White hat SEO

White Hat SEO refers to the usage of optimization strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience.To be more precise - a website that is optimized for search engines, yet focuses on relevancy and organic ranking is considered to be optimized using White Hat SEO practices. White Hat SEO / Ethical SEO. is more frequently used by those who intend to make a long-term investment on their website. Some examples of White Hat SEO techniques include using keywords and keyword analysis, backlinking, link building to improve link popularity, and writing content for human readers.

These tactics stay within the bounds as defined by Google. Examples include:

• Offering quality content and services
• Using descriptive, keyword-rich meta tags
• Making your site easy to navigate

Implement White Hat SEO Methods

Implementing White Hat SEO practices is the best way to create an ethical, sustainably successful website and business. 

keywords

Keywords still hold value but must be used correctly. Many SEO professionals don’t bother putting keywords in the Meta information as Google doesn’t look at them anymore.  See the video below for Google’s Matt Cutt’s reasoning on why keywords in meta information are more or less ignored by the search engine now:

Keyword ‘stuffing’ used to be a very common practice and was a black hat method intended to ensure that the word associated with a company was picked up. We’ve all seen those articles which are barely legible as every other word is a keyword. Many good SEO content writers now refuse to write content where a client may ask them for a keyword density of 7%, as it lessens the quality of the piece considerably.

However, keywords do still have their place for use with site content, including blogs, images and video and PPC/Adwords. These days, it’s better practice to use similar words throughout a piece of writing as well as the main keyword. Key phrases are also good practice and should be used. It’s also important that these are used in Titles and sub-headers as well as throughout the text.

Content – ascended from King

Have you heard the phrase ‘content is king’? This is no longer true, content is everything (well, pretty much). It’s no longer enough to stick a poorly written blog up once a month – or worse, use text spinners to rejig old content.

Content must be:

• Original and not infringe on the intellectual property rights of others
• Highly relevant and useful to your industry and audience
• Very well written with good grammar and spelling
• For image and video should include a title, ALT tag and description and if appropriate, give credit to original artist (if using creative commons licensed images for example)
• Point to the source of research and quotes where applicable

Adding value to your audience

The best possible way you can perform best in the search is by giving value to your audience and preferably, your industry too.

SEO is Not Search Engine Manipulation” that Google will ban you for

SEO not equivalent to “search engine manipulation” 

Google is currently at a legal fight against a publisher that was banned from its search results because of “search engine manipulation” which should not be misconstrued as SEO being as bad, as spam, as something you could get banned for. 

Instead Google has explicitly mentioned that “search engine manipulation” is something the company fights against, might ban anyone for and, importantly, is defined pretty much how many people might define SEO.

Google: SEO is not spam

Given that, “Is Google Trying To Kill SEO,” as the headline of the Entrepreneur article asks? Almost certainly not, as I’ll explain. But let’s start with Google’s official statement that it gave Search Engine Land on this:

While we can’t comment on ongoing litigation, in general, Google supports and encourages SEO practices that are within our guidelines and don’t consider that spam.

Got it? SEO - commonly accepted best practices - isn’t spam. And anyone encountering the newfangled term of “search engine manipulation” should view that, in my opinion, as equating with spam and not SEO.

What is the story behind the term “search engine manipulation” 

The recent legal suit is between Google and e-ventures sites. A statement by Brandon Falls, the Google search quality analyst introduces the term “search engine manipulation” for the first time.

From Falls’ declaration, the first reference to “search engine manipulation” is as follows:

 An important part of providing valuable search results to users is Google’s protection of the integrity of its search results from those who seek to manipulate them for their own gain.

As noted, efforts to subvert or game the process by which search engines rank the relevance of websites are called “webspam” in the search industry.

Such search engine manipulation harms what is most valuable to users about search: the quality (i.e. relevance) of our search results for users.

Accordingly, Google considers search engine manipulation to be extremely serious and expends substantial resources to try to identify and eliminate it. These actions are critical to retain users’ trust in Google’s search results.

The highlighted points above opens with the Google saying the it tries to protect its search results from those who “seek to manipulate them for their own gain.” Now the problem with the above statement is that Google is trying to convey that Anyone doing commonly accepted SEO is doing so in hopes of manipulating the search results for their own gain.In short, Google actively encourages and instructs publishers on how to “manipulate” its search results. While the newly emerged term that Google calls search engine manipulation” is equivalent to spam  does not include accepted SEO.

Now read the next statement by Google that  “Google’s online Webmaster Guidelines include a discussion of “Quality Guidelines.” The Quality Guidelines enumerate numerous manipulation techniques that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.”

In this statement, Google is inherently acknowledging that there are many search engine manipulation techniques but only some violate its guidelines. In other words, not all manipulation is bad and an actionable offense. SEO manipulation, that which is done within its guidelines, should be OK. Outside the guidelines — that’s spam and potentially gets you in trouble.

It’s a pity Google wasn’t much clearer and didn’t stay with the commonly used industry terms out there. As a result, it’s possible for anyone to fear monger or fear that doing accepted SEO might be a bannable offense.

