Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Secrets E-Book

Danny Dover

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Serie: Secrets
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 512

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Tips, tricks, and little-known methods used by professional SEO consultants to rank in some of the most competitive search phrases Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of creating, formatting and promoting web pages in a manner that ensures that they are ranked highly for chosen keyword phrases after a user performs a Web search. This unique book taps the relatively unknown market of advanced SEO knowledge, and reveals secrets used by only the best SEO consultants. You'll take your Internet marketing skills to the next level as you gain a thorough understanding of standard SEO techniques such as on-page optimization, off-page optimization, and link building. Packed with real-world examples, this essential guide demonstrates how real SEO consultants work with Fortune 500 companies to get the results they desire. Coverage includes: * Understanding Search Engine Optimization * Relearning How You See the Web * Picking the Right SEO Tools * Finding SEO Problems * Solving SEO Problems * SEO Best Practices * The SEO Consulting Process * Comprehensive Site Audit (Informational Website) * Comprehensive Site Audit (E-Commerce Website) * Understanding the SEO Industry * Search Engine Verticals * Optimizing for Alternative Search Engines * Setting Up a Testing Platform * SEO Resources * Attending SEO Conferences

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

About the Authors

About the Technical Editor

Acknowledgments

Read This First

Who This Book Is For

Why This Book Is Better Than Other SEO Books

How I Learned the Secrets Shared in This Book

WebSite Supporting the Book

Features and Icons Used in This Book

Chapter 1: Understanding Search Engine Optimization

The Secrets of Popularity

The Secrets of Relevancy

Summary

Chapter 2: Relearning How You See the Web

The 1,000-Foot View—Understanding the Neighborhood

The 100-Foot View—The Website

The 10-Foot View—The Webpage

The 1-Foot View—Individual Content Pieces

Summary

Chapter 3: Picking the Right SEO Tools

View Source

Useful Search Engine Queries

Search Engine–Provided Tools

Google Webmaster Tools

Relevancy Determining Tools

SEO Toolbars

HTTP Header Analyzer

Firefox User Agent Switcher

Firefox Rendering Modifier

Summary

Chapter 4: Finding SEO Problems

The 15-Minute SEO Audit

The 5-Minute Brand Reputation Audit

Identifying Search Engine Penalties

Summary

Chapter 5: Solving SEO Problems

First Things First

Fixing Popularity Problems

Fixing Relevancy Problems

Fixing Penalties

Link Building Techniques

Summary

Chapter 6: SEO Best Practices

Page-Level Information Hierarchy

Domain-Level Information Hierarchy

URL

Title Tag

Meta Description

HTML Headings (H1 – H6)

Images

Nofollow

Rel Canonical Link Element

Meta Keywords

JavaScript and Flash

301 Redirects

Blocking Pages from Search Engines

Traffic and Rankings

Parameter-Driven URLs

Footer Links

Summary

Chapter 7: The SEO Consulting Process

Answering Hard Questions from Clients

Preparing for the First Meeting

Paperwork: Setting Expectations

Deliverables

Establishing Price Points

What to Give Away for Free

Subsequent Meetings

Summary

Chapter 8: Comprehensive Site Audit (Informational Website)

How to Read This Chapter

Sample Website

Sample Report

After Completing the Report

Summary

Chapter 9: Comprehensive Site Audit (E-Commerce Website)

How to Read This Chapter

Sample Website

Sample Report

Summary

Chapter 10: Understanding the SEO Industry

A Brief History of SEO

Who Are Internet Marketers and Where Can I Find Them?

The SEO Pyramid and Wearing Multiple Hats

SEO Leaders

The People and Technology behind Google and Bing

Long-Term Perspective in SEO

Summary

Chapter 11: Search Engine Verticals

Universal Search

Local Search

Image Search

Video Search

Instant Search

Summary

Chapter 12: Optimizing for Alternative Search Engines

Amazon

YouTube

Facebook

Delicious

Flickr

Twitter

Summary

Chapter 13: Test, Test, Test

Setting Up a Testing Platform

Running a Test

Recording Results

The Importance of Sharing Knowledge

Summary

Chapter 14: SEO Resources

SEO Cheat Sheet Part 1: On-Page Optimization

SEO Cheat Sheet Part 2: Canonicalization Errors

SEO Cheat Sheet Part 3: Meta Robots and Robots.txt

SEO Cheat Sheet Part 4: Sitemaps

SEO Cheat Sheet Part 5: User Agents

Switching Domains Checklist

SEO Quick Hit List

Summary

Appendix: Attending SEO Conferences

Picking the Right Conference

What to Expect

Preparing to Go

What to Bring

What to Do

After the Conference

Summary

Index

Advertisement

Executive Editor: Carol Long

Acquisitions Editor: Mary James

Senior Project Editor: Kevin Kent

Project Editor: Kristin Vorce

Technical Editor: Tim Buck

Production Editor: Rebecca Anderson

Copy Editor: Kim Cofer

Editorial Director: Robyn B. Siesky

Editorial Manager: Mary Beth Wakefield

Marketing Manager: Ashley Zurcher

Production Manager: Tim Tate

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher: Richard Swadley

Vice President and Executive Publisher: Barry Pruett

Associate Publisher: Jim Minatel

Project Coordinator, Cover: Katie Crocker

Compositor: Craig Woods, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Proofreader: James Saturnio, Word One New York

