SEO Tutorial For Beginners in 2017

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="single-blog-container" style="background-color: #fefefe; border: 0px; clear: both; color: #444444; font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, "Helvetica Neue Light", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 80px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="blog-single-article" style="border: 0px; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0em 0px 2em; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><div class="entry" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is SEO?</strong></h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">S</strong>earch <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">E</strong>ngine <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">O</strong>ptimisation in 2017 is a technical, analytical and creative process to improve the visibility of a website in search engines. Its primary function is to drive more visits to a site that convert into sales.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The free SEO tips you will read on this page will help you create a successful SEO friendly website yourself.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I have over 15 years experience making websites rank in Google. If you need optimisation services – see my <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-audit/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Hire Hobo To Audit Your Website">SEO audit</a> or <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/small-business-seo-packages/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">small business seo services</a>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">An Introduction</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This article is a beginner’s guide to effective white hat SEO.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I deliberately steer clear of techniques that might be ‘grey hat’, as what is grey today is often ‘black hat’ tomorrow, as far as Google is concerned.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">No one-page guide can explore this complex topic in full. What you’ll read here are answers to questions I had when I was starting out in this field.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The ‘Rules.’</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google insists webmasters adhere to their ‘rules’ and aims to reward sites with <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">high-quality content</strong> and <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">remarkable ‘white hat’ web marketing techniques </strong>with<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> high rankings.</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Conversely, it also <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">needs</em> to penalise websites that manage to rank in Google by breaking these rules.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">These rules are not ‘laws’, but ‘guidelines’, for ranking in Google; lay down <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">by</em> Google. You should note, however, that some methods of ranking in Google are, in fact, illegal. Hacking, for instance, is illegal in the UK and US.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can choose to follow and abide by these rules, bend them or ignore them – all with different levels of success (and levels of retribution, from Google’s web spam team).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">White hats</em> do it by the ‘rules’; <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">black hats</em> ignore the ‘rules’.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">What you read in this article is perfectly within the laws and also within the guidelines and will help you increase the traffic to your website through organic, or natural search engine results pages (SERPs).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Definition</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are a lot of definitions of SEO (spelled Search engine optimi<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">s</strong>ation in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, or search engine optimi<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">z</strong>ation in the United States and Canada) but organic SEO in 2017 is mostly about getting free traffic from Google, the most popular search engine in the world (and almost the only game in town in the UK):</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Graph: The Top 5 Search Engines in the UK from 2015-2016; Date: 2016-04-06" class="alignnone wp-image-20986 size-full" height="535" src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/graph-top-5-search-engines-in-UK-from-2015-2016-timestamp-2016-04-06.png" style="border: 1px solid rgb(203, 204, 205); clear: both; display: block !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; margin-top: 25px; max-width: 100%; padding: 3px; text-align: center !important; vertical-align: baseline;" width="925" /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Opportunity</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The art of web SEO lies in understanding how people search for things and understanding what type of results Google wants to (or will) display to its users. It’s about putting a lot of things together to look for opportunity.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A good optimiser has an understanding of how search engines like Google generate their natural SERPs to satisfy users’ <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">navigational</strong>, <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">informational</strong> and <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">transactional</strong> keyword queries.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Risk Management</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A good search engine marketer has a good understanding of the short term and long term risks involved in optimising rankings in search engines, and an understanding of the type of content and sites Google (<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">especially</em>) WANTS to return in its natural SERPs.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The aim of any campaign is more visibility in search engines and this would be a simple process if it were not for the many pitfalls.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are rules to be followed or ignored, risks to take, gains to make, and battles to be won or lost.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Free Traffic</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">A Mountain View spokesman once called the search engine ‘</span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">kingmakers</em><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">‘, and that’s no lie.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ranking high in Google is VERY VALUABLE – it’s effectively ‘free advertising’ on the best advertising space in the world.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Traffic from Google natural listings is STILL the most valuable organic traffic to a website in the world, and it can make or break an online business.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The state of play, in 2017, is that you can STILL generate highly targeted leads, for FREE, <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">just</em> by improving your website and optimising your content to be as relevant as possible for a buyer looking for your company, product or service.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">As you can imagine, there’s a LOT of competition now for that free traffic – even from Google (!) in some niches.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You shouldn’t compete with Google. You <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">should</em> focus on competing with your competitors.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Process</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The process can be practised, successfully, in a bedroom or a workplace, but it has traditionally always involved mastering many skills as they arose including diverse marketing technologies including but not limited to:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Website design</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Accessibility</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Usability</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">User experience</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Website development</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">PHP, HTML, CSS, etc.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Server management</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Domain management</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Copywriting</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Spreadsheets</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Backlink analysis</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Keyword research</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Social media promotion</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Software development</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Analytics and data analysis</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Information architecture</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Research</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Log Analysis</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Looking at Google for hours on end</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It takes a lot, in 2017, to rank on merit a page in Google in competitive niches.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">User Experience</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The big stick Google is hitting every webmaster with (at the moment, and for the foreseeable future)<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> is the ‘<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">QUALITY USER EXPERIENCE</em>‘ stick</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you expect to rank in Google in 2017, you’d better have a quality offering, not based entirely on manipulation, or old school tactics.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is a visit to your site a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">good</em> user experience?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If not – beware manual ‘Q<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">uality Raters’</em> and beware the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Panda/Site Quality</em> algorithms that are looking for <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">poor user experience</span> for its users.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google raising the ‘quality bar’, year on year, ensures a higher level of quality in online marketing in general (above the very low-quality we’ve seen over the last years).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Success online involves investment in higher quality on-page content, website architecture, usability, conversion to optimisation balance, and promotion.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you don’t take that route, you’ll find yourself chased down by Google’s algorithms at some point in the coming year.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This ‘<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">what is SEO</em>‘ guide (and this entire website) is not about churn and burn type of Google SEO (called webspam to Google) as that is too risky to deploy on a real business website in 2017.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What Is A Successful Strategy?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Get relevant. Get trusted. Get Popular.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is no longer <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">just</em> about manipulation in 2017.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s about adding quality and often useful content to your website that together meet a PURPOSE that delivers USER SATISFACTION.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you are serious about getting more free traffic from search engines, get ready to invest time and effort in your website and online marketing.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Quality Signals</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google wants to rank QUALITY documents in its results, and force those who wish to rank high to invest in higher-quality content or great service that attracts editorial links from reputable websites.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you’re willing to add a lot of great content to your website, and create buzz about your company, Google will rank you high.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you try to manipulate Google, it will penalise you for a period, and often until you fix the offending issue – which we know can LAST YEARS.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Backlinks in general, for instance, are STILL weighed FAR too positively by Google and they are manipulated to drive a site to the top positions – for a while. That’s why blackhats do it – and they have the business model to do it. It’s the easiest way to rank a site, still today.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you are a real business who intends to build a brand online – you can’t use black hat methods. Full stop.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fixing the problems will not necessarily bring organic traffic back as it was before a penalty.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Recovery from a Google penalty is a ‘new growth’ process as much as it is a ‘clean-up’ process.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Rankings Are In Constant Ever-Flux</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s Google’s job to MAKE MANIPULATING SERPs HARD.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">So – the people behind the algorithms keep ‘moving the goalposts’, modifying the ‘rules’ and raising ‘quality standards’ for pages that compete for top ten rankings.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">In 2017 – we have ever-flux in the SERPs – and that seems to suit Google and keep everybody guessing.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google is very secretive about its ‘secret sauce’ and offers sometimes helpful and sometimes vague advice – and some say offers misdirection – about how to get more from valuable traffic from Google.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google is on record as saying the engine is intent on ‘frustrating’ search engine optimisers attempts to improve the amount of high-quality traffic to a website – at least (but not limited to) – using low-quality strategies classed as web spam.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">At its core, Google search engine optimisation is still about <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">KEYWORDS</strong> and <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LINKS</strong>. It’s about <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">RELEVANCE</strong>, <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">REPUTATION </strong>and<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> TRUST</strong>. It is about <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">QUALITY OF CONTENT</strong> & <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VISITOR SATISFACTION</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A</em><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Good USER EXPERIENCE</em></strong> is a key to winning – and keeping – the highest rankings in many verticals.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Relevance, Authority & Trust</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Web page optimisation is about making a web page relevant <span style="background-color: #f5f6f5; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and trusted </span>enough to rank for a query.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s about ranking for valuable keywords for the long term, on merit. You can play by ‘white hat’ rules lay down by Google, and aim to build this <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Authority</em> and <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Trust</em> naturally, over time, or you can choose to ignore the rules and go full time ‘black hat’.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">MOST SEO tactics still work, for some time, on some level, depending on who’s doing them, and how the campaign is deployed.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Whichever route you take, know that if Google catches you trying to modify your rank using overtly obvious and manipulative methods, then they <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">will</em> class you a web spammer, and your site will be penalised ( you will not rank high for relevant keywords).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">These penalties can last years if not addressed, as some penalties expire and some do not – and Google wants you to clean up any violations.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google does not want you to try and modify where you rank, easily. Critics would say Google would prefer you paid them to do that using Google Adwords.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The problem for Google is – ranking high in Google organic listings is a real social proof for a business, a way to avoid PPC costs and still, simply, the BEST WAY to drive VALUABLE traffic to a site.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s FREE, too, once you’ve met the always-increasing criteria it takes to rank top.</div><span class="offset" id="-user-experience-matters" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">‘User Experience’ Matters</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is User Experience A Ranking Factor?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">User experience is mentioned 16 times in the main content of the quality raters <a href="http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//insidesearch/howsearchworks/assets/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">guidelines</a> (official PDF), but we have been told by Google it is <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">not, per say, a classifiable ‘ranking factor</strong>‘ on desktop search, at least.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">On <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mobile, sure</strong>, since UX is the base of the mobile friendly update. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">On desktop currently no.</strong> (<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gary Illyes:</em> Google, May 2015)</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">While UX, we are told, is not literally a ‘ranking factor’, it is useful to understand exactly what Google calls a ‘poor user experience’ because if any poor UX signals are identified on your website, that is not going to be a healthy thing for your rankings anytime soon.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Matt Cutts <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">consistent</em> SEO advice was to focus on a satisfying user experience.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is Bad UX?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">For Google – rating UX, at least from a quality rater’s perspective, revolves around marking the page down for:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Misleading or potentially deceptive design</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">sneaky redirects (cloaked affiliate links)</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">malicious downloads and</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">spammy user-generated content (unmoderated comments and posts)</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Low-quality MC (main content of the page)</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Low-quality SC (supplementary content)</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is SC (supplementary content)?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">When it comes to a web page and <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">positive </em>ux, Google talks a lot about the functionality and utility of <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Helpful Supplementary Content</em> – e.g. helpful navigation links for users (that are not, generally, MC or Ads).</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Supplementary Content contributes to a good user experience on the page, but does not directly help the page achieve its purpose. SC is created by Webmasters and is an important part of the user experience. One common type of SC is navigation links which allow users to visit other parts of the website. Note that in some cases, content behind tabs may be considered part of the SC of the page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">To summarize, a lack of helpful SC may be a reason for a Low quality rating, depending on the purpose of the page and the type of website. We have different standards for small websites which exist to serve their communities versus large websites with a large volume of webpages and content. For some types of “webpages,” such as PDFs and JPEG files, we expect no SC at all.</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is worth remembering that Good SC cannot save Poor MC (“Ma<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">in Content is any part of the page that directly helps the page achieve its purpose</em>“.) from a low-quality rating.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Good SC seems to certainly be a sensible option. It always has been.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Key Points about SC</strong></div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Supplementary Content can be a large part of what makes a High-quality page very satisfying for its purpose.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Helpful SC is content that is specifically targeted to the content and purpose of the page.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Smaller websites such as websites for local businesses and community organizations, or personal websites and blogs, may need less SC for their purpose.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A page can still receive a High or even Highest rating with no SC at all.</li></ol></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Here are the specific quotes containing the term <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SC</em>:</strong></div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Supplementary Content contributes to a good user experience on the page, but does not directly help the page achieve its purpose.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SC is created by Webmasters and is an important part of the user experience. One common type of SC is navigation links which allow users to visit other parts of the website. Note that in some cases, content behind tabs may be considered part of the SC of the page.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SC which contributes to a satisfying user experience on the page and website. – (A mark of a high-quality site – this statement was repeated 5 times)</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">However, we do expect websites of large companies and organizations to put a great deal of effort into creating a good user experience on their website, including having helpful SC. For large websites, SC may be one of the primary ways that users explore the website and find MC, and a lack of helpful SC on large websites with a lot of content may be a reason for a Low rating.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">However, some pages are deliberately designed to shift the user’s attention from the MC to the Ads, monetized links, or SC. In these cases, the MC becomes difficult to read or use, resulting in a poor user experience. These pages should be rated Low.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Misleading or potentially deceptive design makes it hard to tell that there’s no answer, making this page a poor user experience.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Redirecting is the act of sending a user to a different URL than the one initially requested. There are many good reasons to redirect from one URL to another, for example, when a website moves to a new address. However, some redirects are designed to deceive search engines and users. These are a very poor user experience, and users may feel tricked or confused. We will call these “sneaky redirects.” Sneaky redirects are deceptive and should be rated Lowest.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">However, you may encounter pages with a large amount of spammed forum discussions or spammed user comments. We’ll consider a comment or forum discussion to be “spammed” if someone posts unrelated comments which are not intended to help other users, but rather to advertise a product or create a link to a website. Frequently these comments are posted by a “bot” rather than a real person. Spammed comments are easy to recognize. They may include Ads, download, or other links, or sometimes just short strings of text unrelated to the topic, such as “Good,” “Hello,” “I’m new here,” “How are you today,” etc. Webmasters should find and remove this content because it is a bad user experience.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The modifications make it very difficult to read and are a poor user experience. (Lowest quality MC (copied content with little or no time, effort, expertise, manual curation, or added value for users))</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes, the MC of a landing page is helpful for the query, but the page happens to display porn ads or porn links outside the MC, which can be very distracting and potentially provide a poor user experience.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The query and the helpfulness of the MC have to be balanced with the user experience of the page.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pages that provide a poor user experience, such as pages that try to download malicious software, should also receive low ratings, even if they have some images appropriate for the query.</li></ol></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">In short, nobody is going to advise you to create a poor UX, on purpose, in light of Google’s algorithms and human quality raters who are showing an obvious interest in this stuff. Google is rating mobile sites on what it classes is frustrating UX – although on certain levels what Google classes as ‘UX’ might be quite far apart from what a UX professional is <a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/google-desktop-ux-ranking-signals-20285.html" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">familiar</a> with in the same ways as Google’s mobile rating tools differ from, for instance,  W3c Mobile testing tools.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google is still, evidently, more interested in <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">rating the main content of the webpage</strong> in question and <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the reputation of the domain the page is on – relative to your site, and competing pages on other domains.</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A satisfying UX is can help your rankings, with second-order factors taken into consideration. A poor UX can seriously impact your human-reviewed rating, at least. Google’s punishing algorithms probably class pages as something akin to a poor UX if they meet certain detectable criteria e.g. lack of reputation or old-school SEO stuff like keyword stuffing a site.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you are improving user experience by focusing primarily on the quality of the MC of your pages, and avoiding – even removing – old-school SEO techniques – those certainly are positive steps to getting more traffic from Google in 2017 – and the type of content performance Google rewards is in the end largely at least about a satisfying user experience.</div><span class="offset" id="balancing-conversions-with-usability-user-satisfaction" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Balancing Conversions With Usability & User Satisfaction</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Take pop-up windows  or pop-unders as an example:</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">According to usability expert Jakob Nielson, <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">95%</strong> of website visitors hated unexpected or unwanted pop-up windows, especially those that contain unsolicited advertising.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">In fact, Pop-Ups have been consistently voted the <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Number 1 Most Hated Advertising Technique since they first appeared <a href="https://www.nngroup.com/articles/most-hated-advertising-techniques/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">many years ago</a>.</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Accessibility students will also agree<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</strong></div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">creating a new browser window should be the authority of the user</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">pop-up new windows should not clutter the user’s screen.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">all links should open in the same window by default. (An exception, however, may be made for pages containing a links list. It is convenient in such cases to open links in another window, so that the user can come back to the links page easily. Even in such cases, it is advisable to give the user a prior note that links would open in a new window).</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tell visitors they are about to invoke a pop-up window (using the link <title> attribute)</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Popup windows do not work in all browsers.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">They are disorienting for users</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Provide the user with an alternative.</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is inconvenient for usability aficionados to hear that pop-ups can be used successfully to <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">vastly increase signup subscription conversions</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EXAMPLE: TEST With Using A Pop Up Window</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pop ups suck, everybody seems to agree. Here’s the little test I carried out on a subset of pages, an experiment to see if pop-ups work on this site to convert more visitors  to subscribers.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I  tested it out when I didn’t blog for a few months and traffic was very stable.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Results:</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Testing Pop Up Windows Results</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0px; border: 1px solid rgb(205, 205, 205); color: #666666; font-family: arial; font-size: 8pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 10px 0pt 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 784.667px;"><tbody style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><tr style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td rowspan="2" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle"></td><td colspan="2" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pop Up Window</strong></td><td rowspan="2" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Total %</strong><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Change</strong></td></tr><tr style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">WK1 On</strong></td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wk2 Off</strong></td></tr><tr style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mon</strong></td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">46</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">20</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">173%</td></tr><tr style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tue</strong></td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">48</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">23</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">109%</td></tr><tr style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wed</strong></td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">41</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">15</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">173%</td></tr><tr style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thu</strong></td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">48</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">23</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">109%</td></tr><tr style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fri</strong></td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">52</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">17</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;" valign="middle">206%</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s a fair <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">increase in email subscribers</strong> across the board in this small experiment on this site. Using a pop up does seem to have an immediate impact.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I have since tested it on and off for a few months and the results from the small test above have been repeated over and over.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve tested different layouts and different calls to actions without pop-ups, and they work too, to some degree, but they typically take a bit longer to deploy than activating a plugin.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t really like pop-ups as they have been an impediment to web accessibility but it’s stupid to dismiss out-of-hand any technique that works. I’ve also not found a client who, if they had that kind of result, would choose accessibility over sign-ups.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t really use the pop up on days I post on the blog, as in other tests, <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">it really seemed to kill how many people share a post</strong> in social media circles.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">With Google now showing an interest with <a href="https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2015/09/mobile-friendly-web-pages-using-app.html" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">interstitials</a>, I would be very nervous of employing a pop-up window that obscures the primary reason for visiting the page. If Google detects a dissatisfaction, I think this would be very bad news for your rankings.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I am, at the moment, using an exit strategy pop-up window as hopefully by the time a user sees this device, they are FIRST satisfied with my content they came to read. I can recommend this as a way to increase your subscribers, at the moment, with a similar conversion rate than pop-ups – if NOT BETTER.