But still I would like to convey that in reality, anyone who stays within Google’s guidelines really should have nothing further to fear, as Google’s own statement today says. In particular, it’s important to note that this declaration introducing “search engine manipulation” as a term was made back in November 2014. It was only just noticed now

This update was first appeared on SEL. 

7 Common Hreflang Mistakes

The Purpose of Hreflang

Hreflang annotations are meant to cross-reference pages that are similar in content, but target different audiences. You can target different audiences with hreflang according to their language and/or their country. This ensures that the correct pages will be shown to the correct users when they search on the versions of Google search that you are targeting.

Here is an example of two hreflang tags that target English speakers in the USA and English speakers in Canada:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="http://www.example.com/usa/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-ca" href="http://www.example.com/ca/" />

Both of these tags would appear on both pages. This would ensure that Canadians searching on google.ca would find the page targeting Canadians, and Americans searching on google.com would find the page targeting Americans.

So that’s the purpose of hreflang, but often I come across mistakes and misconceptions about how to implement hreflang. Here are some of the most common:

Common Mistakes in Implementing Hreflang

Return Tag Errors

“Return Tag Errors” are the result of hreflang annotations that don’t cross-reference each other. These can be found within Google Search Console under the International Targeting tab. If your website has hreflang annotations, either via the page tagging method or the xml sitemaps method, there will be data reported on how many hreflang tags were found, and how many hreflang errors were found. If there are errors, often times those errors are “return tag errors.” Here’s an example of a site that has 412 hreflang tags with errors – all due to “no return tags”):

Hreflang 

Your annotations must be confirmed from the other pages. If page A links to page B, page B must link  back to page A, otherwise, your annotations may not be interpreted correctly.

Often times, the “missing link” is because the hreflang tags do not include a reference to the page itself. Your annotations should be self-referential. Page A should use rel-alternate-hreflang annotation linking to itself.

Using the Wrong Country or Language Codes

When you are adding hreflang codes to your webpages, you need to be absolutely sure that you are using the correct country and language codes. According to Google, “The value of the hreflang attribute must be in ISO 639-1 format for the language, and in ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 format for the region. Specifying only the region is not supported.”

One of the most common mistakes is using “en-uk” to specify English speakers in the United Kingdom. However, the correct hreflang tag for the UK is actually “en-gb.”

You can use hreflang generator tools like this one to figure out which values you should be using.

Combining Hreflang Sitemaps and Page Tagging Methods

There is no need to use multiple methods for hreflang implementation. Google recommends against it, since it would be redundant. You certainly can use both methods, and there is no clear advantage of one method over the other. Here are some considerations for when you are deciding whether to use the xml sitemaps or page tagging methods:

• Hreflang xml sitemaps can be difficult to create and update. You can use online tools or create it in Excel, but it is difficult to automate the process. If you have xml sitemaps that your CMS updates for you automatically, it would be better to continue to use those rather than create separate, static hreflang xml sitemaps.
• Page tagging leads to code bloat, especially when you are targeting several countries/languages. That can mean an additional 10+ lines of code to each geo-targeted page.
• Some content management systems, such as WordPress and Drupal, offer automatic hreflang page tagging solutions.

Believing That hreflang Annotations Will Consolidate Link Authority

This is another common misconception that can trip up even advanced SEO experts. There have been articles published that seem to show that, once hreflang is correctly implemented across multiple top-level domains or sub-domains, the most authoritative domain gains in link authority. This has not been verified with other international SEO experts, and I have no evidence to believe this is the case either.

The best way to build link authority and consolidate it across your geo-targeted web pages is to keep your content all on one domain. Use a generic, top-level domain such as a .com, and use the sub-folder method to create your country- or language-targeted content. Here is a snapshot of a conversation I had with Gianluca Fiorelli and Martin Kura about this subject:

Fixing Duplicate Content Issues

This is another tricky subject that deserves some nuance. Duplicate content itself is often misunderstood, and throwing hreflang into the mix makes it even more difficult to understand. Hreflang does not “fix” duplicate content issues, per se. For example, when you add hreflang tags to your site, they will appear in the International Targeting tab of Google Search Console (so Google does indeed recognize and understand them), but you will still continue to see Duplicate Title Tags and Duplicate Meta Description warnings in the HTML Improvements tab (if you have pages with duplicate titles and descriptions across your geo-targeted webpages). So if you have two pages in the same language targeting different regions, such as English in the USA and Canada, the content of those two pages may be so similar that they are considered duplicates. Adding hreflang tags will not change that. It is still possible that your American page may outrank your Canadian page, if the American page has significantly more link authority, and especially if it has links from Canadian sources.

However, hreflang tags will help to alleviate this issue. This is why hreflang tags are not enough. They provide a technical structure that helps Google sort out and understand your content, but to have a full-fledged international site(s), you need a holistic international marketing strategy that includes building link authority to your site(s) from the relevant countries/languages that you are targeting.

Hreflang is very effective at handling cross-annotations among different languages, but when it comes to same language, different regions, you can get mixed results.

