How many Hats in SEO?
As per my knowledge is concern only 3 Hats matters most in SEO:
1. White Hat SEO
1. White Hat SEO
2. Grey Hat SEO
3. Black Hat SEO 1. White Hat SEO:
White Hat SEO means completely following the ethical methods to acquire good rankings in search engines for a website. If a website really providing good information to visitors then white hat SEO works very well
and gives the best results. Now you have question that “what are white hat SEO methods?” All the methods which aren’t trying to cheat or manipulate search engines or visitors are called white hat SEO methods. I hope only few sites like Wikipedia, Google etc... follows white hat SEO methods.
2. Grey Hat SEO:
Grey Hat SEO means following combination of ethical and unethical methods to get fine rankings in Search Engines for a website. Most of the SEOs use Grey Hat SEO Methods to attain rankings. Grey Hat SEO works fine most of the time and most of the professionals recommend it. Grey Hat SEO methods aren’t unethical, it includes little stuffing of keywords in the site and back links etc. Now a day’s these methods are quite common while promoting website. Most of Corporate websites, Personal Blogs etc … follows Grey Hat SEO Methods.
3. Black Hat SEO:
Black Hat SEO stands to follow completely unethical which are used to cheat, manipulate search engines as well as users. In the past years search engines aren’t able to recognize these methods and difficult to find out and filter the websites which use Black Hat SEO techniques. Search engines are became smarter now and able to find out and blocks websites which use black hat techniques. Search Engine Quality Professional are working hardly and updating regularly the SE algorithms to give the best results to the visitors.
How to measure SEO Effectiveness?
Every website SEO performance and results can be measured through following three factors.
1. Monitor Keyword Rankings
2. Analyze Monthly Visitors
3. Track Leads & Conversions
1) Monitor Keyword Rankings
Initially every website will be targeted to few keywords which are relevant to respective website niche. SEO Professionals should make sure that “respective landing pages of the website should be indexed & ranked for targeted keywords”. If your website is started ranking for few long tail keywords in the first month itself, it means “your SEO team is doing the right job”. Also month over month keyword rankings positions should be improved. With the help of following kind of report everybody can measure their SEO effectiveness.
Note: This will not happen in all cases, because few of the niches are highly competitive, so it will take little more time to get results.
2) Analyze Monthly Visitors
Every website visits can be tracked through Google Analytics. It’s free tool offered by Google, also simple to install & activate on website. Usually for a new website minimum two months’ time required to receive traffic from search engines. From 3rd month onwards every website will start receiving little traffic and it should be gradually increased month over month. Of course, traffic increase in every month is a difficult task, so at least existing minimum traffic shouldn’t be decreased.
If your SEO team is continuously adding new content pages then the traffic should be improved. So keep an eye on website traffic and measure your SEO team efforts. Ask your SEO team to provide monthly improvement stats and reports for your reference.
3) Track Leads & Conversions
Your website should have Phone number, Email ID and Inquiry box if you are offering services. If your site is an eCommerce portal then it’s important to have online payment facility, so that visitors will purchase your products through online.
Compare month over month stats whether you are receiving any inquiries or sales from your website or not and calculate ROI. Sometimes cannot expect immediate ROI through SEO efforts as SEO will give good results in longer run. However make sure to push and keep little pressure on your SEO team to have max output.
Google Webmaster tools - SEO Updates 2012
I would like to highlight & include the summaries of SEO Updates in 2012 which are published on Google webmaster central official blog.
- Video markup language for better indexation of Videos - Feb 21st 2012
- Optimize your site to handle unexpected traffic growth - Feb 09th 2012
- Webmaster tools sitemaps interface with fresh look - Jan 26th 2012
- Few changes on Top search queries data in Webmaster tools - Jan 25th 2012
- Google Algorithm update to Page layout structure - Jan 19th 2012
- Page Titles Update in Search Results - Jan 12th 2012
1. Schema.org Video Markup:
We all know that Google, Yahoo & Bing are supporting schema.org common markup language to make a better web. Now schema.org released mark up for Videos i.e. http://schema.org/VideoObject. Follow this markup while adding videos to your site. It will help search engines to crawl these videos effectively.
2. Handle sudden traffic spike:
Usually popular sites face downtime issues due to sudden increase in traffic, websites will crash often in such cases. So, it’s better to plan “lightweight version of the website or mobile version” to handle traffic in difficult times. Also we can use third party services to land that particular page which is receiving higher traffic.
