THE SEO BLACK

BOOK
A Guide to the Industry’s
Secrets

by

R.L. Adams
Updated Release: March 4th,
2013
 All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2013 R.L. Adams. All rights are

reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book or portions thereof, in any form.
You may not distribute this book in any way.
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FTC & Legal Notices

The Author was complete as possible in the

creation of this book. The contents within
are accurate and up to date at the time of
writing however the Author accepts that due
to the rapidly changing nature of the
Internet some information may not be fully
up to the date at the time of reading. Whilst
all attempts have been made to verify
information provided in this publication, the
Author assumes no responsibility for errors,
omissions, or contrary interpretation of the
subject matter herein. Any perceived slights
of specific people or organizations are
unintentional. There are affiliate links to
products and services in this guide. The
author will get paid if you purchase some of
the products or services recommended as
links within the content of this book. The
author was not prepaid to recommend any
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listed in this book.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – An SEO Crash Course

Chapter 2 – Aged Domain Names

Chapter 3 – Effective Keyword

Research

Chapter 4 – On-Site SEO Techniques

Chapter 5 – Analytics & Tracking

Chapter 6 – Content is King

Chapter 7 – Off-Site SEO Techniques

Chapter 8 – Social Media Strategies

Chapter 9 – Producing Results

Appendix
What is SEO?

To be successful in today’s
Internet marketplace, you must have a
complete understanding of Google’s
search and the components involved in
optimizing a site for your keywords. By
developing this ability to rank at the top
of search engine results pages you not
only command social creditability, but
you also gain a huge competitive edge.
 The practice of Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) is the set of
methods, techniques and principles
utilized by search engine marketers
(SEMs) to increase the relevancy
ranking of a Website.

SEO has evolved into a multi-

faceted business with various
approaches from social media, to On-
Site Optimization, Off-Site
Optimization, content building, and
everything in between. While seemingly
daunting at first for beginners, as your
SEO knowledge expands and grows,
you’ll gain more of an inherent
understanding and reasoning for how
Google’s search works, and how to
improve any listing on its ranking pages.

It’s difficult to organically rank

yourself for any Google search results
page, let alone at the top of page one.
Some search keywords have become
incredibly difficult to rank for resulting
in a lot of frustration and discouragement
for most people who attempt to practice
SEO. This is because, the search engine
industry has itself been built upon an
element of disinformation. Search
engines with their complex and secrecy
shrouded algorithms are pressing for
more and more relevant search results,
while SEMs are working harder and
harder to keep their sites relevant.

Developing and refining a talent

for SEO can mean riches and fortunes to
anyone lucky enough to perfect the craft.
The potential to have your site and
content exposed, organically, to millions
of potential consumers through SERPs is
tremendous. The sheer volume of
commerce and the potential for upside
with SEO draw millions of people
intrigued by the trade each and every
year.

In journeying to understand the

industry and how the search engines, and
more notably, Google’s search, works,
I’ve come across countless books, blog
posts, comments, forum threads, and
eBooks that tout the secrets of winning
the Google search game. But in the end,
in my opinion, most books either
provide partial or outdated information
that leaves the complete picture of
ranking at the top of SERPs incomplete.

My purpose for you in this book is

to deliver my knowledge and allow you
to have a complete look inside at what it
takes to make real and lasting advances
on SERPs. In this book, I’ll walk you
through both, the foundational basics of
SEO, and some advanced strategies
being implemented by the high traffic
builders that you’ll be hard pressed to
find elsewhere in a book like this.
 As you come to see the bigger
picture, you’ll understand the
components involved in ranking at the
top of SERPs, and be able to harness
that information to your advantage.
You’ll have the tools and knowledge to
begin implementing to improve the
rankings for any Website in today’s
competitive search engine environment.
This competitive edge will help start or
continue your career as an SEO
mastermind.
Who this Book is
for

Written for anyone with an

insatiable desire to learn the ins and outs
of the Google SEO world, this book is
the culmination of experience that I have
gathered over the course of over a
decade of grueling work in the SEO
field.
 I have researched, tested, and
studied just about every method and
technique possible for ranking on
Google and other search engines, and
this book is the culmination of much of
that information. This is not a book for
anyone who isn’t absolutely serious and
committed to learning the real industry
methods, and techniques for propelling
yourself up Google’s search rankings.

In this SEO book I provide a lot of

the foundational concepts that allow you
to rank your pages and sites at the top of
SERPs while also providing step-by-
step instructions in some sections on
how to conduct the techniques. In the
pages to follow you’ll come to learn
some of the true, tried, and proven
techniques that work, today, for Google
SEO improvement. With the recent
major amendments and overhauls to
Google’s search engine algorithm, this
book is a necessity for anyone looking to
stay ahead of the Google Panda &
Penguin curve.

If you commit to reading this book

from end to end I assure you that you
will not only become proficient in the
SEO trade, but you’ll achieve master
level at a very accelerated pace. While
going through the process of learning
SEO I was unable to find a single
repository containing the type and style
of information that I disseminate in this
book. These real world practices
contained in the pages of this book are
not filled with “fluff” and filler to
occupy unnecessary space, but rather
real usable techniques to ranking on
Google’s SERPs.
 In the SEO trade, most techniques
and tips are guarded and protected
heavily as the sheer nature of the culture
has been to shroud itself in secrecy for
want of keeping prying potential
competitors away. Most resources and
books on SEO will leave out key
information and steps that are critical to
the overall success of any SEO
campaign. Without some of this basic
foundational knowledge you may find
yourself at a plateau very early on,
wondering why you’re not having the
results you were expecting.
Introduction

The evolution of the Internet has

been remarkable to watch. Over the past
decade, the exponential rise of both the
power and reach of the Internet has been
breathtaking. This once small array of
computers has now spawned into a
global network of billions of Web pages
located on servers across the globe,
accessible anytime, anywhere, by
anyone.
 A virtual super highway providing
access to the world’s consumers, the
importance of a powerful presence on
the Web has become a necessity in
today’s competitive business
environment, and no longer an option.
No company has played a larger role in
the construction and development of that
virtual superhighway then Google,
building the foundation of its entire
business on our desires to seek out and
find information through online search.

Once operating out of a small

room on the Stanford University campus,
Google has now spawned into a
multibillion dollar, Multinational
Corporation, with virtual tentacles
reaching far and wide. The idea for the
company came about when Stanford
University PhD students Sergey Brin and
Larry Page began a research project to
improve Internet search. Creating an
algorithm that would use backlinks and
page rank as its primary source of
ranking for Websites, Brin and Page
revolutionized the search industry, as we
know it, launching their company Google
in the process.

The Google search algorithm was

released to spider the Web in 1996,
searching out links to Websites, gauging
their importance and simultaneously
attributing a relevancy ranking to each
site in the process. The Google search
algorithm and the company itself, has
come a long way since the early days of
its birth, exhibiting tremendous growth
stretching even beyond the wildest
dreams of its co-founders.
 The Company has now made the
word “Google” synonymous with
search. This brand awareness of the
search giant rivals some of the world’s
largest corporations such as McDonald’s
and Coca-Cola, extending its name into
the very depths of every country, state,
city, municipality and residential acre of
the world.

Considering the scope and

importance of the Internet and its search
today, being found online is more
important now then ever, and businesses
are doing whatever it takes in order to
ensure that they appear relevant in
search results. With the increase in
competition and accessibility of the
Internet to virtually anyone, it’s no
surprise that the level of difficulty in
attaining high organic search rankings
has drastically increased over time.

With billions of pages constantly

vying for the coveted number one spots
on search engine results pages (SERPs),
an entire industry has sprung up
dedicated to the craft of search engine
optimization. The race for presence on
these SERPs has been driven not only by
competition in the marketplace as the
Internet has grown, but also by Google’s
desire to make its search results more
and more relevant and accurate over
time, forcing Websites and search engine
marketers to work harder and harder to
stay ahead of the curve.

As Google’s search algorithms

have aged and evolved, the industry has
changed and shifted dramatically in
order to adapt, and staying relevant is
more important now then ever. A
company or product’s appearance at the
top of SERPs can have a significant
impact on its bottom line. With access to
such a large market of global consumers,
it’s no surprise why so many people are
striving for the type of attention that only
a top organic search result can bring.
Future Updates

While I have taken every

precaution to provide you with as much
current information as possible related
to SEO practices and the industry, it’s
important to understand that with the
inherent nature of the industry’s fast pace
for change, some of the information in
this book may be outdated by the time
you’re reading it. However, this book
will be updated periodically to reflect
information as it evolves so you can rest
assured that you will be reading the most
current information readily available.

This book has been written as a

post Google Panda & Google Penguin
guide to ranking at the top of Google
search results, and while I cannot
guarantee that you will be able to rank
#1 for any given search result, if you
follow the guidelines suggested in this
book, and put in the honest effort that
SEO requires, you will see dramatic
improvements in virtually any keyword
for virtually any site.
 If you’re unfamiliar with Google’s
Panda & Penguin updates, these were
changes to the search giant’s algorithm
that sought to increase the relevancy of
its search results. While punishing poor
low-quality content sites that learned
how to bend the rules to reach top
rankings on Google, it rewarded high-
quality, rich-content sites providing
tremendous value and information to its
visitors.

Of course, there are always the

exceptions to the rule here for being able
to achieve top rankings on Google’s
SERPs. As you may already know, if
you’re attempting to do SEO for sites
that include gambling, pornography, or
other illegal prescription products, you
are going to see heavy amounts of
resistance in ranking high, if at all.
Chapter 1
SEO Crash Course

Search Engine Optimization, or

SEO for short, has grown into a vast
industry encompassing a variety of
diverse tasks & techniques. What started
out as a simple job at first, has evolved
into a labor-intensive, multi-faceted
nearly full-time occupation. Stretching
from keyword research, to content
creation, On-Site optimization, Off-Site
optimization, and social media
marketing, amongst other efforts, SEO
has become an enormous undertaking.

In a search environment with a

constantly evolving algorithm, it’s
important for marketers to stay current
and stay relevant. By understanding what
it takes to rank at the top of the Google’s
SERPs today and into the future, you can
create a strategy and approach that will
produce long-term results and not just
temporary gains.
 In the SEO industry, content is
king, and as ruler of the Web, special
attention needs to be paid to the quality
of content distributed in association with
any Website or page. Gone are the days
when marketers could put out low-
quality content spun in a hundred
different directions and spread across
all corners of the Web in hopes that it
would bolster search engine rankings for
their sites. Today, trying to cheat Google
with low-quality content, link schemes,
and poor user browsing experiences,
will see you drop like a ship’s anchor in
the rankings.

Over the course of the past several

years Google has cracked down on these
so-called content farms that produce
low-quality, poorly researched content
that contain massive amounts of
outbound links. By releasing its Google
Panda algorithm update, and more
recently, its Google Penguin algorithm
update, Google has sent a clear message
to the world. These two algorithm
updates created a massive restructuring
and shuffling of SERP rankings,
demoting pages with low-quality, poorly
researched content, while promoting
those with high-quality, well-researched
content.

The rise of social media platforms

in recent years, has also given way to
significant changes and improvements in
search engine algorithms. Successful
SEO strategies today must embrace
social media platforms by having their
content shared and liked as frequently
and by as many people as possible.
 Social media’s role in search
relevancy has seen a dramatic rise due
to the large part that it now plays in our
lives. By liking or sharing a piece of
content, you’re indicating the relevancy
of it to Google and the other search
engines, and they’ve begun to take
notice. Algorithms have been adjusted
and modified to reflect backlinks coming
from popular social media sites and they
now factor into the relevancy score of a
search listing.

With all of these different elements

playing a part in SEO, how do you go
about creating a winning strategy that
weaves together all of the diverse
approaches that are required for a
successful SEO campaign today? By
first understanding all of the different
parts and components that are involved
with ranking a site, you’ll come to
embrace and comprehend an industry
that may at first seem overwhelmingly
difficult and complex.

Any successful endeavor starts

with gaining an understanding for the
knowledge associated with it. In the
SEO industry, that knowledge required
is vast and spread out across various
different mediums, so it’s important to
absorb and understand what’s involved
in search rankings, then set out to
implement those practices while gauging
your results to determine successes.
You’ll be wearing a lot of hats, so be
prepared to invest some time in creating
a winning strategy that works for you.

This book is broken up into

sections based on the parts and
components involved in the practice of
SEO. At the back of the book is an
appendix filled with a glossary of terms
related to the SEO industry and various
SEO practices. It’s recommended that
you review and understand the terms in
the appendix and use it as a reference for
any terms you may not completely grasp
in the book.

Fully executing a successful SEO

campaign involves understanding and
implementing the practices taught in this
book. To implement some of these
practices you’ll need to have the proper
tools in your SEO arsenal. Attempting to
conduct SEO without the use of these
tools would be like trying to run a car
without gasoline; it simply won’t work.

Keep in mind that SEO also

requires patience, and in order to be
successful you’ll need to implement
these practices consistently, taking daily
action in order to achieve the results
you’re after. Most successful campaigns
for SEO take at least 90 days to see the
biggest gains.
 Although you may begin seeing
some SEO results within shorter periods
of time the largest long term gains will
not be visible until at least 60 to 90 days
from the time you performed your SEO
work. Due to the fact that Google does
multiple updates of its search results,
through quick re-indexing of listings that
tend to shuffle SERP listings around a lot
at first but settle in after longer periods
of time have elapsed and deep-indexing
has occurred.

The amount of time that will be

required for you to see gains in your
particular SEO projects will vary for
each keyword based on the level of
competition and the search volume. The
key is to stay focused and stay
determined. By keeping your eye on the
prize of top rankings, within time you’ll
be successful, as long as you don’t give
up.
Tooling Up

SEO requires a set of tools of the

trade that you’ll need in order to build
and manage an effective optimization
strategy. These tools will automate
certain tasks such as link building that
may otherwise be impossible to do in
the volumes required within any
respectable time constraint when done
manually. Just as a carpenter has a
hammer and a saw that are essential to
his trade, an SEO specialist has his own
set of tools that are needed to launch and
manage any effective optimization effort.

It’s important to follow along with

the steps while utilizing the tools
mentioned in order to achieve any
success in SEO. The gains you stand to
reap by employing the tools discussed
versus the small investment needed for
some of them are phenomenal. A top-tier
search result can rake in countless
income for any product or service so
ensure that you’ve tooled up to get the
job done in order to propel your listing
to the top of SERPs.
Keyword Research

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

– The majority of your keyword research
will be done using the Google Adwords
Keyword Tool, a free online resource
provided by the search giant itself to aid
advertisers with potential ad campaigns.
However, you don’t need to run an ad
campaign in order to use the Keyword
Tool, and you don’t even need to have a
Google account. Although, it is much
simpler to use the Keyword Tool with a
Google account by not having to answer
the Captcha challenge question each time
a search is performed.

SEO Quake Browser Plug-in –

The SEO Quake plug-in is a free
downloadable plug-in available for
Firefox, or as an extension available for
the Chrome browser, that allows you to
see information related to a domain
that’s critical to keyword rankings. You
can set your preferences in this tool,
turning on and off various pieces of data
that come through and it’s a great
resource to quickly check competitors’
domain ages, number of inbound links,
Alexa rankings, number of Twitter
Tweets, number of Facebook Likes, and
number of Google Plus Ones, quickly
while performing these searches on
Google.
Website Development

Wordpress – With near 60 million

installations as of the writing of this
book, Wordpress is certainly a blogging
and Website development platform to be
reckoned with. To most people starting
out that don’t understand complex
programming languages, Wordpress
offers a very simple and easy to use
platform.

The Wordpress system enables

you to get your site up and running fast
allowing you to concentrate on your
SEO efforts sooner as opposed to going
down the traditional route of hiring a
Web designer or doing it yourself. With
Wordpress you can quickly install a
theme to modify the design of your site,
upload a logo, create title tags, and do
much of the On-Site SEO work
discussed in Chapter 4 of this book.

Additionally, if you are a seasoned

developer or Web designer, then you can
further harness and use the power of
Wordpress as an initial platform for your
site. Furthermore, if you’re passing the
site off to a client, they’ll have a built-in
online system they can utilize to manage
Web pages and blog posts even after the
project is complete.

To setup Wordpress with a hosting

company on your own domain use either
GoDaddy or Hostgator.
Traff ic Statistics & Tracking

Google Analytics – The most

sophisticated Website analytics engine
on the market today, Google Analytics
offers free Website analytics to any site
looking to integrate a small piece of
code into its pages for tracking &
analysis. Of course, tracking and
analysis is an important component to
analyzing SEO efforts and having a good
system you can utilize to track your
Website’s traffic is paramount to
understanding just how effective those
SEO efforts have been.

Google Analyticator Wordpress

Plug-in – If you’re working with the
Wordpress platform, then once you have
your Google Analytics account all setup,
setting up this plug-in will help link your
Website with your analytics account. By
utilizing this plug-in you won’t have to
manually add any code to your site, the
synch will happen seamlessly through
the Wordpress administration platform.
 Piwik – This is another powerful
Website analytics platform that provides
a bit more detail then Google Analytics
does, but it’s also more complex to
initially setup if you’re not familiar with
installing a PHP application on your
server. Piwik provides more real, down
to the last detail, information about your
visitors, that Google doesn’t provide
due to privacy policies it has in place.
On-Site SEO

SEO for Wordpress Plug-in –

On-Site SEO can be overwhelming at
times, however, having the proper SEO
plug-ins can make all the difference if
you’re using a publishing platform like
Wordpress. The SEO for Wordpress
plug-in is one of the best free plug-ins
that I’ve found for Wordpress, allowing
you to update the meta description tag,
title tag, and analyze other On-Site SEO
data for each specific page or article
post through its interface.

SEOPressor Wordpress Plug-in

– SEOPressor is another great plug-in
for Wordpress that provides you with
page specific SEO content scoring,
relaying a breakdown of your SEO score
based out of 100 percent for any given
keyword you select. This plug-in is
being used by over 125,000 Wordpress
Websites and is terrific if you want to
take a lot of the guesswork out of your
On-Site SEO.
Off -Site SEO

Tribepro – This is probably one

of the best online applications for
instantly dropping hundreds if not
thousands of high page rank backlinks
through social media instantly from a
single share. Tribepro syndicates your
content to all the people who have
selected to syndicate you in your tribe on
all the social networks they have
activated. You can quickly build up to
5,000 high page rank backlinks to your
URL on networks like Facebook,
Twitter, Google Plus, MySpace, Friend
Free, and 43 other social networks.