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I think, as an optimiser, it is sensible to <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">convert customers without using techniques that potentially negatively impact Google rankings</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do NOT let conversion get in the way of the PRIMARY reason a visitor is CURRENLTY on ANY PARTICULAR PAGE or you risk Google detecting relative dissatifaction with your site and that is not going to help you as Google’s <a href="http://www.thesempost.com/getting-head-around-googles-rankbrain/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">RankBrain</a> gets better at working out what ‘quality’ actually means.</div><span class="offset" id="google-wants-to-rank-high-quality-websites" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Wants To Rank High-Quality Websites</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google has a history of classifying your site as some type of entity, and whatever that is, you don’t want a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">low-quality</em> label on it. Put there by algorithm or human. Manual evaluators might not directly impact your rankings, but any signal associated with Google marking your site as <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">low-quality</em> should probably be avoided.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you are making websites to rank in Google without unnatural practices, you are going to have to meet Google’s expectations in the Quality Raters <a href="http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//insidesearch/howsearchworks/assets/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Guidelines</a> (PDF).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google says:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Low-quality pages are unsatisfying or lacking in some element that prevents them from achieving their purpose well.</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">‘Sufficient Reason’</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There is ‘sufficient reason’ in some cases to immediately mark the page down on some areas, and Google directs quality raters to do so:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">An unsatisfying amount of MC is a sufficient reason to give a page a Low-quality rating.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Low-quality MC is a sufficient reason to give a page a Low-quality rating.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Lacking appropriate E-A-T is sufficient reason to give a page a Low-quality rating.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Negative reputation is sufficient reason to give a page a Low-quality rating.</li></ul></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What are low-quality pages?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">When it comes to defining what a low-quality page is, Google is evidently VERY interested in the quality of the Main Content (MC) of a page:</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Main Content (MC)</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google says MC should be the ‘<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">main reason a page exists’</em>.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">The quality of the MC is low.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">There is an unsatisfying amount of MC for the purpose of the page.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">There is an unsatisfying amount of website information.</li></ul></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">POOR MC & POOR USER EXPERIENCE</strong></div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">This content has many problems:<a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-to-write-seo-friendly-website-content-for-google/#are-poor-spelling-and-bad-grammar-google-ranking-factors-" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> poor spelling and grammar, complete lack of editing</a>, inaccurate information. The poor quality of the MC is a reason for the Lowest+ to Low rating. In addition, the popover ads (the words that are double underlined in blue) can make the main content difficult to read, resulting in a poor user experience.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pages that provide a poor user experience, such as pages that try to download malicious software, should also receive low ratings, even if they have some images appropriate for the query.</li></ul></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">DESIGN FOCUS NOT ON MC</strong></div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If a page seems poorly designed, take a good look. Ask yourself if the page was deliberately designed to draw attention away from the MC. If so, the Low rating is appropriate.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">The page design is lacking. For example, the page layout or use of space distracts from the MC, making it difficult to use the MC.</li></ul></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MC LACK OF AUTHOR EXPERTISE</strong></div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">You should consider who is responsible for the content of the website or content of the page you are evaluating. Does the person or organization have sufficient expertise for the topic? If expertise, authoritativeness, or trustworthiness is lacking, use the Low rating.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">There is no evidence that the author has medical expertise. Because this is a YMYL medical article, lacking expertise is a reason for a Low rating.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">The author of the page or website does not have enough expertise for the topic of the page and/or the website is not trustworthy or authoritative for the topic. In other words, the page/website is lacking E-A-T.</li></ul></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">After page content, the following are given the most weight in determining if you have a high-quality page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">POOR SECONDARY CONTENT</strong></div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Unhelpful or distracting SC that benefits the website rather than helping the user is a reason for a Low rating.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">The SC is distracting or unhelpful for the purpose of the page.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">The page is lacking helpful SC.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">For large websites, SC may be one of the primary ways that users explore the website and find MC, and a lack of helpful SC on large websites with a lot of content may be a reason for a Low rating</li></ul></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">DISTRACTING ADVERTISEMENTS</strong></div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">For example, an ad for a model in a revealing bikini is probably acceptable on a site that sells bathing suits, however, an extremely distracting and graphic porn ad may warrant a Low rating.</li></ul></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">GOOD HOUSEKEEPING</strong></div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If the website feels inadequately updated and inadequately maintained for its purpose, the Low rating is probably warranted.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">The website is lacking maintenance and updates.</li></ul></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SERP SENTIMENT & NEGATIVE REVIEWS</strong></div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Credible negative (though not malicious or financially fraudulent) reputation is a reason for a Low rating, especially for a YMYL page.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">The website has a negative reputation.</li></ul></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LOWEST RATING</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">When it comes to Google assigning your page the lowest rating, you are probably going to have to go some to hit this, but it gives you a direction you want to ensure you avoid at all costs.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google says throughout the document, that there are certain pages that…</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">should always receive the Lowest rating</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">..and these are presented below. Note – These statements below are spread throughout the raters document and not listed the way I have listed them there. I don’t think any context is lost presenting them like this, and it makes it more digestible.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Anyone familiar with Google Webmaster Guidelines will be familiar with most of the following:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">True lack of purpose pages or websites.<ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.4px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 4px 0px 5px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes it is difficult to determine the real purpose of a page.</li></ul></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pages on YMYL websites with completely inadequate or no website information.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pages or websites that are created to make money with little to no attempt to help users.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pages with extremely low or lowest quality MC.<ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.4px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 4px 0px 5px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If a page is deliberately created with no MC, use the Lowest rating. Why would a page exist without MC? Pages with no MC are usually lack of purpose pages or deceptive pages.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Webpages that are deliberately created with a bare minimum of MC, or with MC which is completely unhelpful for the purpose of the page, should be considered to have no MC</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pages deliberately created with no MC should be rated Lowest.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Important: The Lowest rating is appropriate if all or almost all of the MC on the page is copied with little or no time, effort, expertise, manual curation, or added value for users. Such pages should be rated Lowest, even if the page assigns credit for the content to another source. Important: The Lowest rating is appropriate if all or almost all of the MC on the page is copied with little or no time, effort, expertise, manual curation, or added value for users. Such pages should be rated Lowest, even if the page assigns credit for the content to another source.</li></ul></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pages on YMYL (<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Your Money Or Your Life</em> Transaction pages) websites with completely inadequate or no website information.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pages on abandoned, hacked, or defaced websites.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pages or websites created with no expertise or pages that are highly untrustworthy, unreliable, unauthoritative, inaccurate, or misleading.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Harmful or malicious pages or websites.<ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.4px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 4px 0px 5px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Websites that have extremely negative or malicious reputations. Also use the Lowest rating for violations of the Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines. Finally, Lowest+ may be used both for pages with many low-quality characteristics and for pages whose lack of a single Page Quality characteristic makes you question the true purpose of the page. Important: Negative reputation is sufficient reason to give a page a Low quality rating. Evidence of truly malicious or fraudulent behavior warrants the Lowest rating.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Deceptive pages or websites. Deceptive webpages appear to have a helpful purpose (the stated purpose), but are actually created for some other reason. Use the Lowest rating if a webpage page is deliberately created to deceive and potentially harm users in order to benefit the website.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some pages are designed to manipulate users into clicking on certain types of links through visual design elements, such as page layout, organization, link placement, font color, images, etc. We will consider these kinds of pages to have deceptive page design. Use the Lowest rating if the page is deliberately designed to manipulate users to click on Ads, monetized links, or suspect download links with little or no effort to provide helpful MC.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes, pages just don’t “feel” trustworthy. Use the Lowest rating for any of the following: Pages or websites that you strongly suspect are scams</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pages that ask for personal information without a legitimate reason (for example, pages which ask for name, birthdate, address, bank account, government ID number, etc.). Websites that “phish” for passwords to Facebook, Gmail, or other popular online services. Pages with suspicious download links, which may be malware.</li></ul></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Use the Lowest rating for websites with extremely negative reputations.</li></ul></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Websites ‘Lacking Care and Maintenance’ Are Rated ‘Low Quality’.</strong></div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes a website may seem a little neglected: links may be broken, images may not load, and content may feel stale or out-dated. If the website feels inadequately updated and inadequately maintained for its purpose, the Low rating is probably warranted.</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Broken” or Non-Functioning Pages Classed As Low Quality</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I touched on 404 pages in my recent post about <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/traffic-crunch/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">investigating why has a site lost traffic</a>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google gives clear advice on creating useful 404 pages:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tell visitors clearly that the page they’re looking for can’t be found</em></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Use language that is friendly and inviting</em></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Make sure your 404 page uses the same look and feel (including navigation) as the rest of your site.</em></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Consider adding links to your most popular articles or posts, as well as a link to your site’s home page.</em></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Think about providing a way for users to report a broken link.</em></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Make sure that your webserver returns an actual 404 HTTP status code when a missing page is requested</em></li></ol></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ratings for Pages with Error Messages or No MC</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google doesn’t want to index pages without a specific purpose or sufficient main content. A good 404 page and proper setup prevents a lot of this from happening in the first place.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some pages load with content created by the webmaster, but have an error message or are missing MC. Pages may lack MC for various reasons. Sometimes, the page is “broken” and the content does not load properly or at all. Sometimes, the content is no longer available and the page displays an error message with this information. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Many websites have a few “broken” or non-functioning pages. This is normal, and those individual non-functioning or broken pages on an otherwise maintained site should be rated Low quality</strong>. This is true even if other pages on the website are overall High or Highest quality.</em></div></blockquote><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Does Google programmatically look at 404 pages?</strong></div><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">We are told, NO in a recent hangout –  – but – in Quality Raters Guidelines “Users probably care a lot”.</div><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do 404 Errors in Search Console Hurt My Rankings?</strong></div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">404 errors on invalid URLs do </span><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">not</span><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> harm your site’s indexing or ranking</span> in any way. JOHN MEULLER</div></blockquote><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It appears this isn’t a once size fits all answer. If you properly deal with mishandled 404 errors that have some link equity, you reconnect equity that was once lost – and this ‘backlink reclamation’ evidently has value.</div><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The issue here is that Google introduces a lot of noise into that Crawl Errors report to make it unwieldy and not very user-friendly.</div><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A lot of broken links Google tells you about can often be totally irrelevant and legacy issues. Google could make it instantly more valuable by telling us which 404s are linked to from only <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">external</em> websites.</div><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fortunately, you can find your own broken links on site using the myriad of <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/best-seo-tools/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SEO tools</a> available.</div><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I also prefer to use Analytics to look for broken backlinks on a site with some history of migrations, for instance.</div><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">John has clarified some of this before, although he is talking specifically (I think) about errors found by Google in Search Console (formerly <a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Webmaster Tools</a>):</div><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li class="p1" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In some cases, crawl errors may come from a legitimate structural issue within your website or CMS. How do </em>you tell<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">? Double-check the origin of the crawl error. If there’s a broken link on your site, in your page’s static HTML, then that’s always worth fixing</em></li><li class="p1" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What about the funky URLs that are “clearly broken?” When our algorithms like your site, they may try to find more great content on it, for example by trying to discover new URLs in JavaScript. If we try those “URLs” and find a 404, that’s great and expected. We just don’t want to miss anything important</em></li></ol><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you are making websites and want them to rank, the 2015 and 2014 Quality Raters Guidelines document is a great guide for Webmasters to avoid low-quality ratings and potentially avoid punishment algorithms.</div><span class="offset" id="google-is-not-going-to-rank-low-quality-pages-when-it-has-better-options" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Is Not Going To Rank Low-Quality Pages When It Has Better Options</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you have exact match instances of key-phrases on low-quality pages, mostly these pages won’t have all the compound ingredients it takes to rank high in Google in 2017.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I was working this, long before I understood it partially enough to write anything about it.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Here is a few examples of taking a standard page that did not rank for years and then turning it into a topic oriented resource page designed around a user’s intent:</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Screenshot 2016-01-26 00.43.01" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-20622" height="448" src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2016-01-26-00.43.01.png" style="border: 1px solid rgb(203, 204, 205); clear: both; display: block !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; margin-top: 25px; max-width: 100%; padding: 3px; text-align: center !important; vertical-align: baseline;" width="1101" /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Screenshot 2016-01-26 00.33.53" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-20618" height="456" src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2016-01-26-00.33.53.png" style="border: 1px solid rgb(203, 204, 205); clear: both; display: block !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; margin-top: 25px; max-width: 100%; padding: 3px; text-align: center !important; vertical-align: baseline;" width="1111" /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google, in many instances, would rather send long-tail search traffic, like users using mobile VOICE SEARCH, for instance, to high-quality pages ABOUT a concept/topic that explains relationships and connections between relevant sub-topics FIRST, <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">rather</em> than to only send that traffic to low-quality pages <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">just because</em> they have the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">exact phrase</em> on the page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Further Reading</strong></div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/traffic-crunch/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Investigating A Website Traffic Drop</a></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/redundant-pages/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dealing With Low Quality Pages On A Website</a></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/example-high-quality-ecommerce-website/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Example of a High Quality Webpage</a></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/google-panda-making-high-quality-websites-in-2015/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Making High Quality Websites</a></li></ul><span class="offset" id="technical-seo" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Technical SEO</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you are doing a professional SEO audit for a real business, you are going to have to think like a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Search Quality Rater</em> AND a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google search engineer</em> to provide real long term value to a client.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 441.594px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" id="fitvid1" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iJPu4vHETXw?start=35&feature=oembed" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 441.594px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google has a LONG list of technical requirements it advises you meet</strong>, on top of all the things it tells you NOT to do to optimise your website.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Meeting Google’s technical guidelines is no magic bullet to success – but failing to meet them can impact your rankings in the long run – and the odd technical issue can actually severely impact your entire site if rolled out across multiple pages.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The benefit of adhering to technical guidelines is often a second order benefit.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You don’t get penalised, or filtered, when others do. When others fall, you rise.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mostly – individual technical issues will not be the reason you have ranking problems, but they still need addressed for any second order benefit they provide.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="485" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/1u5Cb63Qjc9hqo" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="595"></iframe></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When making a site for Google in 2017, you really need to understand that Google has a long list of things it will mark sites down for, and that’s usually <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">old-school seo tactics</em> which are now classed as ‘<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">web spam</em>‘.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Conversely, sites that are not marked down are not demoted and so improve in rankings. Sites with higher rankings pick up more organic links, and this process can float a high-quality page quickly to the top of Google.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So – the sensible thing for any webmaster is to NOT give Google ANY reason to DEMOTE a site. Tick all the boxes Google tell you to tick.</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I have used this simple (but longer term) strategy to rank on page 1 or thereabouts for ‘SEO’ in the UK over the last few years, and drive 100 thousand relevant organic visitors to this site, every month, to only about 70 pages, without building any links over the last few years (and very much working on it part-time):</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Screenshot 2016-03-17 18.10.16" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-20887" height="541" src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2016-03-17-18.10.16.png" style="border: 1px solid rgb(203, 204, 205); clear: both; display: block !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; margin-top: 25px; max-width: 100%; padding: 3px; text-align: center !important; vertical-align: baseline;" width="1046" /></div></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><span class="offset" id="what-is-domain-authority-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What Is Domain Authority?</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 441.99px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid2" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ALzSUeekQ2Q" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 441.99px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Domain authority, or as Google calls it, ‘online business authority’, is an important ranking factor in Google. What is domain authority? Well, nobody knows exactly how Google calculates popularity, reputation, intent or trust, outside of Google, but when I write about domain authority I am generally thinking of sites that are popular, reputable and trusted – all of which can be faked, of course.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Most sites that have domain authority/online business authority have lots of links to them – that’s for sure – hence why link building has traditionally been so popular a tactic – and counting these links is generally how most 3rd party tools calculate it a pseudo domain authority score, too.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Massive domain authority and ranking ‘trust’ was in the past awarded to very successful sites that have gained a lot of links from credible sources, and other online business authorities too.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Amazon has a lot of <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">online business authority</em>…. (<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Official Google Webmaster Blog</strong>)</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">SEO more usually talk about domain trust and domain authority based on the number, type and quality of incoming links to a site.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Examples of trusted, authority domains include Wikipedia, the W3C and Apple. How do you become a OBA? Through building a killer online or offline brand or service with, usually, a lot of useful content on your site.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">How do you take advantage of being an online business authority? Either you turn the site into a SEO Black Hole (only for the very biggest brands) or you pump out information – like all the time. On any subject. Because Google will rank it!</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">EXCEPT – If what you publish is deemed low quality and not suitable for your domain to have visibility on Google.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I think this ‘quality score’ Google has developed could be Google’s answer to this sort of historical domain authority abuse.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Can you (on a smaller scale in certain niches) mimic a online business authority by recognising what OBA do for Google, and why Google ranks these high in search result?. These provide THE service, THE content, THE experience. This takes a lot of work and a lot of time to create, or even mimic.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">In fact, as a SEO, I honestly think <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the content route</strong> is the only <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">sustainable</span> way for a most businesses to try to achieve OBA at least in their niche or locale. I concede a little focused linkbuilding goes a long way to help, and you have certainly got to get out there and tell others about your site…</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Have other relevant sites link to yours. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Webmaster Guidelines</strong></div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.</strong></div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Brands are the solution, not the problem,” Mr. Schmidt said. “<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.</strong>“</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google CEO Eric Schmidt said this. Reading between the lines, I’ve long thought this is good SEO advice.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you are a ‘brand’ in your space, or well-cited site, Google wants to rank your stuff at the top because it trusts you won’t spam it and fill results pages with crap and make Google look stupid.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s money just sitting on the table the way Google currently awards massive domain authority and trust to particular sites they rate highly.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tip – Keep content within your topic, unless you are producing high-quality content, of course. (e.g. the algorithms detect no unnatural practices)</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I am always thinking:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">“how do I get links from big KNOWN sites to my site. Where is my next quality link coming from?”</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Getting links from ‘Brands’ (or well-cited websites) in niches can mean ‘quality links’</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Easier said than done, for most, of course, but that is the point.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">But the aim with your main site should always be to <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">become an online brand</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Does Google Prefer Big Brands In Organic SERPs?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, yes. It’s hard to imagine that a system like Google’s was not designed exactly over the last few years to deliver the listings it does today – and it IS filled with a lot of pages that rank high LARGELY because the domain the content is on.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Big Brands have an inherent advantage in Google’s ecosystem, and it’s kind of a suck for small businesses. There’s more small businesses than big brands for Google to get Adwords bucks out of, too.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">That being said – small businesses can still succeed if they focus on <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">a strategy based on depth, rather than breadth regarding how content is structured page to page on a website</strong>.</div><span class="offset" id="is-domain-age-an-important-google-ranking-factor-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is Domain Age An Important Google Ranking Factor?</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 441.99px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid3" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y1_1NQWQJ2Q" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 441.99px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No, not in isolation.</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Having a ten-year-old domain that <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google knows nothing about</em> is the same as having a brand new domain.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A 10-year-old site that’s continually cited by, year on year, the actions of other, more authoritative, and trusted sites? That’s valuable.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">But that’s not the age of your website address ON IT”S OWN in-play as a ranking factor.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A one-year-old domain cited by authority sites is just as valuable if not more valuable than a ten-year-old domain with no links and no search-performance history.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Perhaps <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Domain age may come into play when other factors</strong> are considered – but I think Google works very much like this on all levels, with all ‘ranking factors’, and all ranking ‘conditions’.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t think you can consider discovering ‘ranking factors’ without ‘ranking conditions’.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Other Ranking Factors:</strong></div><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Domain age; </strong>(NOT ON IT”S OWN)</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Length of site domain registration</strong>; (I don’t see much benefit ON IT”S OWN even knowing “Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year.”) – paying for a domain in advance just tells others you don’t want anyone else using this domain name, it is not much of an indication that you’re going to do something Google cares about).</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Domain registration information was hidden/anonymous</strong>; (possibly, under human review if OTHER CONDITIONS are met like looking like a spam site)</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Site top level domain (geographical focus, e.g. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">com</em> versus <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">co.uk</em>);<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> (YES)</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Site top level domain (e.g. .<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">com </em>versus .<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">info</em>); <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(DEPENDS)</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sub domain or root domain?