SEO is like an enormous clock. It only works if all the little cogs
*mesh* together. Now, a clock needs to be clean, well-lubricated, and
wound tight. The best clocks have jewel movements, cogs that fit, that
cooperate by design.
You must be bewildered right now. After all, this is supposed to be an SEO guide, so why am I over here talking about clocks and referencing a Pixar movie? Well, allow me to explain: you see, marketers both old and new to the SEO industry often become fixated on one specific aspect of SEO and ignore the rest.
Now, let's say on-page SEO is a cog for a clock and off-page SEO is a cog for a clock. Certain groups of marketers, namely some of those who identify strictly as “white hat SEOs” or “black hat SEOs”, become hyper-focused on on-page SEO or off-page SEO respectively. However, the problem with this type of thinking is that both of these groups are hyper-focused on separate parts of SEO when they would see much better results if they simply incorporated both on-page and off-page SEO tactics into their SEO campaigns.
In essence, they would have the cogs cooperate with each other to make a clock; if the clock has missing or broken cogs, it either won't work at all or won't work as well as could.
Part 1: Your Specialised Tools
Before we begin, I'd like to recommend a few tools to make things a bit easier. All of these tools are available for free, so there's no need to worry about investing any money.
Before we begin, I'd like to recommend a few tools to make things a bit easier. All of these tools are available for free, so there's no need to worry about investing any money.
- Google Webmaster Tools
- Google Analytics
- Wordpress SEO by Yoast (For Wordpress Sites)
- Google Keyword Planner
- Mozbar
*If you'd like to learn how to get search volume results back in the Google Keyword Planner, please see my post here.
*I previously recommended the use of the Ahrefs Toolbar over the Moz Toolbar. Ahrefs picks up more significantly more backlinks than Moz, though they've recently limited their toolbar to only work for people paying for their service.
Part 2: Developing Your SEO Strategy
Nearly everyone has their own unique SEO strategy. For example, my usual strategy focuses mostly on technical and on-page SEO and involves targeting low search, low competition keywords in the beginning of my SEO campaign before gradually moving up to more difficult keywords as my site gains momentum (which is when I'll focus on building backlinks). The reason I like this strategy is because it requires much less effort than the other strategies I've used in the past, and because my competitors will often avoid targeting the same keywords as me due to my initial keywords not being “worth their time”.
However, much like eating a clock, one issue with this strategy is that it can be very time consuming; it might take a while before you see any decent results. Most people just aren't interested in waiting, and this is often the case when there are other strategies out there that can bring in traffic much faster.
With that said, while you can do everything in this guide verbatim, it's best if you just add your own unique spin on each section of this guide.
Part 3: Performing Keyword Research
Something important to note before you open up the Google Keyword Planner is that you should disregard the “competition” shown in the Google Keyword Planner. This is not the competition level for the search engine results pages (SERPs), but rather how many people are bidding on the keyword in Adwords.
*I previously recommended the use of the Ahrefs Toolbar over the Moz Toolbar. Ahrefs picks up more significantly more backlinks than Moz, though they've recently limited their toolbar to only work for people paying for their service.
Part 2: Developing Your SEO Strategy
Nearly everyone has their own unique SEO strategy. For example, my usual strategy focuses mostly on technical and on-page SEO and involves targeting low search, low competition keywords in the beginning of my SEO campaign before gradually moving up to more difficult keywords as my site gains momentum (which is when I'll focus on building backlinks). The reason I like this strategy is because it requires much less effort than the other strategies I've used in the past, and because my competitors will often avoid targeting the same keywords as me due to my initial keywords not being “worth their time”.
However, much like eating a clock, one issue with this strategy is that it can be very time consuming; it might take a while before you see any decent results. Most people just aren't interested in waiting, and this is often the case when there are other strategies out there that can bring in traffic much faster.
With that said, while you can do everything in this guide verbatim, it's best if you just add your own unique spin on each section of this guide.