3. Newinterface for sitemap section:
Earlier sitemap section used have normal interface with some basic content stats. Now added videos, images sitemap statistics with colorful interface. Compared to old interface, new interface looks pretty clean and easier to understand with better usability. Now users can delete sitemaps, which were submitted by another webmaster owner.
4. Searchqueries data update:
Normally in webmaster tools search queries data rankings will show average position of the keyword. Now onwards it will display top position of that keyword.
5. PageLayout Structure algorithm Change:
We often see websites with too many ads and it’s difficult to find out the difference between real content and ads. Few sites will have completely ads about the fold, users will have bad experience with these sites. As per new page layout algorithm, these sites will lose rankings and bring down from top search engine results.
6. PageTitles update in search:
Page titles will have higher impact in CTR. Usually Google pick the title tag from <title> tag and displays the same in search results and displays meta description based on the search query by collecting information from page or description tag. Now title tag also will be displayed based on search query of the visitor and it helps to improve click through rate on search results.
4 Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid in 2012
For the last few years, trend of marketing online has become one of the hottest topics among businessmen, and almost every business owner is looking to take advantage of this amazing marketing channel that literally has the potential to drive insane amount of potential customers without spending a fortune. SEO is one thing in Internet Marketing, that bring highly targeted traffic to any website absolutely free. In this article we will lay down few of the key mistakes that marketers do while implementing SEO campaigns and hence face failure at the end.
Many professional SEOs around the globe rely on the strategy of white hat SEO in order to build their rank in search engines, and expand their reach to millions of potential customers from around the globe.
Poorly Written Content – One of the most successful technique is link building through content. But unfortunately many SEOs do it in a wrong way and hence they don’t see as good results as they want. Content Marketing, also known as Article Marketing is effective only if the content is of high quality and optimized for search engines. You cannot expect any piece of junk content to rank higher on search engine.
Usage Of Keywords – Every page on your website must be targeting some keywords and should be keyword rich. According to top SEOs, keyword density of at least 3-5% should be present in pages to be loved by search engines mainly Google. Almost every SEO in the world knows the importance of keywords, however recently, due to the increasing emphasize on social media marketing, this importance of Keywords has been decreased a little. If keywords are used in the right manner and at right places, they will make your website to rank much higher with very little efforts.
Ineffective Use Of Heading Tags - It has been seen in last few years, that people have started to neglect the importance and effectiveness of Heading Tags in On Page SEO, the tags are H1, H2 and H3. They must be used in every page of a website to get maximum benefits from on site content.
Stop Using Flash Content - Flash Content does not help at all, all it does is make your page heavy and very un-SEO friendly. Instead, make use of latest HTML-5 and CSS techniques to design attractive and eye-catching designs for your website.
The above are just four of the many SEO mistakes that we often see SEO experts do in their small business marketing campaigns, you must ensure that you don’t commit any of these mistakes to stay away from any negative impact from search engines in 2012.
How Google SEO different than other SEO
Search Engine Optimization service is used to optimize the website in such a way that it gets high ranking in search engines through relevant keywords of the website. Search engine optimization technique helps to achieve huge amount of traffic for the business website. This is important for the website because the success and failure of the website depends on the number of the visitors getting attracted towards the website. Main aim of the SEO is to increase number of hits on website links through most relevant keywords of site content searched by the users in search engines. Generally, users think that search engine optimization techniques give top listing in all major search engines but every search engine has different algorithm for their search results. So, SEO techniques also vary for all search engines. To know about how Google SEO is different from SEO, first of all it is necessary to have the complete information about what SEO is all about.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is most effective technique in internet marketing world to achieve targeted business from Internet. The search engine optimization techniques include Keyword Research Analysis, Search Engine Copywriting, Web Site Optimization, Search Engine Registration & Link Popularity Research. All these techniques are used for website promotion on internet with aim of getting business and its presence in top listing of major search engines. SEO contains two methods:
1) On page optimization: On page optimization is implementing on the live mode of the business website. In this we have to take care about targeted keyword, site content, Meta tag, Title tag, H1 tag and many more. It makes website friendlier to search in major search engines through its targeted keywords.