<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> (DEPENDS)</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Domain past records (how often it changed IP); <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(DEPENDS)</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Domain past owners (how often the owner was changed) <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(DEPENDS)</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Keywords in the domain; (<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">DEFINITELY</strong> – <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ESPECIALLY EXACT KEYWORD MATCH – although Google has a lot of filters that mute the performance of an exact match domain in 2017</em>))</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Domain IP; <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(DEPENDS – for most, no)</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Domain IP neighbours; <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(DEPENDS – for most, no)</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Domain external mentions (non-linked)<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> (I have no idea in 2017)</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Geo-targeting settings in Google Webmaster Tools <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(YES – of course)</strong></li></ol><span class="offset" id="google-penalties-for-unnatural-footprints" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Penalties For Unnatural Footprints</strong></h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">In 2017, you need to be aware that what works to improve your rank can also get you penalised (faster, and a lot more noticeably).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">In particular, the Google web spam team is currently waging a PR war on sites that rely on <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/unnatural-links/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">unnatural links</a> and other ‘manipulative’ tactics (and handing out severe penalties if it detects them). And that’s on top of many algorithms already designed to look for other manipulative tactics (like <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">keyword stuffing</span> or <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">boilerplate spun text</span> across pages).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google is making sure it takes longer to see results from black <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and</strong> white hat SEO, and intent on ensuring a flux in its SERPs based largely on where the searcher is in the world at the time of the search, and where the business is located near to that searcher.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are some things you cannot directly influence legitimately to improve your rankings, but there is plenty you CAN do to drive more Google traffic to a web page.</div><span class="offset" id="ranking-factors" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ranking Factors</strong></h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google has HUNDREDS of ranking factors with signals that can change daily, weekly, monthly or yearly to help it work out where your page ranks in comparison to other competing pages in SERPs.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You will not ever find every ranking factor. Many ranking factors are on-page or on-site and others are off-page or off-site. Some ranking factors are based on where you are, or what you have searched for before.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve been in online marketing for 15 years. In that time, a lot has changed. I’ve learned to focus on aspects that offer the greatest return on investment of your labour.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Learn SEO Basics….</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Here are few simple SEO tips to begin with:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you are just starting out, don’t think you can fool Google about everything all the time. Google has VERY probably seen your tactics before. So, it’s best to <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">keep your plan simple</strong>. GET RELEVANT. GET REPUTABLE. Aim for a healthy, satisfying visitor experience. If you are just starting out – you may as well learn how to do it within Google’s Webmaster Guidelines first. Make a decision, early, if you are going to follow Google’s guidelines, or not, and stick to it. Don’t be caught in the middle with an important project. Do not always follow the herd.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If your aim is to deceive visitors from Google, in any way, Google is not your friend. Google is hardly your friend at any rate – but you don’t want it as your enemy. Google will send you lots of free traffic though if you manage to get to the top of search results, so perhaps they are not all that bad.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">A lot of optimisation techniques that are effective in boosting sites rankings in Google are against Google’s guidelines. For example many links that may have once promoted you to the top of Google, may, in fact, today be hurting your site and its ability to rank high in Google. Keyword stuffing might be holding your page back…. You must be smart, and cautious, when it comes to building links to your site in a manner that Google *hopefully* won’t have too much trouble with, in the FUTURE. Because they <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">will</em> punish you in the future.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t expect to rank number 1 in any niche for a competitive without a lot of investment, work. Don’t expect results overnight. Expecting too much too fast might get you in trouble with the spam team.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">You don’t pay anything to get into Google, Yahoo or Bing natural, or free listings. It’s common for the major search engines to find your website pretty quickly by themselves within a few days. This is made so much easier if your cms actually ‘pings’ search engines when you update content (via XML sitemaps or RSS for instance).</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">To be listed and rank high in Google and other search engines, you really should consider and mostly abide by search engine rules and <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">official guidelines for inclusion</a>. With experience and a lot of observation, you can learn which rules can be bent, and which tactics are short term and perhaps, should be avoided.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google ranks websites (relevancy aside for a moment) by the number and quality of incoming links to a site from other websites (amongst hundreds of other metrics). Generally speaking, a link from a page to another page is viewed in Google “eyes” as a vote for that page the link points to. The more votes a page gets, the more trusted a page can become, and the higher Google will rank it – in theory. Rankings are HUGELY affected by how much Google ultimately trusts the DOMAIN the page is on. BACKLINKS (links from other websites – trump every other signal.)</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve always thought if you are serious about ranking – do so with ORIGINAL COPY. It’s clear – search engines reward good content it hasn’t found before. It indexes it blisteringly fast, for a start (within a second, if your website isn’t penalised!). So – make sure each of your pages has enough text content you have written specifically for that page – and you won’t need to jump through hoops to get it ranking.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you have original, quality content on a site, you also have a chance of generating inbound quality links (IBL). If your content is found on other websites, you will find it hard to get links, and it probably will not rank very well as Google favours diversity in its results. If you have <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-to-write-seo-friendly-website-content-for-google/#the-importance-of-unique-content" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">original content</a> of sufficient quality on your site, you can then let authority websites – those with online business authority – know about it, and they might link to you – this is called a <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">quality backlink</strong>.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Search engines need to understand that ‘a link is a link’ that can be trusted. Links can be designed to be ignored by search engines with the <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/what-is-nofollow/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">rel nofollow</a> attribute.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Search engines can also find your site by other websites linking to it. You can also <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-to-submit-a-site-to-search-engines-seo-how-to-tuesday-2/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">submit your site to search engines</a> direct, but I haven’t submitted any site to a search engine in the last ten years – you probably don’t need to do that. If you have a new site, I would immediately register it with Google Webmaster Tools these days.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google and Bing use a crawler (Googlebot and Bingbot) that spiders the web looking for new links to find. These bots might find a link to your homepage somewhere on the web and then crawl and index the pages of your site if all your pages are linked together. If your website has an XML sitemap, for instance, Google will use that to include that content in its index. An XML sitemap is INCLUSIVE, not EXCLUSIVE.  Google will crawl and index every single page on your site – even pages out with an XML sitemap.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Many think Google will not allow new websites to rank well for competitive terms until the web address “ages” and acquires “trust” in Google – I think this depends on the quality of the incoming links. Sometimes your site will rank high for a while then disappears for months. A “honeymoon period” to give you a taste of Google traffic, no doubt.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google WILL classify your site when it crawls and indexes your site – and this classification can have a DRASTIC effect on your rankings – it’s important for Google to work out WHAT YOUR ULTIMATE INTENT IS – do you want to be classified as an affiliate site made ‘just for Google’, a domain holding page or a small business website with a real purpose? Ensure you don’t confuse Google by being explicit with all the signals you can – to show on your website you are a real business, and your INTENT is genuine – and even more importantly today – FOCUSED ON SATISFYING A VISITOR.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOTE – If a page exists only to make money from Google’s free traffic – Google calls this spam. I go into this more, later in this guide.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">The transparency you provide on your website in text and links about who you are, what you do, and how you’re rated on the web or as a business is one way that Google could use (algorithmically and manually) to ‘rate’ your website. Note that Google has a HUGE army of quality raters and at some point they will be on your site if you get a lot of traffic from Google.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">To rank for specific keyword phrase searches, you usually need to have the keyword phrase or highly relevant words on your page (not necessarily all together, but it helps) or in links pointing to your page/site.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ultimately what you need to do to compete is largely dependent on what the competition for the term you are targeting is doing. You’ll need to at least mirror how hard they are competing if a better opportunity is hard to spot.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">As a result of other quality sites linking to your site, the site now has a certain amount of <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">real</em> <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/google-pr-update/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">PageRank</a> that is shared with all the internal pages that make up your website that will in future help provide a signal to where this page ranks in the future.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yes, you need to build links to your site to acquire more PageRank, or Google ‘juice’ – or what we now call <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">domain authority </em>or<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> trust</em>. Google is a link-based search engine – it does not quite understand ‘good’ or ‘quality’ content – but it does understand ‘popular’ content. It can also usually identify poor, or THIN CONTENT – and it penalises your site for that – or – at least – it takes away the traffic you once had with an algorithm change. Google doesn’t like calling actions the take a ‘penalty’ – it doesn’t look good. They blame your ranking drops on their engineers getting better at identifying quality content or links, or the inverse – low-quality content and unnatural links. If they do take action your site for paid links – they call this a ‘Manual Action’ and you will get notified about it in Webmaster Tools if you <a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">sign up</a>.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/link-building-strategy-for-beginners-a-month-of-free-tips/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Link building</a> is not JUST a numbers game, though. One link from a “trusted authority” site in Google could be all you need to rank high in your niche. Of course, the more “trusted” links you attract, the more Google will trust your site. It is evident you need MULTIPLE trusted links from MULTIPLE trusted websites to get the most from Google in 2017.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Try and get links within page text pointing to your site with relevant, or at least, natural looking, keywords in the text link – not, for instance, in blogrolls or site-wide links. Try to ensure the links are not obviously “machine generated” e.g. site-wide links on forums or directories. Get links from pages, that in turn, have a lot of links to them, and you will soon see benefits.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Onsite, consider linking to your other pages by <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/optimize-website-navigation/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">linking to pages within main content text</a>. I usually only do this when it is relevant – often, I’ll link to relevant pages when the keyword is in the title elements of both pages. I don’t go in for auto-generating links at all. Google has penalised sites for using particular auto link plugins, for instance, so I avoid them.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Linking to a page with actual key-phrases in the link help a great deal in all search engines when you want to feature for specific key terms. For example; “SEO Scotland” as opposed to http://www.hobo-web.co.uk or “click here“. Saying that – in 2017, Google is punishing manipulative <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/anchor-text-length/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Anchor Text Best Practices For Google & Recent Observations">anchor text</a> very aggressively, so be sensible – and stick to brand mentions and plain URL links that build authority with less risk. I rarely ever optimise for grammatically incorrect terms these days (especially with links).</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">I think the anchor text links in internal navigation is still valuable – but keep it natural. Google needs links to find and help categorise your pages. Don’t underestimate the value of a clever internal link keyword-rich architecture and be sure to understand for instance how many words Google counts in a link, but don’t overdo it. Too many links on a page could be seen as a poor user experience. Avoid lots of hidden links in your template navigation.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Search engines like Google ‘spider’ or ‘crawl’ your entire site by following all the links on your site to new pages, much as a human would click on the links to your pages. Google will crawl and index your pages, and within a few days usually, begin to return your pages in SERPs.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">After a while, Google will know about your pages, and keep the ones it deems ‘useful’ – pages with original content, or pages with a lot of links to them. The rest will be de-indexed. Be careful – too many low-quality pages on your site will impact your overall site performance in Google. Google is on record talking about good and bad ratios of quality content to low-quality content.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ideally, you will have unique pages, with <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/title-tags/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">unique page titles</a> and <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/definitive-guide-to-using-important-meta-tags/#meta-description-seo-best-practices" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">unique page meta descriptions</a> . Google does not seem to use the meta description when ranking your page for specific keyword searches if not relevant and unless you are careful if you might end up just giving spammers free original text for their site and not yours once they scrape your descriptions and put the text in main content on their site. I don’t worry about <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/definitive-guide-to-using-important-meta-tags/#meta-keywords-seo-best-practice" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">meta keywords</a> these days as Google and Bing say they either ignore them or use them as spam signals.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google will take some time to analyse your entire site, examining text content and links. This process is taking longer and longer these days but is ultimately determined by your domain reputation and real PageRank.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you have a lot of duplicate low-quality text already found by Googlebot on other websites it knows about; Google will ignore your page. If your site or page has spammy signals, Google will penalise it, sooner or later. If you have lots of these pages on your site – Google will ignore most of your website.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">You don’t need to keyword stuff your text to beat the competition.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">You optimise a page for more traffic by increasing the frequency of the desired key phrase, related key terms, co-occurring keywords and synonyms in links, page titles and text content. There is no<a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-to-write-seo-friendly-website-content-for-google/#how-much-text-do-i-need-to-write-for-google-" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> ideal amount of text</a> – no magic <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/keyword-density-seo-myth/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">keyword density</a>. <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-to-write-seo-friendly-website-content-for-google/#what-is-keyword-stuffing-" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Keyword stuffing</a> is a tricky business, too, these days.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">I prefer to make sure I have as many UNIQUE relevant words on the page that make up as many relevant long tail queries as possible.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you link out to irrelevant sites, Google may ignore the page, too – but again, it depends on the site in question. Who you link to, or HOW you link to, REALLY DOES MATTER – I expect Google to use your linking practices as a potential means by which to classify your site. Affiliate sites, for example, don’t do well in Google these days without some good quality backlinks and higher quality pages.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Many search engine marketers think who you link out to (and who links to you) helps determine a topical community of sites in any field or a hub of authority. Quite simply, you want to be in that hub, at the centre if possible (however unlikely), but at least in it. I like to think of this one as a good thing to remember in the future as search engines get even better at determining topical relevancy of pages, but I have never actually seen any granular ranking benefit (for the page in question) from linking out.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve got by, by thinking external links to other sites should probably be on single pages deeper in your site architecture, with the pages receiving all your Google Juice once it’s been “soaked up” by the higher pages in your site structure (the home page, your category pages). This tactic is old school but I still follow it. I don’t need to think you need to worry about that, too much, in 2017.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Original content is king and will attract a “natural link growth” – in Google’s opinion. Too many incoming links too fast might devalue your site, but again. I usually err on the safe side – I always aimed for massive diversity in my links – to make them look ‘more natural’. Honestly, I go for natural links in 2017 full stop, for this website.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google can devalue whole sites, individual pages, template generated links and individual links if Google deems them “unnecessary” and a ‘poor user experience’.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google knows who links to you, the “quality” of those links, and whom you link to. These – and other factors – help ultimately determine where a page on your site ranks. To make it more confusing – the page that ranks on your site might not be the page you want to rank, or even the page that determines your rankings for this term. Once Google has worked out your domain authority – sometimes it seems that the most relevant page on your site Google HAS NO ISSUE with will rank.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google decides which pages on your site are important or most relevant. You can help Google by linking to your important pages and ensuring at least one page is well optimised amongst the rest of your pages for your desired key phrase. Always remember Google does not want to rank ‘thin’ pages in results – any page you want to rank – should have all the things Google is looking for. That’s a lot these days!</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is important you spread all that real ‘PageRank’ – or link equity – to your sales keyword / phrase rich sales pages, and as much remains to the rest of the site pages, so Google does not ‘demote’ pages into oblivion –  or ‘supplemental results’ as we old timers knew them back in the day. Again – this is slightly old school – but it gets me by, even today.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Consider linking to important pages on your site from your home page, and other important pages on your site.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Focus on RELEVANCE first. Then, focus your marketing efforts and get REPUTABLE. This is the key to ranking ‘legitimately’ in Google in 2017.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Every few months Google changes its algorithm to punish sloppy optimisation or industrial manipulation. Google Panda and Google Penguin are two such updates, but the important thing is to understand Google changes its algorithms constantly to control its listings pages (over 600 changes a year we are told).</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">The art of rank modification is to rank without tripping these algorithms or getting flagged by a human reviewer – and that is tricky!</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Focus on improving website download speeds at all times. The web is changing very fast, and <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/your-website-design-should-load-in-4-seconds/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">a fast website is a good user experience</a>.</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Welcome to the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">tightrope</em> that is modern web optimisation.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Read on if you would like to learn how to SEO….</div><span class="offset" id="keyword-research" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Keyword Research</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The first step in any professional campaign is to do some keyword research and analysis.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Screen Shot 2013-07-19 at 02.13.14" class="" height="330" src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2013-07-19-at-02.13.14.png" style="border: 1px solid rgb(203, 204, 205); clear: both; display: block !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; margin-top: 25px; max-width: 100%; padding: 3px; text-align: center !important; vertical-align: baseline;" width="591" /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Somebody asked me about this a simple white hat tactic and I think what is probably the simplest thing anyone can do that guarantees results.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The chart above (from last year) illustrates a reasonably valuable 4-word term I noticed a page I had didn’t rank high in Google for, but I thought probably should and could rank for, with this simple technique.</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I thought it as simple as an example to illustrate an aspect of onpage SEO or ‘rank modification’, that’s white hat, 100% Google friendly and never, ever going to cause you a problem with Google.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This ‘trick’ works with any keyword phrase, on any site, with obvious differing results based on the availability of competing pages in SERPs, and availability of content on your site.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The keyword phrase I am testing rankings for isn’t ON the page, and I did NOT add the key phrase…. or in incoming links, or using any technical tricks like redirects or any hidden technique, but as you can see from the chart, rankings seem to be going in the right direction.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can profit from it if you know a little about how Google works (or seems to work, in many observations, over years, excluding when Google throws you a bone on synonyms. You can’t ever be 100% certain you know how Google works on any level, unless it’s data showing you’re wrong, of course.)</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What did I do to rank number 1 from nowhere for that key phrase?</strong></em></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I added one keyword to the page in plain text because adding the actual ‘keyword phrase’ itself would have made my text read a bit keyword stuffed for other variations of the main term</strong>. It gets interesting if you do that to a lot of pages, and a lot of keyword phrases. The important thing is keyword research – and knowing which unique keywords to add.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This example illustrates a key to ‘relevance’ on a page, in a lot of instances, is a keyword.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">precise</span> keyword.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yes – plenty of other things can be happening at the same time. It’s hard to identify EXACTLY why Google ranks pages all the time…but you can COUNT on other things happening and just get on with what you can see works for you.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">In a time of <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">light </strong><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">optimisation</span>, it’s useful to EARN a few terms you SHOULD rank for in simple ways that leave others wondering how you got it.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Of course, you can still keyword stuff a page, or still spam your link profile – but it is ‘light’ optimisation I am genuinely interested in testing on this site – how to get more with less – I think that’s the key to not tripping Google’s aggressive algorithms.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are many tools on the web to help with basic keyword research (including the Google Keyword Planner <a href="https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">tool</a> and there are <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">even more useful third party</strong> SEO tools to help you do this).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can use many keyword research tools to identify quickly opportunities to get more traffic to a page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I built my own:</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Screenshot 2015-11-17 14.35.12" class="lazy alignnone size-full wp-image-19930" data-lazy-src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2015-11-17-14.35.12.png" data-lazy-srcset="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2015-11-17-14.35.12-300x282.png 300w, http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2015-11-17-14.35.12.png 1013w" data-lazy-type="image" height="953" sizes="(max-width: 1013px) 100vw, 1013px" src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2015-11-17-14.35.12.png" srcset="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2015-11-17-14.35.12.png 1013w, http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2015-11-17-14.35.12-300x282.png 300w" style="border: 1px solid rgb(203, 204, 205); clear: both; display: block !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; margin-top: 25px; max-width: 100%; padding: 3px; text-align: center !important; vertical-align: baseline;" width="1013" /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Analytics Keyword ‘Not Provided.’</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Analytics was the very best place to look at keyword opportunity for some (especially older) sites, but that all changed a few years back.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">stopped telling us which keywords are sending traffic to our sites from the search engine back in October 2011,</strong> as part of privacy concerns for its users.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google will now begin encrypting searches that people do by default, if they are logged into Google.com already through a secure connection. The change to SSL search also means that sites people visit after clicking on results at Google will no longer receive “referrer” data that reveals what those people searched for, except in the case of ads.</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Analytics now instead displays – keyword “<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">not provided</strong>“, instead.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">In Google’s new system, referrer data will be blocked. This means site owners will begin to lose valuable data that they depend on, to understand how their sites are found through Google. They’ll still be able to tell that someone came from a Google search. They won’t, however, know what that search was. <a href="http://searchengineland.com/google-to-begin-encrypting-searches-outbound-clicks-by-default-97435" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SearchEngineLand</a> (A great source for Google industry news)</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can still get <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">some</em> of this data if you sign up for <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Webmaster Tools</strong> (and you can combine this in Google Analytics) but the data even there is limited and often not entirely the most accurate. The keyword data can be useful, though – and access to backlink data is essential these days.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If the website you are working on is an aged site – there’s probably a wealth of keyword data in Google Analytics:</div><span class="offset" id="do-keywords-in-bold-or-italic-help-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do Keywords In Bold Or Italic Help?</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some webmasters claim <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">putting your keywords in bold</strong> or <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">putting your keywords in italics</em> is a beneficial ranking factor in terms of search engine optimizing a page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is essentially impossible to test this, and I think these days, Google could well be using this (and other easy to identify on page optimisation efforts) to determine what to <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">punish</em> a site for, not <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">promote</em> it in SERPs.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Any item you can ‘optimise’ on your page – Google can use this against you to filter you out of results.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I use bold or italics these days specifically for users.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I only use emphasis if it’s <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">natural</em> or <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">this is really what I want to emphasise</strong>!</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do not tell Google what to filter you for that easily.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I think Google treats websites they trust far different to others in some respect.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">That is, more trusted sites might get treated differently than untrusted sites.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Keep it simple, natural, useful and random.</div><span class="offset" id="how-many-words-keywords-do-i-use-on-a-page-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How Many Words & Keywords Do I Use On A Page?</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I get asked this all the time –</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">how much text do you put on a page to rank for a certain keyword?</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The answer is there is <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">no optimal amount of text per page, </strong>but how much text you’ll ‘need’ will be based on your DOMAIN AUTHORITY, your TOPICAL RELEVANCE and how much COMPETITION there is for that term, and HOW COMPETITIVE that competition is.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Instead of thinking about the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">quantity</em> of the text, you should think more about the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">quality</em> of the content on the page. Optimise this with searcher intent in mind. Well, that’s how I do it.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t find that you need a minimum amount of words or text to rank in Google. I have seen pages with 50 words outrank pages with 100, 250, 500 or 1000 words. Then again I have seen pages with no text rank on nothing but inbound links or other ‘strategy’. In 2017, Google is a lot better at hiding away those pages, though.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">At the moment, I prefer long form pages with a lot of text although I still rely heavily on keyword analysis to make my pages. The benefits of longer pages are that they are great for long tail key phrases.