Part 3: Performing Keyword Research
Something important to note before you open up the Google Keyword Planner is that you should disregard the “competition” shown in the Google Keyword Planner. This is not the competition level for the search engine results pages (SERPs), but rather how many people are bidding on the keyword in Adwords.
As you can see, the keyword “psychic celibacy” receives very little, if
any search traffic. However, the keywords below are related to your
original keyword and can be sorted by average monthly searches
(typically, though definitely not always, keywords with fewer searches
each month have less competition). After scrolling through hundreds of
keywords for one that's relevant to your article's topic, the term “the
power of celibacy” catches your eye (let's pretend the term isn't
ambiguous and receives a bit more traffic; I didn't want find an
"amazing keyword" for this guide).
Next, you'll want to search for the term that piqued your interest, “the power of celibacy”, in Google. I personally used to compare my site's metrics to the metrics of the sites in the SERPs while taking note of how many sites are targeting the exact keyword. Assuming the Moz Toolbar is working for you, you can use it to quickly glance over the metrics of the other sites. If the toolbar isn't working, use the tools on SmallSEOTools to check each site individually.
Next, you'll want to search for the term that piqued your interest, “the power of celibacy”, in Google. I personally used to compare my site's metrics to the metrics of the sites in the SERPs while taking note of how many sites are targeting the exact keyword. Assuming the Moz Toolbar is working for you, you can use it to quickly glance over the metrics of the other sites. If the toolbar isn't working, use the tools on SmallSEOTools to check each site individually.
When To (Usually) Avoid Targeting A Keyword
I've listed my own suggestions on what to avoid below, although @hacko wrote an excellent guide called "How NOT to do keyword research in 2017" that I recommend reading through as well.
I've listed my own suggestions on what to avoid below, although @hacko wrote an excellent guide called "How NOT to do keyword research in 2017" that I recommend reading through as well.
- Results with Google's Knowledge Graph (typing in Thomas Jefferson will show information about him on the side)
- Results with authority sites that are targeting your exact keyword (though there are exceptions)
- Results with Google's “In The News” feature, unless you have a news site.
- Results with local results at the top of SERPs, unless you have a local business and you plan on ranking in the local 3 pack.
- Results with more than 1 of the above.
The reason I recommend against targeting keywords with 1 or more of
the above comes down to click-through rate (CTR). For instance, let's
say you rank in position #1 for the keyword “how to tie your shoes”,
which receives roughly 8,000 searches each month. Upon looking at the
SERPs, you'll notice that it has a featured snippet at the top for your
competitor's site that's in position #2 that answers the user's
question. Now, the user will either continue browsing the Internet for
something else, or they'll click on your competitor’s site for more
information. Sure, there will still be people who visit your site, but
your click-through rate will suffer regardless.
Part 4: Creating A Title For Your Page
For this part of the guide, we're going to be taking a trip back to the SERPs, but this time we're going to analyse how the competition is writing their titles. In this part of the guide, we're going to be searching for the keyword “how to make a paper airplane”.
Part 4: Creating A Title For Your Page
For this part of the guide, we're going to be taking a trip back to the SERPs, but this time we're going to analyse how the competition is writing their titles. In this part of the guide, we're going to be searching for the keyword “how to make a paper airplane”.
Look at all of those “meh” results! But wait… The BEST paper airplane!? Well, you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention!
"The Best Paper Airplane: How to make a Paper Airplane". Look at
how captivating that title is. Let me tell you something, I searched for
that key term a couple of years ago for a school I was volunteering at
in my free time, and that was the first result that caught my attention,
and the only one I clicked on. Sure, the other results rank higher and
they might seem nice with their lists, videos, and simple instructions;
but why would anyone want to create just a paper airplane when they could create the best paper airplane!?
Do you see where I'm going with this? A captivating title equals a
better CTR. A better CTR means you get more traffic going to your
website when you rank for that one keyword. But how do you create a
captivating page title? Well, there's no specific formula, but here are
some general guidelines.
- Avoid using a title that's already being used in the SERPs.
- Use lists if you can. The bigger the better; unless it's too big, I've had that backfire on me once.