Onlywire – Onlywire is a content

syndication platform that’s utilized by
Tribepro and it can syndicate your
content on autopilot to up to 48 social
networks. There’s some initial setup
involved in getting your various social
media accounts established, however,
once you’re up and going it’s relatively
simple to use.
 When used in connection with
Tribepro, it will syndicate your content
and anyone else’s content in your tribe
that you’ve chosen to syndicate. This
application is an absolute must for
anyone serious about SEO.

Fiverr – This Website is an

excellent way to speed up your Off-Site
SEO link building. The concept behind
this site is based around vendors willing
to provide a multitude of different
services for as little as $5 USD. A
terrific resource for finding and hiring
vendors willing to do all sorts of Off-
Site SEO link building work, Fiverr will
become an invaluable online destination
for your Off-Site SEO work. Whether
you’re hiring vendors to create link
wheels, link pyramids, or perform other
Off-Site SEO work, Fiverr is simple to
use and excellent for hiring individuals
to help boost SEO presence for any site.

Pingler – Pingler is a Website

dedicated to setting up and pinging a
specific URL on a periodic basis.
Pinging is part of the Off-Site SEO
process and tells Google to visit and
revisit a link based on the amount of
time specified (usually every 3 days).
When you use Pingler, you’ll know that
Google’s spiders will quickly visit the
content that you’ve placed online
indexing and revisiting it based on the
time period you specify.

You can ping links for free with

Pingler, however it’s best to sign up for
one of their basic accounts that will let
you track and re-ping your links
automatically without having to return
and re-enter them yourself every few
days.

Linklicious – During the process

of creating low-level links in mass
quantity you’ll be working hard to make,
you’ll need a way to ensure these links
are indexed and pinged in high volume.
The best service to conduct this volume
pinging is with Linklicious. Since
Google doesn’t crawl 95% of the low
page rank and no page rank links out
there, you have to tell it to do so if you
want those links to count in Google’s
algorithm. Without doing this, you’re
wasting your precious time and
resources creating links that may never
get crawled and indexed.

Linklicious offers a free account

that allows you to ping up to 2,500 links
per day, a Basic account that allows you
to ping up to 10,000 links per day, and a
Pro account that allows you to ping up to
50,000 links per day. Providing you with
a high quality drip-feed system to send
your links to Google in an organic
looking fashion, Linklicious is a must for
any SEO campaign. Without the usage of
a drip-feed system like the one provided
by Linklicious, mass pinging of links to
Google in a short time span will get your
listing demoted, and even de-indexed in
some extreme cases; caught up in the
Google Sandbox nightmare.
Social Media Marketing

Empire Avenue – Empire Avenue

is an excellent resource for bringing
together all of your social media
platforms into one place and allowing
you to collaborate with other like-
minded marketers that are using social
media to spread and share each other’s
content. On Empire Avenue you can
connect any number of social networks
that you are participating in to the
service and begin collaborating with
other online marketers working to boost
their SEO and social media statuses.

As a tradable commodity, your

account on Empire Avenue becomes a
fictitious stock on the site, earning you
the Website’s own currency called
Eaves when your shares are purchased.
While it’s a fictional trading platform,
the site is excellent for collaborating and
doing missions with other people to
either share their content or have them
share yours in exchange for Eaves.
 Empire Avenue is a free site,
however you can always purchase more
Eaves when you run dry or just do
missions to earn them for free. This is an
excellent way to get real human people
to collaborate with, Facebook Share,
like, Google Plus One, and Re-Tweet
your content, all excellent sources of
SEO link juice.

Twitter – Twitter is an excellent

platform for getting yourself out there
and noticed by just about anyone. With a
page rank of 9 out of 10, Twitter
backlinks can be very powerful link
juice when pointing to your site’s pages.
If you don’t already have a Twitter
account for yourself or your business,
then set one up and make it look
professional.

Since the Twitter account is a

reflection of you and your business,
don’t ruin it by posting unprofessional
tweets or photos. Select a quality photo,
and pick a pleasing background that’s
easy on the eyes and ensure that you
create a backlink to your Website in your
Twitter profile.

Facebook – With over one billion

people on Facebook, this is probably the
best way to network, socialize and
create high quality Off-Site SEO
backlinks on a regular basis. Create a
professional looking page for your
business and ensure that you hyperlink
your domain name in your profile. Each
time you add content share it on
Facebook to pick up more of those high
page-ranking links back to your site.
 When setting up a business or fan
page on Facebook, keep it professional,
because remember, this is a reflection of
you as well. If you’re doing this for a
client, get them to setup the page and
make you an admin so that you can adjust
the appearance, setup the company
profile with Website link, and begin
sharing content directly on the page for
more high-quality backlinks.

Google Plus – The importance

and reach of Google’s own social
network, Google Plus, has grown
tremendously over the past couple of
years. Today, having a Google Plus
profile is not an option, it’s a must, and
being in as many circles as possible will
increase the prominence of any content
tied to your author account on Google’s
SERPs.

YouTube – Google loves YouTube

videos. Maybe it’s because the search
giant owns the video powerhouse, but
for whatever reason, creating videos on
YouTube will explode your SEO
presence when linked to your content.
 By shooting & uploading videos
that provide value, such as instructional
videos and how-to videos that solve
problems, you will be able to quickly
move to the top of Google SERPs. By
having a popular video on YouTube with
a link back to your content or embedded
in your content, you create a winning
strategy for increased rankings.

Shareaholic Wordpress Plug-in –

A terrific free Wordpress plug-in,
Shareaholic allows your content to be
easily shared across any number of
social networks by visitors to your site
or blog. Shareaholic sets up simple
sharing capabilities on your Wordpress-
based Website’s pages and posts
allowing the content to be very easily
shared amongst dozens of social
networks.
Creating a Successful SEO
Strategy

Creating and implementing a

successful SEO strategy takes a sincere
amount of effort. It requires daily and
consistent action with link building,
unique content creation, social media
marketing, along with other On-Site and
Off-Site SEO efforts. If you’re not
absolutely committed to an SEO project,
you might see it fail if you can’t follow
through with these tasks on a daily basis.
 Think of your site as a plant, and
SEO as the water and sunlight; without
water and sunlight a plant can’t grow
and flourish to its full potential, and will
eventually wither away and die. By
providing the proper amount of
nourishment each and everyday,
however, your plant will grow little by
little until the day it fully blooms and
blossoms.

Much like a plant, your listing

will climb the SERPs little by little each
day as more work is done to it until one
day when it shoots to the top and your
hard work pays off. While getting to the
#1 position involves a lot of hard work
and is never guaranteed, making sure that
you stay there also includes basic daily
actions as well; your work is not
completely finished even when you
reach the top.

Covering foundational SEO

strategies, along with some advanced
ranking techniques, this book, when read
end to end will allow you to conduct a
successful White-Hat SEO campaign for
any site or page. If you follow along
with the processes and steps laid out in
this book, you will be able to
successfully improve your SERP ranking
for virtually any search keyword. Here
is an overview of the process and steps
laid out in this book for effectually
instituting a successful SEO campaign.

Chapter 2 – Securing an Aged Domain

Part of what Google sees as

relevant is finding a domain name that
has some age and history to it. The
search giant understands that businesses
are vying to climb its rankings, but it
also understands that new businesses are
less relevant then existing businesses
that have been in existence for some
time.

Like any business that has been

around for years, an aged domain is a
domain that has more credibility, and
this is the view taken by Google. An
aged domain is a domain that has been
indexed in the past two or more years by
Google and is considered a trusted
domain. Even if the domain name is old,
it must have been indexed and have had
some activity in the past to be
considered an aged domain name.

Chapter 3 – Conducting Effective

Keyword Research

Your site or page’s primary

keyword is at the heart of your SEO
strategy and all your other activities will
revolve around it. As the main target of
search queries, the primary keyword for
both your site or a specific piece of
content located anywhere on the Internet,
is going to be what you focus all your
other SEO efforts on. Doing the proper
research at this stage of the game will
set yourself up for success moving
forward.

Chapter 4 – On-Site SEO Techniques

Having excellent On-Site (or On-

Page) SEO will give your site that much
needed boost and potential to rank at the
top of SERPs. If your On-Site SEO is
lacking, then your capability to rank high
will diminish greatly.

In this section we’ll discuss what

matters today for search engines when it
comes to optimizing your pages with On-
Site SEO techniques. These techniques
will drastically improve your end results
and make all your other efforts that much
more worthwhile.
Chapter 5 – Setting up Website
Analytics & Keyword Tracking

Setting up a good system for

analysis and tracking will allow you to
determine the success of your SEO
efforts. There are only a handful of good
tools that are available on the market
today for tracking site usage and
statistics. In SEO, there are multiple
different tracking and analysis tools that
can be used. The most important
elements you’ll want to keep track of
will be keyword searches and sources of
your Website’s traffic.

Chapter 6 – Creating Unique, Well-

Researched Content

A cornerstone of any successful

SEO campaign, we’ll discuss what it
takes to write well-researched unique
content. Since writing well researched,
unique content is critical to ranking high
on Google’s SERPs, this is something
that should be an important focus for
you.
 If you’re unable to write well, or
you feel like your English may not be
perfect, then you may consider
outsourcing some of this work. Although,
since writing good content is so vital to
SEO, and something you’ll need to be
doing on a consistent basis, getting very
good at this one major component could
mean drastic differences in your ranking
success rates.

Chapter 7 – Off-Site SEO Techniques

 Link relationships are a
foundational part of the Internet and its
search algorithms. However, making
mistakes and being severely penalized
by Google for some types of link
building activities are some of the
pitfalls you’ll need to avoid.
Understanding what works and what
doesn’t when it comes to Off-Site SEO
is important to give your site that push it
needs to get found, noticed, and appear
relevant to search engines.

Without the proper Off-Site SEO

guidance you may be unknowingly
practicing Black-Hat SEO techniques
and wondering why your site isn’t
moving up the rankings after weeks and
even months of hard work.

Chapter 8 – Social Media Strategies

Like, share, tweet, and plus one,

the social networks’ role in SEO has
dramatically increased over the past
several years. Google now pays close
attention to just how many times a page
is tweeted, shared, liked, or given a plus
one. It’s important to mix any good SEO
strategy with a strong social media
strategy, but knowing what to do and
how to go about getting those precious
social media votes can at times be
difficult.

This section will give you some

helpful tips on launching and managing
an effective social media strategy to go
along with your SEO campaign efforts
and show you some insider techniques
on getting more social media shares and
votes then ever before.

Chapter 9 – Producing Results

Of course, like anything else in

life, good things come to those who
wait, and although this is not a personal
development book, I can’t help but
highlight the importance of feeding your
brain with positive input daily.

SEO takes work, and you’ll find

yourself at times putting in long hours
trying to set things up properly.
Fortunately, you have an SEO road map
here for success; however, the road is
long and hard and requires consistent
effort on your part to produce lasting
results.

It’s easy to get discouraged at SEO

as it is with anything else in life that
takes real and consistent effort.
However, if you can master the art of
SEO, your ability to create instant and
lasting wealth online will be unlimited.

There are few people who truly

understand SEO and use it to their
advantage. These few who follow
through with SEO practices such as
unique content creation, proper linking,
social media campaigns, and everything
else involved with SEO, are able to
create significantly trafficked sites that
ultimately enhance their bottom lines.

By understanding and having the

knowledge to build and launch a site that
will make it to the top of Google’s
rankings quickly, and stay there for a
long time, is a skill that will pay off
handsomely over time. Just imagine
being able to find a domain, build a site
with affiliate links and really good
content, then work on driving that site to
the top of Google’s search results. The
pay off - automatic income running 24
hours a day, 7 days a week, without rest.
Sound enticing? Welcome to the world
of SEO.
Chapter 2
Aged Domains

Known only to very few savvy

Internet Marketers & SEO specialists, an
aged domain is a domain that has
previously been indexed by Google in
the past two or more years. This is a
requisite for the success of any SEO
campaign since Google’s algorithm has
been beefed up to factor in how long ago
a domain was first indexed by the search
engine.

If you have a new, or relatively

new domain name, Google’s algorithm
filters the impact of everything SEO
related, On-Site and Off-Site,
diminishing any optimization efforts you
may try to institute in the first couple of
years of a domain’s existence. This
means that links don’t get as much
weight, even if they are prominent ones,
social media shares don’t matter as
much, even if there are many of them,
and any other normally affective SEO
effort’s impact is dampened. As a result,
the SEO score is diminished along with
the visibility of that domain’s listings on
SERPs.

Being stuck with a domain that’s

new isn’t the end of the world.
However, if you’re going to make any
significant moves to rank higher on the
SERPs, you must allocate an aged
domain. An aged domain name is not
considered aged based on the date of the
initial registration of the domain itself
(located in the WHOIS database), but
rather, the initial date that Google
indexed the domain.

An aged domain name can be

either a domain name that you have
owned for two or more years, or a
domain name that was won at auction.
No matter how old the domain however,
if it was never actually indexed by
Google, it’s not considered an aged
domain.

If you have a domain name that

was registered and indexed by Google
less then two years ago, and you’re
attempting to rank for highly competitive
keywords, then your efforts will be
nothing short of futile. In competing to
rank at the top of Google’s SERPs,
you’re better off purchasing an aged
domain name at auction and building up
the SEO value of that domain name, and
linking your original domain name to the
aged one.

Over time, your original domain

name will increase in SEO value and
won’t have its results filtered (or
Sandboxed) by Google. While this may
be a difficult decision for some, without
an aged domain name, you’ll be trapped
on low-level SERPs wondering to
yourself how come you’re not ranking
high when you’ve done everything else
to boost your site’s SEO.

This is probably one of the most

important insider trade secrets to SEO
that’s not discussed in many other
places. Most people either gloss over
this or simply haven’t analyzed enough
data and had enough experience with
both aged and new domain names to be
able to tell the difference. This one
technique will not only save you time
and frustration, it will help boost your
bottom line in the long run.
Google’s Sandbox

As children, we all played in the

sandbox, but there’s another little known
virtual sandbox floating around in
Cyberspace that many just aren’t aware
of. Google’s sandbox, also referred to as
the Sandbox Effect, is a method for
filtering search results that decrease the
impact of any link building, content
creation and other SEO efforts that are
implemented for new domain names.
This results in the degradation of SERP
rankings for any given keyword having
high competition on an un-aged domain
name.

You may be thinking that this is an

unfair practice implemented by the
search engine giant, however, many
years ago, spammers would dominate
the search ranking pages by buying up
multiple varying domain names,
duplicating content and creating link
bombs with those keywords to the sites,
rocketing them to the top quickly and
easily. This has been very well
documented in the past. To prevent this,
and for other reasons, Google has
created its Sandbox.

While the Sandbox Effect is

something that has been well
documented in the SEO world, Google
has never abjectly disclosed it or the
exact set of rules that pertain to it. This
is because the Sandbox has been put in
place to prevent spammers and low
quality content generators from
dominating Google’s ranking pages as
they once did in the past, so it’s pretty
clear that Google most likely never will
disclose all the details related to its
rules.

You may have a domain name that

you have been trying fiercely to rank on
the first page of Google’s search engine
results, to your frustration, but have not
been able to get it to budge after months
of work possibly including content
creation and heavy backlink building
campaigns. In this instance, be aware
that if the domain name is a new domain
name, then your efforts are mostly going
to waste. While there are special
situations that may be exceptions to the
Sandbox rule (such as obtaining a
domain name with the exact phrase as
your primary keyword), in most cases a
new domain name will rank significantly
lower then an aged domain.

Understanding what an aged

domain name is and following along
with some basic principles that are in
effect when attempting to acquire an
aged domain, is imperative to the
success of your intended SEO campaign.
Not referring to the date of initial
registration of the domain itself (located
in the WHOIS database), an aged
domain refers to the first time that
Google indexed its pages.

If a domain name was first

registered in 2006 but it wasn’t first
indexed until 2012, the domain name
isn’t aged. However, if the domain was
registered in 2006 and first indexed in
2006, then you have a well-aged domain
name. This information is vital to the
success of your SEO campaign, but
finding the right aged domain name may
be difficult so it will take some effort of
consistently searching.

One other important issue to note

here while discussing aged domain
names and their acquisition is that you
should not attempt to acquire an aged
domain name that was in a completely
different category or niche then the site
that you intend to associate with it. The
content should be somewhat similar to
what you’re attempting to rank for. For
example, if you’re trying to launch a
children’s toy ecommerce site, don’t try
to purchase a domain name that was
indexed for skin care a few years back.

Although this isn’t a major issue

today, repurposing a domain name may
become a red flag in the future,
especially if you attempt to associate
entirely different content with the
domain then its historical indexes
contained. Try to keep the niche or
category somewhat similar to what it
used to be in order to avoid any
potential future headaches.
Avoiding the Google Sandbox

You only have two choices if

you’re looking to avoid the Google
Sandbox Effect: you can either wait until
your domain has aged for two or more
years, or you can purchase a domain
name from an auction site or domain
seller directly.

Even if you’ve already put

considerable efforts behind an existing
new domain name that you may have,
purchasing an aged domain name will
allow you to rank higher and faster then
with a new domain. Registering an aged
domain name will at least give you the
opportunity to rank as high as the first
position on Google’s SERPs. Even with
low competition for a given keyword,
it’s going to be very difficult, if not
impossible, to rank a new domain name
on the first page of Google’s SERPs let
alone be in the first position.

Of course, special circumstances

could exist here, and if for example the
new domain name is the exact same
word or phrase as the intended keyword,
there may be a chance to reach page one
immediately. However, if there is heavy
competition you will still see huge
resistance even with a new domain name
that meets this criterion.