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Creating deep, information rich pages focuses the mind when it comes to producing authoritative, useful content.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Every site is different. Some pages, for example, can get away with 50 words because of a good link profile and the domain it is hosted on. For me, the important thing is to make a page relevant to a user’s search query.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t care how many words I achieve this with and often I need to experiment on a site I am unfamiliar with. After a while, you get an idea how much text you need to use to get a page on a certain domain into Google.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">One thing to note – the more text you add to the page, as long as it is unique, keyword rich and relevant, the more that page will be rewarded with more visitors from Google.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There is no optimal number of words on a page for placement in Google. Every website – every page – is different from what I can see. Don’t worry too much about word count if your content is original and informative. Google will probably reward you on some level – at some point – if there is lots of unique text on all your pages.</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/character-counter/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Count the number of characters in text">Character Counter Tool</a></li></ul><span class="offset" id="what-is-the-perfect-keyword-density-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is The Perfect Keyword Density?</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 441.99px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid4" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rk4qgQdp2UA" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 441.99px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The short answer to this is – <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">no</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There is no one-size-fits-all keyword density, <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">no</strong> optimal percentage guaranteed to rank any page at number 1. However, I do know you can keyword stuff a page and trip a spam filter.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Most web optimisation professionals agree there is no ideal percent of keywords in text to get a page to number 1 in Google. Search engines are not that easy to fool, although the key to success in many fields doing simple things well (or, at least, better than the competition).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I write natural page copy where possible always focused on the key terms – I never calculate density to identify the best % – there are way too many other things to work on. I have looked into this. If it looks natural, it’s ok with me.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I aim to include <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">related terms</span>, <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">long-tail variants</span> and <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">synonyms</span> in <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Primary Content</span> – at least ONCE, as that is all some pages need.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/keyword-density-seo-myth/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Optimal keyword density</a> is a myth, although there are many who would argue otherwise.</div><span class="offset" id="-things-not-strings-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">‘Things, Not Strings’</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google is better at working out what a page is about, and what it <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">should</em> be about to satisfy the intent of a searcher, and it isn’t relying <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">only</em> on <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">keyword phrases on a page</em> to do that anymore.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google has a <a href="https://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/introducing-knowledge-graph-things-not.html" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Knowledge Graph</a> populated with NAMED ENTITIES and in certain circumstances, Google relies on such information to create <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SERPs</span> (Search Engine Results Pages)..</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google has plenty of options when rewriting the query in a contextual way, based on what you searched for previously, who you are, how you searched and where you are at the time of the search.</div><span class="offset" id="can-i-just-write-naturally-and-rank-high-in-google-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Can I Just Write Naturally and Rank High in Google?</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yes, you <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">must</em> write naturally (and succinctly) in 2017, but if you have no idea the keywords you are targeting, and no expertise in the topic, you will be left behind those that can access this experience.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">just</em> ‘write naturally’ and still rank, albeit for fewer keywords than you would have if you optimised the page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are too many competing pages targeting the top spots not to optimise your content.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Naturally, how much text you need to write, how much you need to work into it, and where you ultimately rank, is going to depend on the domain reputation of the site you are publishing the article on.</div><span class="offset" id="do-you-need-lots-of-text-to-rank-pages-in-google-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do You Need Lots of Text To Rank Pages In Google?</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">User search intent</em> is a way marketers describe <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">what a user wants to accomplish </em>when they perform a Google search.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">SEOs have understood user search intent to fall broadly into the following categories and there is an excellent post on <a class="broken_link" href="https://moz.com/blog/revisiting-navigational-informational-transactional-search-post-pagerank" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Moz</a> about this.</div><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Transactional</strong> – The user wants to do something like buy, signup, register to complete a task they have in mind.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Informational</strong> – The user wishes to learn something</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Navigational</strong> – The user knows where they are going</li></ol><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Google <a href="https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//insidesearch/howsearchworks/assets/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">human quality rater guidelines</a> modify these to simpler constructs:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do </strong></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Know</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Go</strong></li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">As long as you meet the user’s primary intent, you can do this with as few words as it takes to do so.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You do NOT need lots of text to rank in Google.</div><span class="offset" id="optimise-for-user-intent-satisfaction" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Optimise For User Intent & Satisfaction</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">When it comes to writing SEO-friendly text for Google, we must optimise for u<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ser intent,</span> not simply <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">what</em> a user <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">typed</em> into Google.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google will send people looking for information on a topic to the highest quality, relevant pages it has in its database, often BEFORE it relies on how Google ‘<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">used</span>‘ to work e.g. relying on finding <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">near</span> or <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">exact match</span> instances of a keyword phrase on any one page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google is constantly evolving to better understand the context and intent of user behaviour, and it doesn’t mind <a href="http://www.seobythesea.com/2013/12/rewrite-search-terms/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">rewriting the query</a> used to serve high-quality pages to users that comprehensively deliver on user satisfaction e.g. explore topics and concepts in a unique and satisfying way.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Of course, optimising for user intent, even in this fashion, is something a lot of marketers had been doing long before <a href="http://hughewilliams.com/2012/03/19/query-rewriting-in-search-engines/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">query rewriting</a> and  <a href="http://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-172816" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Hummingbird</a> came along.</div><span class="offset" id="optimising-for-the-long-click-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Optimising For ‘The Long Click’</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">When it comes to rating <a class="broken_link" href="https://moz.com/blog/seo-satisfaction" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">user satisfaction</a>, there are a few theories doing the rounds at the moment that I think are sensible. Google could be tracking user satisfaction by proxy. When a user uses Google to search for something, <a class="broken_link" href="https://moz.com/blog/user-behaviour-data-as-a-ranking-signal" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">user behaviour</a> from that point on can be a proxy of the relevance and relative quality of the actual SERP.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is a Long Click?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A user clicks a result and spends time on it, sometimes terminating the search.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is a Short Click?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A user clicks a result and bounces back to the SERP, pogo-sticking between other results until a long click is observed. Google has this information if it wants to use it as a proxy for query satisfaction.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">For more on this, I recommend this article on the <a href="http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/time-to-long-click" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">time to long click</a>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Optimise Supplementary Content on the Page</strong></div><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Once you have the content, you need to think about supplementary content and secondary links that help users on their journey of discovery.</div><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">That content CAN be on links to your own content on other pages, but if you are really helping a user understand a topic – you should be LINKING OUT to other helpful resources e.g. other websites.A website that does not link out to ANY other website could be interpreted accurately to be at least, self-serving. I can’t think of a website that is the true end-point of the web.</div><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A website that does not link out to ANY other website could be interpreted accurately to be at least, self-serving. I can’t think of a website that is the true end-point of the web.</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">TASK – On informational pages, LINK OUT to related pages on other sites AND on other pages on your own website where RELEVANT</li><li class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">TASK – For e-commerce pages, ADD RELATED PRODUCTS.</li><li class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">TASK – Create In-depth Content Pieces</li><li class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">TASK – Keep Content Up to Date, Minimise Ads, Maximise Conversion, Monitor For broken, or redirected links</li><li class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">TASK – Assign in-depth content to an author with some online authority, or someone with displayable expertise on the subject</li><li class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">TASK – If running a blog, first, clean it up. To avoid creating pages that might be considered thin content in 6 months, consider planning a wider content strategy. If you publish 30 ‘thinner’ pages about various aspects of a topic, you can then fold all this together in a single topic page centred page helping a user to understand something related to what you sell.</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">For more on primary main content optimisation see:: <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-to-write-seo-friendly-website-content-for-google/#how-many-words-can-i-optimise-a-page-for-" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-to-write-seo-friendly-website-content-for-google/</a></div><span class="offset" id="page-title-element" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Page Title Element</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 441.99px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid5" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NlJiLDn9-38" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 441.99px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><pre style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(241, 238, 230); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; overflow: auto; padding: 15px 5px 15px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><title>What Is The Best Title Tag For Google?</title></pre><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The page title tag (or HTML Title Element) is arguably the most important on page ranking factor (with regards to web page optimisation). Keywords in page titles can undeniably HELP your pages rank higher in Google results pages (SERPs). The page title is also often used by Google as the title of a search snippet link in search engine results pages.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">For me, a perfect title tag in Google is dependant on a number of factors and I will lay down a couple below but I have since expanded page title advice on another page (link below);</div><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A page title that is <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">highly relevant</strong> to the page it refers to will maximise its usability, search engine ranking performance and click through satisfaction rate. It will probably be displayed in a web browser’s window title bar, and in clickable search snippet links used by Google, Bing & other search engines. The title element is the “crown” of a web page with important <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">keyword phrase</em> featuring, AT LEAST, ONCE within it.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Most modern search engines have traditionally placed a lot of importance in the words contained within this HTML element. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A good page title is made up of valuable keyword phrases with clear user intent</strong>.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The last time I looked Google displayed as many characters as it can fit into  “a block element that’s 512px wide and doesn’t exceed 1 line of text”. So – <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">THERE BECAME NO AMOUNT OF CHARACTERS any optimiser could lay down as exact best practice</strong> to <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">GUARANTEE</strong> a title will display, in full in Google, at least, as the search snippet title. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ultimately – only the characters and words you use will determine if your entire page title will be seen in a Google search snippet</strong>. Recently Google displayed 70 characters in a title – but that changed in 2011/2012.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you want to <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ENSURE your FULL title tag shows in the desktop UK version of Google SERPs</strong>, stick to a shorter title of about <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">55 characters</strong> but that does not mean your title tag MUST end at 55 characters and remember your mobile visitors see a longer title (in the UK, in March 2015 at least). I have seen ‘up-to’ 69 characters (back in 2012) – but as I said – what you see displayed in SERPs depends on the characters you use. In 2017 – I just expect what Google displays to change – so I don’t obsess about what Google is doing in terms of display.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google is all about ‘user experience’ and ‘visitor satisfaction’ in 2017 so it’s worth remembering that usability studies have shown that a good page title length is about <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">seven or eight words long and fewer than 64 total characters. </strong>Longer titles are less scan able in bookmark lists, and might not display correctly in many browsers (and of course probably will be truncated in SERPs).</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">will INDEX perhaps 1000s of characters</strong> in a title… but I don’t think no one knows exactly how many characters or words Google will count AS a TITLE when determining relevance for ranking purposes. It is a very hard thing to try to isolate accurately with all the testing and obfuscation Google uses to hide its ‘<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">secret sauce</em>‘. I have had ranking success with longer titles – much longer titles. Google <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">certainly</em> reads ALL the words in your page title (unless you are spamming it silly, of course).</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">probably include up to 12 words that will be counted as part of a page title</strong>, and consider using your important keywords in the first eight words. The rest of your page title will be counted as normal text on the page.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOTE, in 2017, the <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">HTML title element you choose for your page, may not be what Google chooses to include in your SERP snippet</strong>. The search snippet title and description are very much <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">QUERY dependant</em> these days. Google often chooses what it <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">thinks</em> is the most relevant title for your search snippet, and it can use information from your page, or in links to that page, to create a very different SERP snippet title.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When optimising a title, you are looking to rank for as many terms as possible, without keyword stuffing your title. Often, the best bet is to optimise for a particular phrase (or phrases) – and take a more long-tail approach. Note that too many page titles and not enough actual page text per page could lead to Google Panda or other ‘user experience’ performance issues. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A highly relevant unique page title is no longer enough to float a page with thin content</strong>. Google cares WAY too much about the page text content these days to let a good title hold up a thin page on most sites.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some page titles do better with a call to action – a call to action which reflects exactly a searcher’s <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">intent</em> (e.g. to learn something, or buy something, or hire something. Remember this is your <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">hook</em> in search engines if Google chooses to use your page title in its search snippet, and there are a lot of competing pages out there in 2017.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The perfect title tag on a page is <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">unique</em> to other pages on the site. In light of Google Panda, an algorithm that looks for a ‘quality’ in sites, you REALLY need to make your page titles UNIQUE, and minimise any duplication, especially on larger sites.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I like to make sure my keywords feature as early as possible in a title tag but the important thing is to have important keywords and key phrases in your page title tag SOMEWHERE.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For me, when improved search engine visibility is more important than branding, the company name goes at the end of the tag, and I use a variety of dividers to separate as no one way performs best. If you have a recognisable brand – then there is an argument for putting this at the front of titles – although Google often will change your title dynamically – sometimes putting your brand at the front of your snippet link title itself.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Note that Google is pretty good these days at removing any special characters you have in your page title – and I would be wary of trying to make your title or Meta Description STAND OUT using special characters. That is not what Google wants, evidently, and they do give you a further chance to make your search snippet stand out with RICH SNIPPETS and SCHEMA mark-up.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I like to think I write titles for search engines AND humans.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Know that Google tweaks everything regularly – why not what the perfect title keys off? So MIX it up…</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t obsess. Natural is probably better, and will only get <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">better</em> as engines evolve. I optimise for key-phrases, rather than just keywords.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I prefer mixed case page titles as I find them more scan able than titles with ALL CAPS or all lowercase.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Generally speaking, the more domain trust/authority your SITE has in Google, the easier it is for a new page to rank for something. So bear that in mind. There is only so much you can do with your page titles – your websites rankings in Google are a LOT more to do with OFFSITE factors than ONSITE ones – negative and positive.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Click through rate is something that is likely measured by Google when ranking pages (Bing say they use it too, and they now power Yahoo), so it is worth considering whether you are best optimising your page titles for click-through rate or optimising for more search engine rankings.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I would imagine keyword stuffing your page titles could be one area Google look at (although I see little evidence of it).</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Remember….think ‘<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">keyword phrase</em>‘ rather than ‘<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">keyword</em>‘, ‘<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">keyword</em>‘,’<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">keyword</em>‘… think Long Tail.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google will select the best title it wants for your search snippet – and it will take that information from multiple sources, NOT just your page title element. A small title is often appended with more information about the domain. Sometimes, if Google is confident in the BRAND name, it will replace it with that (often adding it to the beginning of your title with a colon, or sometimes appending the end of your snippet title with the actual domain address the page belongs to).</li></ol><h3 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 34px; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A Note About Title Tags;</h3><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">When you write a page title, you have a chance right at the beginning of the page to tell Google (and other search engines) if this is a spam site or a quality site – such as – have you repeated the keyword four times or only once? I think title tags, like everything else, should probably be as simple as possible, with the keyword once and perhaps a related term if possible.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I always aim to keep my HTML page title elements simple and as unique as possible.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m certainly cleaning up the way I write my titles all the time.</div><h3 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 34px; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">More Reading:</h3><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/title-tags/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Title Tags Best Practice</a></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/headers/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Will Use H1,H2,H3,H4,H5 & H6 Headers As Titles</a></li></ul><h3 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 34px; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> External Links</h3><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/good-titles.html" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/good-titles.html</a></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://moz.com/learn/SEO/title-tag" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://moz.com/learn/SEO/title-tag</a></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_title.asp" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_title.asp</a></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://searchengineland.com/writing-HTML-title-tags-humans-google-bing-59384" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://searchengineland.com/writing-HTML-title-tags-humans-google-bing-59384</a></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2054494/title-tag-copywriting-tips-newbie-SEOs" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2054494/title-tag-copywriting-tips-newbie-SEOs</a></li></ul><span class="offset" id="meta-keywords-tag" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Meta Keywords Tag</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 441.99px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid6" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jK7IPbnmvVU" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 441.99px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A hallmark of shady natural search engine optimisation companies – the meta-keywords tag. Companies that waste time and resources on these items waste client’s money – that’s a fact:</div><pre style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(241, 238, 230); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; overflow: auto; padding: 15px 5px 15px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><meta name="Keywords" content="s.e.o., search engine optimisation, optimization"></pre><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I have one piece of advice with the meta keyword tag, which like the <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/title-tags/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="This is actually important!">title tag</a>, goes in the head section of your web page, <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">forget about them</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you are relying on meta-keyword optimisation to rank for terms, your dead in the water. From what I see, Google + Bing ignores meta keywords – or, at least, places no weight in them to rank pages. Yahoo may read them, but really, a search engine optimiser has more important things to worry about than this nonsense.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">What about other search engines that use them? Hang on while I submit my site to those 75,000 engines first [sarcasm!]. Yes, ten years ago early search engines liked looking at your meta-keywords. I’ve seen OPs in forums ponder which is the best way to write these tags – with commas, with spaces, limiting to how many characters. Forget about meta-keyword tags – they are a pointless waste of time and bandwidth. Could probably save a rain forest with the bandwidth costs we save if everybody removed their keyword tags.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tin Foil Hat Time</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">So you have a new site. You fill your home page meta tags with the 20 keywords you want to rank for – hey, that’s what optimisation is all about, isn’t it? You’ve just told Google by the third line of text what to filter you for. The meta name=”Keywords” was actually originally for words that weren’t actually on the page that would help classify the document.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes competitors might use the information in your keywords to determine what you are trying to rank for, too….</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If everybody removed them and stopped abusing meta keywords, Google would probably start looking at them but that’s the way of things in search engines.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I ignore meta keywords and remove them from pages I work on.</div><span class="offset" id="meta-description-tag" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Meta Description Tag</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 589.323px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid7" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vS1Mw1Adrk0" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 589.323px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">L</strong><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ike</strong> the title element and <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">unlike</strong> the meta keywords tag, this one is important, both from a human and search engine perspective.</div><pre style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(241, 238, 230); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; overflow: auto; padding: 15px 5px 15px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><meta name="Description" content="Get your site on the first page of Google,<br />Yahoo and Bing. Call us on 0845 094 0839. A company based in Scotland." /></pre><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Forget whether or not to put your keyword in it, make it relevant to a searcher and write it for humans, not search engines. If you want to have this 20-word snippet which accurately describes the page you have optimised for one or two keyword phrases when people use Google to search, make sure the keyword is in there.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I must say, I normally do include the keyword in the description as this usually gets it in your SERP snippet.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google looks at the description but there is debate whether it uses the description tag to rank sites. I think they might be at some level, but again, a very weak signal. I certainly don’t know of an example that clearly shows a meta description helping a page rank.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes, I will ask a question with my titles, and answer it in the description, sometimes I will just give a hint.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">That is a lot more difficult in 2017 as search snippets change depending on what Google wants to emphasise to its users.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s also very important to have <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">unique meta descriptions</strong> on every page on your site.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tin Foil Hat Time</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes I think if your titles are spammy, your keywords are spammy, and your meta description is spammy, Google might stop right there – even they probably will want to save bandwidth at some time. Putting a keyword in the description won’t take a crap site to number 1 or raise you 50 spots in a competitive niche – so why optimise for a search engine when you can optimise for a human? – I think that is much more valuable, especially if you are in the mix already – that is – on page one for your keyword.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">So, the meta description tag is important in Google, Yahoo and Bing and every other engine listing – very important to get it right.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Make it for humans.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Oh, and by the way – Google seems to truncate anything over @156 characters in the meta description, although this may be limited by pixel width in 2017.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Programmatically Generate Meta Descriptions on Large Sites</strong></div><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Googles says you <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">can</strong> programmatically auto-generate unique meta descriptions based on the content of the page.</div><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Follow Googles example:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><pre class="p1" style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(241, 238, 230); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; overflow: auto; padding: 15px 5px 15px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Author: J. K. Rowling, Illustrator: Mary GrandPré, Category: Books, Price: $17.99, Length: 784 pages"></pre></blockquote><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">….and their advice why to do this:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No duplication, more information, and everything is clearly tagged and separated</strong>. No real additional work is required to generate something of this quality: the price and length are the only new data, and they are already displayed on the site.</div></blockquote><div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I think it is very important to listen when Google tells you to do something in a very specific way, and Google does give clear advice in this area.