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SEO is the widely used acronym for ‘search
engine optimization’. It is the practice of
designing, building and producing content
for websites which serves to increase the
authority and relevance of that site; with
the simultaneous aim of ensuring the site
also appears more highly ranked on search
engine results pages (S.E.R.P’s).
When the phrase ‘search engine’ is used,
largely it refers to Google because while
there are other search engines available, like
Bing andYahoo! for users to use, Google still
holds the largest share of the search engine
market, estimated at somewhere between
65-70% of the whole (imforza).
What is SEO?
3. CLOUDSPOTTING
Pandas and
Penguins
That statistic alone means you need to know
your Penguins from your Pandas if you’re
going to be successful in handling your
SEO strategy, regardless of whether you
outsource that strategy or handle it in house.
The Penguin algorithm focuses mainly on
identifying and penalizing sites that are
engaging in activities like using: link spam,
paid links, link farms and overly optimised
anchor text. Penguin is concerned with your
sites CREDIBILITY.
The Panda algorithm focuses on targeting
low quality, thin and duplicate material.
So of course, Panda is concerned with your
CONTENT.
I check your
CONTENT
...and I check your
CREDABILITY
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Pandas and
Penguins:The good,
the bad and the
downright unnatural
Interflora lost visibility in a huge way in
February 2013, to the extent that they no
longer ranked in Google for their own name,
let alone their most valuable keywords:
flowers, florist, flower delivery and flowers
online! It later transpired that Interflora’s
SEO team had been acquiring paid links
through the method of sending a free
product to bloggers.
This is a classic example of engaging in
unnatural or ‘Black Hat’ back link building
which means it was the Penguin algorithm
that Interflora fell foul of.
On the other hand,YouTube gained visibility
with the last Panda refresh and largely it’s
unsurprising as the site relies heavily on
user generated content which is therefore
relevanttousersandunlikelytobeduplicated
or unnatural (interestingly, it’s also one of
Google’s companies). However Wabauto.
de is a German site, unaffiliated to Google
that also saw an increase in visibility after
the last Panda refresh, they recorded a rise
in visibility of 132.77% (Orchid Box).
So, a change in Google’s algorithms should
not be synonymous with a negative effect
on SEO, if you’re playing by the rules.
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Which hat are you?
The distinction between White Hat SEO and
Black Hat SEO is widely debated and has
even led to the suggestion of a third type;
Grey Hat SEO.
White Hat SEO refers to a method of
search engine optimisation that is generally
approved by search engines.These methods
look to improve the rankings of a website in
an ethical manner by staying within a search
engine’s terms of service. In simple terms,
this means the website is designed, built and
optimised in a way that will naturally appeal
to search engines rather than attempting to
bluff or deceive them. White hat SEO tends
to produce successful long term, high
value and low risk search engine rankings.
Black Hat SEO refers to methods of search
engine optimisation and promotion that are
consideredtobeunethicalorthatcontravene
a search engine’s terms of service. Such
techniques will often create a poor user
experience or present content in a different
ornon-visualway.Examplesincludekeyword
stuffing, invisible text and doorway pages.
Black hat SEO can be described as a short-
term and indeed short - sighted solution
to a long-term problem as websites using
such techniques will eventually be banned
(either temporarily or permanently) once
the search engines discover what they are
doing, making black hat SEO high risk, short
term and low value.
FinallyGrey HatSEO refers toSEO strategies
that (as the colour suggests) fall in between
Black Hat and White Hat SEO. As such, so
calledGrey Hat techniques can be legitimate
in some cases and illegitimate in others.
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Our philosophy
Togiveouropinion,thereisnoGreyHatSEO,
Penguins and Pandas are black and white as
are all SEO techniques. They fall either in to
the Black Hat SEO camp or the White Hat
SEOcamp.Byclearlydistinguishingbetween
the do’s and don’ts of SEO and choosing not
to acknowledge the grey areas it makes it
easier to ensure your practices are low risk
and search engine friendly.