- Use exaggerated words like best, ultimate, greatest, et cetera.
- Allude to solving a problem that a user never knew that wanted to be solved. Example: How to tie a tie that will never come undone.
Part 5: Targeting Keywords
This is easier than you think. A simple keyword targeting strategy you can use is to "sprinkle" your primary keyword a few times throughout your article: once in one of your header tags, in your image's alt tag, and the URL. Easy, right? But there are a few things you should be aware of before you target your keywords, namely keyword cannibalisation, over-optimisation, and LSI keywords.
Keyword Cannibalisation
Keyword cannibalisation is an issue where you essentially become your own competitor in the SERPs. This happens when you target the same keyword on multiple pages throughout your site. There are dozens of articles about the topic, so for more information on keyword cannibalisation, you can read Moz's article about it here: https://moz.com/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization
Over-Optimisation
Over-optimisation is a bit of a general term, though in this case, it occurs when you use your keyword too many times. How much is too much, you ask? There's no exact answer for that. There will be people who tell you to only have a X% keyword density, but my response to this is to simply read your own article and ask yourself, “does this sound natural”. If it doesn't, you probably used the keyword too much. So what can you do if you find yourself with a high keyword density. Perhaps removing the excess keywords is one option, but another option is to use LSI keywords.
LSI Keywords
This is easier than you think. A simple keyword targeting strategy you can use is to "sprinkle" your primary keyword a few times throughout your article: once in one of your header tags, in your image's alt tag, and the URL. Easy, right? But there are a few things you should be aware of before you target your keywords, namely keyword cannibalisation, over-optimisation, and LSI keywords.
Keyword Cannibalisation
Keyword cannibalisation is an issue where you essentially become your own competitor in the SERPs. This happens when you target the same keyword on multiple pages throughout your site. There are dozens of articles about the topic, so for more information on keyword cannibalisation, you can read Moz's article about it here: https://moz.com/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization
Over-Optimisation
Over-optimisation is a bit of a general term, though in this case, it occurs when you use your keyword too many times. How much is too much, you ask? There's no exact answer for that. There will be people who tell you to only have a X% keyword density, but my response to this is to simply read your own article and ask yourself, “does this sound natural”. If it doesn't, you probably used the keyword too much. So what can you do if you find yourself with a high keyword density. Perhaps removing the excess keywords is one option, but another option is to use LSI keywords.
LSI Keywords
For those of you who don't know, latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords
are synonyms, plurals, and other variants of your primary keyword.
Using the keyword "The Power of Celibacy" as an example, a few LSI
variants of this keyword would include the following:
- The Powers of Celibacy
- Celibacy Superpowers
- Spiritual Celibacy Powers
- Celibate Powers
Get the idea?
You can include these LSI keywords in your article in order to increase the likelihood of ranking for those variants and to provide Google with more information on what your site and articles are about (e.g., apple the fruit vs apple the brand; keywords centred around produce would let Google know you're referring to the fruit. On the other hand, keywords centred around technology and phones would let Google know you're referring to the brand).
A great way to find LSI keywords is by typing in your primary keyword or a generic search term into Google and reading the “Searches Related To...” results, although another option is to use something like the Keyword Shitter Pro.
You can include these LSI keywords in your article in order to increase the likelihood of ranking for those variants and to provide Google with more information on what your site and articles are about (e.g., apple the fruit vs apple the brand; keywords centred around produce would let Google know you're referring to the fruit. On the other hand, keywords centred around technology and phones would let Google know you're referring to the brand).
A great way to find LSI keywords is by typing in your primary keyword or a generic search term into Google and reading the “Searches Related To...” results, although another option is to use something like the Keyword Shitter Pro.
Part 6: Internal Link Structure
Internal links are just links that go to other pages on your site. The primary purpose of this is to spread what's referred to as link equity (ranking power, in layman's terms) across your website. However, a good internal link structure is also important when it comes to Google finding and indexing pages on your website.