</div><h3 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 34px; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">More Reading:</h3><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/definitive-guide-to-using-important-meta-tags/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/definitive-guide-to-using-important-meta-tags/</a></li></ul><h3 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 34px; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> External Links</h3><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/?hl=en#topic=3309469" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://support.google.com/webmasters/?hl=en#topic=3309469</a></li></ul><span class="offset" id="robots-meta-tag" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Robots Meta Tag</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 441.99px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid8" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZjRGkc__FwQ" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 441.99px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Example Robots Meta Tag</strong>;</div><pre style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(241, 238, 230); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; overflow: auto; padding: 15px 5px 15px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><meta name="robots" content="index, nofollow" /></pre><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I could use the above meta tag to tell Google to <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">index</em> the page but not to <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">follow</em> any links on the page, if for some reason, I did not want the page to appear in Google search results.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">By default, Googlebot will index a page and follow links to it. So there’s no need to tag pages with content values of INDEX or FOLLOW. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">GOOGLE</strong></div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are various instructions you can make use of in your Robots Meta Tag, but remember Google by default WILL index and follow links, so you have NO need to include that as a command – <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">you can leave the robots meta out completely – and probably should if you don’t have a clue</strong>.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Googlebot understands any combination of lowercase and uppercase. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">GOOGLE</strong>.</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Valid values for Robots Meta Tag ”<tt style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CONTENT</tt>” attribute are: “<tt style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">INDEX</tt>“, “<tt style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOINDEX</tt>“, “<tt style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">FOLLOW</tt>“, and  “<tt style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOFOLLOW</tt>“.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Example Usage:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, FOLLOW”</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”INDEX, NOFOLLOW”</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOARCHIVE”</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">META NAME=”GOOGLEBOT” CONTENT=”NOSNIPPET”</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google will understand the following and interprets the following robots meta tag values:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOINDEX – prevents the page from being included in the index.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOFOLLOW – prevents Googlebot from following any links on the page. (Note that this is different from the link-level NOFOLLOW attribute, which prevents Googlebot from following an individual link.)</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOARCHIVE – prevents a cached copy of this page from being available in the search results.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOSNIPPET – prevents a description from appearing below the page in the search results, as well as prevents caching of the page.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOODP – blocks the Open Directory Project description of the page from being used in the description that appears below the page in the search results.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">NONE – equivalent to “NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”.</li></ul></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Robots META Tag Quick Reference</strong></div><table style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0px; border: 1px solid rgb(205, 205, 205); color: #666666; font-family: arial; font-size: 8pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 10px 0pt 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 784.667px;"><tbody style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><tr style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><th style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(124, 127, 70) !important; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">Terms</th><th style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(124, 127, 70) !important; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">Googlebot</th><th style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(124, 127, 70) !important; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">Slurp</th><th style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(124, 127, 70) !important; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">BingBot</th><th style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(124, 127, 70) !important; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">Teoma</th></tr><tr style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NoIndex</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td></tr><tr style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NoFollow</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td></tr><tr style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NoArchive</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td></tr><tr style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NoSnippet</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td></tr><tr style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NoODP</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td></tr><tr style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NoYDIR</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td></tr><tr style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NoImageIndex</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td></tr><tr style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NoTranslate</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td></tr><tr style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">Unavailable_After</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">YES</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px; vertical-align: baseline;">NO</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve included the robots meta tag in my tutorial as this IS one of only a few meta tags / HTML head elements I focus on when it comes to managing Googlebot and Bingbot. At a page level – it is a powerful way to control if your pages are returned in search results pages.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">These meta tags go in the [HEAD] section of a [HTML] page and represent the only tags for Google I care about. Just about everything else you can put in the [HEAD] of your HTML document is quite unnecessary and maybe even pointless (for Google optimisation, anyway).</div><span class="offset" id="robots-txt-file" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Robots.txt File</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you want to control which pages get crawled and indexed by Google see my article for beginners to the <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/robots-txt-tutorial-for-beginners/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">robots.txt file</a>.</div><h3 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 34px; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">External Links</h3><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/using-robots-meta-tag.html" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/using-robots-meta-tag.html</a></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html</a></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/robots-exclusion-protocol.html" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/robots-exclusion-protocol.html</a></li></ul><span class="offset" id="h1-h6-page-headings" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">H1-H6: Page Headings</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 441.99px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid9" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GIn5qJKU8VM" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 441.99px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I can’t find any definitive proof online that says you need to use Heading Tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6) or that they improve rankings in Google, and I have seen pages do well in Google without them – but I do use them, especially the H1 tag on the page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">For me, it’s another piece of a ‘perfect’ page, in the traditional sense, and I try to build a site for Google and humans.</div><pre style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(241, 238, 230); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; overflow: auto; padding: 15px 5px 15px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><h1>This is a page title</h1></pre><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I still generally <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">only use one <h1> heading tag</strong> in my keyword targeted pages – I believe this is the way the <a href="http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/Use_h1_for_Title" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">W3C</a> intended it to be used in HTML4 – and I ensure they are at the top of a page above relevant page text and written with my main keywords or related keyword phrases incorporated.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I have never experienced any problems using CSS to control the appearance of the heading tags making them larger or smaller.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can use multiple H1s in HTML5, but most sites I find I work on still use HTML4.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I use as many H2 – H6 as is necessary depending on the size of the page, but I use H1, H2 & H3. You can see here <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/headers/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">how to use header tags properly</a> (basically, just be consistent, whatever you do, to give your users the best user experience).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">How many words in the H1 Tag? As many as I think is sensible – as short and snappy as possible usually.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I also discovered Google will use your Header tags as page titles at some level if your title element is malformed.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">As always be sure to make your heading tags highly relevant to the content on that page and not too spammy, either.</div><span class="offset" id="alt-tags" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Alt Tags</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 589.323px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid10" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3NbuDpB_BTc" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 589.323px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOTE: Alt Tags are counted by Google (and Bing), but I would be careful <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">over-optimizing</em> them. I’ve seen a lot of websites penalised for over-optimising invisible elements on a page. Don’t do it.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">ALT tags are very important and I think a very rewarding area to get right. I always put the main keyword in an ALT once when addressing a page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t optimise your ALT tags (or rather, attributes) JUST for Google!</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Use ALT tags (or rather, ALT Attributes) for descriptive text that helps visitors – and keep them unique where possible, like you do with your titles and meta descriptions.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t obsess. Don’t optimise your ALT tags just for Google – do it for humans, accessibility and usability. If you are interested, I conducted a simple test using ALT attributes to determine <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-many-words-in-alt-text-for-google-yahoo-bing/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">how many words I could use in IMAGE ALT text that Google would pick up</a>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">And remember – even if, like me most days, you can’t be bothered with all the image ALT tags on your page, at least, use a blank ALT (or NULL value) so people with screen readers can enjoy your page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Update 17/11/08</strong> – Picked This Up At SERoundtable <a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018743.html" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">about Alt Tags</a>:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">JohnMu from Google:<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> alt attribute</strong> should be used to describe the image. So if you have an image of a big blue pineapple chair you should use the alt tag that best describes it, which is alt=”big blue pineapple chair.”<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> title attribute</strong> should be used when the image is a hyperlink to a specific page. The title attribute should contain information about what will happen when you click on the image. For example, if the image will get larger, it should read something like, title=”View a larger version of the big blue pineapple chair image.”</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Barry continues with a quote:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">As the Googlebot does not see the images directly, we generally concentrate on the information provided in the “alt” attribute. Feel free to supplement the “alt” attribute with “title” and other attributes if they provide value to your users! So for example, if you have an image of a puppy (these seem popular at the moment ) playing with a ball, you could use something like “My puppy Betsy playing with a bowling ball” as the alt-attribute for the image. If you also have a link around the image, pointing a large version of the same photo, you could use “View this image in high-resolution” as the title attribute for the link.</div></blockquote><span class="offset" id="link-title-attributes-acronym-abbr-tags" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Link Title Attributes, Acronym & ABBR Tags</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Does Google Count Text in The Acronym Tag?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">From my tests, no. From observing how my test page ranks – Google is ignoring keywords in the acronym tag.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">My observations from a test page I observe include;</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Link Title Attribute – no benefit passed via the link either to another page, it <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">seems</em></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">ABBR (Abbreviation Tags) – No</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Image File Name – No</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wrapping words (or at least numbers) in SCRIPT – Sometimes. Google is better at understanding what it can render in 2017.</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s clear many invisible elements of a page are completely ignored by Google (that would interest us SEO).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some invisible items are (still) aparently supported:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOFRAMES – Yes</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOSCRIPT – Yes</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">ALT Attribute – Yes</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Unless you really have cause to focus on any particluar invisible element, I think the **P** tag is the most important tag to optimise in 2017.</strong></div><span class="offset" id="search-engine-friendly-urls-sef-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Search Engine Friendly URLs (SEF)</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Clean URLs (or search engine friendly URLs) are just that – clean, easy to read, simple.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You do not need clean URLs in site architecture for Google to spider a site successfully (</strong>confirmed by Google in 2008<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">)</strong>, although I do use clean URLs as a default these days, and have done so for years.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s often more usable.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is there a massive difference in Google when you use clean URLs?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No</strong>, in my experience it’s very much a second or third order affect, perhaps even less, <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">if used on its own</strong>. However – there it is demonstrable benefit to having keywords in URLs.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The thinking is that you might get a boost in Google SERPs if your URLs are clean – because you are using keywords in the actual page name instead of a parameter or session ID number (which Google often struggles with).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I think Google might reward the page some sort of relevance because of the actual file / page name. I optimise as if they do.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is virtually impossible to isolate any ranking factor with a degree of certainty.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Where any benefit <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">is slightly detectable</strong> is when people (say in forums) <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">link to your site with the URL as the link</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Then it is fair to say you do get a boost because keywords are in the actual anchor text link to your site, and I believe this is the case, but again, that depends on the quality of the page linking to your site. That is, if Google trusts it and it passes Pagerank (!) and anchor text benefit.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">And of course, you’ll need citable content on that site of yours.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes I will remove the stop-words from a URL and leave the important keywords as the page title because a lot of forums garble a URL to shorten it. Most forums will be nofollowed in 2017, to be fair, but some old habits die-hard.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes I prefer to see the exact phrase I am targeting as the name of the URL I am asking Google to rank.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I configure URLs the following way;</div><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">www.hobo-web.co.uk/?p=292 — is automatically changed by the CMS using URL rewrite to</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">www.hobo-web.co.uk/websites-clean-search-engine-friendly-URLs/ — which I then break down to something like</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">www.hobo-web.co.uk/search-engine-friendly-URLs/</li></ol><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It should be remembered it is thought although Googlebot can crawl sites with dynamic URLs; it is assumed by many webmasters there is a greater risk that it will give up if the URLs are deemed not important and contain multiple variables and session IDs (theory).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As standard</strong>, I use clean URLs where possible on new sites these days, and try to keep the URLs as simple as possible and do not obsess about it.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s my aim at all times when I optimise a website to work better in Google – simplicity.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google does look at keywords in the URL even in a granular level.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Having a keyword in your URL might be the difference between your site ranking and not – potentially useful to take advantage of long tail search queries – for more see <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/search-engine-friendly-urls/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Does Google Count A Keyword In The URI (Filename) When Ranking A Page?</a></div><span class="offset" id="absolute-or-relative-urls" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Absolute Or Relative URLs</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">My advice would be to keep it consistent whatever you decide to use.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I prefer absolute URLs. That’s just a preference. Google will crawl either if the local setup is correctly developed.</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is an absolute URL? Example – http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation/</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is a relative URL? Example – /search-engine-optimisation.htm</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Relative just means relative to the document the link is on.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Move that page to another site and it won’t work.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">With an absolute URL, it would work.</div><span class="offset" id="subdirectories-or-files-for-url-structure" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Subdirectories or Files For URL Structure</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes I use subfolders and sometimes I use files. I have not been able to decide if there is any real benefit (in terms of ranking boost) to using either. A lot of CMS these days use subfolders in their file path, so I am pretty confident Google can deal with either.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I used to prefer files like <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.html</strong> when I was building a new site from scratch, as they were the ’end of the line’ for search engines, as I imagined it, and a subfolder (or directory) was a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">collection</em> of pages.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I used to think it could take more to get a subfolder trusted than say an individual file and I guess this sways me to use files on most websites I created (back in the day). Once subfolders are trusted, it’s 6 or half a dozen, what the actual difference is in terms of ranking in Google – usually, rankings in Google are more determined by how RELEVANT or REPUTABLE a page is to a query.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the past, subfolders could be treated differently than files (in my experience).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Subfolders can be trusted less than other subfolders or pages in your site, or ignored entirely. Subfolders *used to seem to me* to take a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">little</em> longer to get indexed by Google, than for instance <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.html</strong> pages.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">People talk about trusted domains but they don’t mention (or don’t think) some parts of the domain can be <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">trusted less</em>. Google treats some subfolders….. differently. Well, they used to – and remembering how Google <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">used</em> to handle things has some benefits – even in 2017.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some say don’t go beyond four levels of folders in your file path. I haven’t experienced too many issues, but you never know.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">UPDATED – I think in 2017 it’s even less of something to worry about. There’s so much more important elements to check.</strong></div><span class="offset" id="which-is-better-for-google-php-html-or-asp-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Which Is Better For Google? PHP, HTML or ASP?</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google doesn’t care. As long as it renders as a browser compatible document, it appears Google can read it these days.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I prefer PHP these days even with flat documents as it is easier to add server side code to that document if I want to add some sort of function to the site.</div><span class="offset" id="does-w3c-valid-html-css-help-rank-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Does W3C Valid HTML / CSS Help Rank?</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 441.99px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid11" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2XlKn6I9rSc" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 441.99px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Above – a Google video confirming this advice I first shared in 2008.</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Does Google rank a page higher because of valid code? The short answer is no, even though I tested it on a <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/official-google-prefers-valid-html-css/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">small-scale test</a> with different results.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google doesn’t care if your page is valid HTML and valid CSS. This is clear – check any top ten results in Google and you will probably see that most contain invalid HTML or CSS. I love creating accessible websites but they are a bit of a pain to manage when you have multiple authors or developers on a site.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If your site is so badly designed with a lot of invalid code even Google and browsers cannot read it, then you have a problem.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Where possible, if commissioning a new website, demand, at least, minimum <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/design-website-for-blind/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Web Accessibility For Beginners">web accessibility</a> compliance on a site (there are three levels of priority to meet), and aim for valid HTML and CSS. Actually, this is the law in some countries although you would not know it, and be prepared to put a bit of work in to keep your rating.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Valid HTML and CSS are a pillar of best practice website optimisation, not strictly a part of professional search engine optimisation. It is one form of optimisation Google will not penalise you for.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Addition – I usually still aim to follow W3C recommendations that help deliver a better user experience;</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hypertext links.</strong> Use text that makes sense when read out of context. W3C Top Ten Accessibility Tips<a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/quicktips/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></a></div></blockquote><span class="offset" id="point-internal-links-to-relevant-pages" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Point Internal Links To Relevant Pages</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Link To Important Pages" height="411" src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/internal-structure.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(203, 204, 205); clear: both; display: block !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; margin-top: 25px; max-width: 100%; padding: 3px; text-align: center !important; vertical-align: baseline;" width="506" /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/optimize-website-navigation/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">link to relevant internal pages</a> in my site when necessary.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I silo any relevance or trust mainly via links in text content and secondary menu systems and between pages that are relevant in context to one another.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t worry about perfect silo’ing techniques anymore, and don’t worry about whether or not I should link to one category from another as I think the ‘boost’ many proclaim is minimal on the size of sites I usually manage.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I do not obsess about site architecture as much as I used to…. but I always ensure my pages I want to be indexed are all available from a crawl from the home page – and I still emphasise important pages by linking to them where relevant. I always aim to get THE most important exact match anchor text pointing to the page from internal links – but I avoid abusing internals and avoid overtly manipulative internal links that are not grammatically correct, for instance..</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s no set method I find works for every site, other than to <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">link to related internal pages often without overdoing it</strong> and where appropriate.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What Are SERP Sitelinks?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">When Google knows enough about the history or relationships of a website (or web page), it will sometimes display what are called site links (or mega site links) under the url of the website in question.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This results in an enhanced search snippet in SERPs.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is normally triggered when Google is confident this is the site you are looking for, based on the search terms you used.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sitelinks are usually reserved for navigational queries with a heavy brand bias, a brand name or a company name, for instance, or the website address.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve tracked the evolution of Google site links in organic listings over the years, and they are seemly picked based on a number of factors.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How To Get Google Sitelinks?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pages that feature in site links are often popular pages on your site, in terms of internal or external links, or user experience or even recent posts that may have been published on your blog.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google likes to seem to mix this up a lot, perhaps to offer some variety, and probably to obfuscate results to minimise or discourage manipulation.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes it returns pages that leave me scratching my head as to why Google selected a particular page appears.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you don’t HAVE site links, have a bit of patience and focus on other areas of your web marketing, like adding more content, get some PR or social activity focussed on the site.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google WILL give you site links on some terms; ONCE Google is confident your site is the destination users want.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">That could be a week or months, but the more popular the site is, the more likely Google will catch up fast.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sitelinks are not something can be switched on or off, although you can control to some degree the pages are selected as site links. You can do that in Google Webmaster Tools AKA Search Console.</div><span class="offset" id="link-out-to-related-sites" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Link Out To Related Sites</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Concerning on-page SEO best practices, I usually link out to other quality relevant pages on other websites where possible and where a human would find it valuable.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t link out to other sites from the homepage</strong>. I want the Pagerank of the home page to be shared only with my internal pages.<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> I don’t like out to other sites from my category pages either</strong>, for the same reason.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I link to other relevant sites (a deep link where possible) <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">from individual pages</strong> and I do it often, usually. I don’t worry about link equity or PR leak because I control it on a page-to-page level.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This works for me, it allows me to share the link equity I have with other sites while ensuring it is not at the expense of pages on my domain. It may even help get me into a <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/link-building-strategy-for-beginners-a-month-of-free-tips/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">‘neighbourhood’ of relevant sites</a>, especially when some of those start linking back to my site.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Linking out to other sites, especially using a blog, also helps tell others that might be interested in your content that your page is ‘here’. Try it.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t abuse anchor text, but I will be considerate, and usually try and link out to a site using keywords these bloggers / site owners would appreciate.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The recently leaked Quality Raters Guidelines document clearly tells web reviewers to identify how USEFUL or helpful your SUPPLEMENTARY NAVIGATION options are – whether you link to other internal pages or pages on other sites.</div><span class="offset" id="broken-links-are-a-waste-of-link-power" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Broken Links Are A Waste Of Link Power</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The simplest piece of advice I ever read about creating a website / optimising a website was years ago and it is still useful today:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">make sure all your pages link to at least one other in your site</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This advice is still sound today and the most important piece of advice out there in my opinion.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/optimize-website-navigation/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Check your pages for broken links</a>. Seriously, broken links are a waste of link power and could hurt your site, drastically in some cases.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google is a link-based search engine – if your links are broken and your site is chock full of 404s you might not be at the races.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Here’s the second best piece of advice, in my opinion, seeing as we are just about talking about website architecture;</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">link to your important pages often internally, with varying anchor text in the navigation and in page text content</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Especially if you do not have a lot of Pagerank.</div><span class="offset" id="does-only-the-first-link-count-in-google-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Does Only The First Link Count In Google?</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Does the second anchor text link on a page count?