Purchasing a domain name at

auction doesn’t require that much effort,
and it’s something that few know about
or really take advantage of. I’ve found
some of the best domain names that I
own by combing through the auction
sites on a periodic basis. These auction
sites are not only dedicated to people
willingly selling their domain names,
they also house the crown jewels of
domain names that have possibly
unknowingly expired and are now
available to scoop up, and those are
recently expired domains.

There truly is no better way to get

your content ranked quicker then by
having an aged domain. Even if you do
all the other things right, having a brand
new domain name is going to sting for a
long time. Google looks at a new domain
name just like banks look at new
businesses, as big risks. Whether it’s the
risk it will fail, produce spam, or
whatever other reasoning it has, Google
has instituted these safeguards and it’s
your job to ensure that you do whatever
it takes to have the best fighting chance
on ranking high.

By finding and purchasing an aged

domain name, you will at least have the
capability to rank your site high up on
the SERPs, whereas with a new domain
name, you will not. Simply put, new
domains just aren’t trusted by Google.

Cross-referencing historical
Google indexed data is going to be
critical during the hunt for aged domain
names. By cross-referencing the domain
data you will be determining whether or
not this is an actual aged domain name
that has been indexed in the past, or
whether it’s simply an old domain that
sat dormant and never became a
Website.
 To conduct your cross-referencing
work on the domain names you’ll be
using a Website called the Wayback
Machine. The Wayback Machine houses
an archive of the Internet and its pages
dating back to 1996. You’ll need to use
the Wayback Machine while searching
for domains at auction so it’s best to
open it up in a separate browser
window or tab while conducting your
searches for an aged domain.

If you’ve ever tried to search for

an aged domain, the process is relatively
simple and purchasing an aged domain
name is similar to purchasing a new
domain name. The major difference is
that the transfer usually takes a few days
after purchase of an aged domain name
as opposed to happening instantly for
brand new, never before registered
domains. But you know how the saying
goes: good things come to those who
wait.

The transfer period usually takes

anywhere from 3 days to 6 days and
sometimes happens before the expected
final transfer date. Waiting a few days
for an aged domain name is significantly
better then having to wait a few years
before you can rank a new domain on
Google’s SERPs.
Using GoDaddy Auctions

One of the Web’s best resources

for purchasing aged domains is
GoDaddy Auctions. Not only do they
provide domain names available by
auction, but they also house domain
names on the auction site that have
recently expired.

Expired domain names are usually

premium ones, going un-renewed for a
multitude of reasons such as a re-billing
credit card errors, no longer doing
business, or an issue related to outdated
email and contact information. These
expired domains are gold mines
possessing enormous amounts of SEO
juice, so to speak.

To initiate the process of

allocating a domain from GoDaddy
Auctions, simply navigate to the site by
clicking here. Subsequently, you can also
simply point your browser to:
http://auctions.godaddy.com.
 When you arrive at the GoDaddy
Auctions Website, you’ll need to click
on their advanced search hyperlink in
order to access and adjust the filters that
we’ll require when searching for aged
domains. The advanced search hyperlink
is located where the arrow is pointing in
Figure 2.1 depicting the GoDaddy
Auctions Website homepage.

What we hope to achieve, by

adjusting these filters, is to find a
domain name that is in your niche and
can fit the site you intend to launch or the
existing business you’re in. It’s
important to find a domain name that is
at least in the same category because by
using a domain name that was indexed
for something completely different in the
past you may encounter some resistance
or even face de-indexing by Google in
some extreme cases. This repurposing of
the domain name must be done properly
if you’re going to succeed in your SEO
efforts.
 Figure 2.1 ~ GoDaddy Auctions
Website Home Page

When sifting through the database

of names that are available at GoDaddy
Auctions, I would recommend setting the
search filters as shown in Figure 2.2 (the
highlighted sections display the
recommended settings for searching).
You’ll be looking for a domain name
with a minimum age of 5 years that
contains a certain keyword related to
your business, with a dot com extension
that has a buy it now option.

If you’re in the children’s clothing

business, you can use the keyword
“clothing” but make sure that selector
type is changed to “contains”, otherwise
it will look for an exact match and you
can rest assured that clothing.com will
not be available. The category has to
make sense and it should match
categorically with the present business
that you’re in to avoid raising any red
flags in the future.

Take the time to look at some of

the old Web pages in the Wayback
Machine. archive to see what the past
content of the domain was; see if it
matches what you’re intending on doing
with it.

Figure 2.2 ~ GoDaddy Auctions

 Advanced Search Filters Screen

Upon successful initiation of a

search on GoDaddy Auctions, you’ll be
presented with a number of domain
results that you can review the details of
by clicking on their respective rows.
The most important component of this
search isn’t the actual age of the domain
name, but the first time that the site was
actually indexed by Google’s search
engine.
 To determine if the domain was in
fact indexed by Google in the past, after
you conduct your search, launch another
browser window or tab and navigate to
the Wayback Machine and type in the
domain names that you’ve located one
by one. In the search results on the
Wayback Machine, you’ll either have
data returned with history of the
Webpages over time, as depicted in
Figure 2.3 for Amazon.com, or a screen
displaying that no historical index
information is available.
 Figure 2.3 ~ Wayback Machine
Archive Search Results

Once you find the ideal domain

name that has been indexed in the past
within the search parameters specified,
you should immediately purchase it
before it’s no longer available. Most
people buying new domain names are
not familiar with this technique on
purchasing aged domains, and this one
tip alone could put countless extra
dollars in your pocket by being able to
immediately sky rocket your site to page
one or even position number one on
Google search results within a very
short period of time.

Without having an aged domain,

you’re looked at as the new kid on the
block that doesn’t get much attention for
a while. Every effort that you take with a
new domain name will be filtered by the
Sandbox Effect and have less of an
impact then if you were to use an aged
domain name.

When you find the domain you’re

looking for, simply add it to your cart
and continue through with the purchase
process. After purchase, you’ll be able
to come back and check the status of the
domain’s transfer to see just how many
days it’s going to take (usually 3 to 6 day
period from purchase to transfer).

Before purchasing the domain

name it’s critical that you ensure Google
has previously indexed it. Check the
Wayback machine’s screenshots to
confirm that the pages were actual Web
pages and not just domain repository
coming soon pages. The more activity
and older the domain name, the better
your chances are for ranking higher,
faster.
Chapter 3
Keyword Research

With billions of Web pages vying

for search engine traffic, competing and
clawing their way to the top of SERPs,
picking and selecting the right keyword
can either propel you high up on the
rankings, or leave you sitting on the
sidelines for a long time. SEO is a
competitive field, but it’s always
possible to find some combination of
words or phrases that will offer lower
keyword competition while still fitting
your product or service.

There are many tools that can be

utilized on the Web in order to determine
your probability of being able to rank on
the first page of Google’s SERPs. With
96% of clicks coming from that first
page of Google SERPs, as opposed to
the second page and beyond, it’s no
wonder why everyone is hard at work to
position themselves on that jeweled first
page. The more time that you spend
doing the proper keyword research, the
better your possibilities are going to be
to rank at the top.

In the field of Internet Marketing,

professionals who take the time to write
a few well-researched articles each day
with unique content are able to drive
thousands of unique visitors to their
blogs on a daily basis while earning
themselves six and seven figure yearly
salaries by promoting whatever product
they choose to on those pages. Before
they set about writing those articles,
however, they invest their time into
doing keyword research to ensure that
they will be able to rank at the top
quickly.

While you may not do this for a

living, it’s imperative to understand that
spending the extra time doing quality
research during the keyword phase is
going to be time well spent.
Brainstorming Keywords

Your approach to the all-elusive

hunt for the right keyword should always
start with a brainstorming session. If
you’re a pen and paper kind of person,
then you should grab a notepad in hand,
and if you prefer the computer, then I
would suggest opening up an Excel
spreadsheet. Whatever tools you choose,
pick one and immerse yourself in the
hunt for the right keyword.
 What you’re going to be looking
for is not only a primary keyword, but
secondary keywords as well; this is
applicable both for a site-wide search
and an article-focused search. I can’t
express enough the importance of this
phase, and time well spent hunting for
the right keywords will be time well
saved in the future when trying to rank
on SERPs for those searches.

The first thing you’ll need to begin

with of course, is your niche. If you’re
looking to sell children’s toys, cell
phone accessories, weight loss products,
or whatever it may be, try to analyze
your industry and resultant keywords
from different angles. Write down as
many different ideas as you possibly can
about your business, niche, industry,
competitors, products, and customer
demographics. This should be a good
starting point for you when you start to
actually analyze the amount of searches
some of those terms gets compared with
how competitive it is to rank for those
keywords.
 When brainstorming there are a
few different approaches. There’s a
direct approach, say if you’re selling a
weight loss pill, you might simply begin
with the terms “diet pills” or “weight
loss pills”. However, going beyond the
direct approach to a specific type of
product is an answer to a question such
as “how to lose weight fast” or “best
pills to take for fast weight loss”. Now,
you’ll notice that some of these phrases
are long tail keywords that offer one of
the lowest barriers to entry in SEO
ranking.
 Long tail keywords usually have
low competition but considerably good
search volumes. When approached
correctly, long tail keywords are one of
the simplest types of search queries to
rank first page or number one for, as you
won’t see as much competition for long
tail keywords as you will for shorter
keywords. An example of a long tail
keyword would be “how to lose weight
in less then 30 days” as opposed to just
“how to lose weight”.

When conducting your keyword

research, keep in mind that you’ll need
to create unique content based around
the keywords that you’ve selected. Now,
if this is a site-wide keyword, then this
may be a bit easier since site-wide
keywords usually will not be long tail
keywords. However, if you’re trying to
pick a keyword that wouldn’t naturally
appear in a sentence that often, then
writing the content for it may pose a
little bit more difficult for you.

Writing content for a short

keyword is a lot easier then writing
content for a long tail keyword, but it’s
harder to rank at the top of SERPs
quicker. In retrospect, selecting a long
tail keyword may make content writing
more difficult, but the ease of ranking at
the top of SERPs much better. Since
factors come into play when ranking a
keyword, you won’t actually know how
well you do until your content is out
there and indexed. If you’re just starting
out, Google’s spiders will be visiting
your Website a lot less often, so you’re
force to wait longer periods of time until
you can see a noticeable effect from the
work you’ve put in.

The game of wait and see can be

one of the most frustrating parts of the
SEO business, but there’s just no way
around it. Until you have a Website with
high page rank (4 or above) you won’t
see immediate results for ranking a
keyword. You will have to wait at as
much as 14 to 21 days to notice the
initial effects of your SEO so it’s
important to do it right the first time
around.
Google Adwords Keyword
Tool

The best method for researching

the volume of search and competition for
keywords is a tool provided by the
search engine giant, Google, itself. The
Google Keyword Tool, part of the
Google Adwords suite, is a free online
tool that can be used by anyone to do
keyword research. The tool is very fast
and effective and provides an enormous
amount of insight into how rankable any
given keyword is going to be.

To locate the Google Adwords

tool, simple query the search term
“Keyword Tool” in Google and click on
the first result titled “Keyword Tool –
Google Adwords”.
 Figure 3.1 ~ Google Adwords
Keyword Tool

Based on your keyword

brainstorming session, you’ll key in
some keywords and enter them into the
box entitled “Words or phrases”. You
can separate the words or phrases on
separate lines, however, it’s best to just
keep it simple and start the search with
your primary keyword or phrase from
your keyword brainstorming session.
For example, if your site has to do with
heating repair in New York City, you
may try to enter “Heating Repair
Manhattan” or “Heating Repair NYC “as
your keywords. Put yourself in the place
of the person doing the search to try to
visualize what you would type if you
were searching for the product or
service that you’re trying to promote.

Try to stick with long tail

keywords if you’re marketing an article
or blog post, and shorter, broader
keywords, for site-wide SEO efforts.
The ideal outcome of the research done
using the Google Keyword Tool is to
locate keywords that have high search
volume and low competition. If your
product is based on a specific locale and
you’re using the search tool from that
locale, then you would focus on local
search volume as opposed to global
search volume.

The local monthly searches

column is reflective of the searches that
are conducted from the area where your
IP address is located. If you’re logged in
from Houston, Texas, then a search for
“Heating Repair NYC” may not bring up
enough monthly searches since most
people from Houston, Texas won’t care
about heating repair companies located
in New York City.
 The two most important columns
you’ll be focusing on when conducting
this research will be the “Competition”
and the “Global Monthly Searches”. You
want to try to avoid any keyword that
has high competition in the outset
because it will be very difficult to rank
high for them even with an aged domain.
Your main target should be low and
medium competition keywords that have
a relatively high search volume.

The most ideal situation would be

to find a keyword that has low
competition with over 10,000 global
monthly searches, or even more. Now
this may be rare if you’re targeting
something broad, like Web design
services, so be sure to analyze it from
different angles by trying something like
“Web design NYC” or “NYC SoHo Web
Design Company”. While the monthly
search volume may be lower for this
long tail keyword, your whole goal is
going to be to rank at the top of the
search. Showing up #1 for a keyword
with 800 searches per month is much
better then showing up on page 5 for a
keyword with 100,000 searches per
month.
 Figure 3.2 ~ Google Keyword
Tool Search Results Page

In Figure 3.2, you’ll notice the

results of a keyword search for the term
“how to make money online” which not
only returns back the results for that
query, but underneath, some additional
suggestions or similar searches as well.
Each returned result has the volume of
competition (high, medium or low), the
global monthly searches and the local
monthly searches. As stated earlier, you
need to keep a keen eye open for low to
medium competitive keywords with
larger search volumes.

In the case of the search shown in

Figure 3.2, the keyword search “make
money online from home” would be a
more optimal target then the keyword
“how to make money online”. With a
search volume of 74,000 queries per
month, the term “make money online
from home” is one that would be a
feasible target to gain first page and/or
first position Google ranking for
(considering that other requirements are
met such as having an aged domain,
unique well-researched content, proper
On-Site and Off-Site SEO, and so on).

As your experience in conducting

research on keywords expands, you will
be able to quickly determine how easy
or difficult it is going to be to rank at the
top of a SERP for that search. Once you
locate a primary keyword that you are
going to target, be sure to locate three or
four similar keywords by looking at the
suggestions provided in the Google
Keyword Tool search results. You’ll be
using these keywords to conduct
additional research in the next section
along with adding them in as page tags if
you’re using Wordpress.
SEO Quake Plug-in

Figure 3.3 ~ SEO Quake Icon on

Firefox Browser
 Figure 3.4 ~ SEO Quake Only
Google Search Selected

After you’ve deselected all but

Google, open up the SEO Quake
Preferences menu, located in that same
icon’s drop-down menu (it’s the first one
at the top), click on Parameters and set
the parameters for Google to: Google
Page Rank, Google Links, SEMRush
Links, SEMRush Linkdomain, Alexa
Rank, Webarchive age, Twitter Tweets,
Facebook Likes, and Google PlusOne.
$1llr\llll h' lt

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Parameters

Once you have SEO Quake

properly configured, you can start
running some keyword searches with
this newly installed tool. When
conducting your searches you’ll now
notice that a small bar appears under
each listing in the search. This bar
provides you with crucial information
allowing you to determine whether or
not you will be able to successfully
compete for the keyword tested.

Let’s say for example, you want to

rank at the top of Google’s SERP for the
keyword “Fly First Class Cheap” and
you conduct a search on your browser
with the newly installed plug-in or
extension, SEO Quake. You’ll notice as
depicted in Figure 3.5, that each result
now features an SEO Quake results bar
just beneath it with detailed information
based on the parameters that were
selected in Figure 3.4.
 When performing a search like the
one depicted in Figure 3.5, you’ll notice
several factors that either positively or
negatively affect the SERP rankings of
each listing. The first is the Alexa Web
Ranking, shown just as “Rank” in the
SEO Quake toolbars below each result.
The lower the rank, the better the site is
since Alexa quantifies the popularity of
every single Website on the Internet,
with #1 being the highest attainable
number; having a rank higher then #1
would mean a lower popularity.
Currently, the #1 spot is held by Google,
with #2 and #3 spots held by Facebook
and YouTube, respectively.

While browsing through the five

results in Figure 3.5 and reviewing their
Alexa rankings you’ll notice that three of
the sites are within the top 1000 most
popular sites on the Internet, results #1,
#3, and #5. Other important factors to
take note of are links to the page
indicated by the “L” with the Google
logo next to it (there’s also another “L”
shown from SEMRush Links, another
authority house on Website data). In
addition to the Alexa Rank and the
number of links you’ll notice the
domain’s age, Facebook likes, Twitter
Tweets and Google Plus Ones.
Google ny finotc1assc:11eap

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seo,.,,.. l>I PR. 11'1<: l Ccllf> '""" lZl u.... •"'• 11111 Lil l •L l$11 l
 Figure 3.5 ~ Firefox Search with
SEO Quake Plug-in Installed

Looking at all the factors

involved, we can see a very telling story
from the data that’s presented and be
able to come to the conclusion that it
will not be easy to rank for this keyword
search. By doing a subsequent search for
“fly first class cheap” using the Google
Keyword you’ll notice that the search
term “fly first class cheap” has high
competition and only 590 global
searches per month.

Furthermore, in the search results

depicted in Figure 3.5, all of the domain
names are fairly aged. The oldest
domain, in this case ranked #1 on this
SERP, has the oldest age, dating back to
January 25, 1999 while the youngest
domain dates back to July of 2005.

How is it that the youngest domain

name is ranked #2 in the results pictured
in Figure 3.5? This is due to the fact that
the youngest domain name has the most
(135) links to that particular page while
the other sites have 1, 0 or 8 links; in
this case backlinks make up significant
ground considering that the domain is far
outweighed in age. This is an example of
the power of backlinking (discussed in
Chapter 7 on Off-Site SEO) and how it
can propel you to the top spots on
Google’s SERPs.

Additionally, notice the social

media statistics in the results on Figure
3.5; while it’s unclear still just how
much of a role they are playing in the
overall rankings, you can be sure that
they have an impact on rank. While it
can be argued that Google may be
weighing its Google Plus, as the highest-
ranking factor in its algorithm since this
is its own proprietary service, there
certainly isn’t any evidence to support
that.