Backlinkbuildinghasbeenalargecontributor
to the arguments for positing the category
of Grey Hat SEO. Indeed some definitions of
White Hat SEO would state that full service
white hat SEO includes link building services
which involve:
• article marketing
• social networking
• online publicity
• directory submission
• video marketing
• blog commenting
• local profiles
• blogging
Google’s official position is that back link
building is a Black Hat SEO technique.
Withthatinmind,weturntosomeguidelines
which you should apply to ANY links you
have pointing back to your site:
1. Ensure the links are quality, as opposed
to just large in quantity. It’s the age old
distinction between quality and quantity
and as is most common, quality wins!
2. Build a concurrent social media presence
that is strong and well connected to support
any backlinks you may gain. If we are aiming
to keep Google happy then of course this
social media building should take advantage
of Google+.
3.Continually produce content for your blog,
your social sites and your webpages that is
high quality, well referenced, original and
use this to build your SEO strategy above
any other tactic. Great content will draw
in links naturally rather than requiring the
active building of backlinks which Google
frowns upon.
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How we would approach
the development of a
Content Marketing Plan
for a client
Research
Data
Preparation &
assessment
Prospecting
Creating &
Promotion
Assessment
Indeed, content marketing is a growing
trend in the search industry with 54%
of B2B companies intending to increase
their content marketing spending in 2013
(Content Marketing Institute). So adapting
your content marketing to also include SEO
is a great way to streamline your whole
marketing operation and make content
production more successful long term.
WerecentlypublishedourContentMarketing
Guide for business which you can access here
in full:
CONTENT MARKETING GUIDE
However here is also a quick example of how
we would approach the development of a
content marketing plan for a client:
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To conclude our
philosophy
To expand our philosophy of SEO further,
we could go as far to say that SEO is not
even about ‘White Hat’ versus ‘Black Hat’
techniques; SEO is about low value versus
high value, high risk versus low risk and long
term versus short term techniques.
Low value SEO is most commonly
recognisable as the use of SPAM, however
a point to note is that not all low value
SEO techniques are illegal and not all are
necessarily unethical depending on your
views, but all low value SEO techniques
are done purely to affect and theoretically
benefit an SEO campaign.
High value SEO techniques are those that
are employed not only to serve the need
of SEO but to also provide the site and site
visitors with either beneficial material or a
favourable experience.
Black hat tactics certainly, and even
some ‘grey hat SEO’ tactics have become
considerably riskier than they once were,
that means you need to be able to afford to
lose if you’re going to make a risky move.
With the latest Panda and Penguin updates,
affording to lose is a much bigger decision
that it once was.
Deciding on the difference between using
short term and long term SEO tactics is very
much dependent on your business. If you
know your business is only functional in the
short term for example if you are targeting
a particular trend or event relevant within a
specific time frame, like Movember perhaps,
then you can take risks and use short term,
techniques relatively safely, that other more
long term business can’t.
What can be generally inferred from the
examples of other companies is that if
you play the SEO game purely to win SEO
points, you may win a few rounds, but you
will ultimately lose the game.
SPAM
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The lesson to learn...
The lesson to learn: Once Google sets a
Panda or Penguin loose on the low value
SEO tactic you’re using you’re dead in the
water. By their very nature, low value SEO
techniques do not provide for the future and
consider SEO only in isolation.
So, the best option is to conduct a long
term, high value and low risk SEO strategy
because, even if you are affected by aGoogle
algorithm change at some point, because
your SEO strategy is focussing on improving
the user experience as well as your S.E.R.P
placement, you will be using a diverse range
of techniques to do this.
Thus whichever one technique an algorithm
may pick up on and penalize you for, you’ll
have another technique they are not
penalizing you for. Essentially ensuring you
never go back to square 1.
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The 3 C’s f SEO:
quality content,
clean code and link
credability
This serves to illustrate that
when it comes to your SEO
strategy, you do as Google
says not as Google does.
1. Do not produce low quality/ thin content
2. Consolidate any pages that are similar to
minimise duplicate content.
3. Any offending pages should be moved to
a new domain or 404’d
4. Provide Google with a site map to help
them learn the structure of your site and
increase their coverage of it to help your
users find the content they need.