Internal links are just links that go to other pages on your site. The primary purpose of this is to spread what's referred to as link equity (ranking power, in layman's terms) across your website. However, a good internal link structure is also important when it comes to Google finding and indexing pages on your website.
Part 7: Technical SEO
Technical SEO is probably one of the least covered topics here on Black Hat World, although you see it often discussed in segments. In case you don't know, technical SEO is the side of SEO that focuses on optimising your site's code and page speed, though it's a bit more broad than that.
No-Indexing Category & Tag Pages
You can do this with Yoast's SEO plugin. In my old SEO guide, I had recommended that you add an article to these pages in order to add some unique content to it. However, as pointed out WPRipper at the time, this seems to be a hit or miss (possibly a miss more often), and while it didn't negatively affect my site, I went ahead and added no-index tags to my category and tag pages.
Increasing Site Speed
As far as page speed is concerned, Google has a tool called Pagespeed Insights that can help you find out what you need to do to your site.
I actually have a guide here titled, “From Snail To Cheetah: 30 Ways To Speed Up Your Site”, that goes over how to accomplish this.
Using More Efficient Codes
For example, those of you with child themes on Wordpress may be using the @import instead of the wp_enqueue_style code, the latter of which will load the theme faster than the former.
Compress Images
Rather than use PNG images when you don't need to, converting your images to Jpeg can reduce their file size quite a bit, thus making your page load faster.
Disallowing Search Via Robots.txt
Recently (January 2017), I ran into an interesting issue with an increase in the number of soft 404 errors found on my business website. This led me to discover that some spammers have been taking advantage of the fact that most webmasters aren't preventing Google from crawling their search URLs and their search parameter.
You can read the full article here (I disabled ads on that page so you don't feel like I'm monetising you), but this is what happens when you forget to disallow search:
Technical SEO is probably one of the least covered topics here on Black Hat World, although you see it often discussed in segments. In case you don't know, technical SEO is the side of SEO that focuses on optimising your site's code and page speed, though it's a bit more broad than that.
No-Indexing Category & Tag Pages
You can do this with Yoast's SEO plugin. In my old SEO guide, I had recommended that you add an article to these pages in order to add some unique content to it. However, as pointed out WPRipper at the time, this seems to be a hit or miss (possibly a miss more often), and while it didn't negatively affect my site, I went ahead and added no-index tags to my category and tag pages.
Increasing Site Speed
As far as page speed is concerned, Google has a tool called Pagespeed Insights that can help you find out what you need to do to your site.
I actually have a guide here titled, “From Snail To Cheetah: 30 Ways To Speed Up Your Site”, that goes over how to accomplish this.
Using More Efficient Codes
For example, those of you with child themes on Wordpress may be using the @import instead of the wp_enqueue_style code, the latter of which will load the theme faster than the former.
Compress Images
Rather than use PNG images when you don't need to, converting your images to Jpeg can reduce their file size quite a bit, thus making your page load faster.
Disallowing Search Via Robots.txt
Recently (January 2017), I ran into an interesting issue with an increase in the number of soft 404 errors found on my business website. This led me to discover that some spammers have been taking advantage of the fact that most webmasters aren't preventing Google from crawling their search URLs and their search parameter.
You can read the full article here (I disabled ads on that page so you don't feel like I'm monetising you), but this is what happens when you forget to disallow search:
Those sites aren't hacked, just victims of the same spam attack.
I've highlighted the two robots.txt disallow lines that you can use to prevent this below. The codes below are from a robots.txt file I use on a web security website I've been building, so feel free to copy the whole thing (just be aware of what each line does).
I've highlighted the two robots.txt disallow lines that you can use to prevent this below. The codes below are from a robots.txt file I use on a web security website I've been building, so feel free to copy the whole thing (just be aware of what each line does).