What is clear in Google rankings

today is that social media links do
matter. The specific weight of each
network and its shares or likes are
undisclosed by the search giant, but it’s
important to keep in mind that promoting
on social media will be one of the key
skills to develop in your overall SEO
skillset. Getting enough people to click
like, or share a post with any of the
social media outlets can help in
propelling you to the top of some
SERPs.

In contrast to the “fly first class

cheap” keyword option, if you look at
some of the keyword suggestions further
down the list in Figure 3.6, you’ll notice
that the term “business class vs first
class” has low competition with 5,400
global searches done per month. In this
instance, writing a well-researched
article with unique content contrasting
the positives and negatives of flying
business class vs first class might be an
excellent segway for launching into an
article geared towards this specific
keyword rather then the more difficult
“fly first class cheap” keyword.

Let’s say you’re trying to target

people looking to fly first class cheap,
then maybe they can already afford
business class, and you can use that
article to discuss how you can secure
tickets for first class for roughly the
same price if not cheaper at times then
with business class. This is just one
example of piggy backing off of domain
recommendations using the Google
Keyword Tool.
 Figure 3.6 ~ “Fly First Class
Cheap” Google Keyword Tool Results
 As you can see, by using a
combination of information gathered
from Google’s Keyword Tool, along
with information from SEO Quake, you
can quickly put together a picture of just
how easy or hard it’s going to be to rank
at the top of any SERP for any keyword.
By looking at the domain’s age at the top
of the results, along with links and social
media stats, its easy to determine just
how easy of a task it will be to compete
with these top 10 page one search
results.
 While the purpose of this is not to
detract you from trying to compete, if
you have a brand new site on a brand
new domain name and you’re unable to
allocate an aged domain as described in
Chapter 2, then you’re going to find it
very difficult to compete for keywords.
However, if you do have an aged domain
and you’ve done the proper research on
the top 5 or top 10 results and you can
see how many links each result has
versus say their age and social media
stats, you’ll know pretty quickly for
which searches you’ll be able to achieve
top rankings for.
Selecting your Keywords

After you’ve done the research

and narrowed down the options, you
should select one primary keyword that
will represent your page’s primary
theme or. In addition to your primary
keyword it’s good to select 4 to 6
secondary keywords or keyword
variations that you can use to optimize
your site and its pages.

Some of the general rules of thumb

here are to not select any keywords that
have less then 500 global searches per
month, and don’t select any keywords
that have high competition unless you
absolutely have to. If you’re having
difficulty locating keywords with lower
competition in your niche, then try
approaching the keyword searches from
a different angle. For example, if you
sell a specific kind of widget you may
want to try searching for how that widget
solves a need or a problem as opposed
to the specific kind of widget itself.
 You’ll be using these main primary
and secondary keywords on most of your
non-article or blog pages so make sure
that they fit your site and its niche as
relevance factor is very important in
SEO. Ensuring that keywords appear
consistently in places like headings,
titles, meta descriptions, image alt tags,
and other important places will go a
long way to site optimization in the long
run.

Another thing to consider when

selecting your keywords is to do
searches for your competitors and see
what they’re using. You may want to run
a few Google searches yourself for
whatever product, service or industry
that you’re in. If your product or service
is local, you may also want to try
including some keywords with the locale
and some without to see the effects it has
on competition and search volumes.
Chapter 4
On-Site SEO

Referring to work done by you to a

Website or Webpage to bolster the
effectiveness of its SEO, On-Site SEO
plays a major role in your capability to
rank in the top positions of searches. The
ease of which you can impact your site
by instituting effective On-Site SEO
practices is far higher then those
involving Off-Site SEO.

Having the ability to manipulate

your page to match current SEO
guidelines is simple enough when you
know what to look for. However, when
dealing with Off-Site SEO, it becomes
more difficult to control external links,
likes, shares, and tweets, how long they
stick around for and any attributes
associated with those links.

On-Site SEO involves the physical

aspects of the design, setup, functionality
and content of the Website itself. This
includes the HTML & CSS code,
keyword density, keyword styling,
content, heading tags, internal linking,
XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs, image alt
tags, and any other relatable factors.

While as an SEO specialist you’re

not expected to be a Website designer or
programmer, having an understanding of
the inner workings of how your site’s
underlying code functions and affects its
appearance, and invariably its SEO, is
highly recommended for anyone
involved in the trade.

There are several resources

available online that can provide you
with a primer on HTML & CSS. From
videos, to tutorials, online course, or
blog posts, be sure that you at least have
an understanding for the code even if you
are not a programmer yourself.

If you’re using a system like

Wordpress for your Website, then your
work will be much easier, but having the
foundational knowledge of adjusting
some configurations directly through the
code itself never hurts, but in this case,
it’s not a requisite, just a
recommendation.

There are several key factors to

consider and address when it comes to
On-Site SEO. Each and every time you
add content (in the case of a blog),
you’ll be working with On-Site SEO so
having the right tools & plug-ins if
you’re using Wordpress is going to be
relatively important here.
 When building your Website with
Wordpress, plug-ins can really enhance
and simplify your On-Site SEO work.
They provide enhanced functionality to
any Wordpress build that makes
determining some of the variables much
simpler such as the keyword density of a
page. If you’re not using Wordpress to
manage your site, it’s certainly
something you should consider, as it will
increase the ease with which you can
conduct your day-to-day On-Site SEO
efforts when creating content for your
site.
 There are two, primary On-Site
SEO plug-ins I use with all of my
Wordpress installations. Together, these
two plug-ins, allow you to tackle
virtually every On-Site SEO task needed
to optimize your site. Not only do they
help with page specific SEO but they
also provide assistance with site-wide
SEO as well.

The two Wordpress plug-ins that I

utilize for On-Site SEO are the
following (one is a free download, and
the other is available by purchase only):
 Wordpress SEO Plug-in – The
SEO for Wordpress plug-in is one of the
best free plug-ins that I’ve found for
Wordpress, allowing you to update the
meta description tag, title tag, and
analyze other On-Page SEO data through
the same interface you use to edit & post
pages and articles.

SEOPressor Wordpress Plug-in

– SEOPressor is another great plug-in
for Wordpress that provides you with
On-Site SEO scoring, with a complete
breakdown of your SEO score factor
(based out of 100). This is terrific if you
want to take a lot of the guesswork out of
your On-Site SEO. This plug-in is
presently being used by over 125,000
Wordpress blogs online to manage over
15 million pages.

Anytime you add a piece of

content such as a Webpage or article
post to your site, you’ll be utilizing the
same process for optimization. This
process starts at the keyword research
level, as discussed in Chapter 3, and
continues through to both On-Site and
Off-Site SEO. Once you have this
process down, completing and fully
optimizing each new page or post will
become routine to you.

You’ll need to ensure that you

adhere to the rules and guidelines laid
out for you in Chapter 2 on Aged
Domains. It’s important that you have an
aged domain name and conduct the
proper keyword research in order to
have a good foundation to build your
On-Site SEO work on. Once you have
your foundation in place, some technical
details will need to be addressed as
well. The overall HTML & CSS coding,
keyword placement within pages and in
relation to the Website fold are just some
of the factors you will need to consider
when doing your On-Site SEO work.

Google checks and analyzes data

that’s above and below the fold, and you
want to make sure that you have certain
important tags such as primary keyword
headings for H1 and H2 above your
fold. If you’re using a system like
Wordpress, then selecting a theme that is
SEO friendly is important.

While you may not be a

professional when it comes to selecting
Wordpress themes, if you’re looking to
purchase a theme, read the descriptions
and reviews carefully. Look for SEO
optimized themes that place emphasis on
not only an aesthetically appealing
design, but also one that provides the
highest possible optimized approach to
SEO in its code. An excellent theme to
use that’s highly modifiable and
optimized for SEO is the Blackbird
Theme by InkThemes.

While there may be a lot of little

technical details to address when putting
together your site, once it’s complete
your sole focus should be on creating
unique well-researched content that you
can then get linked, shared, and liked on
as many networks and pages throughout
the Web as possible.
Wordpress SEO Plug-in

Boasting over 3,300,000

downloads, Wordpress SEO is a free
plug-in developed by SEO consultant
firm Yoast that takes the capabilities of
doing SEO with the Wordpress platform
to a whole new level. While Wordpress
has always been a strong foundational
basis for SEO, adding this plug-in by
Yoast allows you more flexibility over
critical On-Site SEO elements like never
before.

From the modification of page and

post specific meta description fields,
titles, and a robots.txt editor, the
Wordpress SEO plug-in has an
incredible array of tools to take your
On-Site SEO efforts with Wordpress to
the next level. If you’re building on the
Wordpress platform, having this plug-in
is highly recommended to save time and
improve your overall SEO efforts.

Installation for the plug-in is easy

by navigating to the Plug-ins > Add New
section of your Wordpress
administration area. Use the keyword
“Wordpress SEO” to locate the plug-in
in the plug-in search and ensure that you
install and activate it (see Figure 4.1).
Once installed, you have the power of
conducting nearly all of your On-Site
SEO efforts directly through your
Wordpress administration panel.

After installation, you’ll have

access to a settings screen that will
allow you to modify some of the plug-
in’s system-wide general settings. Most
of the default settings will work just
fine, however, if you’re interested in
getting more technical you can access the
settings as shown in Figure 4.2, and
modify any of the information displayed.
In the Dashboard, you can integrate
Google, Bing and Yahoo Webmaster
tools but if you’ve already verified your
site with these tools then this is
unnecessary.
 Figure 4.1 ~ Wordpress SEO
Plug-in by Yoast Installation.

One of the most powerful aspects

of utilizing a plug-in like Wordpress
SEO by Yoast is the ability to change the
meta description tag and title tag for
each specific page and post. This is
done directly through the same interface
that allows you to add & edit pages and
posts in the Wordpress administration
interface, a capability that doesn’t exist
with the core Wordpress installation.
Since Google weighs the meta
description and title tags as factors in its
scoring of your page for SEO, having the
capability to modify these on a page and
article specific level makes your SEO
job that much easier and better.

While getting acclimated to this

plug-in may take some time, the
powerful features that it holds for your
On-Site SEO work is well worth it. The
company provides a guide on using the
plug-in that is available here on the
company’s own blog, which should
answer most of your questions regarding
its usage.
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Figure 4.2 -Wordpress SEO

Plug-in Screen
 Each time a new page or article is
created, you can utilize the built-in
interface available directly on the add
page or add article screen to optimize
your page. As you add your content and
save your draft, this plug-in will let you
know if you’ve adhered to all the factors
that derive an On-Site SEO score such
as keyword in the title, content length,
keyword in heading tags, keyword in
page URL, keyword in content, keyword
in meta description, and so on.
 Wordpress SEO also provides a
handy SEO check available in the right
hand margin of your add / edit interface
in your Wordpress admin. Indicating the
level of completeness for your On-Site
SEO, the colored circle changes from
green, to orange, to yellow, to red,
indicating just how optimized the page is
with green being the best and red being
the worst.
Figure 4.3 ~ Wordpress SEO Page
Analysis
 As you can see in 4.3, the
Wordpress SEO plug-in provides the
fields required for you to fully optimize
your page or article with the title tag and
meta description tag fields tailored for
each post or page. Additionly, it can
help you find related keywords for a
primary keyword, as well as provide
you with a quick scorecard to see how
you’re doing (indicated by the fields just
below the Focus Keyword field).

For someone just starting up their

On-Site SEO work, this truly does make
it a no-brainer, however, just having the
Wordpress SEO plug-in won’t be enough
to address all your On-Site SEO
requirements.
SEOPressor Wordpress Plug-
in

SEOPressor is a unique plug-in

available for the Wordpress platform,
revolutionizing your On-Site SEO work.
This plug-in assists with all of the
various little factors that go into scoring
a page for On-Site SEO effectiveness.
Addressing this issue of fine-tuning that
becomes complex to manage without an
accurate system for tracking,
SEOPressor is one of the most
invaluable tools you will find in
optimizing a Wordpress article or page.

Helping literally take the

guesswork out of your On-Site SEO
work, SEOPressor has sparked frenzy in
the search engine optimization
community, seeing over 125,000
installations over the past 3 years with
over 15 million pages optimized. When
used in combination with the Wordpress
SEO plug-in by Yoast, it offers a fully
complete suite of On-Site SEO tools for
managing the optimization of site-wide
SEO as well as page specific On-Site
SEO for your Website.

While SEOPressor is a paid plug-

in, it’s by far one of the best that you can
find and will save you an enormous
amount of headache when starting out
with On-Site SEO. If you intend on
doing multiple projects utilizing
SEOPressor for Wordpress it’s best to
purchase the multi-site license as
opposed to the single site license.

Installation of SEOPressor is
simple and straightforward. Once the
system is installed it keeps a score of
your SEO for just your On-Site content
(shown at the right hand side of the
screen when add or updating pages and
posts). While achieving a 100% score
on every page & article you post is not
required coming as close to 100% as
possible is always good practice.
HTML & CSS Setup

Whether you’ve hired a Web

designer to build your Website, or
you’re doing it on your own, it’s
important that you have a clear
understanding of what the best practices
are when it comes to optimized HTML
& CSS coding for search engines. Of
course, if you’re utilizing a Wordpress
system, this will not be as important, but
it’s still good to have a foundational
understanding of the code.
 While a complete review of
HTML & CSS is beyond the scope of
this book, I will highlight some of the
important elements of HTML & CSS as
they pertain to On-Site SEO.

If you’re not comfortable writing

code or modifying existing code, then
you should either hire a developer that
you can work with on an ongoing basis
from a site like Elance.com or
Guru.com, or utilize Wordpress and get
yourself a good theme you can you use
and make modifications to through the
administration panel.

HTML & CSS have come a long

way since the early days of Website
development. In fact, early on
developers didn’t adopt CSS at all, and
it really took time for the programming
language to take footing in the industry.
Additionally, in the past, it was not
possible to completely design a site
without the use of traditional tables,
columns and rows, which created the
foundational basis for early Website
development coding.
 CSS has enhanced the capability
of designers and programmers to
separate the Website layout code from
the rest of the site, making it easier on
search engines like Google to spider the
Web and determine SEO related data
much quicker.

Today, when laying out a site, the

HTML & CSS setup is very important to
search engine spiders, as they place
heavy weight on where certain elements
in your page’s architecture appear.
There’s also heavy weight placed on an
element’s location to the Website’s fold
(where the Web page gets cut off by the
standard browser and is forced to scroll
down).

You want to ensure that your

important keyword headings are placed
above the fold if you are building the
Website without the use of Wordpress.
This would include the <H1> and <H2>
tag for optimal On-Site SEO.

When working with HTML & CSS

there are several practices that you (or
your Web developer) should institute in
order to successfully optimize your page
for search engines to the greatest extent
possible. Search engines really don’t
like to see a lot of code mixed in with
text these days, which is why CSS is so
important for separating your coding
structure from the site text & content.
Search engines expect a clean site with
the proper elements addressed when it
comes to On-Site SEO in order for you
to compete at any level.

JavaScript should be avoided

whenever possible within your page’s
HTML code unless absolutely necessary.
A lot of what you can achieve with
JavaScript can now be accomplished
with HTML 5 & CSS so if you’ve hired
a Web developer to assist you with your
site, make sure that he or she is aware of
this.

Keeping your Website’s imagery

to a minimum is also important. While
we all want Websites that dazzle and
look amazing, it’s important to ensure
that your site is using as much text within
the design as possible. If you’re utilizing
a Wordpress theme, this is something
that you usually don’t have to worry
about.

If you have a custom Website

being designed for you, or you’re having
a theme modified, ensure that as many of
the elements as possible utilize text as
opposed to imagery. Years ago this
wasn’t as possible to make cross-
browser and platform Website
appearances look as similar as it is
today.
 The advancement of browser
technologies, Website coding, and
operating system fonts allow CSS
coding to manipulate designs to look
very similar across all browsers and
platforms. You can virtually design an
entire Website in CSS including
gradations and other effects you could
only achieve with imagery just a few
short years ago.
Meta Data

Meta data used to hold more

importance then it does today. In fact,
many of the meta fields are now
obsolete, but there are however a few
fields that still matter, and one important
one that greatly still affects On-Site SEO
is the meta description field.

Meta data is not visible to the

human eye on the browser unless
viewing the source code, and, first
generation Website designers used to use
meta data to propel their Websites to the
top of search engines by instituting a
now frowned upon Black-Hat SEO
technique called keyword stuffing.
Keyword stuffing would see the meta
keywords literally stuffed full of similar
keywords to the maximum character
capacity in order to propel sites to the
top of SERPs, and it used to work.

However, the days of keyword

stuffing are now over, and meta keyword
tags have lost all significance.
Keywords are now obtained from the
search engines through the usage of
keyword density algorithms, weighing
the keywords on the page based on the
number of times they appear in relation
to the total amount of words on the page,
in addition to various other keyword
styling factors as well.

The one meta tag that still holds

relative importance today is the meta
description field, which search engines
use to establish a Website’s description
from. Although, even if the meta
description field is not present, Google,
and the other search engines will still
spider the page to produce its own
descriptions and display that upon
serving up the search result.
Keyword Density

Keyword density refers to the

number of times your keyword appears
on the page in relation to the total
number of words. For example, if you
have 500 words on your page and your
keyword appears 10 times then you have
a keyword density of 2%. This is a very
important factor when it comes to doing
On-Site SEO.

Scouring the Internet, the search

engines score and rank sites for their
keyword density, keyword positioning,
keyword headings, keyword styling, and
keyword existence in title tags, amongst
other On-Site data. During the creation
of your content take note to focus on
developing a keyword density of 2% to
5% in natural organic sounding manner.
Oftentimes, when attempting to achieve
optimal keyword densities individuals
get so caught up that they allow the text
to sound too “spammy”.

If the written text does not sound

natural, isn’t well researched and well
written, it will not rank high. Dropping
your keyword over and over again in an
attempt to quickly wrap up your content
creation tasks will allow it to sound
forced and poorly written, and as a
result get you demoted in the rankings.

No matter what you set about

writing that’s attached to the site you’re
working on, take the time in creating
content that is well written, with
keywords that are spaced well enough
apart and sound natural and flowing and
not forced.