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">One of the more interesting discussions in the webmaster community of late has been trying to determine which links Google counts as links on pages on your site. Some say the link Google finds higher in the code, is the link Google will ‘count’ if there are two links on a page going to the same page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I tested this (a while ago now) with the post <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/first-link-priority/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Google counts The First Internal Link</a>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">For example (and I am talking internally here – if you took a page and I placed two links on it, both going to the same page? (OK – hardly scientific, but you should get the idea).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Will Google only ‘count’ the first link? Or will it read the anchor text of both links, and give my page the benefit of the text in both links especially if the anchor text is different in both links? Will Google ignore the second link?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is interesting to me is that knowing this leaves you with a question. If your navigation array has your main pages linked to in it, perhaps your links in content are being ignored, or at least, not valued.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I think links in body text are invaluable. Does that mean placing the navigation below the copy to get a wide and varied internal anchor text to a page?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Perhaps.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">As I said, I think this is one of the more interesting talks in the community at the moment and perhaps Google works differently with internal links as opposed to external; links to other websites.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I think quite possibly this could change day to day if Google pressed a button, but <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I optimise a site thinking that only the first link on a page will count</strong> – based on what I monitor although I am testing this – and actually, I usually only link once from page-to-page on client sites, unless it’s useful for visitors.</div><span class="offset" id="duplicate-content-penalty" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Duplicate Content Penalty</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Webmasters are often confused about getting penalised for duplicate content, which is a natural part of the web landscape, especially at a time when Google claims there is NO duplicate content penalty.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The reality in 2017 is that if Google classifies your duplicate content as THIN content, then you DO have a very serious problem that violates Google’s website performance recommendations and this ‘violation’ will need ‘cleaned’ up.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin…..</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s very important to understand that if, in 2017, as a webmaster you republish posts, press releases, news stories or product descriptions found on other sites, then your pages are very definitely going to struggle to gain in traction in Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google doesn’t like using the word ‘penalty’ but if your entire site is made of entirely of republished content – Google does not want to rank it.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you have a multiple site strategy selling the same products – you are probably going to cannibalise your traffic in the long run, rather than dominate a niche, as you used to be able to do.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is all down to how the search engine deals with duplicate content found on other sites – and the experience Google aims to deliver for its users – and its competitors.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mess up with duplicate content on a website, and it might look like a Google penalty as the end-result is the same; important pages that once ranked might not rank again – and new content might not get crawled as fast as a result.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Your website might even get a ‘manual action’ for thin content. Worse case scenario your website is hit by the GOOGLE PANDA algorithm.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A good rule of thumb is; d<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">o NOT expect to rank high in Google with content found on other, more trusted sites</em>, and don’t expect to rank at all if all you are using is automatically generated pages with no ‘value add’.</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tip: Do NOT REPEAT text, even your own, across too many pages on your website.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">More Reading:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/redundant-pages/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Which Pages On Your Site Hurt Or Help Your Rankings?</a></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/traffic-crunch/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Algorithm Change Causes Ranking Drop</a></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/duplicate-content-problems/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Duplicate content advice from Google</a></li></ul><span class="offset" id="double-or-indented-listings-in-google" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Double or Indented Listings in Google</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">How do you get <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Double</em> or <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Indented</em> Listings in Google SERPs? How do you get two listings from the same website in the top ten results in Google instead of one (in normal view with 10 results).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Generally speaking, this means you have at least two pages with enough link equity to reach the top ten results – two pages very relevant to the search term. In 2017 however it could be a sign of Google testing different sets of results by for instance merging two indexes where a website ranks differently in both.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can achieve this with relevant pages, good internal structure and of course links from other websites. It’s far easier to achieve in less competitive verticals but in the end is does come down in many cases to domain authority and high relevance for a particular keyphrase.</div><span class="offset" id="redirect-non-www-to-www" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Redirect Non-WWW To WWW</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Your site probably has canonicalisation issues (especially if you have an e-commerce website) and it might start at the domain level.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Simply put, http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/ can be treated by Google as a different URL than http://hobo-web.co.uk/ even though it’s the same page, and it can get even more complicated.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Its thought REAL Pagerank can be diluted if Google gets confused about your URLs and speaking simply you don’t want this PR diluted (in theory).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s why many, including myself, redirect non-www to www (or vice versa) if the site is on a Linux/Apache server (in the htaccess file –</div><pre style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(241, 238, 230); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; overflow: auto; padding: 15px 5px 15px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Options +FollowSymLinks<br />RewriteEngine on<br />RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hobo-web.co.uk [NC]<br />RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]</pre><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Basically, you are redirecting all the Google juice to one canonical version of a URL.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">In 2017 – this is a MUST HAVE best practice.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It keeps it simple when optimising for Google. It should be noted; it’s <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">incredibly important not to mix the two types of www/non-www on site when linking your internal pages</strong>!</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Note in 2017 Google asks you which domain you prefer to set as your canonical domain in Google Webmaster Tools.</div><span class="offset" id="301-redirects-are-powerful-white-hat" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">301 Redirects Are POWERFUL & WHITE HAT</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Rather than tell Google via a 404 or some other command that this page isn’t here anymore, consider permanently redirecting a page to a relatively similar page to pool any link equity that page might have.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">My general rule of thumb is to make sure the information (and keywords) are contained in the new page – stay on the safe side.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Most already know the power of a <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-to-change-domain-names-keep-your-rankings-in-google/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">301 redirect</a> and how you can use it to power even totally unrelated pages to the top of Google for a time – sometimes a very long time.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google seems to think server side redirects are OK – so I use them.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can change the focus of a redirect but that’s a bit black hat for me and can be abused – I don’t talk about that sort of thing on this blog. But it’s worth knowing – you need to keep these redirects in place in your htaccess file.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Redirecting multiple old pages to one new page – works for me, if the information is there on the new page that ranked the old page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOTE – This tactic is being heavily spammed in 2017. Be careful with redirects. </span>I think I have seen penalties transferred via 301s. I also WOULDN’T REDIRECT 301s blindly to your home page. I’d also be careful of redirecting lots of low-quality links to one URL. If you need a page to redirect old URLs to, consider your sitemap or contact page. Audit any pages backlinks BEFORE you redirect them to an important page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m seeing CANONICALS work just the same as 301s in 2017 – though they seem to take a little longer to have an impact.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hint – a good tactic at the moment is to <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CONSOLIDATE old, thin under-performing articles Google ignores, into bigger, better quality articles</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I usually then 301 all the pages to a single source to consolidate link equity and content equity. As long as the intention is to serve users and create something more up-to-date – Google is fine with this.</div><span class="offset" id="canonical-link-element-is-your-best-friend" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Canonical Link Element Is Your Best Friend</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 441.99px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid12" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Cm9onOGTgeM" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 441.99px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">When it comes to Google SEO, the <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">rel=canonical link element</strong> has become <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">*VERY* IMPORTANT</strong> over the years and NEVER MORE SO.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This element is employed by Google, Bing and other search engines to help them specify the page you want to rank out of duplicate and near duplicate pages found on your site, or on other pages on the web.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the video above, Matt Cutts from Google shares tips on the new rel=”canonical” tag (more accurately – the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">canonical link element</em>) that the 3 top search engines now support.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft have all agreed to work together in a</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">“joint effort to help reduce duplicate content for larger, more complex sites, and the result is the new Canonical Tag”.</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Example Canonical Tag From Google Webmaster Central blog:</div><pre style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(241, 238, 230); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; overflow: auto; padding: 15px 5px 15px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish" /></pre><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The process is simple. You can put this link tag in the head section of the duplicate content URLs if you think you need it.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I add a self-referring canonical link element as standard these days – to ANY web page.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is rel=”canonical” a hint or a directive? </strong><br />It’s a hint that we honor strongly. We’ll take your preference into account, in conjunction with other signals, when calculating the most relevant page to display in search results.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Can I use a relative path to specify the canonical, such as <link rel=”canonical” href=”product.php?item=swedish-fish” />?</strong><br />Yes, relative paths are recognized as expected with the <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><link></strong> tag. Also, if you include a<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><base></strong> link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is it okay if the canonical is not an exact duplicate of the content?</strong><br />We allow slight differences, e.g., in the sort order of a table of products. We also recognize that we may crawl the canonical and the duplicate pages at different points in time, so we may occasionally see different versions of your content. All of that is okay with us.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What if the rel=”canonical” returns a 404?</strong><br />We’ll continue to index your content and use a heuristic to find a canonical, but we recommend that you specify existent URLs as canonicals.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What if the rel=”canonical” hasn’t yet been indexed?</strong><br />Like all public content on the web, we strive to discover and crawl a designated canonical URL quickly. As soon as we index it, we’ll immediately reconsider the rel=”canonical” hint.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Can rel=”canonical” be a redirect?</strong><br />Yes, you can specify a URL that redirects as a canonical URL. Google will then process the redirect as usual and try to index it.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What if I have contradictory rel=”canonical” designations?</strong><br />Our algorithm is lenient: We can follow canonical chains, but we strongly recommend that you update links to point to a single canonical page to ensure optimal canonicalization results.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Can this link tag be used to suggest a canonical URL on a completely different domain?</strong><br /><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">**</strong>Update on 12/17/2009: The answer is yes! We now support a <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">cross-domain rel=”canonical”</a> link element.<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">**</strong></div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">More reading at <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html</a></div><span class="offset" id="do-i-need-a-google-xml-sitemap-for-my-website-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do I Need A Google XML Sitemap For My Website?</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is an XML sitemap and do I need one to SEO my site for Google?</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">(The XML Sitemap protocol) has wide adoption, including support from Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">No. You do NOT, technically, <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">need</em> an XML Sitemap to optimise a site for Google if you have a sensible navigation system that Google can crawl and index easily.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">HOWEVER – in 2017 – you should have a Content Management System that produces one as a best practice – and you should submit that sitemap to Google in Google Webmaster Tools. Again – best practice.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google has said very recently XML and RSS are still a very useful discovery method for them to pick out recently updated content on your site.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">An XML Sitemap is a file on your server with which you can help Google easily crawl & index all the pages on your site. This is evidently useful for very large sites that publish lots of new content or updates content regularly.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Your web pages will still get into search results without an XML sitemap if Google can find them by crawling your website if you:</div><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Make sure all your pages link to at least one other in your site</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Link to your important pages often, with (varying anchor text, in the navigation and <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">in page text content if you want best results)</strong></li></ol><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Remember – Google needs links to find all the pages on your site, and links spread Pagerank, that help pages rank – so an XML sitemap is not quite a substitute for a great website architecture.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.sitemaps.org/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sitemaps</a> are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">relative to other URLs in the site</strong>) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Most modern CMS auto-generate XML sitemaps and <a href="https://support.google.com/sites/answer/100283?hl=en" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google does ask you submit a site-map in webmaster tools</a>, and I do these days.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I prefer to define manually my important pages by links and depth of content, but an XML sitemap is a best practice in 2017 for most sites.</div><span class="offset" id="rich-snippets" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Rich Snippets</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Rich Snippets</strong> and <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Schema Mark-up</strong> can be intimidating if you are new to them – but important data about your business can actually be very simply added to your site by sensible optimisation of your website footer.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is easy to implement.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">An optimised website footer can comply with law, may help search engines understand your site better and can help usability and improve conversions.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Properly optimised your website footer can also help you make your search snippet stand out in Google results pages:</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Rich Snippets" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19347" height="109" sizes="(max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px" src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2015-04-14-at-00.53.05.png" srcset="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2015-04-14-at-00.53.05.png 510w, http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2015-04-14-at-00.53.05-300x64.png 300w" style="border: 1px solid rgb(203, 204, 205); clear: both; display: block !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; margin-top: 25px; max-width: 100%; padding: 3px; text-align: center !important; vertical-align: baseline;" width="510" /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you are a business in the UK – your website needs to meet the legal requirements necessary to comply with the <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">UK Companies Act 2007</strong>. It’s easy to just incorporate this required information into your footer.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Companies in the UK must include certain regulatory information on their <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">websites and in their email footers …… or they will breach the Companies Act and risk a fine</span>. OUTLAW</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Here’s what you need to know regarding website and email footers to comply with the UK Companies Act (with our information in <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">bold</strong>);</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">———————————-</div><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Company Name –<br /><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MBSA Marketing LTD (Trading as Hobo)</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Physical geographic address (A PO Box is unlikely to suffice as a geographic address; but a registered office address would – If the business is a company, the registered office address must be included.)<br /><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MBSA Marketing LTD trading as Hobo,<br />68 Finnart Street,<br />Greenock,<br />PA16 8HJ.<br />Scotland, UK</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the company’s registration number should be given and, under the Companies Act, the place of registration should be stated (e.g.<br /><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MBSA Marketing LTD is a company registered in Scotland with company number SC536213</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">email address of the company (It is not sufficient to include a ‘contact us’ form without also providing an email address and geographic address somewhere easily accessible on the site)<br /><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">info@hobo-web.co.uk</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The name of the organisation with which the customer is contracting must be given. This might differ from the trading name. Any such difference should be explained<br /><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The domain hobo-web.co.uk and the Hobo logo and creative is owned by Shaun Anderson and licensed to MBSA Marketing LTD of which Shaun is an employed co-founding director</strong>.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If your business has a VAT number, it should be stated even if the website is not being used for e-commerce transactions.<br /><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VAT No. 249 1439 90</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Prices on the website must be clear and unambiguous. Also, state whether prices are inclusive of tax and delivery costs.<br /><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">All Hobo Web Co Uk prices stated in email or on the website EXCLUDE VAT</strong></li></ol><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">———————————-</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The above information <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">does not</strong> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">need</em> to feature on every page, more on a clearly accessible page. However – with Google Quality Raters rating web pages on quality based on Expertise, Authority and Trust (see my recent <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/google-panda-making-high-quality-websites-in-2015/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">making high-quality websites</a> post) – ANY signal you can send to an algorithm or human reviewer’s eyes that you are a legitimate business is probably a sensible move at this time (if you have nothing to hide, of course).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Note: If the business is a member of a trade or professional association, membership details, including any registration number, should be provided. Consider also the Distance Selling Regulations which contain other information requirements for online businesses that sell to consumers (B2C, as opposed to B2B, sales).</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">For more detailed information about the UK Companies:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/20060046.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Companies Act 2006</a> (HTML version)</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2006/20063429.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Companies (Registrar, Languages and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2006</a></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/ukpga_20060046_en.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Companies Act</a> (760-page / 2.8MB PDF)</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.out-law.com/page-431" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The UK’s E-commerce Regulations</a> – OUT-LAW’s excellent guide</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Although we display most if not all of this information on email and website footers, I thought it would be handy to gather this information clearly on one page and explain why it’s there – and wrap it all up in a (hopefully) informative post.</div><span class="offset" id="dynamic-php-copyright-notice-in-wordpress" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dynamic PHP Copyright Notice in WordPress</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Now that your site complies with the Act – you’ll want to ensure your website never looks obviously out of date.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">While you are editing your footer – ensure your copyright notice is dynamic and will change year to year – automatically.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s simple to display a dynamic date in your footer in WordPress, for instance, so you never need to change your copyright notice on your blog when the year changes.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This little bit of code will display the current year. Just add it in your theme’s footer.php and you can forget about making sure you don’t look stupid, or give the impression your site is out of date and unused, at the beginning of every year.</div><pre style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(241, 238, 230); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; overflow: auto; padding: 15px 5px 15px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">&copy; Copyright 2004 - <?php echo date("Y") ?></pre><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A simple and elegant php copyright notice for WordPress blogs.</div><span class="offset" id="adding-schema-org-mark-up-to-your-footer" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Adding Schema.org Mark-up to Your Footer</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can take your information you have from above and transform it with Schema.org mark-up to give even more accurate information to search engines.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">From this….</div><pre style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(241, 238, 230); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; overflow: auto; padding: 15px 5px 15px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div><br /> <p> © Copyright 2006-2016 MBSA Marketing LTD trading as Hobo, Company No. SC536213 | VAT No. 249 1439 90 <br><br /> 68 Finnart Street, Greenock, PA16 8HJ, Scotland, UK | TEL: 0800 689 0293<br><br /> Business hours are 09.00 a.m. to 17.00 p.m. Monday to Friday - Local Time is <span id="time">9:44:36</span> (GMT)<br /> </p><br /></div><br /></pre><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">…to this.</div><pre style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(241, 238, 230); border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; overflow: auto; padding: 15px 5px 15px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div><br /> <div itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness"><br /> © Copyright 2006-2016 <span itemprop="name">Hobo</span><br /> <div itemprop="address" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress"><br /> ADDRESS:<br /> <span itemprop="streetAddress">68 Finnart Street</span>,<br /> <span itemprop="addressLocality">Greenock</span>,<br /> <span itemprop="addressRegion">Scotland</span>,<br /> <span itemprop="postalCode">PA16 8HJ</span>,<br /> <span itemprop="addressCountry">GB</span> |<br /> TEL: <span itemprop="telephone">0800 689 0293</span> |<br /> EMAIL: <a href="mailto:info@hobo-web.co.uk" itemprop="email">info@hobo-web.co.uk</a>.<br /> </div><br /> <br /> <span itemprop="geo" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/GeoCoordinates"><br /> <meta itemprop="latitude" content="55.9516"><br /> <meta itemprop="longitude" content="4.7725"><br /> </span><br /> <br /> <span>Company No. SC536213</span> |<br /> VAT No.<span itemprop="vatID">249 1439 90</span> |<br /> Business hours are <time itemprop="openingHours" datetime="Mo,Tu,We,Th,Fr 09:00-17:00">09.00 a.m. to 17.00 p.m. Monday to Friday</time><br /> Local Time is <span id="time">9:46:20</span> (GMT)<br /><br /> </div><br /> <br /> <span class="rating-desc" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Product"><br /> <span itemprop="name">Hobo Web SEO Services</span><br /> <span itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating"> Rated <span itemprop="ratingValue">4.8</span> / 5 based on <span itemprop="reviewCount">11</span> reviews. | <a class="ratings" href="https://plus.google.com/b/113802450121722957804/113802450121722957804/about/p/pub?review=1">Review Us</a> </span><br /> </span><br /></div><br /></pre><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tip: Note the code near the end of the above example, if you are wondering <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">how to get yellow star ratings in Google results pages</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I got yellow stars in Google <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">within a few days of adding the code to my website template</strong> – directly linking my site to information Google already has about my business.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Also – you can modify that link to plus.google.com to <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">link directly to your REVIEWS page on Google Plus</strong> to encourage people to review your business.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Now you can have a website footer that helps your business comply with UK Law, is more usable, automatically updates the copyright notice year – <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and</strong> helps your website stick out in Google SERPs.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">PRO Tip</strong> – Now you know the basics, consider implementing rich schema using a much cleaner method called <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">JSON-LD</strong>!</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">More Reading</strong></div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://developers.google.com/structured-data/?hl=en&rd=1" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/99170?hl=en</a></li></ul><span class="offset" id="keep-it-simple-stupid" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Keep It Simple, Stupid</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t Build Your Site With Flash or HTML Frames.</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Well… not entirely in Flash, and especially not if you know very little about the ever improving accessibility of Flash.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Flash is a propriety plug-in created by Macromedia to infuse (albeit) fantastically rich media for your websites. The W3C advises you avoid the use of such proprietary technology to construct an entire site. Instead, build your site with CSS and HTML ensuring everyone, including search engine robots, can sample your website content. Then, if required, you can embed media files such as Flash in the HTML of your website.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Flash, in the hands of an inexperienced designer, can cause all types of problems at the moment, especially with:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Accessibility</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Search Engines</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Users not having the Plug-In</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Large Download Times</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Flash doesn’t even work at all on some devices, like the Apple iPhone. Note that Google sometimes highlights if your site is not mobile friendly on some devices. And on the subject of mobile-friendly websites – note that <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google has alerted the webmaster community that mobile friendliness will be a search engine ranking factor in 2017</strong>.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Starting April 21 (2015), we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high-quality search results that are optimized for their devices. GOOGLE</em></div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Html5 is the preferred option over Flash these days, for most designers. A site built entirely in Flash could cause an unsatisfactory user experience, and could affect your rankings, and especially in mobile search results. For similar accessibility and user satisfaction reasons, I would also say <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/website-frames/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">don’t build a site with website frames</a>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">As in any form of design, don’t try and re-invent the wheel when simple solutions suffice. The <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">KISS</strong> philosophy has been around since the dawn of design.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">KISS</em> does not mean boring web pages. You can create stunning sites with smashing graphics – but you should build these sites using simple techniques – HTML & CSS, for instance. If you are new to web design, avoid things like Flash and JavaScript, especially for elements like scrolling news tickers, etc. These elements work fine for TV – but only cause problems for website visitors.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Keep layouts and navigation arrays consistent and simple too. Don’t spend time, effort and money (especially if you work in a professional environment) designing fancy navigation menus if, for example, your new website is an information site.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Same with website optimisation – keep your documents well structured and keep your page Title Elements and text content relevant, use Headings tags sensibly and try and avoid leaving too much of a footprint – whatever you are up to.</div><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://validator.w3.org/mobile/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://validator.w3.org/mobile/</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/best-screen-size/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Best Screen Size</a></li></ol><span class="offset" id="how-fast-should-your-website-download-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How Fast Should Your Website Download?