Not Using Canonical Tags and Hreflang Tags Together Correctly

The hreflang tag also can be used along with rel="canonical" annotations, but hreflang tags need to referenceself-referential,canonical URLs. For example, page A should have a canonical tag pointing to page A, page B should have a canonical tag pointing to page B, and page C should have a canonical tag pointing to page C. All three pages should have hreflang tags that mention all three of the pages in the group. You do NOT want to canonicalize only one version of a page in a page grouping, as that would interfere with hreflang annotations.

Example:

On this page, http://www.example.com/usa/ the hreflang tags might say:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="http://www.example.com/usa/" />

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-ca" href="http://www.example.com/ca/" />

So in this case, the canonical tag for this page would be:

<link rel="Canonical" href="http://www.example.com/usa/" />

And on the Canadian page, the hreflang tags would remain the same, but the canonical tag would be:

<link rel="Canonical" href="http://www.example.com/CA/" />

Not Using Absolute URLs

This one is a heart-breaker because often everything is correct except for the simple fact that the hreflang link referenced is relative rather than absolute. There really is no margin for error with hreflang tags so make sure you are always using absolute URLs. For example, here is what NOT to do:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="/usa/" />

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-ca" href="/ca/" />

Google wants to be able to crawl the entire URL path, especially since many times hreflang tags reference separate ccTLDs or sub-domains.

Content Credit : Kaitlin McMichael

"Content Is King " - Celebrating Twenty Years of Being True

You've heard the phrase, of course, “content is king.” Bill Gates first wrote those words in 1996 in an essay of the same title.

Here is the the essay in it’s entirety here

Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.

The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment.

When it comes to an interactive network such as the Internet, the definition of “content” becomes very wide. For example, computer software is a form of content-an extremely important one, and the one that for Microsoft will remain by far the most important.

But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate.

One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create. In a sense, the Internet is the multimedia equivalent of the photocopier. It allows material to be duplicated at low cost, no matter the size of the audience.

The Internet also allows information to be distributed worldwide at basically zero marginal cost to the publisher. Opportunities are remarkable, and many companies are laying plans to create content for the Internet.

For example, the television network NBC and Microsoft recently agreed to enter the interactive news business together. Our companies will jointly own a cable news network, MSNBC, and an interactive news service on the Internet. NBC will maintain editorial control over the joint venture.

I expect societies will see intense competition-and ample failure as well as success-in all categories of popular content-not just software and news, but also games, entertainment, sports programming, directories, classified advertising, and on-line communities devoted to major interests.

Printed magazines have readerships that share common interests. It’s easy to imagine these communities being served by electronic online editions.

But to be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isn’t enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium.

If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines.

A question on many minds is how often the same company that serves an interest group in print will succeed in serving it online. Even the very future of certain printed magazines is called into question by the Internet.

For example, the Internet is already revolutionizing the exchange of specialized scientific information. Printed scientific journals tend to have small circulations, making them high-priced. University libraries are a big part of the market. It’s been an awkward, slow, expensive way to distribute information to a specialized audience, but there hasn’t been an alternative.

Now some researchers are beginning to use the Internet to publish scientific findings. The practice challenges the future of some venerable printed journals.

Over time, the breadth of information on the Internet will be enormous, which will make it compelling. Although the gold rush atmosphere today is primarily confined to the United States, I expect it to sweep the world as communications costs come down and a critical mass of localized content becomes available in different countries.

For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn’t working yet, and it may not for some time.

So far, at least, most of the money and effort put into interactive publishing is little more than a labor of love, or an effort to help promote products sold in the non-electronic world. Often these efforts are based on the belief that over time someone will figure out how to get revenue.

In the long run, advertising is promising. An advantage of interactive advertising is that an initial message needs only to attract attention rather than convey much information. A user can click on the ad to get additional information-and an advertiser can measure whether people are doing so.

But today the amount of subscription revenue or advertising revenue realized on the Internet is near zero-maybe $20 million or $30 million in total. Advertisers are always a little reluctant about a new medium, and the Internet is certainly new and different.

Some reluctance on the part of advertisers may be justified, because many Internet users are less-than-thrilled about seeing advertising. One reason is that many advertisers use big images that take a long time to download across a telephone dial-up connection. A magazine ad takes up space too, but a reader can flip a printed page rapidly.

As connections to the Internet get faster, the annoyance of waiting for an advertisement to load will diminish and then disappear. But that’s a few years off.

Some content companies are experimenting with subscriptions, often with the lure of some free content. It’s tricky, though, because as soon as an electronic community charges a subscription, the number of people who visit the site drops dramatically, reducing the value proposition to advertisers.

A major reason paying for content doesn’t work very well yet is that it’s not practical to charge small amounts. The cost and hassle of electronic transactions makes it impractical to charge less than a fairly high subscription rate.

But within a year the mechanisms will be in place that allow content providers to charge just a cent or a few cents for information. If you decide to visit a page that costs a nickel, you won’t be writing a check or getting a bill in the mail for a nickel. You’ll just click on what you want, knowing you’ll be charged a nickel on an aggregated basis.

This technology will liberate publishers to charge small amounts of money, in the hope of attracting wide audiences.

Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products-a marketplace of content.

This essay is copyright © 2001 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.