Certain other rules should be

followed and adhered to when
composing your text, laden with
keywords. A good rule of thumb is to
ensure that your keyword appears once
in the first sentence and once in the last
sentence of your page’s content. Space
the rest of your keywords out
periodically throughout the balance of
the text, trying not to place too many
keywords in any one single paragraph
drastically more then the others.
 If at all possible try to achieve a
word length of at least 500 words for
each page and post that you put out on
the site. I’ve come to notice that content
that’s over 1000 words ranks even
better, so if you’re able to achieve this
length of content for your page or article
without making it sound drab or spammy,
then I highly suggest you do this.

The distribution of your keyword,

and the care that you take to write a well
thought out, well-researched piece of
content speaks volumes to Google and
the other search engines indexing your
site. Ultimately, not only does this
bolster your SEO, it provides significant
value to the reader of the content. By
providing value, you’re indicating that
you’re an authority, and by being an
authority, your rank increases.

Having never written a piece of

content, you may find some of this
difficult at first, especially when
attempting to distribute the keyword
throughout the content without making it
sound too forced. This will take some
practice and getting used to and while
you can outsource something like this, I
highly recommend that you get
acclimated to writing rich content with
proper keyword distribution. It’s an
excellent skill to have no matter what
type of marketing you set about doing in
life.

If you’re using Wordpress and

you’ve installed the SEOPressor
Wordpress Plug-in, scoring and keeping
track of your On-Site SEO keyword
density, amongst other things, will be
simplified. This will make your job
dramatically easier and take a lot of the
guesswork out of On-Site SEO work that
will have to be done on an ongoing basis
to the site.
Keyword Styling

Another On-Site SEO element

influencing search algorithms is
keyword styling. Keyword styling places
a certain type of emphasis on the
keyword, changing its appearance in the
text to either bold, underlined, or
italicized. Careful attention must be paid
to placing this type of styling, or
emphasis, on the primary keyword when
building content for your page.
 The guidelines on styling your
keyword include having it appear in
bold face font at least once (wrapped in
<b></b> or <strong></strong> tags), in
italicized font at least once (wrapped in
<i></i> or <em></em> tags), and in
underlined font at least once (wrapped
in <u></u> tags) for every 500 words of
content.

Ensuring that the keyword styling

appears evenly spaced out throughout the
content is good On-Site SEO practice.
For example, if your content is 5
paragraphs long, place the bold keyword
in the first paragraph, the italicized
keyword in the third paragraph and the
underlined keyword in the fifth
paragraph.

While keyword styling can be

done to your page’s secondary
keywords, it’s best to stick with styling
only for your primary keyword. Styling
and optimizing a page for multiple
keywords, while doable, is not
recommended, especially if you’re just
starting out in SEO. You’ll notice that the
SEOPressor plug-in (version 5) does
allow you to optimize for multiple
keywords, however, in my opinion this
will only serve to confuse search
engines more then help you climb the
rankings.

Simply focusing on your primary

keyword for the page is an On-Site SEO
best practice. Attempting On-Site SEO
for multiple keywords, will only confuse
the search engine spiders and you’ll find
yourself not ranking as well because of
it.
 Google uses a mixture of your
keyword density, keyword styling,
keyword positioning, keyword headings,
title tags, and meta description tags to
provide you with an On-Site SEO score.
This algorithmic computation, coupled
with other high level data it has about
your site, allows the search giant to give
your page a relevancy ranking that leads
to your ultimate position on the SERPs.
Trying to conduct On-Site SEO for more
then one keyword will ruin your chances
of optimizing to 100% of your On-Site
SEO primary keyword.
 Keyword styling, and other On-
Site SEO requires finesse. It’s easy to
overdo it when it comes to keyword
density and keyword styling. It’s
completely unnecessary to have your
keyword be styled more times then
required or have your keyword density
be too high. The difficulty here is in
having the page not look like it’s been
forced and written around your primary
keyword. By doing so, you’ll end up
demoting your page if you don’t end up
adhering to some of these guidelines.
 Try breaking up your page into
sections, this way you can use your
headings to identify each section. For
example, if your page is about the “100
Meter Dash”, sections on the page can
be diversified to use your keyword,
“100 Meter Dash”, in various form
factors and ways. For example, types of
sentences for this keyword may include
those such as “History of the 100 Meter
Dash” or “100 Meter Dash Fastest
Runners”.

If you’re using a program like

Wordpress to manage your site and
you’re working on a page layout or post
layout, then you can easily use the built-
in tools to highlight and modify (or style)
your text. This is a lot simpler then
coding in direct HTML and having to
place the tags, save your file, then
upload it via FTP each time, which can
become fairly tedious and time intensive
after a while. Save yourself some
headache and utilize a Wordpress
installation even if you’re already a Web
developer or seasoned Web designer.
Using Headings

In HTML and CSS wrapping text

with heading tags creates headings that
are both stylized aesthetically and also
weighted for On-Site SEO. Headings not
only alter the appearance of text making
it look a certain size, color, and font
family, but headings are also used by
search engines to gather an
understanding of what the page is about.

By analyzing heading tags such as

the H1, H2, and H3 tags, Google, and
other search engines, can estimate what
the page or article is primarily geared
towards when combined with the other
On-Site SEO factors. For this reason,
it’s important to have your primary
keyword appear in all these heading
tags, but not to over do it.

An example of using headings

would be to wrap a title such as “How
to Lose Weight” in an <H1> opening tag
and an </H1> closing tag. In HTML the
forward slash in the tag denotes that the
tag is closing and the tag lacking the
forward slash is the opening tag.

In our example, this would look

like this in HTML: <H1>How to Lose
Weight</H1>. Of course, if you’re using
Wordpress this can simply be achieved
by highlighting the text and changing the
styling from “paragraph” to “heading 1”
or switching to “text” or “HTML” mode
and placing the tags in manually.

There are six different headings in

HTML that can be stylized with CSS but
only the first three have real weight. The
<H1>, <H2>, and <H3> tags are given
special importance by Google and it’s
important that they not only appear in
your HTML or Wordpress article, but
that each of these tags contains your
page’s primary keyword.
Internal Links & Breadcrumbs

Internal links & breadcrumbs are

an important part of On-Site SEO as they
help the search engine spiders to find
other pages on your site. Building
internal links on your Website will
allow you to spread the link juice around
the site and provide easy access to the
search engine spiders to quickly index
your entire site.

You should have a clear and easily

navigable overall Website structure
setup with proper menu bar and internal
links within your content to other pages
on your Website. When linking to
internal content, try to utilize the
keyword that the target page is using for
SEO, as this will properly marry the
destination page with the keyword.

Breadcrumbs are a type of

navigational linking structure that help
the search engine spiders, and human
visitors, to quickly jump through
sections of a site. For example, when
you’re shopping for a laptop on an
electronic Website you may see a
breadcrumb link structure that looks
something like this: Home > Electronics
> Computers > Laptops. A structure like
this makes it very easy to navigate
through a site no matter what page you
may be located on.

Internal links and breadcrumbs are

very important when it comes to On-Site
SEO as they denote a clear and
identifiable site structure (similar to a
site map). Without internal links, pages
of content may be completely lost to
search engine spiders and may never be
seen by human visitors.

When utilizing a Wordpress theme,

linking & breadcrumb navigation
become no brainers, as most themes will
support this type of linking structure. As
commonplace as it may be today, some
sites and developers are still not
instituting proper linking & breadcrumb
structures so it’s important for you to be
aware if you’re having a professional
develop your site for you.
Image Alt Tags

Image alternative tags, or alt tags,

are tags, or attributes, added to an
HTML image that provides the search
engines with an alternative text reference
to your image. Usage of the image alt tag
dates back to the early days of the
Internet, and today, the alt tags are still
important for SEO since search engine
algorithms will use the presence of your
page’s primary keyword in the alt tag in
their relevancy scoring.
 On each page, whatever the
primary keyword is, you should have an
image alt tag that contains that primary
keyword. Going a step above and
beyond this is to actually name the
primary image as the primary keyword
using hyphens to separate the words. For
example, if your page’s primary
keyword is “How to Cook Eggs
Benedict” then you should name your
main image located on the page as how-
to-cook-eggs-benedict.jpg or whatever
image file extension suits your image.
The image HTML version optimized for
On-Site SEO would look similar to this:

<img
src=http://www.yourdomain.com/images
to-cook-eggs-benedict.jpg” border=”0”
width=”585” height=”300” alt=”How to
Cook Eggs Benedict”>

As you can see in the example

above, the image alt tag is the primary
keyword for the page and the image has
been named as the primary keyword of
the page. This is the most optimal way of
having your image files on your page
optimized for SEO. If you’re utilizing the
Wordpress system for your Website,
setting an image alt tag is simple upon
upload and can be defined during the
process of adding that image to your
page.
On-Site SEO Checklist

The whole purpose of On-Site

SEO is to address all the factors on the
page that affect your SEO score. As
discussed in the sections of this chapter
preceding this one, there are a multitude
of elements to address in On-Site SEO
when building a site or page.

To make matters easier, using the

combination of Wordpress plug-ins will
enhance the ease with which you can
simply and effectively address all of
these elements through the same
interface with which you add or edit the
actual Webpages or article posts.

Below is a checklist of items that

should be addressed to achieve optimal
On-Site SEO. The same elements, aside
from the first one in the list, will be
available to you through the two plug-ins
directly on the page or article that you
will posting through Wordpress. Ensure
that you adhere to these as closely as
possible to ensure excellent On-Site
SEO.

□ CSS separated from content

□ Keyword in title tag

□ Meta tag description uses keyword

□ Keyword in H1 tag

□ Keyword in H2 tag

□ Keyword in H3 tag
□ Keyword in bold tag

□ Keyword in italics tag

□ Keyword in underlined tag

□ Image alt tag utilizing keyword

□ One image on page is named with

keyword

□ At least 500 words of content

□ 2% to 5% keyword density

□ Keyword in first sentence

□ Keyword in last sentence

□ At least one internal link within

content

□ Usage of breadcrumbs
Chapter 5
Analytics & Tracking

Every marketer knows that he or

she needs some sort of tool of
measurement to determine whether or
not they’re achieving the marketing
results that they’re after, and SEO is no
different. Without the capability to track
and analyze your traffic, you will be
unable to determine whether or not your
efforts are in vain or if they’re paying
off.

There are a couple of really good

tracking tools that can be implemented
when tracking a site’s Website traffic.
One of the most well known tools comes
from Google itself, and is called Google
Analytics. Utilizing Google Analytics
does require you to setup and create an
account with Google, so if you already
have an account, just navigate your way
to Google Analytics in order to access
this system.
 Getting setup with Google
Analytics is relatively easy and
straightforward and you can add any
number of Websites & profiles into your
Google Analytics account for tracking. A
recent addition that Google has added
has been the real-time tracking tool that
now allows you to view the traffic to
your Website in real-time as opposed to
only static data that used to have a long
delay.

To this day Google Analytics is

still free, however, that may of course
change in the future, but it’s doubtful
considering that most people allow the
sharing of their Website data with
Google which only helps to improve
their search engine algorithm’s
knowledge that much more. With this
knowledge Google can determine data
sets that it couldn’t gather before such as
how long a user stays on the site, what
other pages are visited, and so on. This
is all valuable knowledge that Google
can then use to improve it’s own search
results. For example, if a site has a page
that captivates users’ attention spans for
minutes on end say with a video, Google
may just increase the SERP ranking of
that page due to its “stickiness”.

Once you have Google Analytics

setup, you can follow the instructions
provided by the search engine giant to
integrate the code into the header of your
Website for tracking. If you’re using
Wordpress, then installing the Google
Analyticator Wordpress Plug-in is
probably the easiest way to get up and
live with your analytics right away.
When linking the two it will prompt you
for access then allow you to choose
which analytics domain you would like
to link to (if you have multiple domains
that is) and the integration is fairly easy
and straight forward.

Aside from Google Analytics

there’s also other alternatives as well
for Website analytics. One of the most
popular alternatives is a PHP script
called Piwik available as a free
download. You’ll need to ensure that
you’re on a Linux Server, or if you have
a Windows Server, that you’ve installed
PHP as a Fast CGI add on. This can get
rather technical if you’re on a Windows
server, and if you have a hosted solution
it won’t work at all on Windows since
you won’t be able to modify major
components of the server such as making
PHP available in IIS (the Windows
Server Platform).

Whichever analytics platform you

select, the importance of being able to
determine your Website’s traffic is
paramount to understanding how well
your SEO efforts are paying off. Not
only will you be able to determine the
demographic location of your visitors,
you’ll also be able to determine just how
they found you (whether through
keyword search, a referral link, or direct
entry) and what pages they visited on
your site and how long they stayed there
for.

Of course there’s a wealth of

knowledge to be found from analyzing
Website statistics but the basics are
relatively simple and straightforward
and will allow you to determine the
success rates of your SEO campaigns.
The important information you’re
looking for are number of visitors, how
they got to your site (whether through
referral link or organic search), and
what keywords were used to reach your
site. Obviously when you’re optimizing
for specific keywords you want to
ensure that people are finding your site
through those keywords so this would be
the type and style of information to look
for in your Website’s analytics.

One important detail to note about

using Google Analytics is that due to
privacy concerns, Google won’t give
you full details about your Website’s
visitors. For example, if you’re trying to
determine how many people from New
York City typed in a specific keyword to
get to your site you won’t be able to do
so since Google does not log the IP
addresses for you to view.

Furthermore, you may notice that

on some Google Analytics results you
receive a “not provided” in place of
keywords used. The “not provided” is
attributed to Google’s secure search
results, extending even more privacy to
its users and less information for you to
analyze. However, your ability to
analyze content viewed on your site will
always be available to you, but beyond
that if you’re looking to be able to
determine all the minute details of your
Website’s visitors, you might want to opt
to install Piwik instead of Google
Analytics.
Tracking your Progress

Once you’ve setup and installed

your analytics program of choice, it’s
important that you get very acclimated
with the program and its various
different reporting statistics. It goes
without saying that tracking and
analyzing your Website’s traffic once
you’ve begun conducting SEO work is
imperative.

Understanding what to track is of

real importance in gauging the success of
your promotional efforts. Unfortunately,
SEO is a hurry-up-and-wait type of
undertaking. The changes that you make
now may not be reflected in search
results for days or even weeks to come.
For this reason, understanding what to
do and how to do it right the first time is
important if you’re going to be at all
efficient with your time.

Clearly we’re trying to understand

the effectiveness of specific keyword
searches and our ranking position in
each of those searches. One thing you
need to understand first is that Google’s
search results are localized so if you’re
searching for some keyword from one
location, you may receive different
SERP results then if you search from
another. This affects what you see, and
what someone else sees in another, city,
state, and country.

While it’s important to understand

that SERP rankings are localized, there
are various tools that you can use to
track the average result of your organic
search listings for your keywords. One
such piece of software that’s amongst the
most popular is called SEOMoz. By
tracking your keyword placement over
time, you’ll determine whether or not
your SEO efforts are paying off and
make adjustments when necessary.
Chapter 6
Content is King

SEO is such a multi-faceted

industry that weaves together so many
different complex little elements, that it’s
no wonder many people truly never get a
handle on mastering the profession.
Being a so-called “SEO Guru” takes a
lot of time and experience and making
plenty of mistakes. I can’t tell you how
many times I’ve messed things up just
trying to get it right.

There are so many errors that you

can end up making simply because you
don’t know any better at the time. These
can be costly, causing you to lose
ranking fast, and some mistakes just
cannot be undone when the damage has
already been done. Risky behavior taken
while trying to quickly rank for a
keyword can end up backfiring and
demoting you on the SERPs so proceed
with caution. If you’re still not clear
about something go back and reference it
or do a search online to get more
specific information.

When it comes to tried and true

top rankings on Google, while all the
other factors are important, content is
and always will be king. If Google and
the other search engines recognize that
you have unique well-researched content
you hold an extremely good chance of
ranking well. Unique content on an aged
domain is like having a concrete
foundation for a house that spans as deep
as one for a skyscraper.

Of course, meeting all the other

On-Site SEO parameters required for a
high scoring page is crucial. All other
things being equal however, your
excellent content will propel you to the
top.

Your ability to write excellent

content will set you apart from the others
competing and clawing their way to the
top of SERPs. Learn to write excellent
content while doing everything else
required of you in SEO, and you will the
ranking game over and over again.

The best way to get really good at

content is to write every single day.
Practice writing everyday in order to
improve your writing skills, whether it’s
online or offline, it’s important that you
continuously engage in writing to build
up this skillset.

If you don’t presently have a blog,

then get one and use it to post on a daily
basis. Setup a blog that addresses a
specific niche, do keyword research,
and write well-researched articles with
unique content that help to provide value
to people’s lives.

Whether you want to just write for

fun just to get better at it, or you’re
looking to monetize your blogging
career, writing daily will help you to
incredibly improve this skill. By running
Google AdSense ads on your blog, or
promoting affiliate programs through
Clickbank or Commission Junction, you
can easily monetize your blog to earn
money while also improving your SEO
abilities.

Practice makes perfect. Writing

and blogging daily will force you to be
able to formulate your thoughts and ideas
much more clearly over time. If you’re
able to build a blog with any formidable
amount of traffic, then you will learn
how to create the winning formula for
boosting SEO for yourself or a client. If
you’ve followed along with all of the
other suggestions I’ve offered up until
now, you will get very good at SEO and
ranking just about anything if you
institute these practices on your blog or
domain name.

It is wise to throw up a cautionary

notification here to inform you that if
you’re doing SEO for the first time
around, it’s utterly imperative that you
be very careful and cautious. While
performing a task that may be seemingly
routine such as pinging Google with
links that house your keyword and
domain (Chapter 7), you could get
yourself into hot water by overdoing it.
What may excite you at the time as an
opportunity to quickly climb the rankings
may be construed by Google as a Black-
Hat SEO technique, and get you demoted
very quickly, so be careful.