5. Create content that is: useful, information
rich, clear, and accurately described.
Using Parked Domains with excessive
advertising above the fold is not
recommended.
Sadly, (and no doubt deliberately) the
GoogleAd Layout tool doesn’t seem to allow
you to test a Google search query page, no
doubt because if it did you’d see that there
is an excessive use of advertising appearing
above the fold. At a quick glance, about 80%
of content above the fold on this page is
advertising. Tut tut.
6. Use the keywords you are aiming to rank
for within your on page content to increase
your sites relevance.
7. Use text not images where possible
8. Try to ensure advertisements don’t affect
search engine rankings.You can useGoogle’s
AdSense or DoubleClick to do this as they
are blocked from being crawled.
9. Make pages primarily for users not search
engines
10. Make your website stand out especially
from others in your field
#1: quality
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#2: clean code
1. Stuffing title tags, Meta tags, anchor
text and navigation links with keywords is
another method Google penalizes websites
for.
2. Vary anchor text again avoiding duplicate
content.
3. When using an image make use of the ALT
atribute to include a snippet of descriptive
text.
4. Make sure theseALT attributes and <title>
elements are both descriptive and accurate.
5. Check and correct any incorrect HTML.
6. Make sure your web server supports the If-
Modified-Since HTTP header, this will alert
Google if your content has changed since
they last crawled your site.
7. Use the robots.txt file on your webserver
to indicate to crawlers which directories can
and cannot be crawled.
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#3: link
Cloaking: This is a form of search engine
subterfuge whereby visitors are not shown
an indexed web page when they click on
the link to it in Google. Cloaking can work in
either direction in that, the visitor is cloaked
from Google and Google’s indexed content
is cloaked from the visitor. What cloaking
achieves is to attribute a high PageRank to
content that would normally receive a low
PageRank. However an important point to
note is that cloaking is not necessarily illicit,
i.e. a specific form of cloaking can be used to
deliver ISP tailored or web browser tailored
pages to a user which is perfectly legitimate.
(SE Partner).
Using redirects is a tactic which sends a user
to a different page from the one they actually
clicked on in the search results, often the page
they are redirected to, is less relevant than the
link they clicked on suggested. (Paul deSousa).
Doorway pages: Similar to using redirects,
doorwayorentrypagesastheyarealsoknown,
send visitors to an entirely different site than
the destination they thought they clicked on in
the Google S.E.R.P’s. (SE Partner).
Using affiliate sites. This is borne from affiliate
marketing whereby one business rewards one
or more affiliates for the business it receives
which is brought about by the affiliates
marketing efforts. When it comes to SEO,
having affiliates can boost PageRank through
associations, the least orthodox methods of
using this method is having affiliates publish
product reviews and services offered by one
another. This is similar to the practices that
got Interflora in to trouble.
Build high quality and relevant links to your
site and simultaneously delete, destroy or
dilute suspected low quality links your site
(Relevance of Disavow Links tool).
Cancel or remove any unnecessary footer links
from your pages.
Be conservative with internal linking.
Avoid or limit buying sponsored links: organic
is better.
Design and build a site with a clear hierarchical
structure complete with text links. Every page
in the site should be accessible from at least
one static text link.
Keep links on any given page to within a
‘reasonable number’ (sadly, there is no real,
specific guideline as to what this reasonable
number is.
Check and repair any broken links.
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In a nutshell... 1. Test your site
2. Optimize load times, this keep in line
with Google’s aim to provide users with the
best user experience they can and fast sites
increase user satisfaction.
3. Don’t deceive users.
4. Avoid tricks to improve search rank.
5. Avoid: automatically generated content,
link schemes, cloaking, sneaky redirects
hidden text or links, doorway pages, scraped
content, affiliate programmes without
sufficient value, irrelevant keywords,
malicious behaviour like phishing, installing
viruses Trojans or other ‘bad ware’, abusing
rich snippets and sending automated queries
to Google.
6. Engage in good practices like monitoring
your site for hacking and remove hack
content ASAP and preventing and removing
user generated SPAM on your site, the most
common example of this being left typically
as blog comments loaded with links.