Code :
User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /?s= Disallow: /search/ Disallow: /cgi-bin Disallow: /wp-includes Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/ Disallow: /wp-content/cache/ Disallow: /wp-content/themes/ Disallow: */trackback/ Disallow: */feed/ Disallow: /*/feed/rss/$ Disallow: /category/* Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
Using A Responsive Design
For this part, I'm going to reluctantly borrow a bit from Neil Patel here. I'm not a fan of the guy, but his explanation was quick and to the point.
https://www.quicksprout.com/2015/07/31/the-beginners-guide-to-technical-seo/
For this part, I'm going to reluctantly borrow a bit from Neil Patel here. I'm not a fan of the guy, but his explanation was quick and to the point.
https://www.quicksprout.com/2015/07/31/the-beginners-guide-to-technical-seo/
Clean Up 404 Errors
As far as outbound links are concerned, all you have to do is find 404 errors on your site. You can do this by using a plugin called Broken Link Checker. https://wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/
For 404 internal links on your site, I'm on the fence about this. There are definitely times when you absolutely have to 301 redirect your old URLs to the new ones, such as when you switch from a HTTP site to HTTPS (or www to non-www, or vice versa). If you don't do this, you'll run into what's referred to as canonicalisation issues, which is when Google indexes both versions of your site. This is actually a similar phenomenon to keyword cannibalisation.
However, when it comes to removing articles on your site (including the internal links), but not 301 redirecting them anywhere, it's not necessary to do this.
I actually ran an experiment 4 months ago where I did this exact thing, and you can read a summarised version of what happened in my post here on Black Hat World (quoted below) or you can read the full events on my local business site.
As far as outbound links are concerned, all you have to do is find 404 errors on your site. You can do this by using a plugin called Broken Link Checker. https://wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/
For 404 internal links on your site, I'm on the fence about this. There are definitely times when you absolutely have to 301 redirect your old URLs to the new ones, such as when you switch from a HTTP site to HTTPS (or www to non-www, or vice versa). If you don't do this, you'll run into what's referred to as canonicalisation issues, which is when Google indexes both versions of your site. This is actually a similar phenomenon to keyword cannibalisation.
However, when it comes to removing articles on your site (including the internal links), but not 301 redirecting them anywhere, it's not necessary to do this.
I actually ran an experiment 4 months ago where I did this exact thing, and you can read a summarised version of what happened in my post here on Black Hat World (quoted below) or you can read the full events on my local business site.
- Summary: http://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/6-...bsites-completely-ignore.854559/#post-9023491
- Full Events: https://www.sycosure.com/blog/removing-pages-improve-search-engine-rankings/
Part 8: Site Architecture
This is easier than you think. Let's say you have a business website with the layout in the image below.
This is easier than you think. Let's say you have a business website with the layout in the image below.
What you can do is organise your URLs like this:
- site.com/blog/article-title
- site.com/services/service
- site.com/products/product
- site.com/about/employee-name
An added perk of organising your site's URLs this way is getting sitelinks in Google, although that's not a guarantee.
An alternative to the structure above is a "silo" structure. I've personally never bothered with it, but you can read about it in the below.
http://themezoom-neuroeconomics.com/SEO_Website_Silo_Architecture
An alternative to the structure above is a "silo" structure. I've personally never bothered with it, but you can read about it in the below.
http://themezoom-neuroeconomics.com/SEO_Website_Silo_Architecture
Step 9: Re-Optimisation
At this juncture, we're coming to the end of the guide. Going back to the clock analogy once again, this is where we'll go over how to properly clean and lubricate our “clock”.
Every month or so, I like to go through my analytics, search console, and SerpBooks data and see how my articles are doing in Google. The articles I tend to keep have the following traits:
- Overall positive movement in the SERPs.
- Users reading the article (average time on the page)
- Users visiting other articles on my site (pages per session)
- Click-through rate in the SERPs
You may be wondering what I do when I come across articles that
aren't performing that great. Well, what I do depends mostly on the age
of the article and how poorly it's doing. For instance, if I see an
article that's performing well in Google but not with users, I go back
and see if I can make the article more interesting by adding new images
or re-writing it entirely. If an article is ranking well but has a poor
CTR, I'll go back and change the title to something more interesting.
Part 10: Developing A Backlink Strategy
I'm admittedly not much of an avid backlink builder. However, there are both a few tactics I use when I want to see faster results and several tactics I've come across other people using successfully.