It may even be advantageous for

you to register an entirely new aged
domain name and start from scratch,
setting up a blog and practicing ranking
that domain name for a keyword and
niche. While the process may seem
somewhat tedious in the beginning, by
practicing care and doing SEO with
caution your traffic will climb slowly
and steadily until one day you explode
onto the top of SERPs.

When setting up your own blog on

an aged domain, you can choose any
topic you wish to write about. Find a
niche that you enjoy or a hobby that
you’re fond of and find your aged
domain in that category, ensuring that
your intended new content matches the
name or the historical indexed content of
that domain. This process will help you
get really good at researching keywords,
producing content and ranking for
whatever it is that you may choose to
rank for.

Always begin by using the Google

Keyword Tool and SEO Quake plug-in
or extension to analyze the competition
on the first page for any keyword. By
consistently doing keyword research,
and creating well researched, well
written articles that provide valuable
information, you’ll be surprised just how
much Web traffic you can create.
 When you set out to write your
content make sure you spend a good
amount of time researching the area and
topic that you’ll be writing about. You’ll
be surprised to find out just how much
additional information you can uncover
about a topic that you might already think
you know everything about. Don’t ever
be too overconfident because you can
always learn more, do more and provide
more value when writing so make sure
to give it your best effort each and every
time.
Selecting a Topic

When building and developing

content for your site you should always
follow the overall theme of the site and
not steer too far off into other areas of
interest. If you have a product review
site, for example, then stick to writing
product reviews and not spending time
writing articles on off-topic subjects.

By focusing your content building

efforts on a specific niche, you
effectively boost the SEO juice of the
entire site as you add more information
related to that niche and promote each
piece of content on its own. By doing
this, the cumulative SEO value of your
site increases since these pieces of
content are all tied together through tag
or category links.

Writing may be difficult for you in

the beginning, especially if you’re trying
to come up with various ideas to blog
about. While it can be tricky acclimating
yourself to this, it’s another skillset that
you will develop by practicing it on a
daily basis. The better you get at this, the
more chance of success you will have in
SEO and ranking high.

To combat article and Website

writer’s block, there are several good
methods you can use to come up with
new ideas for your content. The first is
by using Google’s News Alert for your
niche. If there’s a company that’s doing
very well or a top producer in your
niche, then setup a Google News Alert
for that.
 No matter what niche you’re in,
there’s always a company, brand or
individual sparking frenzies of search
queries conducted each day for more
information on them. These work well to
provide you with up-to-the-minute alerts
on relatable news that you can read,
digest, then reorganize and redistribute
on your own site or blog.

Of course, it goes without saying

that your content must be 100% unique,
and by practicing to read news-related
information from various sources and
put together your own short articles,
you’ll get very good at writing copy and
content that is unique and well
researched.

Besides for creating Google News

alerts, other ways for finding fresh
content to write about are to ask
questions about your topic or industry
and see if you can answer those
questions. Use the six question types of
Who, What, When, Where, How and
Why and pose them at a company in your
niche, the economic condition,
competition, or any other relatable topic
you can come up with. Brainstorm and
get creative, then get busy writing and
practicing every single day.
Writing your Content

Nobody likes dull, difficult to read

content, but when writing your content
it’s easy to allow yourself to let it get
drab or to run on. Furthermore, writing
content for a Website from an SEO angle
can get tricky, and can come across
sounding spammy in an effort to attain a
high keyword density.

When writing your content

remember to keep in mind that you’re
going to want to hit at least a 2%
keyword density, approximately. If you
go under a little that’s okay, but try to
keep it at around a minimum of 2%.
You’ll also want to ensure that your
keyword appears in the first and last
sentence of your content as well as
evenly distributed throughout the rest of
the text and not just bombarded into one
section. However, doing all this while
achieving content that also sounds good
and flows is tricky, but it’s the ideal
goal.
 If you’re having difficulty placing
your keyword within the body of your
content, don’t force it. You can find other
creative ways to place your keyword in
the content, for example if you’re doing
an article on how to ride a bike, you
could use subtitles with the keyword and
the step number before each step in the
process.

However, it’s important not to

overdo this as well. Having your
keyword appear too often in heading
tags can also hinder you as opposed to
help you. Just remember to keep in mind
the rule of moderation; try not to overdo
anything because when it comes to SEO
slow and steady wins the race.

Try planning out your content prior

to writing it and keep in mind that you’re
going to want to have a minimum of 500
words per page or article and optimally
1000 words or more. The longer the
article, the better it will rank on SERPs
and concentrating on hitting 1000 words
for each article or page of content is
important if you’re going to have any
chance of vying with other listings for
competitive keywords.

Before you set out to write your

content, be sure that you do the proper
keyword research. Of course, you’ll
have the primary keyword for your
Website, but considering that you’ll be
building content for your entire site, for
each section, make sure that you do the
keyword research, select a primary
keyword along with secondary
keywords for each page and article.
Gear your content towards these
keywords and follow the rules laid out
in Chapter 4 On-Site SEO Optimization
for the best results.
Chapter 7
Off -Site SEO

Off-Site SEO (also known as Off-

Page SEO) refers to all the SEO work
done away from your Website that help it
rank on SERPs. Link building, social
media marketing, forum posting, and
blog commenting, are all examples of
Off-Site SEO work.
 The primary goal for your Off-Site
SEO efforts is to build up as many high
quality, IP address diverse, and keyword
diverse links back to your site possible.
The linking must look completely natural
and organic for you to rank high. If
Google sees 10,000 backlinks with the
same keyword over and over created in
a very short period of time, it will know
you are participating in “link schemes”,
considered to be a Black-Hat SEO
technique and your site will be demoted,
or further Sandboxed (if it’s new) on the
SERPs.
 Off-Site SEO is an enormous
undertaking. With so many changes being
instituted recently by Google it seems as
though at times you’re walking on a
tightrope trying to balance all the
different tasks required while not
violating any algorithm rules in place.
It’s not enough to just have an aged
domain, unique content, good keyword
density, and near perfect On-Site SEO.
You have to tell the search engines that
you’re relevant by creating a diverse set
of links bridging back to your Website.
 If you think of your Website when
you first launch, it’s likened to a lonely
little island sitting off the coast of
millions of other islands and continents
ranging from very small to super-sized.
These surrounding landmasses are other
Websites that have varying different
page ranks.

The page rank of a Website ranges

from 0 to 10 and can be determined by
downloading and installing the Alexa
toolbar (available on all browsers
except safari). The Alexa toolbar is
another tool that you’ll need in your
arsenal of SEO weapons to wage the
war in climbing to the top of SERPs.
While this may sound a little bit
outlandish, SEO is no walk in the park,
and Off-Site SEO is going to be the bulk
of your work, so be prepared to dig in
and “grind”.

Virtual link bridges spanning the

unending divide of Cyberspace, connect
your Website with the rest of the Internet
world. An island with no bridges is an
island with no traffic, but an island with
many bridges to and from other islands
has the opportunity for an exceedingly
large amount of traffic. Since link
relationships have a very early root in
search engine rankings, these link
bridges play a major role in relevancy
for search results.

Not just a determination of the

number of links back to your Website,
your ranking is also based on the
popularity of those links. For example
one link from a very popular site like
Facebook or YouTube (both have page
ranks of 9 out of 10) has much more
value then 10 links from very unpopular
Websites with low page ranks.

The goal in Off-Site SEO is to

build up as many links as possible from
as diverse of a range of Websites as
possible. This link building will take up
a majority of your Off-Site SEO efforts.

While link building is a critical

component of Off-Site SEO, too much
link building in too short of a time can
actually hurt you. When Google released
one of its recent algorithm updates
called the Google Penguin, in April of
2012, one of its sole goals was to seek
out Websites that were participating in
these so-called “link schemes”.

If it determined that a certain site

went from virtually no links, to
thousands of links in a very short period
of time, Google’s Penguin algorithm
came to the conclusion that the site was
participating in “link schemes”. This is
also part of what we call the Google
Sandbox Effect that can happen not only
by having a new domain name, as
discussed in Chapter 3, but also by
participating in these link schemes.

It’s important to not only have a

good quantity of links that are from high
quality sites and to have link
diversification, but also that the links
built up to your site have diversified
keywords and are created gradually and
not dramatically. This may be a lot of
rules to remember, but just keep in mind
that you always want your efforts to be
as organic looking as possible.
 Having 1,000 links created in a
period of one week all with the same
two or three keywords is very unnatural,
even if you those links are coming from
very different Websites. The key here is
to have a very diversified set of
keywords that includes your primary
keyword, secondary keywords, and
generic keywords. Once these links are
created, they must be pinged slowly
through a drip feed system, like the one
available through Linklicious.

While you may not understand it

now, anytime you have an obsession
over something and you track it on an
hourly and daily basis (like some do in
the SEO industry), you come to know
what works and what doesn’t over time
and you can see major shifts clearly
when they occur. It’s like watching a
stock on the stock market move up and
down with its fluctuations as it ebbs and
flows both against and with the market.

There are always factors that can

be attributed to the rise and fall of a
stock, and the same goes for the rise and
fall of a domain name on the SERPs. The
difficulty here is to be able to determine
what works and what doesn’t in a timely
fashion in order to make adjustments
geared around ranking you higher.

The issues with SEO at times are

that changes may not be noticeable for
two or more weeks from the date you
publish a piece of content and begin
conducting SEO work on it. Unless you
have a very popular site that’s heavily
trafficked (PR 4 and above), any
changes you make may take considerable
time to show up as an improvement on
the SERPs.
Search Relevancy

The purpose of the search engines’

searches are to provide its users with
relevant search results that will come as
close to possible in providing answers
to the questions they are seeking. Staying
relevant is paramount if you’re going to
get noticed and rank at the top of SERPs
by Google and the other search engines.

By striving to provide more and

more relevant search results as the
Internet becomes more crowded, Google
has been forced to fine tune its algorithm
many times over by rewarding those that
stick to the rules, and punishing those
who try to bend them.

When building your Off-Site SEO

campaign, your goal should always be to
look as natural and organic as possible.
Google loves natural looking links that
point to unique well-researched content,
so use that information to your advantage
by building content that is useful and
unique. This foundational element of the
search giant’s computations has always
existed and will most likely increase as
time goes on.

When conducting Off-Site SEO

efforts it’s easy to try to rush through
theses processes simply because you
feel pressed for time or want to achieve
immediate results. However, the more
time you take and effort you put into
building a solid Off-Site and On-Site
SEO foundation, the better the rewards
will be. Consistently creating unique
well-researched content with natural and
organic looking links should always be
your primary concern.

You might have come across

people or companies promising #1
Google rankings that are guaranteed
based on some special arrangement they
have with Google. Albeit, there are no
companies that have special
arrangements with Google for ranking #1
on searches, and this would be
completely counter-intuitive to the
relevancy culture that Google has tried
so hard to promote and preserve.
 No one can possibly guarantee you
a first position ranking on Google. So
many factors come into play, as we’ve
discussed in this book, that guaranteeing
a #1 position on the SERPs is just not
possible unless you’re Google itself.

The best-proven results will come

to people who follow the rules andapply
these principles consistently overa
period of 60 to 90 days and beyond.
Trying to rush these efforts by bending
the rules or cheating with Black-Hat
SEO techniques will ultimately lead to
your ranking demise.

Another important point to note in

our discussion about backlinking is that
your competition on searches holds
valuable clues into the eyes of search
engine relevancy for a keyword. In
Chapter 3, I discussed strategies for
keyword research and utilizing the
various tools available to you to see
how the competition is ranking the way
they do. I discussed using SEO Quake
alongside the Google Keyword Tool to
be able to estimate your ability to rank
on the first page for any given search
result. These are very valuable tools in
judging how well you will be able to
rank for your keywords so embrace them
and use them often.

The more relevant your overall

page is to the keyword being searched,
the more likely you’ll rank at the top.
For example, it will be difficult to rank
an investment article high on a blog that
has its primary topic of discussion as
celebrity news. Of course there are some
exceptions to the rule such as just how
popular that site housing the article is,
but for the most part, try to ensure that
your keyword is relevant to your site-
wide topic or niche.

Over time, as you work on SEO

for specific pages and boost each page
respectively, it will help the collective
group increase in SERP rankings. Since
these pages will most likely share tags
or categories that create a linked
relationship between them, this will
result in the collective rise of the
domain’s search engine visibility along
with its pages and articles as well.
Backlinking

Backlinking is one of the largest

undertakings that you’ll be involved in
when engaged in the practice of daily
SEO. Backlinks are an essential part of
any SEO campaign and it’s a major
weighing factor in the overall search
engine algorithm that ranks your site’s
importance and relevancy.

Backlinks are like little bridges

created from different landmasses to
your new Website and when Google first
started out, it started with the underlying
theory that the number of backlinks
created rankings. The more backlinks
you had the more important your site
was. Of course that has morphed
significantly with the addition of many of
the factors that I’ve covered in this book,
but backlinks still remains as one of the
core principles to placement on SERPs.

So, you’re probably wondering to

yourself how many backlinks you’re
going to need in order to rank your
Website high up on the SERPs. Well,
there really isn’t any clear answer to that
and it’s going to fluctuate based on your
competition. As I discussed in Chapter 3
Keyword Research, it’s important to
understand the competition in order to be
able to “snipe” your way to the top of
Google. This is going to be done by
using tools such as the SEO Quake plug-
in and the Google Keyword Tool along
with any other keyword analysis tool
you may decide to invest in during your
SEO career.
 While understanding your
competition and the number of backlinks
that they have is important, you should
set your sights on building as many high
quality, diversified backlinks on a
consistent basis as possible. The
backlinks will need to be drip-fed to
Google in a manner that seems organic
and not as though you are paying to build
these links or participating in a “link
scheme”.

There are a few important

guidelines when it comes to backlinking
that you should keep in mind. Not only
are there different page ranks where a
backlink can come from, there are also
different types of backlinking structures
that can be built. While the magnitude of
backlinks is important, it’s also
important to understand that the “link
juice” coming from a Website with a
high page rank such as YouTube will be
much higher then several backlinks
coming from lower page rank sites (such
as forum comments, blog posts, etc.).
Aiming towards quality as opposed to
quantity will get you much further in
boosting link juice for your site.

Creating backlinks from popular

social media profile pages is one
excellent way to begin your link building
campaign. Sites like Facebook, Twitter,
and Google Plus are excellent starting
points for any such efforts. Begin with
your profile pages on the big three social
media sites, and continue on to setting up
profiles and dropping your site’s link on
authority sites as well.

An authority site is a site that

anyone can post on such as YouTube,
Squidoo, HubPages, Scribd, and others.
Start with profile pages from each of the
authority sites, making sure that a
backlink exists to the site that you’re
working on. If it’s a site for a client, then
make sure that the client places
backlinks in each of his or her profiles
on these sites or create the profiles for
them. Where possible, create the
backlinks with the primary keyword of
the site (this can be done on a site like
Google Plus and a few select others).
 While manually creating backlinks
is a lot of work, there is software
available that provides for automation
such as SEnuke XCr SEO, and XRumer,
but unless you’re well versed in these it
may be a better idea to outsource your
backlinking work to start with. You can
also use an online service such as
DripFeedLinks or OneHourBackLinks
for a very organic approach to link
building on your own terms.
Post Penguin Backlinking
Strategy

As discussed earlier, Google has

released various different algorithm
changes over the past several years. The
search giant is constantly shaping and
transforming its algorithm to be smarter
and better, forcing those working on
ranking sites to try to stay one step ahead
in order to maintain relevancy.

One of the more well known

recent algorithm changes by Google has
been the Google Penguin update. Google
Penguin, an update to the algorithm that
was first announced by Google in April
of 2012, aimed at punishing and
demoting sites on SERPs that
participated in any SEO practices that
violated Google’s Webmaster
Guidelines. This included things like
keyword stuffing, cloaking pages,
building mass amounts of links or
purchasing paid links, and duplicating
content. Websites that were ranking high
who employed these practices got a
severe demotion in ranking as a product
of this algorithm change.

With the release of the Google

Penguin, the search giant essentially sent
a loud and clear message to the Internet
as a whole informing them that while
working to increase a site’s ranking is
okay, it won’t tolerate those that try to
bend and break the rules. This has
forced SEO specialists to create Post
Penguin practices that won’t violate the
search engines rules; it’s made everyone
a little bit more honest in the SEO
world.

This is all very important when it

comes to performing backlinking work
for whatever site you may be trying to
increase the SERP presences for.
Google is looking for sites that not only
have unique content, and lots of links,
but also links that are diverse and
organic. Just think about finding links to
a site say in a forum or a blog post, that
link isn’t always linked with the exact
same 4 or 5 keywords each time. To
appear more organic, your link building
activities must include some generic
terms such as “click here”, “learn more”
or “get more info” beyond just the
primary and secondary keyword links.

The essential set of rules for

backlinking then, in the current Google
algorithm environment are:

• High PR Links – Every good Off-

Site SEO backlinking strategy
must provide backlinks from high
PR domains. Try to space out
these links over time and not build
them all at once, as it will appear
less organic if you do so. These
high PR links will come from
profile pages and once the profile
page has been created, a good
practice would be to ping them
with a service like Linklicious.
Concentrate on building four or
five high PR backlinks per week
from profile pages on popular
social media and authority sites.
To create high PR backlinks you
can use the following Websites:
o Facebook.com
o Twitter.com
o Plus.Google.com
o Folkd.com
o Stumbleupon.com
o Pintrest.com
o Zootool.com
o Springpad.com
o Oneview.com
o Diigo.com
o Delicious.com
o Reddit.com
o Blinklist.com
• Keyword Links – Linking with
your primary keyword is important
in order to create that relational
bond between your Website and
your keyword, one that Google
will recognize and index. Take
your primary keyword along with
three or four secondary keywords
(based on your keyword research
discussed in Chapter 3), combined
with 4 or 5 generic keywords and
begin creating backlinks, link
pyramids and link wheels by
either purchasing them from a site
 like Fiverr, DripFeedLinks, or
OneHourBackLinks.

• Link IP Diversification – Google

likes to see as much of an IP
diversification as possible from
sites that are housing your links.
This means that the links should
not all be located on the same site,
but spread out on sites all across
the Internet. You can achieve this
by purchasing your links through
proven vendors who provide
 diverse link building programs.
Once these links are created
however, you’ll need to ping them
in a manner that looks organic by
drip feeding about 40 to 100 links
in per day through a program like
Linklicious.