2) Off page Optimization: Off page optimization only includes website URL and targeted keywords. This helps to increase huge number of back links and provide indirect traffic to the website. Off page optimization contains many methods which are performed to get high page rank of the website in major search engine. Those methods are Forum Posting, Blog Commenting, Social Bookmarking Submission, Article Submission, Press release etc. All these tactics require smart SEO efforts and expertise to achieve top listing in results of search engine.
It is a known fact that Google is widely used search engine in world. People have developed a psychology that Google is the most reliable search engine and provides the most relevant search results. If any website is ranks top in Google search results, it means that the SEO expert optimizing that website has used perfect SEO strategy and left no stone unturned in optimizing the website.
Google is the most popular search engine and keeps on updating its algorithm regularly. So, getting high ranking for a particular website through competitive keywords in Google is a challenging task. Google changes its algorithm and updates Google bots codes after every three months. It indexes the whole website and gives ranking to them on the bases of its popularity, traffic, keyword relevancy etc. To get high ranking in Google, website owners need to take sepecialized Google SEO services which is different from SEO for other search engines.
Google SEO
Google SEO techniques are used to rank the website on top position in Google. A website can achieve top ranking in either paid results which is through Google PPC or organic results through Google SEO services.
1) Paid results: In paid results business executives need to buy results to show their website ads on the tops of the Google result pages.
2) Organic results: In organic results business executive need to optimize the content, Title tag, Meta tag, H1 tag, ALT tag etc. Organic SEO is also popular as Natural SEO. Organic SEO requires specialization, techniques and great efforts to obtained target result.
Google PPC campaign management is done with the help of Google Adword tool. In this Google concentrates on some particular keywords and when website link get click on it the website owner has to pay to Google. This is known as paid results SEO which really helps to boost the business in such a great way.
Google organic results can be achieved through effective SEO which is used to increase business popularity throughout the world. Google SEO services also includes on page optimization and off page optimization like SEO for other search engines, but an SEO expert has to ensure that the website has maximum back links to achieve high ranking in Google. As a website owner you need to ensure with your SEO Company that they have uploaded a Google sitemap, so that the Google spider can crawl your website easily. Also, one needs to ensure that the website has been optimized as per the SEO guidelines set by Google. If SEO strategy is not implemented as per those guidelines, there are chances that your website is considered as a spamming website by Google and then your website can never get listed in Google.
Also, to get high ranking of your website in search engines, one can use different products of Google like Google Places, Google Merchant Centre etc., and register into them. To get registered in Google Places is very important if you have a local business like a restaurant, hotel, fitness centre etc. Whereas, registering in Google merchant centre is very important if you have an online shopping website, so that you can get your products listed in Google shopping. The images on your website should have prominent and relevant ALT tags so that the images of your website get listed in Google images. Also the videos when uploaded on Youtube should be optimized properly to get listed in Google Videos. If your website is news website, then your Google Sitemap should be regularly updated to get best results in Google News.
Google's Panda impact has led tonnes of websites either rank or tank. It underscores that "the highest quality contents" should get their due prizes while "the lowest quality contents" should suffer the Panda wrath. Websites with 'the lowest quality contents' can save themselves from the Panda ire if they replace their copy-contents with the original ones, or else they should keep themselves ready to pale into insignificance against the surge of the Google Panda.
Google has hundreds of quality-controlling mechanisms. Among them, its Panda seems to be one of the most merciless systems that neutralizes the copy-contents. As a result, affiliate sites appear to get affected badly. The Panda impact can affect 20 to 80 percent of websites overall. It can cause miserable dips of search visibility for a large chunk of websites across the Google search engine.
However, this impact is limited to those websites which have infringed the copyright terms and conditions by copying contents from others and overlapping the same or similar topics with marginally different keyword variations. Allegedly, the Panda swipe cannot sometimes distinguish the
original websites from the duplicate ones and that results in poor traffic performance of the original websites. Despite this allegation, Google claims that Panda considers original contents and gives ranks duly to them. Also, it values for the unique design, original content and good navigational speed of the web pages, among others.
If Panda finds that web contents are meeting its parameters perfectly, it will give proper ratings to them. As a result, the flow of the web traffic to those web pages will swell automatically. Nevertheless, thousands of website-owners are voicing against this artificial intelligence in the fear of osing page ranks and huge web traffic overnight. But, Google insists on its preference for quality contents over quantity. This giant search engine has made its stand clear in its official blog post that contains 23 relevant questions. If the website-owners go through that set of questions, they will come to know what kind of contents can qualify the Panda parameters.