</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">‘Site Speed’, we are told by Google in the above video, <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">is</strong> a ranking factor. But as with any factor Google confirms <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">is</em> a ranking signal, it’s usually a small, ‘nuanced’ one.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A fast site is a good user experience</strong> (UX), and a satisfying UX <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">leads to higher conversions</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">How fast your website loads is a critical – but often completely ignored – element in any online business – and that includes search marketing and search engine optimisation.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Very slow</strong> sites are a <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">bad user experience</strong> – and Google is <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">all about</em> GOOD UX these days.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Screenshot 2015-05-14 01.02.07" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19446" height="528" sizes="(max-width: 467px) 100vw, 467px" src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2015-05-14-01.02.07.png" srcset="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2015-05-14-01.02.07.png 467w, http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2015-05-14-01.02.07-265x300.png 265w" style="border: 1px solid rgb(203, 204, 205); clear: both; display: block !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; margin-top: 25px; max-width: 100%; padding: 3px; text-align: center !important; vertical-align: baseline;" width="467" /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How Much is ‘Website Speed’ a Google Ranking Factor?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">‘How much is a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">very slow site</em> a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">negative</em> ranking factor’ is a more useful interpretation of the claim that ‘<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">website speed is a Google ranking factor</em>‘.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">First – for I have witnessed VERY slow websites of 10 seconds and more negatively impacted in Google, and second, from statements made by Googlers:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We do say we have a small factor in there for pages that are really slow to load where we take that into account</em>. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">John Mueller, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0thsBnTUyg#t=2760" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">GOOGLE</a></strong></div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google might crawl your site slower if you have a slow site. And that’s bad – especially if you are adding new content or making changes to it.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We’re seeing an extremely high response-time for requests made to your site (at times, over <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">2 seconds to fetch a single URL</strong>). This has resulted in us severely limiting the number of URLs we’ll crawl from your site.</em><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">John Mueller, <a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/google-crawl-slow-tw0-seconds-20070.html" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">GOOGLE</a></strong></div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">John specifically said 2 seconds disrupts CRAWLING activity, not RANKING ability, but you get the picture.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How Fast Should Your Website Load in 2017?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Recent research is hard to find, but would indicate <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/your-website-design-should-load-in-4-seconds/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">as fast as possible</a></em>.</div><span class="offset" id="a-non-technical-google-seo-strategy" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A Non-Technical Google SEO Strategy</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Here are some final thoughts:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Use common sense</strong> – Google is a search engine – it is looking for pages to give searchers results, 90% of its users are looking for information. Google itself WANTS the organic results full of information. Almost all websites will link to relevant information content so content rich websites get a lot of links – especially quality links. Google ranks websites with a lot of links (especially quality links) at he top of its search engines so the obvious thing you need to do is <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ADD A LOT INFORMATIVE CONTENT TO YOUR WEBSITE</strong>.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">I think ranking in organic listings is a lot about trusted links making trusted pages rank, making trusted links making trusted pages rank ad nauseam for various keywords. Some pages can pass trust to another site; some pages cannot. Some links can. Some cannot. Some links are trusted to pass ranking ability to another page. Some are not. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">YOU NEED LINKS FROM TRUSTED PAGES IF YOU WANT TO RANK AND AVOID PENALTIES & FILTERS.</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google engineers are building an AI – but it’s all based on simple human desires to make something happen or indeed to prevent something. You can work with Google engineers or against them. They need to make money for Google but unfortunately for them they need to make the best search engine in the world for us humans as part of the deal. Build a site that takes advantage of this. What is a Google engineer trying to do with an algorithm? I always remember it was an idea first before it was an algorithm. What was that idea?<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </strong>Think like a Google engineers and give Google what it wants.<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </strong>What is Google trying to give its users? Align with <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">that</em>. What does Google not want to give its users? Don’t look anything like <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">that</em>. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">THINK LIKE A GOOGLE ENGINEER & BUILD A SITE THEY WANT TO GIVE TOP RANKINGS</strong>.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google is a links-based search engine.</em> Google doesn’t need content to <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">rank</em> pages but it needs content to give to <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">users</em>. Google needs to find content and it finds content by following links just like you do when clicking on a link. So you need first to make sure you tell the world about your site so other sites link to yours. Don’t worry about reciprocating to more powerful sites or even real sites – I think this adds to your domain authority<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> – which is better to have than ranking for just a few narrow key terms.</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Everything has limits. Google has limits.</strong> What are they? How would you go about observing them or even testing, breaking them or benefiting from them or being penalised by them? It’s not a lab setting – you can’t test much if anything, 100% accurately, but you can hypothesise based on the sensible approach bearing in mind what a Google engineer would do, and what you would do if Google were yours.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">The best way for Google to keep rankings secret ultimately is to have a <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">randomness</strong> – or, at least, a randomness on the surface, as it is presented to users of Google – to it while keeping somethings <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">stable</strong> – surely the easiest way for it to prevent a curious optimiser finding out how it works. Well, I think that. And I think this randomness manifests itself in many ways. What will work for some sites might not necessarily work for your sites – not the same anyway. Perhaps no two sites are the same (the conditions are different for a start for any two sites).</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google may play dice with the Google multi-verse</strong> so be aware of that. It uses multiple results and rotates them and serves different results to different machines and browsers even on the same computer. Google results are constantly shifting – some pages rank at the top constantly because they are giving Google what it wants in some areas or they might just have a greater number and diversity of more trusted links than your do.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google has a long memory</strong> when it comes to links and pages and associations for you site – perhaps an infinite memory profile of your site. Perhaps it can forgive but never forget. Perhaps it can forget too, just like us, and so previous penalties or bans can be lifted. I think (depending on the site because Google can work out if you have a blog or an e-commerce site) Google probably also looks at different history versions of particular pages even on single sites WHAT RELATIONSHIP DO YOU WANT TO HAVE WITH GOOGLE? Onsite, don’t try to fool Google – we’re not smart enough. Be squeaky clean on-site and make Google think twice about bumping you for discrepancies in your link profile.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Earn Google’s trust.</strong> Most of our more lucrative accounts come from referrals from clients who trust us. Before clients told them of us, they didn’t know about us. Ok, they might have heard about us from people, in turn, they didn’t trust that much. Upon the clients testimonial, the referral now trusts us a lot more. These referrals automatically trust us to some extent. That trust grows when we deliver. The referral now trusts us very much. But it’s an uphill struggle from that point on to continue to deliver that trust and earn even more trust because you don’t want to dip in trust – it’s nice to get even more and more trusted. Google works the the same way as this human emotion, and search engines have tried for years to deliver a trusted set of sites based on human desire and searcher intent. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MAKE FRIENDS WITH GOOGLE</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t break Google’s trust – if your friend betrays you, depending on what they’ve done, they’ve lost trust. Sometimes that trust has been lost altogether. If you do something Google doesn’t like manipulate it in a way it doesn’t want, you will lose trust, and in some cases, lose all trust (in some areas). For instance, your pages might be able to rank, but your links might not be trusted enough to vouch for another site. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">DON’T FALL OUT WITH GOOGLE OVER SOMETHING STUPID</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">YOU NEED TO MAKE MORE FRIENDS AND ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO ARE FRIENDS WITH GOOGLE.</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">When Google trusts you it’s because you’ve earned its trust to help it carry out what it needs to carry out in the quickest and most profitable way. You’ve helped Google achieve its goals. It trusts you and it will reward you by listing your contribution in order of the sites it trusts the most. It will list friends it trusts the most who it knows to be educated in a particular area at the top of these areas. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IF GOOGLE TRUSTS YOU IT WILL LET YOUR PAGES RANK AND IN TURN, VOUCH FOR OTHER PAGES, or ‘FRIENDS’, GOOGLE MIGHT WANT INFORMATION ON.</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google is fooled and manipulated just like you can but it will  kick you in the gonads if you break this trust – as I probably would. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Treat Google as you would have it treat you.</strong></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Be <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">fast</strong>.</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">REMEMBER IT TAKES TIME TO BUILD TRUST…. AND THAT IS PROBABLY ONE OF THE REASONS WHY GOOGLE is pushing the need to be ‘trusted’ as a ranking modifier.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I, of course, might be reading far too much into Google, TRUST and the TIME Google wants us to wait for things to happen on their end….but consider trust to be a psychological emotion Google is trying to emulate using algorithms based on human ideas.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you do all the above, you’ll get more and more traffic from Google over time.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you want to rank for specific keywords in very competitive niches, you’ll need to be a big brand, be picked out by big brands (and linked to), or buy links to fake that trust, or get spammy with it in an intelligent way you won’t get caught. Easier said, than done.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I suppose Google is open to the con just as any human is if it’s based on human traits….</div><span class="offset" id="what-not-to-do-in-website-search-engine-optimisation" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What Not To Do In Website Search Engine Optimisation</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google has a VERY basic organic search engine optimisation <a href="http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="This Is A PDF!">starter guide</a> pdf for webmasters, which they use internally:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Although this guide won’t tell you any secrets</strong> that’ll automatically rank your site first for queries in Google (sorry!), following the best practices outlined below will make it easier for search engines to both crawl and index your content. <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google</a></div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is still worth a read, even if it is VERY basic, best practice search engine optimisation for your site.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">No search engine will EVER tell you what actual keywords to put on your site to improve your rankings or get more converting organic traffic – and in Google – that’s the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT thing you want to know!</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you want a bigger pdf – try my <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/hobo-uk-seo-a-beginners-guide-v4-2016.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">free SEO ebook</a>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s been downloaded by tens of thousands of webmasters and I update it every year or so.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Here’s a list of <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">what Google tells you to avoid</strong> in the document;</div><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">using default or vague titles like “Untitled” or “New Page 1″</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">using a single title tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">writing a meta description tag that has no relation to the content on the page</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">using generic descriptions like “This is a webpage” or “Page about baseball<br />cards”</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">filling the description with only keywords</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">copy and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">using a single description meta tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">choosing generic page names like “page1.html”</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">using excessive keywords like “baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseball-cards.htm”</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">having deep nesting of subdirectories like “…/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/<br />page.html”</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">using directory names that have no relation to the content in them</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">having pages from subdomains and the root directory (e.g. “domain.com/<br />page.htm” and “sub.domain.com/page.htm”) access the same content</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mixing www. and non-www. versions of URLs in your internal linking structure</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">using odd capitalization of URLs (many users expect lower-case URLs and remember them better)</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">creating complex webs of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site to every other page</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (it takes twenty clicks to get to deep content)</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">having a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or animations (many, but not all, search engines can discover such links on a site, but if a user can reach all pages on a site via normal text links, this will improve the accessibility of your site)</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">letting your HTML sitemap page become out of date with broken links</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">creating an HTML sitemap that simply lists pages without organising them, for example by subject (Edit Shaun – Safe to say especially for larger sites)</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your webserver is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent pages are requested)</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">providing only a vague message like “Not found”, “404″, or no 404 page at all</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">using a design for your 404 pages that isn’t consistent with the rest of your site</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">writing sloppy text with many <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-to-write-seo-friendly-website-content-for-google/#are-poor-spelling-and-bad-grammar-google-ranking-factors-" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">spelling and grammatical mistakes</a></li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">embedding text in images for textual content (users may want to copy and<br />paste the text and search engines can’t read it)</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users</li></ol><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pretty straight forward stuff but sometimes it’s the simple stuff that often gets overlooked. Of course, you put the above together with Google Guidelines for webmasters.</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site’s user experience and performance in organic search results.</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t make these simple but dangerous mistakes…..</div><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Avoid duplicating content on your site found on other sites. Yes, Google likes content, but it *usually* needs to be well linked to, unique and original to get you to the top!</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t hide text on your website. Google may eventually remove you from the SERPs.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t buy 1000 links and think “that will get me to the top!”. Google likes natural link growth and often frowns on mass link buying.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t get everybody to link to you using the same “anchor text” or link phrase. This could flag you as a ‘rank modifier’. You don’t want that.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t chase Google PR by chasing 100′s of links. Think quality of links….not quantity.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t buy many keyword rich domains, fill them with similar content and link them to your site. This is lazy and dangerous and could see you ignored or worse banned from Google. It might have worked yesterday but it sure does not work today without some grief from Google.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do not constantly change your site pages names or site navigation without remembering to employ redirects. This just screws you up in any search engine.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do not build a site with a JavaScript navigation that Google, Yahoo and Bing cannot crawl.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do not link to everybody who asks you for reciprocal links. Only link out to quality sites you feel can be trusted.</li></ol><span class="offset" id="don-t-flag-your-site-with-poor-website-optimisation" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t Flag Your Site With Poor Website Optimisation</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A primary goal of any ‘rank modification’ is not to flag your site as ‘suspicious’ to Google’s algorithms or their web spam team.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I would recommend you forget about tricks like links in H1 tags etc. or linking to the same page 3 times with different anchor text on one page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Forget about ‘which is best’ when considering things you shouldn’t be wasting your time with.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Every element on a page is a benefit to you until you spam it.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Put a keyword in every tag and you will flag your site as ‘trying too hard’ if you haven’t got the link trust to cut it – and Google’s algorithms will go to work.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Spamming Google is often counter-productive over the long term.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">So:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t spam your anchor text link titles with the same keyword.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t spam your ALT Tags or any other tags either.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Add your keywords intelligently.</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Try and make the site mostly for humans, not just search engines.</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">On Page SEO is not as simple as a checklist any more of keyword here, keyword there. Optimisers are up against lots of smart folk at the Googleplex – and they purposely make this practice difficult.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">For those who need a checklist, this is the sort of one that gets me results;</div><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do keyword research</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Identify valuable searcher intent opportunities</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Identify the audience & the reason for your page</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Write utilitarian copy – be useful. Use related terms in your content. Use plurals. Use words with searcher intent like buy, compare. I like to get a keyword or related term in every paragraph.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Use <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">emphasis</strong> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">sparingly</em> to emphasise the important points in the page whether they are your keywords are not</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pick an intelligent Page Title with your keyword in it</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Write an intelligent meta description, repeating it on the page</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Add an image with user-centric ALT attribute text</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Link to related pages on your site within the text</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Link to related pages on other sites</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Your page should have a simple Google friendly URL</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Keep it simple</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Share it and pimp it</li></ol><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can forget about <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">just about</em> everything else.</div><span class="offset" id="the-continual-evolution-of-seo" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Continual Evolution of SEO</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The ‘Keyword Not Provided’ incident is another example of Google making ranking in organic listings HARDER – a change for ‘users’ that seems to have the most impact on ‘marketers’ outside of Google’s ecosystem – yes – search engine optimisers.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Now, consultants need to be page-centric (abstract, I know), instead of just keyword centric when optimising a web page for Google. There are now plenty of third party tools that help when researching keywords but most of us miss the kind of keyword intelligence we used to have access to.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Proper keyword research is important because getting a site to the top of Google eventually comes down to your text content on a page and keywords in external & internal links. Altogether, Google uses these signals to determine where you rank if you rank at all.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s no magic bullet, to this.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">At any one time, your site is probably feeling the influence of some algorithmic filter (for example, <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/google-panda-making-high-quality-websites-in-2015/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Panda</a> or <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/google-penguin-update/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Penguin</a>) designed to keep spam sites under control and deliver relevant, high-quality results to human visitors.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">One filter may be kicking in keeping a page down in the SERPs while another filter is pushing another page up. You might have poor content but excellent incoming links, or vice versa. You might have very good content, but a very poor technical organisation of it.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Try and identify the reasons Google doesn’t ‘rate’ a particular page higher than the competition – the answer is usually on the page or in backlinks pointing to the page.</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do you have too few quality inbound links?</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do you have too many low quality backlinks?</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Does your page lack descriptive keyword rich text?</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Are you keyword stuffing your text?</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do you link out to unrelated sites?</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do you have too many advertisements above the fold?</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do you have affiliate links on every page of your site, and text found on other websites?</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do you have broken links and missing images on the page?</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Whatever they are, identify issues and fix them.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Get on the wrong side of Google and your site might well be selected for MANUAL review – so <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">optimise your site as if, one day, you will get that website review from a Google Web Spam reviewer</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The key to a successful campaign, I think, is persuading Google that your page is most relevant to any given search query. You do this by good unique keyword rich text content and getting “quality” links to that page.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The latter is far easier to say these days than actually do!</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Next time you are developing a page, consider what looks spammy to you is probably spammy to Google. Ask yourself which pages on your site are really necessary. Which links are necessary? Which pages on the site are emphasised in the site architecture? Which pages would you ignore?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can help a site along in any number of ways (including making sure your page titles and meta tags are unique) but be careful. Obvious evidence of ‘rank modifying’ is dangerous.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I prefer simple SEO techniques and ones that can be measured in some way. I have never <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">just</em> wanted to<strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> rank for competitive terms</strong>; I have always wanted to understand at least some of the reasons why a page ranked for these key phrases. I try to create a good user experience for humans AND search engines. If you make high-quality text content relevant and suitable for both these audiences, you’ll more than likely find success in organic listings and you might not ever need to get into the technical side of things, like redirects and <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/search-engine-friendly-urls/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">search engine friendly URLs</a>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">To beat the competition in an industry where it’s difficult to attract quality links, you have to get more “technical” sometimes – and in some industries – you’ve traditionally needed to be 100% black hat to even get in the top 100 results of competitive, transactional searches.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are no hard and fast rules to long term ranking success, other than developing quality websites with quality content and quality links pointing to it. The less domain authority you have, the more text you’re going to need. The aim is to build a satisfying website and build real authority!</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You need to mix it up and learn from experience. Make mistakes and learn from them by observation. I’ve found getting penalised is a very good way to learn what not to do.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Remember there are exceptions to nearly every rule, and in an ever fluctuating landscape, and you probably have little chance determining exactly <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">why</em> you rank in search engines these days. I’ve been doing it for over 15 years and every day I’m trying to better understand Google, to learn more and learn from others’ experiences.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s important not to obsess about granular ranking specifics that have little return on your investment unless you really have the time to do so! THERE IS USUALLY SOMETHING MORE VALUABLE TO SPEND THAT TIME ON.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s usually either good backlinks or great content.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fundamentals</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 441.99px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid13" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KyCYyoGusqs" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 441.99px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The fundamentals of successful optimisation while refined have not changed much over the years – although Google does seem a LOT better than it was at rewarding pages with some reputation signals and satisfying content / usability.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google isn’t lying about rewarding legitimate effort</strong> – despite what some claim. If they were, I would be a black hat full time. So would everybody else trying to rank in Google.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The majority of small to medium businesses do not need advanced strategies because their direct competition has not employed these tactics either.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I took a medium sized business to the top of Google recently for very competitive terms doing nothing but ensuring page titles were optimised, the home page text was re-written, one or two earned links from trusted sites.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This site was a couple of years old, a clean record in Google, and a couple of organic links already from trusted sites.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This domain had the authority and capability to rank for some valuable terms, and all we had to do was to make a few changes on the site, improve the depth and focus of website content, monitor keyword performance and tweak page titles.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There was a little <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/duplicate-content-problems/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">duplicate content</a> needing sorting out and a bit of canonicalisation of thin content to resolve, but <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">none</strong> of the measures I implemented I’d call advanced.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A lot of businesses can get more converting visitors from Google simply by following basic principles and best practices:</div><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Always making sure that every page in the site links out to at least one other page in the site</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Link to your important pages often</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Link not only from your navigation, but from keyword rich text links in text content – keep this natural and for visitors</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Try to keep each page element and content unique as possible</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Build a site for visitors to get visitors and you just might convert some to actual sales too</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Create keyword considered content on the site people will link to</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Watch which sites you link to and from what pages, but do link out!</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Go and find some places on relatively trusted sites to try and get some anchor text rich inbound links</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Monitor trends, check stats</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Minimise duplicate or thin content</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Bend a rule or two without breaking them and you’ll probably be ok</li></ol><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Once this is complete it’s time to … add more, and better content to your site and tell more people about it, if you want more Google love.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">OK, so you might have to implement the odd 301, but again, it’s hardly <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">advanced</em>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve seen simple SEO marketing techniques working for years.