• Web 2.0 Links – The Web 2.0

links of the past may not have the
same meaning as they do in the
present day. Web 2.0 links refer to
sites that offer more interactivity
 beyond just the standard static data
display. This could mean an
interactive forum or other
community online that has some
page rank.

• EDU and GOV links – To further

the diversification needs of
Google’s algorithm, the EDU and
GOV domain names have special
importance to the search engine.
Google weighs these domain
names a little bit differently and
 provides a little bit more
importance to them then regular
domain names of equal PR value.
Getting EDU and GOV links are
very good for your link
diversification.

• Social Media – Of course, there’s

the all important social media
links back to your content. Links
and shares from sites like
Facebook, Twitter, and Google
Plus are gaining more and more
prominence in the eyes of the
search giant. Beyond just sharing
the links on your own, Google’s
algorithm will put more weight on
a page or site that has multiple
shares or likes by different people.
Google knows that this type of
activity is unique to real human
beings or real human accounts
actually vouching for a page or
site so having a diverse amount of
shares, re-tweets, and plus ones is
important.
 As you can see, the work of an
SEO specialist in the link-building Off-
Site SEO field is immense. Creating a
diverse and organic looking backlinking
structure is going to be something that
you’ll need to work on and plan prior to
diving in. You will get demoted in the
SERPs if you create lots of links in a
very small period of time and ping them
all at once.

To appear organic you must create

the links and ping them in a way that
looks natural with keywords that look
natural. This is very important to the
success of your site. Furthermore, to
give your site more link juice, you
should be linking to different pages in
the site other then just your home page.
By linking to other pages, you’re telling
Google that not only is the home page
important, but so is the rest of the site.
Building Link Pyramids

You may or may not have heard of

the term link pyramid in the past, but
these are powerful linking structures,
that until just recently, were one of the
primary tools that one could use to sky
rocket a site to the top of SERPs. After
the release of the Google Penguin,
however, link pyramids, while still
effective, can also backfire if Google
flags it as a “link scheme”.
 A link pyramid is a pyramid of
links consisting of three or four tiers
with the top tier being considered the
“money page”. The money page would
be your Website, article, email capture
page, or any other page that you’re
attempting to get ranked at the top of
SERPs.

The bottom few tiers of links will

consist of links that link from the lower
level to the level just above it only. The
lowest tier of the link pyramid would be
the lowest page rank links – these may
be PR0 or PR1 links from blog
comments, forum posts, obscure foreign
profile pages or any other low page rank
site pages.

The bottom level would link to the

links in the level just above it, which
would be higher-ranking links such as
PR2 to PR4 links. Subsequently, those
links would lead up to the tier above it,
say Web 2.0 and social media links, all
of which would lead to the top of the
pyramid, the money page.
 Building effective link pyramids
takes a bit of finesse. You can’t have it
be perceived by Google that you’re
trying to quickly clamor your way to the
top of SERPs so you must build them
delicately. What I mean by this is after
you’ve purchased your link pyramid
from a vendor (such as off of Fiverr or
another similar site) you’ll have to
slowly drip feed the links by pinging
only a small amount to Google each day.
This way, the link pyramid looks more
natural and not forced. The link pyramid
should also be built with a mixture of
your site’s real primary keyword and
secondary keywords, along with generic
keywords.

Pinging can be done in multiple

ways through multiple software
programs; however, there are a few
online that are fairly reliable and
affordable. You can ping up to 2,500
links per day for free through a site
called Linklicious and also set a drip
feed (i.e. 40 links per day) to feed
through to Google for pinging, making it
look more natural.
 You can also take advantage of a
site like DripFeedLinks to build your
own link pyramid as well, rather then
purchasing it from a vendor off sites like
Fiverr. Although Fiverr is a great
resource, for those that like to do things
on your own DripFeedLinks is a terrific
resource for building your own organic
looking links and link pyramids.
Building Link Wheels

Link wheels are another powerful

SEO tool, and when used properly, and
in conjunction with other link building
methods, can propel a site high up on the
SERPs. Link wheels refer to a network
of sites all of which link to the next site
in the wheel. For example, if we had
five sites, A through E, A would link to
B, B to C, C to D, D to E, then E back to
A. All of these five sites would also link
to the main site or “money page”. The
links to the money page in the link wheel
are like the spokes on a wheel with the
five sites being the actual wheel
surrounding the center.

Link wheels are another tactic that

Google has attempted to squash with the
release of the Google Penguin, however,
this has been something that has proven
to be more powerful of a linking
structure. The most powerful kinds of
link wheels are social media link wheels
where your social media profiles are all
connected to your site and also to each
other through content sharing. As you can
imagine, this is a very powerful link
wheel since social media sites have very
high page ranks and much of the linking
done through here seems more organic.
Creating your link wheel with social
media sites that all have connected
profiles is a powerful form of a link
wheel.

Link wheels, if done improperly

can have a negative impact on your site’s
link juice. By creating “lazy link
wheels” a site can actually get penalized
and have all of the link juice reverted if
a spoke is removed on a link wheel for
spam. This happens, for example, when
content is posted that looks “spun” or is
not original. Some blog platforms are
even deleting blog posts from profiles
that only have one blog posted with
more then 2 outbound links, so there are
many things to take into consideration
when trying to create these types of
linking structures.

Today, however, you have to think

outside of the box in order to propel
yourself to the top of the SERPs. Not
only do you need to create a powerful
link wheel, but also having a
combination of all linking methods is the
most powerful and effective way that
you’ll move up the SERP rankings and
stay at the top.
Outsourcing

It’s difficult for most individuals

engaging in SEO work on a full time
basis to tackle all there is to do that’s
involved with it, let alone someone who
has a primary job working elsewhere.
SEO is difficult, there’s no question
about that, and the most difficult part
revolves around the creation and
distribution of unique content that’s well
researched. Without this primary
building block it’s very difficult to get
search engines to rank you at the top of
SERPs.

If you’ve never written before, and

you find it difficult to come up with
unique content, you do have the option of
outsourcing your work to other
individuals. While finding and locating
an individual or business that can
provide you with quality content at a
reasonable price may be difficult, they
do exist out there.

When you’re at the stage where

you feel you’ll need to outsource some
of your work, there are several
resources online that you can turn to.
From article writing, to link building
there’s an endless stream of providers
ready and willing to help you with your
SEO needs. Once you understand the
basics of what SEO entails and have
some experience under your belt, you
can budget your time and finances on
different aspects of the project. But
when it comes to article writing, there
really is no better person for the job then
yourself.
 A lot of what happens during the
Off-Site SEO process can be outsourced
but if you’re outsourcing your content
creation you have to ensure that you find
a company or an individual who can
deliver good unique content that has
been properly researched. There are
several sites on the Internet where you
can search for outsourcing your content
creation efforts such as on eLance.com,
or Guru.com. These sites are dedicated
to helping bring buyers and sellers of all
sorts of projects together.
 Another terrific resource for
outsourcing that I’ve found major
success with is Fiverr.com. The concept
behind the site is that sellers sell you any
type of product or service that costs a
minimum of $5 (with optional add-ons
for the more advanced sellers).
Fiverr.com is a great place to outsource
link-building efforts, since there are
many sellers willing to do both manual
and automatic link building for your site
from just $5.

Fiverr.com has one of the best

resources of cost-effective sellers for
SEO services. To locate them simply
navigate your browser to Fiverr.com,
click on the “Online Marketing” tab on
the blue menu off to the right, navigate to
SEO, then sort by “Rating”. In the list,
you’ll see a large number of sellers with
various different SEO services to offer.
You can also search Fiverr.com for any
of the following terms: “link pyramid”,
“link wheel”, “backlinks” and then sort
by “Rating” to find the best sellers
offering these types of services.
Figure 7.1 ~ Fiverr.com for SEO
Outsourcing
 Figure 7.1 displays the options to
select on Fiverr.com in order to find top-
rated SEO services. One suggestion here
is that you try to vary your usage of
sellers on the site (don’t buy all your
links from the same seller). Each SEO
service here is a little bit unique, some
are more organically linked, some have
low PR sites, some have high PR sites,
some are link pyramids, some are link
wheels, and so on. If you vary up the
SEO services that you purchase, you’ll
be sure to provide a wide enough variety
of links to make Google happy.

One thing to keep in mind that

you’ll need to look out for on Fiverr.com
when searching for vendors that offer
link pyramids, link wheels, or direct
links that are mostly Dofollow and try to
avoid any that offer a large amount of
Nofollow links.

When researching vendors on

Fiverr be sure to read the reviews and
see what negative reviews, if any, a
vendor has. It’s best to also
communicate with a vendor before hand
too if you have questions about a
particular vendor’s services as they’re
always willing to help provide you with
further information.

Additionally, look for vendors on

Fiverr that will not ping the links for you
before delivery and if they do, that they
do so with an optimal drip feed rate. It’s
best to communicate this with them prior
to placing your order in order to be clear
because some vendors on Fiverr will
ping all your links for you at once,
essentially creating link juice suicide.

While some of these concepts may

be foreign to you and difficult to
understand at first, just keep the
underlying principles of natural and
organic always in the back of your mind
when conducing any Off-Site SEO work.
If it can’t be considered natural and
organic, don’t engage in it as you risk
major demotion on the SERPs if you do
so.
Pinging

It’s not enough that you have to go

out and create this complex and vast
array of backlinks that link back to your
Website, but in order to get Google to
crawl and find them you have to do
something called pinging. Since the
majority of the sites that you’ll be
obtaining backlinks from will have low
page ranks or no page ranks, Google
may never actually crawl those pages.
 It’s estimated that Google only
crawls about 5% of the Web that houses
low page rank or no page rank sites.
Without any directive to go index a page
with a low or no page rank, Google
spiders may never end up visiting it and
your hard work in creating those links
will go to waste, since they will never
get indexed.

Pinging is a task that you’re going

to need to get used to doing each time
you create an array of links back to your
site. There are two different types of
pinging services that you’ll be using
here. The first is a pinging service for
your page’s URLs that you create and
build over time. This type of pinging
will essentially instruct Google to visit
the page on a periodic basis that you’ve
established such as every 3 to 10 days.

Each time you post a Web page or

article, you need to ensure that it gets
pinged on a regular basis by using a
service like Pingler.com, which will
ping Google spiders to visit any link on
a periodic basis (from every 3 days to
every 10 days). If you have content that
gets updated regularly you should set
this to every 3 days, and if it’s less often
you can pick any other day up to and
between 10 days.

In addition to ensuring that your

own content gets pinged, you’ll also
need to ensure that any mass amounts of
backlinks that are created are pinged as
well. To do this you can utilize a service
like Linklicious that will allow you to
drip feed link pings of up to 2,500 per
day (free account), use their basic
account with 10,000 links per day (paid
account), or you can opt for their pro
account giving you 50,000 links per day
(paid account).

Pinging is very important, since

your grueling efforts of creating these
backlinks takes time, you want to ensure
it’s time well spent because without
pinging those links they may never get
discovered and your site will never get
credit for those backlinks.

The goal with pinging mass

amounts of backlinks is that you want to
make this appear as organic as possible
to Google so you shouldn’t be pinging
thousands of backlinks per day. You
should use the drip feed system of
pinging to drip about 40 to 100 links per
day to Google’s spiders per domain or
page that you’re working on. Doing this
will make your link building appear
much more organic and your ability to
climb the SERP rankings that much
greater.
Chapter 8
Social Media Strategies

With the explosive growth of

social media networks like Facebook,
Twitter & Google Plus, social media has
not only become an important component
of our lives, it has also become critical
to the success of any SEO campaign. We
use social media everyday to connect
with the people we love and care about,
and watch people’s lives play out on the
screen in front of us. For some, social
media plays such an important role in
their lives that nearly everything they do
is documented from either their home
computer or mobile device.

Google has of course taken notice

of this explosive growth, not only by
launching its own social media platform
called Google Plus, but also now by
beginning to give weight to social media
likes, shares, and tweets more then ever
before. While the weight that Google
gives for each share on various different
social networks is unknown, it is clear
that it is providing more prominence for
pages & sites that have heavy shares
through the social media realm.

If you haven’t already done so then

it’s important to setup a Facebook Page,
Twitter Account, and Google Plus
account for whatever person, product, or
service that you’re promoting in order to
start garnering page likes and shares
through the social media world. If you’re
unable to do this and you’re working for
a client, then this is one of the directives
that you must give them as this is going
to play a very important part in your
SEO work since one important task in
your Off-Site SEO efforts is to garner as
many likes, shares, re-tweets, and plus
one’s as you possibly can.

Social media shares are important

because they come from real human
people clicking on a link saying that they
either liked something or wanted to
share it with the rest of the world.
Getting someone to like or share a page
sometimes isn’t that easy, especially if it
involves a bland or dry topic. It’s
become increasingly important to get
people to share and like your content,
whatever it may be, due to the impact
these very powerful high page rank
backlinks have in terms of Off-Site SEO
link juice.

Of course most people already

have a Facebook account and Twitter
account, but if you’re one of the few that
doesn’t’ have these, then it’s important to
get this setup right away. Besides for
these two social networks, having a
Google Plus account is critical now as
well.

There are hundreds of social

media platforms out there today that
have taken the term Web 2.0 to a whole
new level, and Google is starting to take
notice. It’s also become increasingly
clear by the high page ranks of some of
these sites, just how popular they have
become. When managing an effective
SEO campaign one of the hats you are
going to have to wear will be the Social
Media hats.

While managing sharing content

through 3 sites may sound
overwhelming, try doing it on dozens of
sites at a time. There are ways, however,
that you can automate some of this work.
Of course, this would become virtually
impossible to manage after a while,
especially if you’re tackling several
projects at once. For this, reason, it’s
important to engage in content
syndication, discussed in the following
section, which will ease some of the
workload here.
Content Syndication

One of the best, most effective

strategies that you can use to begin
syndication of your content on social
media networks is to use the power of
the tribe. Whenever working and
collaborating with others in this field
(and other marketing fields), group
efforts always trump individual efforts.
You know how the saying goes, “there’s
no i in team”, and it certainly holds true
here.
 Going about syndicating your
content is difficult without the power of
a tribe and automatic content syndication
platforms. Tribepro provides an
excellent syndication platform for
sharing your content amongst hundreds,
if not thousands of people in your tribe.
The system offers its members a unique
platform to be able to quickly syndicate
content and build up heavy high page
ranking backlinks almost
instantaneously.

Tribepro requires a membership

fee and also requires that you have a
subscription to Onlywire, a service that
provides the actual syndication pipeline
used by Tribepro. While this can get
moderately costly, it’s probably one of
the best investments that you can make in
the SEO industry, allowing you to
quickly and effectively build very high
page rank backlinks to your content
through a simple interface.

Content syndication can also be

placed on autopilot with Tribepro. By
adding your RSS feed to the site, it will
automatically feed your content into the
tribe on a daily basis. This is a terrific
hands-free approach to doing a major
part of your SEO tasks.

Of course, merely just doing

content syndication is not enough, but
when coupled with the strategies
discussed in Chapter 7 for Off-Site SEO,
can tremendously grow your SERP
presence quickly and effectively.
Chapter 9
Producing Results

The SEO business is a complex

one, forcing you to weave together
various labor-intensive Web-based
marketing efforts to produce a single end
result. Of course in life, nothing
worthwhile would come easy, and the
same saying goes for SEO and the
industry as a whole. Wrapping your head
around Google and its fickle algorithm
seems overwhelming at first, but as you
verse yourself in the industry it will
make more and more sense over time.

A resounding theme in Google’s

algorithm changes boils down to just one
thing: how relevant and important is
your content. Google wants to produce
the most relevant search result to the
searcher, and doesn’t like it when it
finds people try to fool it into ranking
something higher then it should be.
 If you step back to look at Google
and its present algorithm, you’ll notice
just how much its changed and evolved
and gotten smarter. Gone are the times
when you could spend a few days
building mass amounts of links, stuffing
keywords into meta tags, and exploding
your Website to #1 in the rankings.
Today, the Google algorithm is
extremely smart and intuitive, and getting
to the top of any worthwhile SERPs
requires effort, real and consistent effort.

If you’ve had any brush-ins with

Google SEO prior to diving into this
book then you know just how
complicated it can be to compete for
some keywords. At times, it feels like
you’re driving against a brick wall
while producing absolutely no results,
but this is by design. Google makes it
intentionally difficult to climb the
rankings on SERPs because it doesn’t
want to give away those jeweled top
spots to just anyone. It wants those top
spots to go to those most relevant listing,
and to be relevant you need to have been
around for a while, be properly linked,
and have good unique content with
excellent On-Site SEO.

It’s easy to get discouraged when

you’re dealing with search engine
rankings. Sometimes it seems as though
you do all the right things with no
changes in sight, especially when you’re
monitoring those results on a daily and
even hourly basis. When you follow the
steps in this book, and practice a little
bit of patience, you will experience
dramatic, results and improvements over
time.
 Normally when doing SEO work, I
tell my clients to expect the most results
after the 90-day mark. Of course, a lot
can be done prior to that 90-day mark,
especially if you’re dealing with a non-
competitive keyword. However, for the
most part, the clients that I’ve worked
with all want to get to the top of
competitive keyword SERPs, and to do
that requires sincere effort along with a
good amount of time for full indexing to
occur.

Here’s a look back at a summary

of what Google is looking for in its ideal
page one SERP listings, and what you
should be aiming to achieve in your SEO
work.

• How old is the content – As

discussed in Chapter 2, Google
wants to know if the domain is
aged and has some history. If not,
you’re going to have some
difficulties in achieving high
rankings. Another thing Google is
looking for is how new the actual
 piece of content or page you’re
ranking for is. While older content
will still rank, Google does like to
find new fresh content for topics
that are age sensitive such as news
related topics. Make sure that you
keep the content fresh but have an
aged and well-indexed domain for
optimal SERP results.

