doesn't matter anymore.. Google can detect what the page is about itself.... blah blah".
Sure G have improved (or should I say "messed up") their algorithm but
that doesn't mean you should stop caring about your on page tactics. On
page
SEO is still very relevant... in fact, more relevant than it ever was.
Now that you have your doubts clear, we can move on to the first section of this guide which is...
Like I said above, on page
SEO is still very relevant and it is one of the most important building blocks of your
SEO campaign.
Having that said, bear in mind that G's algo is way smarter than it used
to be a few years ago. Gone are the days when you could rank your site
by just stuffing a bunch of keywords in your title and meta description.
There is way more than that to on page
SEO now...
Section 1a - The basics
Clean HTML & CSS code:
Pretty simple... bad code = bad site rankings or even a penalty... If
you're using wordpress, use themes that are clean and do not contain any
malware.
The <title> tag:
Your page's title is one of the most important on page factors. A good
title is what describes what your page is about and at the same time,
smartly uses your target keyword in it.
Do not make it look spammy or you'll leave your site to be vulnerable to a Google Penalty.
For example, if you're targeting "
make money online" a good title would be
"Discover different ways to make money online at *yoursite*"
And a bad title would be
"Make money online - make money on the internet - make money taking surveys"
See the difference? In a nutshell, do not stuff your keywords in
there... Google's bots are smart enough to detect that kind of crap in a
blink of an eye. And besides that, a Good title helps you get a better
clicks-through rate. A user is more likely to click on something that
actually makes sense than some spammy gibberish.
The meta <description> tag
Pretty much the same story here... Be smart and summarize your page in
approx. 155 characters while using your target keyword at least once.
This, again, is not only important for your
SEO but also helps you get more clicks in Search Engine Ranking Pages.
The meta <keywords> tag
Stop worryin about it... Google does NOT use the keywords tag as a factor to rank your sites.
Thats it for this section... in a nutshell : DO NOT MAKE YOUR SITE LOOK
SPAMMY BUT AT THE SAME TIME, DO USE YOUR TARGET KEYWORDS IN YOUR TITLE
AND DESCRIPTION.
---------------------------------------------
Section 1b - The Content
It has been said before and I'll say it again... content plays a great role in your
SEO campaign and not only that, its also crucial to make money from your site.
Here are a few things you should keep in mind when creating/outsourcing content for your site.
Who to write for... humans or search engines?
Now, all white hats will tell you to write for humans and not search
engines... don't care about your keyword density etc etc... Guess we're
on BHW right? So lets do things the smarter way and kill two birds with
one stone.
The answer to this question is... BOTH! Yes, write for both... the search engines and humans at the same time.
Like I said before, the good old days when you could rank a site with
just a spammy title, a crappy article and a few thousand XRumer links
are long gone... Google has become much smarter and that in turn
requires you to be smarter than G... which is really easy!
So.. back to the topics, your content should be engaging as well as
perfectly optimized for your target keyword(s). Here are some pointers
for optimization.
Keyword density
With all the over-optimization thing going on lately, you have to be
very careful about your keyword density. From my tests, it seems that
0.5-1% seems to be a good idea... just use your keyword wisely and
smartly in your article.
LSI keywords
LSI stands for "latent semantic indexing" and you can Google it to read
more about what the term is about... but to give you an idea, LSI
keywords are the ones that are closely related to your main keyword. For
example,
If your main keyword is "weight loss" then some of the LSI keywords
would be... 'lose weight fast' 'how can you lose weight' 'weight loss
supplements' 'tips to lose weight'.... you get the idea.
The key is to use a lot of LSI keywords in your article WITHOUT losing
the flow of it... make sure your article is still perfectly readable by
humans after using LSI keywords a few times in it.
Types of content:
Okay so you've got the basics covered.. now its time to learn how to
create good quality content (articles) that will attract a lot of long
term traffic.
There are different types of content... some of them are:
1) Informational : this includes 'general' informational articles like
"5 tips to burn fats in two weeks"... the kind of articles we all read
everyday.
2) Factual : a very good example of factual content is this
- notice how they've layed out FACTS about the sun? It is absolutely
possible to create factual content in almost every niche out there...
just takes some research.
3) How-to's & tutorials : Pretty self explanatory. Some examples
would be "How to fix registry issue in Windows 7" or "Your 11-step guide
to baking a cake".
4) News and evens : Like "Miami Heat beat Boston Celtics in Game 7" or
"Osama Bin Laden killed in Pakistan"... this type of articles seem to
get a lot of traffic but that traffic is not long term and will
eventually die off in a few days/weeks.
Your best bet is to create a lot 1st, 2nd and 3rd type of content
discussed above. Its still a good idea to post the 4th type to get your
website some exposure.
How many articles?
Many of you would be asking yourself how big your site should be?
Well... the bigger, the better. It makes a lot of sense to have 100s of
articles on your site since one article costs you only $5-7 and you'll
most likely make that money back within two or three months from that
single article (on average)... anything you make from that specific
article on your site is pure profit.
Search engines seem to hate thin 'one-page' sites so be sure to expand
your site as much as possible... it'll pay off in the end.
How long should the articles be?
I keep my article length to be AT LEAST 450-500 words... not a word
less. And many experienced SEOers would agree that 600-800 word articles
tend to rank very well... you can make your article longer than 800
words but I suggest splitting them into two for the sake of your site's
size.
That it for section 1b.
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Section 1 over.
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Okay, folks, that is pretty much it for now... In part 2, we'll discuss about off page SEO. Feel free to ask any questions in this thread and I'll try my best to answer them for you.
Off to a walk now.