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You are better off doing simple stuff better and faster than worrying about some of the more ‘advanced’ techniques you read on some blogs I think – it’s more productive, cost effective for businesses and safer, for most.</div><span class="offset" id="beware-pseudoscience-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Beware Pseudoscience </strong></h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 441.99px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid14" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/HtMX_0jDsrw" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 441.99px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pseudoscience</em> is a claim, belief, or practice posing as science, but which does not constitute or adhere to an appropriate scientific methodology…</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Beware folk trying to bamboozle you with science. This isn’t a science when Google controls the ‘laws’ and changes them at will.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You see I have always thought that optimisation was about:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Looking at Google rankings all night long,</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Keyword research</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Observations about ranking performance of your pages and that of others (though not in a controlled environment)</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Putting relevant, co-occurring words you want to rank for on pages</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Putting words in links to pages you want to rank for</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Understanding what you put in your title, that’s what you are going to rank best for</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Getting links from other websites pointing to yours</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Getting real quality links that will last from sites that are pretty trustworthy</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Publishing lots and lots of content</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Focusing on the long tail of search!!!</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Understanding it will take time to beat all this competition</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I always expected to get a site demoted, by:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Getting too many links with the same anchor text pointing to a page</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Keyword stuffing a page</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Trying to manipulate Google too much on a site</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Creating a “frustrating user experience.”</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Chasing the algorithm too much</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Getting links I shouldn’t have</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Buying links</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Not that any of the above is automatically penalised all the time.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I was always of the mind I don’t need to understand the maths or science of Google, that much, to understand what Google engineers want.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The biggest challenge these days are to get trusted sites to link to you, but the rewards are worth it.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">To do it, you probably should be investing in some marketable content, or compelling benefits for the linking party (that’s not just paying for links somebody else can pay more for). Buying links to improve rankings WORKS but it is probably THE most hated link building technique as far as the Google web spam team is concerned.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I was very curious about the science of optimisation I studied what I could but it left me a little unsatisfied. I learned that <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">building links</strong>, creating <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">lots of decent content </strong>and learning <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">how to monetise that content better</strong> (while not breaking any major TOS of Google) would have been a more worthwhile use of my time.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Getting <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">better and faster at doing all that would be nice too</em>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are many problems with blogs, too, including mine.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Misinformation is an obvious one. Rarely are your results conclusive or observations 100% accurate. Even if you think a theory holds water on some level. I try to update old posts with new information if I think the page is only valuable with accurate data.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Just remember most of what you read about how Google works from a third party is OPINION and just like in every other sphere of knowledge, ‘facts’ can change with a greater understanding over time or with a different perspective.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Chasing The Algorithm</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There is no magic bullet and there are no secret formulas to achieve fast number 1 ranking in Google in any competitive niche WITHOUT spamming Google.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A legitimately earned high position in search engines takes a lot of hard work.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are a few less talked about tricks and tactics that are deployed by some better than others to combat Google Panda, for instance, but there are no big secrets (no “white hat” secrets anyway). There is clever strategy, though, and creative solutions to be found to exploit opportunities uncovered by researching the niche. As soon as Google sees a strategy that gets results… it usually becomes ‘out with the guidelines’ and something you can be penalised for – so <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">beware jumping on the latest fad</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The biggest advantage any one provider has over another is experience and resource. The knowledge of what doesn’t work and what will hurt your site is often more valuable than knowing what will give you a short-lived boost. Getting to the top of Google is a relatively simple process. One that is constantly in change. Professional SEO is more a collection of skills, methods and techniques. It is more a way of doing things, than a one-size-fits-all magic trick.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">After over a decade practising and deploying real campaigns, I’m still trying to get it down to its simplest, most cost-effective processes.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I think it’s about doing simple stuff right.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Good text, simple navigation structure, quality links. To be relevant and reputable takes time, effort and luck, just like anything else in the real world, and that is the way Google want it.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If a company is promising you guaranteed rankings and has a magic bullet strategy, watch out.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’d check it didn’t contravene Google’s guidelines.</div><span class="offset" id="how-long-does-it-take-to-see-results-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How Long Does It Take To See Results?</strong></h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some results can be gained within weeks and you need to expect some strategies to take months to see the benefit. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google WANTS these efforts to take time.</strong> Critics of the search engine giant would point to Google wanting fast effective rankings to be a feature of Googles own Adwords sponsored listings.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Optimisation is not a quick process, and a successful campaign can be judged on months if not years. Most successful, fast ranking website optimisation techniques end up finding their way into Google Webmaster Guidelines – so be wary.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It takes time to build quality, and it’s this <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">quality</em> that Google aims to reward in 2017.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It takes time to generate the data needed to begin to formulate a campaign, and time to deploy that campaign. Progress also depends on many factors</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">How old is your site compared to the top 10 sites?</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">How many back-links do you have compared to them?</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">How is their quality of back-links compared to yours?</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">What the history of people linking to you (what words have people been using to link to your site?)</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">How good of a resource is your site?</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Can your site attract natural back-links (e.g. you have good content or a great service) or are you 100% relying on your agency for back-links (which is very risky in 2017)?</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">How much unique content do you have?</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do you have to pay everyone to link to you (which is risky), or do you have a “natural” reason people might link to you?</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google wants to return quality pages in its organic listings, and it takes time to build this quality and for that quality to be recognised.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It takes time too to balance your content, generate quality backlinks and manage your disavowed links.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google knows how valuable organic traffic is – and they want webmasters investing a LOT of effort in ranking pages.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Critics will point out the higher the cost of expert SEO, the better-looking Adwords becomes, but Adwords will only get more expensive, too. At some point, if you want to compete online, your going to HAVE to build a quality website, with a unique offering to satisfy returning visitors – the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll start to see results.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you start NOW and are determined to build an online brand, a website rich in content with a satisfying user experience  – Google will reward you in organic listings.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROI</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Web optimisation is a marketing channel just like any other and there are no guarantees of success in any, for what should be obvious reasons. There are no guarantees in Google Adwords either, except that costs to compete will go up, of course.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s why it is so attractive – but like all marketing – it is still a gamble.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">At the moment, I don’t know you, your business, your website, your resources, your competition or your product. Even with all that knowledge, calculating ROI is extremely difficult because ultimately Google decides on who ranks where in its results – sometimes that’s ranking better sites, and sometimes (often) it is ranking sites breaking the rules above yours.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nothing is absolute in search marketing.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are no guarantees – despite claims from some companies. What you make from this investment is dependent on many things, not least, how suited your website is to convert visitors to sales.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Every site is different.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Big Brand campaigns are far, far different from small business SEO campaigns that don’t have any links to begin with, to give you but one example.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s certainly easier if the brand in question has a lot of domain authority just waiting to unlocked – but of course, that’s a generalisation as big brands have big brand competition too.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It depends entirely on the quality of the site in question and the level and quality of the competition, but smaller businesses should probably look to own their niche, even if limited to their location, at first.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Local SEO is always a good place to start for small businesses.</div><span class="offset" id="what-makes-a-page-spam-" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What Makes A Page Spam?</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="fluid-width-video-wrapper" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 441.99px 0px 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" id="fitvid15" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yHpRlextjL0?rel=0" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 441.99px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 785.771px;"></iframe></div><br /><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">What makes a page spam?:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hidden text or links – may be exposed by selecting all page text and scrolling to the bottom (all text is highlighted), disabling CSS/Javascript, or viewing source code</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sneaky redirects – redirecting through several URLs, rotating destination domains cloaking with JavaScript redirects and 100% frame</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Keyword stuffing – no percentage or keyword density given; this is up to the rater</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">PPC ads that only serve to make money, not help users</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Copied/scraped content and PPC ads</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Feeds with PPC ads</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Doorway pages – multiple landing pages that all direct user to the same destination</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Templates and other computer-generated pages mass-produced, marked by copied content and/or slight keyword variations</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Copied message boards with no other page content</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fake search pages with PPC ads</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fake blogs with PPC ads, identified by copied/scraped or nonsensical spun content</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thin affiliate sites that only exist to make money, identified by checkout on a different domain, image properties showing origination at another URL, lack of original content, different WhoIs registrants of the two domains in question</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pure PPC pages with little to no content</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">Parked domains</li></ul></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s more on this announcement at <a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2118334/How-Googles-Human-Search-Quality-Raters-Assign-a-URL-Rating" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SEW</a>.</div><span class="offset" id="if-a-page-exists-only-to-make-money-the-page-is-spam-to-google" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If A Page Exists Only To Make Money, The Page Is Spam, to Google</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Quote:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If A Page Exists Only To Make Money, The Page Is Spam GOOGLE</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">In BOTH leaked quality rater guidelines we’ve seen for Google quality raters this statement is pretty <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">standout</strong> – and should be a heads up to any webmaster out there who thinks they are going to make a fast buck from Google organic listings these days.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It should, at least, make you think about the types of pages you are going to spend your valuable time making.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Without VALUE ADD for Google’s users – don’t expect to rank.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you are making a page today with the sole purpose of making money from it – and especially with <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">free traffic from Google</strong> – you obviously didn’t get the memo.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Consider this from a manual reviewer:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">…when they DO <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">get to the top</strong>, they <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">have to be reviewed with a human eye</strong> in order to make sure the site has quality. <a href="http://www.potpiegirl.com/2011/10/how-google-makes-algorithm-changes/#ixzz1bEZzEuHW" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">potpiegirl</a></div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s worth remembering:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If A Page Exists Only To Make Money, The Page Is Spam</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">If A Site Exists Only To Make Money, The Site Is Spam</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is how what you make will be judged – whether it is fair or not.</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IS IT ALL BAD NEWS?</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Of course not – in some cases – it levels the playing field.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you come at a website thinking it is going to be a load of work and passion, thinking:</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">DIFFERENTIATE YOURSELF</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">BE REMARKABLE</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">BE ACCESSIBLE</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">ADD UNIQUE CONTENT TO YOUR SITE</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">GET CREDITED AS THE SOURCE OF UNIQUE CONTENT</li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;">HELP USERS (!) IN A WAY THAT IS NOT ALREADY DONE BY 100 OTHER SITES</li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">…. then you might find you’ve built a pretty good site and even, in time – a ‘brand’.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google doesn’t care about us SEO or websites – but it <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">DOES</strong> care about <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">HELPING USERS</strong>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">So, if you are helping your visitors – and not by just getting them to another website – you are probably doing one thing right at least.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">With this in mind – I am already building affiliate sites differently.</div><span class="offset" id="doorway-pages" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Doorway Pages</span></h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google has announced they intend to target doorway pages in the next big update. The definition of what a doorway page is sure to evolve over the coming years – and this will start again, soon.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">The last time Google announced they were going after doorway pages and doorway sites was back in 2015.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Example:  in the images below (from 2011), all pages on the site seemed to be hit with a -50+ penalty for everything.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">First – Google <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">rankings for main terms tanked</strong>….</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="doorway page penalty in google" height="299" src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/doorway-page-penalty-google.png" style="border: 1px solid rgb(203, 204, 205); clear: both; display: block !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; margin-top: 25px; max-width: 100%; padding: 3px; text-align: center !important; vertical-align: baseline;" title="doorway page penalty in google" width="703" /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">… which led to a traffic apocalypse of course….</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Google detected doorway pages penalty" height="235" src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/detected-doorway-pages-google.png" style="border: 1px solid rgb(203, 204, 205); clear: both; display: block !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; margin-top: 25px; max-width: 100%; padding: 3px; text-align: center !important; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Google detected doorway pages penalty" width="659" /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">…and they got a nice <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">email from Google WMT</strong>:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected doorway pages on </strong>xxxxxxxx – Dear site owner or webmaster of xxxxxxxx, We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, your site may have what we consider to be doorway pages – groups of “cookie cutter” or low-quality pages. Such pages are often of low value to users and are <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">often optimized for single words or phrases in order to channel users to a single location</em>. We believe that doorway pages typically create a frustrating user experience, and we encourage you to correct or remove any pages that violate our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results. If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What Are Doorway Pages?</strong></div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. In many cases, doorway pages are written to rank for a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination. Doorway pages are web pages that are created for spamdexing, this is, for spamming the index of a search engine by inserting results for particular phrases with the purpose of sending visitors to a different page. They are also known as bridge pages, portal pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages and by other names. Doorway pages that redirect visitors without their knowledge use some form of cloaking. Whether deployed across many domains or established within one domain, doorway pages tend to frustrate users, and are in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. Google’s aim is to give our users the most valuable and relevant search results. Therefore, we frown on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the ones they selected, and that provide content solely for the benefit of search engines. Google may take action on doorway sites and other sites making use of these deceptive practice, including removing these sites from the Google index. If your site has been removed from our search results, review our Webmaster Guidelines for more information. Once you’ve made your changes and are confident that your site no longer violates our guidelines, submit your site for reconsideration.</div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">At the time (2011), I didn’t immediately class the pages on the affected sites in question <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">as</em> doorway pages. It’s evident Google’s definition of a doorways changes over time.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">When I looked in Google Webmaster Forums there are plenty of people asking questions about how to fix this, at the time – and as usual – it seems a bit of a grey area with a lot of theories….. and some of the help in the Google forum is, well, clearly questionable.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">A lot of people do not realise they are building what Google <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">classes</em> as doorway pages….. and it’s indicative that ….. what you <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">intend</em> to do with the traffic Google sends you may in itself, be a ranking factor not too often talked about.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You probably DO NOT want to register at GWT if you have lots doorway pages across multiple sites.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Here is what Google has said lately about this algorithm update:</div><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Doorways are sites or pages created to rank highly for specific search queries. They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple similar pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination. They can also lead users to intermediate pages that are not as useful as the final destination.</em></div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">…with examples of doorway pages listed as follows:</em></div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page</em></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pages generated to funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site(s)</em></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy</em></li></ul><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google also said recently:</div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages:</em></div></blockquote></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><blockquote style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.45; margin: 0.25em 0px; padding: 0.5em 40px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none outside; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is the purpose to optimize for search engines and funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site, or are they an integral part of your site’s user experience?</em></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Are the pages intended to rank on generic terms yet the content presented on the page is very specific?</em></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?</em></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Are these pages made solely for drawing affiliate traffic and sending users along without creating unique value in content or functionality?</em></li><li style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: outside; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do these pages exist as an “island?” Are they difficult or impossible to navigate to from other parts of your site? Are links to such pages from other pages within the site or network of sites created just for search engines?</em></li></ul></div></blockquote></div><span class="offset" id="a-real-google-friendly-website" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A Real Google Friendly Website</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">At one time A Google-Friendly website meant a website built so Googlebot could scrape it correctly and rank it accordingly.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When I think ‘Google friendly’ these days – I think a website Google will rank top, if popular and accessible enough, and won’t drop like a f*&^ing stone for no apparent reason one day, even though I followed the </span>Google SEO starter guide<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> to the letter….. just because Google has found something it doesn’t like – or has classified my site as <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">undesirable</em> one day.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is not JUST about original content anymore – it’s about the function your site provides to Google’s visitors – and it’s about your commercial intent.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I am building sites at the moment with the following in mind…..</div><ol style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t be a website Google won’t rank – </strong>What Google classifies your site as – is perhaps the NUMBER 1 Google ranking factor not often talked about – whether it Google determines this algorithmically or eventually, manually. That is – whether it is a MERCHANT, an AFFILIATE, a RESOURCE or DOORWAY PAGE, SPAM, or VITAL to a particular search – what do you think Google thinks about your website? Is your website <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">better than the ones in the top ten of Google now</strong>? Or just the same? Ask, why should Google bother ranking your website if it is just the same, rather than why it would not because it is just the same…. how can you make yours <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">different</em>. Better.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Think, that one day, your website will have to pass a <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">manual review by ‘Google’</strong> – the better rankings you get, or the more traffic you get, the more likely you are to be reviewed. Know that Google, at least classes even useful sites as spammy, according to leaked documents. If you want a site to rank high in Google – it better ‘do’ something other than only link to another site because of a paid commission. Know that to succeed, <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">your website needs to be USEFUL</strong>, to a visitor that Google will send you – and a useful website is not just a website, with a sole commercial intent, of sending a visitor from Google to another site – or a ‘thin affiliate’ as Google CLASSIFIES it.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Think about how Google can algorithmically and manually determine the <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">commercial intent of your website</strong> – think about the signals that differentiate a real small business website from a website created JUST to send visitors to another website with affiliate links, on every page, for instance; or adverts on your site, above the fold, etc, can be a clear indicator of a webmaster’s particular commercial intent – hence why Google has a Top Heavy Algorithm.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google is NOT going to thank you for publishing lots of similar articles and near <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">duplicate content on your site</strong> – so EXPECT to have to create original content for every page you want to perform in Google, or at least, not publish content found on other sites….</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ensure <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google knows your website is the origin of any content you produce</strong> (typically by simply pinging Google via XML or RSS) – I’d go as far to say think of using Google+ to confirm this too…. this sort of thing will only get more important as the year rolls on</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Understand and <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">accept why Google ranks your competition</strong> above you – they are either:<br />1. more relevant and more popular,<br />2. more relevant and more reputable, or<br />3. manipulating backlinks better than you.<br />4. spamming<br />Understand that everyone at the top of Google falls into those categories and formulate your own strategy to compete – relying on Google to take action on your behalf is VERY probably not going to happen.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Being ‘relevant’</strong> comes down to keywords & key phrases – in domain names, URLs, Title Elements, the number of times they are repeated in text on the page, text in image alt tags, rich mark-up and importantly in keyword links to the page in question. If you are relying on manipulating hidden elements on a page to do well in Google, you’ll probably trigger spam filters. If it is ‘hidden’ in on-page elements – beware relying on it too much to improve your rankings.</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The basics of GOOD SEO hasn’t changed for years</strong> – though effectiveness of particular elements has certainly narrowed or changed in type of usefulness – you should still be focusing on building a simple site using VERY simple SEO best practices – <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">don’t sweat the small stuff, while all-the-time paying attention to the important stuff </strong> – add plenty of unique PAGE TITLES and plenty of new ORIGINAL CONTENT. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Understand how Google <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SEES</em> your website</strong>. CRAWL it, like Google does, with (for example) Screaming Frog SEO spider, and fix malformed links or things that result in server errors (500), broken links (400+) and unnecessary redirects (300+). Each page you want in Google should serve a 200 OK header message.</li></ol><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Shaun Anderson" class="profile-pic alignright" height="113" src="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/shaun-anderson.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(203, 204, 205); clear: both; display: block !important; float: right !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 5px 0px 30px 50px !important; max-width: 100%; padding: 3px; text-align: center !important; vertical-align: baseline;" width="87" />…and that’s all for now.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is a complex topic, as I said at the beginning of this in-depth article.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">I hope you enjoyed this free DIY SEO guide for beginners. <strong style="border: 0px; color: #47491e; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">DO</strong> keep up to date with:</div><span class="offset" id="google-webmaster-guidelines" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: -70px 0px 0px; padding: 70px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><h2 style="border: 0px; color: #2d2d2b; font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.06em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Webmaster Guidelines</h2><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">You do not pay to get into search engines, and you don’t necessarily need to even <a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-to-submit-a-site-to-search-engines-seo-how-to-tuesday-2/" style="border: 0px; color: #663399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">submit your site</a> to them, but you do need to know their ‘rules’ – especially rules lay down by Google.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #3e4018; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; padding: 7px 0px 21px; vertical-align: baseline;">Note; these rules for inclusion can and do change. These rules are official advice from Google to Webmasters, and Google is really cracking down on ‘low-quality’ techniques that influence their rankings in 2017.</div></div></div></div></div>

SEO Tutorial For Beginners in 2017

What is SEO? S earch  E ngine  O ptimisation in 2017 is a technical, analytical and creative process to improve the visibility of a website ...

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