• Is the content easy to read &

navigate – Is the content easy to
read and navigate? If your content
isn’t pleasing to the eye, then it
 isn’t pleasing to Google. Trying
things like making the text a
similar color to the background to
hide keywords, having all of your
heading tags below the fold, or
attempting to cloak pages will get
you demoted on the SERPs. Try to
keep your site looking clean with
separated HTML & CSS code and
keep most of the important content
above the fold.

• Is the content unique & well

researched – Google’s algorithm
is smart, and can determine how
well a piece of content is written
and sounds. Whatever
mathematical equation they’ve
come up with, it works to filter out
the junk and spam out there, so
make sure that whatever you write
and place on your Website is
unique, well-researched and not
duplicate to anything else on the
Web. You can use a resource like
Copyscape.com to check for
duplicate content.
• How relevant is the content to
the search query – Relevancy is
the largest factor in search engine
results, so you’ll want to ensure
that your content is relevant to the
search keyword that you’re
targeting and that you’ve instituted
all the proper On-Site SEO
guidelines suggested. Simply put,
don’t try to write about something
far off topic from your keywords,
as this is considered a Black-Hat
SEO technique and will get you
barred from climbing to the top of
 SERP results for any given
domain.

• Does the content have enough

organic links – Google and the
other search engines love well-
linked content as it’s telling them
that this content is important
enough to have people link to it.
Of course, the way you go about
producing those links will take
some finesse and pushing too hard
too fast can get you flagged by the
search engine for participating in
so-called “link schemes”. Try to
keep your linking organic looking
and institute some patience while
drip feeding a reasonable amount
of links per day and not flooding
the search engine with thousands
of links at a time. It’s easy to get
over excited when you have a list
of 10,000 links ready to be pinged
that point to your site, but flooding
this many links will surely hinder
you more then help you.
Feeding your Brain with
Positivity

In life it’s easy to get discouraged

with whatever it is that we set out to do.
The reason why there’s so many fad
diets and get rich quick schemes out
there is because human beings have
something call shiny object syndrome;
we like to participate in the newest and
best product or service but never really
make it beyond just a couple of weeks.
 Your goal is to stay committed and
not give up, over time, you’ll see lasting
results, but anyone that promises you
immediate Google #1 listing results or
says they have a special arrangement
with the search giant, is fabricating the
truth. No one can guarantee you the #1
spot on Google, and Google doesn’t
place any special search conditions on
its advertisers’ organic search results
either. The Google search engine’s
purpose is to show relevant organic
search results, period.
 There’s several ways to get
severely set back in the SEO industry so
make sure this doesn’t happen to you. If
you try to participate in any Black-Hat
SEO techniques your site is going to fall
so far off the search rankings that it may
be difficult for it to ever really recover.
Make everything that you do look
organic with your Off-Site link building
efforts. Great ways for Off-Site SEO
link building include participating in
sites Tribepro where everyone
syndicates each other’s content on their
own real social networks, this is
powerful stuff.

It’s also important to stress that

when building your keywords, if you’re
setting about purchasing keywords from
a site like Fiverr, make sure that you
have a mixture of 30% generic keywords
to 70% real keywords. So, for example,
if I’m linking to a site and using 10 total
keywords then seven of those would be
real keywords that would include my
site’s primary keyword, and three of
them would be generic keywords. The
generic keywords should change for
each page you link to, so you can use
“click here”, “learn more”, “get details”
for one set of purchases then change it up
for another.

It’s important to assess where you

are each day when it comes to your SEO
efforts and ensure that you come up with
your own daily action plan that you’ll
execute everyday to improve your SERP
rankings and site’s overall SEO
standings. These could include things
like daily affirmations, self education on
YouTube, reading motivational or
inspirational material, reading other
blogs about SEO or your niche to get
ideas for unique content, and so on.

Whatever strategy or plan of attack

you come up with, stick to, never giving
up until you reach your goals.
Appendix
SEO Terminology

Aged Domains – An aged domain is a

domain that has been in indexed by
Google at least two or more years ago
and it’s a critical component of any
successful SEO campaign. Google
penalizes new domain names, making it
very difficult to rank any keywords at the
#1 position or even on the first page of
search results for that matter in the
beginning. Purchasing or having an aged
domain will be one of the critical factors
in your success for ranking a site high
for any given keyword.

ALT tags – Also known as alternative

tags, these are the tags that appear within
the HTML <img> tags that present the
alternate data to the search engines to
provide a description of what the image
is. For optimal search engine rankings
you should have at least one image ALT
tag that correlates with your site or
page’s primary keyword.
Backlinking – Likely to be your biggest
undertaking when it comes to SEO,
backlinking is the effort involved with
creating hyperlinks that link back to your
Website. There are several rules
involved in backlinking that are covered
within the content of this book in
Chapter 7 on Off-Site SEO.

Black-Hat SEO – Black-Hat SEO is a

term used to describe a SEO tactics that
are not compliant with Google’s
Webmaster Guidelines. Black-Hat SEO
techniques are frowned upon by the
search engine industry. Examples of
Black-Hat SEO techniques are trying to
hide keywords within HTML comment
tags or trying to cloak pages.

Breadcrumb – A navigational aid used

on Websites, breadcrumbs not only
allow users to quickly jump through
informational sections on the site, they
also provide high SEO value by
allowing the search engine spiders
access to quickly navigate and spider
through a site, indexing data faster and
more efficiently.

Cloaking – This is a technique that

delivers different content to the search
engine spiders then it does to real human
visitors. The cloaking technique is
oftentimes used to mask the real content
or change the real content of a page and
make it appear differently to a search
engine spider. This is considered a
Black-Hat SEO technique and while it is
sometimes used for legitimate purposes,
it is oftentimes used to display
pornographic material to real human
visitors while only displaying non-
pornographic material to a search engine
spider.

CPC – Cost-per-click, or CPC, is a term

used in online paid advertising to
indicate click through percentages. The
cost per click is calculated by diving the
number of clicks with the total amount
spent on the advertisement. For example,
if you spent $100 on an ad and 200
clicks was received; the CPC would be
$0.50 cents.

CSS – Cascading Style Sheets, also

known as CSS, is a style sheet
presentation markup language that is
used to position elements, layouts,
colors, fonts, images, and construct a
Web page on the whole. While CSS is
used primarily in styling HTML Web
pages, it is also used to style XML and
other documents.
Dofollow Links – Dofollow links are an
attribute associated with an HTML
hyperlink that tell a search engine to
continue to link through to the site,
disseminating some of the site’s
important link juice. These are very
powerful types of links that work well
when pointed to your site or to a link
pyramid that leads to your site. When a
search engine sees a Dofollow link they
continue linking through to the site,
passing part of the SEO link juice that
would have been offered to that page
had the link been a Nofollow link.
Duplicate Content – In the search
engine world, content is king, but
duplicate content is the court jester.
Copying large chunks of content to your
site is one of the biggest no-no’s in the
industry. The search engines will figure
it out sooner or later and you will be
demoted in the rankings. If you’re going
to do SEO right, make sure all the
content is high-quality and unique
content that’s well researched.

Headings – HTML headings are blocks

of code that are placed around certain
words, styling and providing a certain
level of prominence in the overall page
structure. Heading tags range from <h1>
through <h6>, however, in the modern
SEO world the first three hold the most
importance. Tags <h1> through <h3>
should all contain the primary keyword
spaced throughout the page with the
<h1> and <h2> tags being above the
Website fold.

Internal Link – Internal links are links

from your page’s content to another page
or section on the same domain. Internal
links are important when it comes to On-
Site SEO as discussed in Chapter 4.

Keyword – A keyword is a word or

phrase that is used to optimize a Website
or Webpage. Selecting keywords is one
of the most important tasks in SEO work
and selecting the right keywords in the
outset can either make or break you. It’s
important to note that the keyword
“Miami vacation” and “vacation Miami”
will produce different search results, so
the order and positioning of the words
within the phrase is just as important.

Keyword Density – The keyword

density is the number of times a keyword
appears on a page in relation to the total
number of words. Optimal keyword
density ranges from 2% to 5% with
anything considerably over 5% being
construed as SPAM and anything
considerably lower then 2% being
construed as not keyword rich enough
and thus less relevant. It’s important
when writing your content that your
primary keyword is evenly distributed
throughout the page, making sure that it
appears in the first and last sentence of
the content as well as evenly spaced
throughout the balance of the words.

Keyword Stuffing – Keyword stuffing

is the over usage of a keyword in content
or meta keyword tags, something that
used to be popular many years ago, but
is now frowned upon as a Black-Hat
SEO technique. Keyword stuffing is
achieved in various different ways
which include placing the phrase
multiple times within the Meta tags
while combined with other words in
different combinations, applying the
same color to the keywords as the
background making them invisible, using
the <noscript> tag, and using CSS z-
positioning. All of these practices will
get you demoted and sometimes de-
indexed by search engines like Google.
Long Tail Keyword – A long tail
keyword is a keyword that has a
minimum of at least 3 words and any
maximum number of words. Long tail
keywords are used by marketers trying
to target a specific niche, question or
topic, which produce near similar
results to a broader search term of lessor
keywords but may have higher
competition. Long tail keywords are a
great way to rank at the top of search
engine results for terms that may
otherwise be more difficult to rank for.
Link Bait – Link Bait refers to content
that is created in order to garner as many
links to it as possible. Since backlinks
are one of the primary drivers of SERP
positioning, many SEO efforts include
the creation of content with the primary
goal to get as many links back to that
content as possible.

Link Farm – A link farm is a group of

sites that all hyperlink to one another,
back and forth in an oscillating fashion.
While link farms used to be
advantageous, they don’t have large
relevancy today since the two-way links
make it confusing for search engines to
determine which site is the vendor and
which is the promoting site.

Link Juice – This is the SEO linking

power of a page and usually refers to the
combined sum of the link power of all
the pages linking into it. You’ll hear the
term link juice referenced when
quantifying the power of a certain link or
a page that those links lead to.
Link Pyramid – A Link Pyramid is a
very powerful form of Off-Site SEO
backlinking that involves the creation of
a linking structure that is extremely
powerful. Think of the strength in
physical form that a real pyramid has
and how the transference of force is
physically supported by the structure
itself and how that has stood the test of
time. Link Pyramids generally have three
tiers: a bottom tier with low level links,
a middle with medium level links, and a
top level with high level EDU, GOV or
other authority links. The bottom links
link to the middle, the middle links link
to the top, and the top links link to your
site.

Link Sculpting – When you implement

attributes to links to affect their behavior
in how search engines interpret them,
you’re engaging in link sculpting. The
most common form of link sculpting is
using the Nofollow or Dofollow link
sculpting forms. The Nofollow links tell
a search engine not to follow a link, thus
leaving the link juice on the page, while
a Dofollow link tells a search engine to
continue on to follow that link thus
disseminating the link juice to the next
page.

Link Wheel – A Link Wheel is a form of

linking that links one site to another
while also linking back to your site as
well. The links flow in a sort of wheel
format with the spokes being links back
to your site in the center. When done
correctly, a link wheel can be a
powerful form of SEO boost for your
Website and the most effective forms of
link wheels are organically fashioned
ones that utilize social media platforms
as their linking mediums.

Meta Keywords – Meta keywords are

part of a set of Meta Tags that appear in
the header of Websites. Meta keywords
used to be prominently used in search
engine rankings but have no interpreted
value of importance today. Instead of
using meta keywords, search algorithms
now use other tags such as heading tags,
site content, keyword density and
backlinking keywords to determine
search engine rankings.

Meta Description – The meta

description tag is one of the meta tags
that are still used by search engines to
display search results. This along with
the title tag is used to display the name
and description of the link on SERPs to
the user searching for information.
Nofollow Links – Search engines spider
the Web looking for information and in
turn ranking the relevance of sites in its
indexes. Nofollow links are an HTML
attribute associated with hyper links that
tell a search engine to not follow the
link, stopping the search engine’s traffic
at that page, almost like a dead end.
Nofollow links are optimal when it
comes to making sure that your own page
is optimized to the highest level possible
by not allowing the link juice to pass
through it.
Off-Site SEO – Off-Site SEO are the
methods and practices of performing
SEO work that happen away from the
site itself. Off-Site SEO mainly involves
the use of heavy backlinking, social
media shares, authority site content
creation (i.e. squidoo.com, youtube.com,
etc.), article spinning, and so on. Off-
Site SEO is a very labor-intensive part
of the SEO trade and I’ve dedicated an
entire chapter to it to help you efficiently
tackle it without wasting your efforts and
making mistakes.
On-site SEO – Any work that is done
on the Website to increase the
effectiveness of its SEO is considered
On-Site SEO. This includes any HTML
work, content creation, internal linking,
setup, keyword distribution, and other
related efforts.

Page Title – The HTML page title is the

descriptive site title detail that resides
within the page’s <title> tags. This
information is displayed by the search
engines and is used in ranking the site on
the SERPs. A good page title tag should
be descriptive but not superfluous and
should accomplish its goal in around 70
characters (the cut off point for most
SERPs) with the use of the primary
keyword.

Pinging – Pinging is a technique that

notifies the search engines to go out and
seek data from a URL. This is required
because a lot of the link building that is
done happens on low, or no page rank
sites that do not get visited often or at all
by the search engines. When a search
engine is pinged to go out and index a
URL you can be certain that the
hyperlink to your site or to another link
in a link pyramid that’s pointing to your
site, will be found and indexed.

Panda – The Google Panda is a change

in the algorithm for Google’s search
results that was released in February of
2011. The effects of Panda were to
demote low quality sites and promote
sites with high quality well researched
information. The effects of this release
were widespread, making huge shifts in
positioning on SERPs forcing some
businesses to lose large volumes of
search traffic while others were able to
gain it.

Page Rank – One of the most important

descriptors of a Web page, the page rank
is a Web page’s rank in relevancy on the
Internet, ranging from 0 to 10. Sites like
Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s home
page achieve Page ranks of 9 and 10,
while lower trafficked sites have lesser
page ranks.

Penguin – The Google Penguin was one

of the latest major updates released to
Google’s algorithm on April 24th, 2012,
that began to demote visibility of listings
on SERPs that violated Google’s
Webmaster guidelines and employed
Black-Hat SEO tactics such as cloaking,
keyword stuffing, and the creation of
duplicate content.
PPC - Pay-per-click advertising, or
PPC, is a form of paid search engine
advertising that marketers use to get their
message out to the masses on a large
scale very quickly. PPC ads show up on
the right side of SERPs and are now also
being implemented on Facebook,
YouTube videos, and more recently on
sites like Twitter.

PPV – Pay per view ads, or PPV, is a

type of advertising that is utilized by
marketers to distribute ads to a user base
that has expressly agreed to receive
those ads. An example of this is free
software downloads or online services
such as Pandora that use PPV ads to
display advertisements on a periodic
basis while providing a free service.

Referrer String – Referrer strings are

used in affiliate and Web marketing to
pinpoint campaigns and where a lead or
referral came from. This is important to
some marketers running paid
advertisements to be able to gauge the
successes of their various efforts
throughout the Web. Web programming
dictates that after the Web page name, a
question mark can indicate the start of
any variables that may be appended to a
URL, thus resulting in a Referrer String.

Robots.txt – This is a file that resides in

the root directory of your Website, that
provides instructions to search engines
on any folders, or files that it shouldn’t
index. Most people don’t want search
engines seeing all files on their sites
such as administration files, or other
files that contain sensitive information.

RSS Feed – A Rich Site Summary

(RSS) feed is a standardized format that
allows for the automatic update and
syndication of content on sites that have
frequent changes and entries such as
blogs and other news sites. The RSS
feed format provides a standard in
formatting that allows ease of
redistribution of either full or
summarized data, metadata and
publishing information.

Sandbox – Google Sandbox Effect is an

effect that happens when a newly formed
domain name’s link juice is not fully
weighted due to filtering from Google in
order to prevent SPAMMERS from
reaching the first page in SERPs by
registering multiple domain names
quickly and actively promoting them.

Search Algorithm – A formula devised

by brilliant minds that weighs and takes
multiple factors into account when
reaching a determination for search
result page ranking. The Google search
algorithm combines many factors
including the aged domain factor,
Website link popularity, On-Site SEO
elements, and Off-Site SEO elements.
No one outside of Google knows the
exact current algorithm and the total
weight of each of the factors that are
taken into account or precisely how they
impact search results but there are very
good guidelines available.
SEM – SEM is the business of search
engine marketing, the industry that search
engine optimization specialists fall
under. SEM is used to refer to not only
SEO efforts but also paid search engine
marketing efforts as well.

SERP – Search Engine Ranking Pages,

also known as SERPs, are the end listing
results pages of queries to search
engines. SERPs will generally include a
title and brief description of each listing
related to the keywords searched along
with a link to that content. In SEO the
goal is to dominate the first page of
SERPs.

Sitemap – A sitemap is a page that’s

created to aid browsers in crawling a
site. A sitemap provides a hierarchical
link structure of pages on a Website that
are accessible and permissible to be
crawled.

Social Media – Social media is a term

that refers to the types of sites that have
increased in popularity in the past
several years that base themselves on
end user interactions in a social and
collaborative format. Examples of such
popular sites are Facebook, Google
Plus, and Twitter.

Spider – A Spider is a Web-robot that’s

instructed to go out and crawl the
Internet for data used for the purposes of
Website indexing and rankings. Google
has multiple spiders that it sends out,
some that are dedicated to deep-indexing
the Web, others for more periodic
updates to Web content, and even others
for algorithm adjustments such as the
Google Panda and Google Penguin.

Website Fold – The Website fold is the

section of the Website that is viewable
to the natural eye prior to getting cut off
by the browser and forcing a user to
scroll. The Website fold will vary from
screen resolution to screen resolution,
however it’s typically 600 to 850 pixels
down from the top of the browser.
White-Hat SEO – White-Hat SEO
techniques are those that follow the rules
and standards of the SEO world and also
adhere to Google’s Webmaster
Guidelines. White-Hat SEO techniques,
while more time intensive, offer the
largest long-term gains for your
Website’s ranking on SERPs. These
techniques include quality content
creation, proper On-Site SEO
configuration, and organically looking
Off-Site SEO linking.