Indexer: Robert Swanson

Cover Designer: Ryan Sneed

Cover Image: © Chad Baker / Lifesize / Getty Images

Search Engine Optimization Secrets

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. 10475 Crosspoint Boulevard Indianapolis, IN 46256www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2011 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-0-470-55418-0

ISBN: 978-1-118-07829-7 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-07831-0 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-07830-3 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone]. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

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This book is dedicated to my family (That’s you, Mom, Dad, Jessica, and Josh!) for their support and encouragement. I love all of you!

It is also dedicated to my fantastic friend Ian Lauth, (not you Kevin Tower :-p) for his patience and support. Thanks for putting up with me buddy!

Last but not least, I am dedicating this to all of my brilliant co-workers at SEOmoz. Without all of you, this would have been an unpublished disaster!

I don’t know what I did to get lucky enough to have all of you in my life but I appreciate my time with you every day.

—Danny Dover

To my wife and children, who love me even though I never finish working when I say I will.

—Erik Dafforn

About the Authors

Danny Dover is a passionate SEO and influential writer. During his tenure at SEOmoz.org (where he was the Lead SEO), he did SEO consulting for many of the world’s most popular companies including Facebook, Microsoft, and Comcast. His expertise has been cited in Time, PCWorld, Smashing Magazine, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and has been translated into Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, German, and Hungarian.

Danny has spoken at numerous SEO conferences (spanning three continents) and his written posts and articles have been read over a million times and accessed online in more than 175 different countries.

Erik Dafforn is Executive Vice President and Director of Organic SEO for Intrapromote, LLC, a Cleveland-based Search and Social Marketing firm. At Intrapromote’s blog and ClickZ.com, he’s written over 200 articles on SEO strategy and techniques, many of which focus on architecture’s effects on the crawling and indexing processes. Erik lives in Indianapolis with his wife and three children.

About the Technical Editor

Tim Buck worked for 15 years as IT Manager for a small software development company. Being the sole source of IT support there, he was responsible for server management, desktop support, web development, and software testing, and he wore many other hats as well. As a result, he learned a little about everything, including the basics of getting his company’s website listed in Google’s search engine results.

Now Tim works as a web application developer in state government; in this role, he continues to learn a little about everything, supporting legacy applications as well as developing new ones.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of Kevin Kent (Project Editor), Mary James (Acquisitions Editor), Carol Long (Executive Editor), and Jenny Watson (who originally found me for this book) for their work on this enormous and fun project. Your guidance and leadership made it possible for me to complete this book and I sincerely appreciate your patience and support.

I would also like to acknowledge the SEO community as a whole for creating the invigorating environment that made this book possible. Whether I met you in person, online, or not at all, you have been my driving force and an unconditional source of encouragement and important constructive criticism.

Thank you!

—Danny Dover

I would like to acknowledge the help and encouragement of several people who made my contribution to this book possible.

Thanks to Danny Dover for his hard work conceiving an excellent collection of content not typically found in SEO books. Contributing to the project has been an honor and a challenge.

Special thanks go to John Lustina and Doug Ausbury, co-founders of Intrapromote, LLC, for their encouragement during the writing stage; and to James Gunn, who was instrumental long ago in helping me understand fundamental SEO concepts and who continues to be a source of great insight and knowledge today.

Finally, I want to acknowledge the expertise and professionalism of the Wiley acquisitions, editorial, and production staff, including such excellent editors as Kevin Kent, Mary Beth Wakefield, and Mary James. They are an excellent team.

—Erik Dafforn

Read This First

Why would someone like myself want to publish my SEO secrets for the world to read? Doesn’t this destroy my competitive advantage? Won’t I surely go broke and starve on the street? Won’t my friends mock me and my family disown me?

For two reasons, the answer is probably not.

The first reason is the size of the market. The Internet is incredibly large and growing at an astounding rate. The market for SEO is following a similar path. There is absolutely no way I could work for all of the websites that need SEO consulting. As such, I am happy to pass the work on to others and teach them how to succeed. It is no money out of my pocket, and it makes me feel like I am contributing to a greater good. I learned most of what I know about SEO from others and, as such, feel obligated to spread the knowledge.The second reason has to do with SEOmoz, the company I used to work for. SEOmoz provides tools to help SEOs do their jobs. As such, it is to my advantage to promote and train other SEOs. Just like Google benefits from getting more people online, I benefit from teaching others how to do SEO. You may choose to use SEOmoz’s competitors’ services or you may not. That is completely up to you, and I will do my best to show you all the available options.