Using Your Client Network
Many of you may know that I work with local clients and completely manage numerous local business websites in the process. However, I often use this to my advantage to create what I refer to as an "inbred link network". Basically, whenever I get a new client, I do two things:
Part 10: Developing A Backlink Strategy
I'm admittedly not much of an avid backlink builder. However, there are both a few tactics I use when I want to see faster results and several tactics I've come across other people using successfully.
Using Your Client Network
Many of you may know that I work with local clients and completely manage numerous local business websites in the process. However, I often use this to my advantage to create what I refer to as an "inbred link network". Basically, whenever I get a new client, I do two things:
- I give them a link from my company website, usually in an article if I can find one that's relevant to their business.
- I link to my company website to their company website. Sometimes it's a footer or sidebar link, though I've thrown myself on the "employees" pages in the past (with their permission, of course).
I repeat this process for each new client, though I also link the websites of my clients together.
Now, believe it or not, this actually does not violate the Google Webmaster Guidelines. After all, the sites are all legitimate, high quality, and linked to in a relevant way; so don't worry about getting penalised from this.
Link Building Outreach
Every now and then, I receive an email from someone looking to get a link from one of my sites. Most of the emails I receive are poorly-written, so I don't bother responding. However, there's a rare occasion where I receive an email that seems genuine. For example, rather than them asking for a backlink, they ask me what they can do to get a backlink from before listing examples of what they can do. This makes me take their trade into consideration, since they're offering me something in return.
At this point, they'll have my curiosity, so I'll go and check out the site they want me to link to. If it's a website with low-quality content, then I won't respond. But then if it's a decent looking site with good content, I'll have no problem linking to their site without them providing me with anything in return.
Using Your Own Sites
This is watered-down version of the first link building method for those of you who don't have clients. However, it requires you to have a site with at least some ranking power. Pretty much all you have to do is add a link to your high-ranking site with the keyword you're targeting to one of your low-ranking sites. The results will vary, although in the case of one of my latest clients who was stuck on pages 4-5 for most of their keywords, this boosted them up to pages 1-3.
Social Media
I'm absolutely terrible when it comes to social media... Anything! Although, I've seen some success when it comes to promoting content using social media marketing, more specifically on Twitter.
All I really do is use Twitter and Facebook to share the URL and add a few relevant hashtags. Yes, that's it. There's probably a much better way of doing this, so if you understand social media well, then by all means use your method.
Now, believe it or not, this actually does not violate the Google Webmaster Guidelines. After all, the sites are all legitimate, high quality, and linked to in a relevant way; so don't worry about getting penalised from this.
Link Building Outreach
Every now and then, I receive an email from someone looking to get a link from one of my sites. Most of the emails I receive are poorly-written, so I don't bother responding. However, there's a rare occasion where I receive an email that seems genuine. For example, rather than them asking for a backlink, they ask me what they can do to get a backlink from before listing examples of what they can do. This makes me take their trade into consideration, since they're offering me something in return.
At this point, they'll have my curiosity, so I'll go and check out the site they want me to link to. If it's a website with low-quality content, then I won't respond. But then if it's a decent looking site with good content, I'll have no problem linking to their site without them providing me with anything in return.
Using Your Own Sites
This is watered-down version of the first link building method for those of you who don't have clients. However, it requires you to have a site with at least some ranking power. Pretty much all you have to do is add a link to your high-ranking site with the keyword you're targeting to one of your low-ranking sites. The results will vary, although in the case of one of my latest clients who was stuck on pages 4-5 for most of their keywords, this boosted them up to pages 1-3.
Social Media
I'm absolutely terrible when it comes to social media... Anything! Although, I've seen some success when it comes to promoting content using social media marketing, more specifically on Twitter.
All I really do is use Twitter and Facebook to share the URL and add a few relevant hashtags. Yes, that's it. There's probably a much better way of doing this, so if you understand social media well, then by all means use your method.
» Thanks for reading: The Only SEO Guide That's Worth Your Time