Who This Book Is For

This book is for the SEO who already knows the basics of SEO and wants to take this knowledge to the next level so that they can make more money. In the SEO industry, the best way I have found to do this is to do SEO consulting.

This book is written as a guide to becoming an SEO consultant or for those who want to use the strategies of professional SEO consultants. It clearly lays out the processes and perspectives I have used at SEOmoz when I did consulting for some of the most well-known websites on the Internet. It is intended for those who love the Internet and strive to influence how it operates.

Why This Book Is Better Than Other SEO Books

Modern SEO is complicated, fast moving, and rife with misconceptions. This makes it extremely difficult to learn. When I began researching for this book, I read all of the major SEO books that were available. I quickly found that they were full of theory and lacked actionable steps to really help the reader master the subject.

I wrote this book with the goal of building the bridge between theory and action by bringing together all of the best sources of information I have found and putting them in a format that makes it easy to understand and, more importantly, do SEO like a professional. This emphasis on action follows the steps I originally used to learn SEO. I believe this focus on process followed by explanation is unique among SEO books on the market, and I believe it will make the difference that allows you to out rank your competition.

How I Learned the Secrets Shared in This Book

The brutal truth is that I do not work at Google or Microsoft and I have never read a single line of code that powers the search engine algorithms. Surprisingly, as an SEO professional, I am not unique.

So what gives me the authority to write a book about SEO? The answer is simple. I get results. I have dedicated years of my life to studying the search engines and have learned how to influence search engine result pages. I use my skills almost every day to help people improve their rankings and drive traffic to their sites. To me, there is no better feeling than helping people achieve their online dreams.

This book is the next step for me. Instead of helping others in a one-to-one fashion, this book will enable me to help others in a one-to-many fashion. That is where you come in. My hope is that after reading this book, you will choose to use your skills to help others (but be sure to look out for yourself first). Either way I support you.

WebSite Supporting the Book

You will find additional supporting material at the accompanying online resource at www.dannydover.com/search-engine-optimization-secrets/. This resource includes:

Beginner’s Guide to SEOA Comprehensive SEO Audit Report (Informational Website)A Comprehensive SEO Audit Report (E-commerce Website)A Center for Learning SEOWeb Developer’s SEO Cheat SheetInternet Marketing Handbook15 Minute SEO Audit ChecklistUpdates to this bookResources on how to learn more

Features and Icons Used in This Book

The following features and icons are used to help draw your attention to some of the most important or useful information in the book, some of the most valuable tips, insights, and advice.

Watch for margin notes like this one that highlight some key piece of information or that discuss some valuable technique or approach.

Sidebars

Sidebars like this one feature additional information about topics related to the nearby text.

TIP The Tip icon indicates a helpful trick or technique.

NOTE The Note icon points out or expands on items of importance or interest.

CROSSREF The Cross-Reference icon points to chapters where additional information can be found.

WARNING The Warning icon warns you about possible negative side effects or precautions you should take before making a change.

Enough talk; it is now time to get started. Thank you, and best of luck with your Internet endeavors.

Chapter 1

Understanding Search Engine Optimization

In This Chapter

Learning how search engines see websitesTaking a look at popularity in SEOConsidering the role of relevancy in SEO

At Google, search engineers talk about “80-20” problems. They are describing situations where the last 20 percent of the problem is 80 percent of the work. Learning SEO is one of these problems. Eighty percent of the knowledge SEOs need is available online for free. Unfortunately, the remaining 20 percent takes the majority of the time and energy to find and understand. My goal with this book is to solve this problem by making the last 20 percent as easy to get as the first 80 percent. Though I don’t think I will be able to cover the entire 20 percent (some of it comes from years of practice), I am going to write as much actionable advanced material as humanly possible.

This book is for those who already know the basics of SEO and are looking to take their skills to the next level. Before diving in, try reading the following list:

robots.txtsitemapnofollow301 redirectcanonicalization

If you are not sure what any of the items in this list are, you should go over to the nearest computer and read the article “The Beginner’s Guide to SEO” at

http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization

This free article can teach you everything you need to know to use this book to its fullest. Done with that? Great, now we can begin.

The Secrets of Popularity

Once upon a time there were two nerds at Stanford working on their PhDs. (Now that I think about it, there were probably a lot more than two nerds at Stanford.) Two of the nerds at Stanford were not satisfied with the current options for searching online, so they attempted to develop a better way.

Being long-time academics, they eventually decided to take the way academic papers were organized and apply that to webpages. A quick and fairly objective way to judge the quality of an academic paper is to see how many times other academic papers have cited it. This concept was easy to replicate online because the original purpose of the Internet was to share academic resources between universities. The citations manifested themselves as hyperlinks once they went online. One of the nerds came up with an algorithm for calculating these values on a global scale, and they both lived happily ever after.

Of course, these two nerds were Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, and the algorithm that Larry invented that day was what eventually became PageRank. Long story short, Google ended up becoming a big deal and now the two founders rent an airstrip from NASA so they have somewhere to land their private jets. (Think I am kidding? See .)