Author

Rad Basta

CEO and lead SEO strategist at @theFourDots and lecturer at Digital Marketing Institute.
Co-founder of Dibz.me, Reportz.io and Base.me
Huge tattoo fan. In love with growth hacking.

SSL Implementation by Google – "Not Provided" Keywords Issue

October 27, 2011
Rad Basta
2 Comments

“On Tuesday, Google announced that signed-in users will, by default, be routed to the SSL version of Google (https://www.google.com)“
This sentence written by one of the most respectable SEO’s in the industry Mr.Rand Fishkin generated big quakes in the SEO world.
Now, you’re asking why? You think, it’s just SSL protocol, some people used it before this move by Google. You’re partially right, but just partially.

Main idea behind this (at least according to Google) is to provide enhanced privacy to Google users, not showing their searches and so on.
“Less important” change after this update will be that the average webmaster (me including) will not be able to see some of the keyword data anymore (cause it’s considered an intrusion into user privacy, right?). Yeah… not so much.

However, Google in his all-knowing wisdom decided that the user privacy has a price (isn’t that always the case) and with simple adwords account you can still see all the data that you could before this so called “datapocalypse“. Yeah, just give Google a “few bucks” for ads and voila, everything you need for your deep keywords analysis is available.

Now, this move from Google triggered very negative reactions from the SEO community all over the world. Webmasters are complaining that they now have crippled data with those “Not Provided” keywords that can’t give them accurate data for their deep keyword researches and modifications. Of course, this will not influence all of your organic data. Google estimates that only 10% of all keyword referral traffic will be “Not Provided”.

Now, there is another side to the coin, something that just a small number of webmasters thought about. This update doesn’t have to be that bad actually.

If we consider what the phrase “signed-in users” exactly means, we can see that in this case it stands for the person with customized SERP to match his or her search history and social activities. To explain further, by removing those results that are “polluted” by mentioned influences and Soc.Media variables (how many social media accounts are linked, how engaged with social-search their connections are, etc.) Google is giving us only relevant, clean keyphrases that are served directly from its main algorithm. And that’s the stuff you want to optimize for, since 90% of visitors will still find you in that manner.
What more can you need for you precise analysis, research and site wide alterations?!

This, of course, this is just my personal opinion, and I would love to hear what you have to say about this turmoil, positive or negative, so ladies and gentlemen, comments are all yours.

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SEO-friendly Content

October 26, 2011
Rad Basta
0 Comments

You don’t have to rely on statistics to see that the online business industry is booming. Millions of domains are registered everyday. Today just an ordinary person can build multiple websites on his own. There are definitely large profits from owning a websites but it all depends on the traffic. The big question is, do all websites get decent traffic? No! Some are actually struggling to gain visitors (and profit).

The first thing to consider is the source of the traffic. Organic searches can drive huge amounts of traffic depending on how you optimize your webpage. And the simplest and easiest to do is to focus on keyword-rich content. And when we say keyword-rich, it means that the article has a centralized idea, quality and well written content. Following that basic rule of the quality content helps you creating a SEO-friendly content.

Good SEO-friendly content is what brings visitors to your website, and each of those one time visitors might become a long term reader or user of your services, thus bringing you increased revenue. It’s important to remember that these visitors didn’t just stumble upon your site accidentally, they searched for keywords related to your business.

How is search engine optimization related to your keywords?

KeywordsThe main ingredient to generate targeted web traffic through SEO is usually the keywords. They are highly optimized in site title, meta tags, categories and description. But most of all, in the content. When individuals search online, they rely on keywords. Some keywords are certainly more often utilized than others. If you realize which keywords are widely-used more often, you can incorporate them in your web content without sacrificing the quality. Remember that your goal is not to link bait but to provide helpful information to your readers. While link baiting could work, it has drawback to your site performance and authority.

Once you identify the keyword to work on, start publishing articles. Distribute your keywords and keyword phrases equally and reasonably on your content material. Ensure your keyword density doesn’t go beyond 3 – 5% of the total number of words. If this is done properly, search engine spiders or bots will crawl your webpage and index the new SEO-friendly article content for a better web site ranking.

The good thing about being indexed right away is that your new content might appear in search thumbnails. Whenever people browse the web, and enter the keyword located in your content, the link of the source and part of that content are shown together with other search results. As online users click on your site which is displayed among the others ranked for that keyword you gain one unique visitor that might be interested in your site or products and services offered. Therefore, keywords can really improve the overall visibility of your webpage.

Try to play around with your keywords. Keyword phrases (long tail keywords) may be derived from keywords. They improve site rankings and thus attract more visitors to your site. The higher the traffic, the higher will your sales conversions be provided that the bounce rate is not too high. After all, with quality content you can be sure of longer page views.

You can use Google Adwords to acquire keyword-related information and analyze the keyword competition. We know that Google is the top search engine so you can just as well work with them. Plus, Google Panda has consistent updates which may hit your site if you are not up to their standards. There are also a lot of SEO online tools that you can take advantage of. They can help you with important keyword search and analysis.

Guest Post by:
Liz D. has been blogging since 2005 and started her personal SEO campaign just recently with positive results. Her Make More Money Online website is currently on the first page of Google search for the keyword “make more money” and she is currently optimizing more sites. Top Keywords for SEO is just one of them and it is doing pretty well.

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Link Building 101

October 22, 2011
Rad Basta
3 Comments

You do not have to be an SEO expert to know the basics of link building. There are some quick ways that you can build up your reputation and get quality links at the same time. As I am sure most of you all ready know, you are going to need a decent amount of backlinks from reputable sites. There is no doubt that is going to be one of the major contributing factors as to how your site ranks on Google and other major search engines. Below, you will find some of the white-hat methods that I like to use in order to build up a solid link base.

Link Baiting

This is always going to be one of my favorites, simply because it is the easiest for me to deal with. You are basically putting stuff up on your site that is going to be worth linking to by visitors. That way the links build themselves. You can use free stuff, tutorials, awesome articles, charts/graphs, videos, and many other content choices as link bait. The general rule of thumb is that you have to look at it from the perspective of the visitor. What makes your site worth linking to? Would you link to it? Once you are able to answer those without a doubt, you have yourself some link bait.

Guest Posting

Another great way to ensure that you are getting backlinks is to find blogs that are related to your niche to guest post content to. A lot of these sites will allow you to link back to your site in the post. This is an excellent way to get that anchor text that you have been looking for. Keep in mind though, the article should be unique and of the highest quality if you want someone else to publish it on their blog. This article is also going to be coupled with you by visitors to the site it is on. So, if they see that you are informative and helpful, they will have no problem coming over to your site.

Directories

A lot of people still think that directories are not going to help you move up the rankings. But, the truth of the matter is that there are still a lot of directories out there that pass along some link juice. The best way to spot a directory to submit to is by analyzing them before you submit. Do they have search engine friendly links? Are they a site you should be associated with? If you have any doubt about submitting, simply don’t submit and move on to another one.

Article Submission

One other way to get backlinks to your site is to post informative articles on article sites. Just make sure that like the directories you are sticking to the reputable ones as well. Ezine, Squidoo, etc. These are great ways to get a quick link back to your site within your article and get the anchor text that you want. Just make sure that each article you submit to each site is unique and informative. That way you give the search engines no reason not to like it.

I realize that these seem like simple tips to most of you, but if people stuck to the basics more they would do a lot better on the search rankings. If you knock all 4 of these things out of the park you are going to be able to see a lot of success with your SEO as long as you stick with it.

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SEO Practices That Can Ensure a Better Rankings

October 3, 2011
Rad Basta
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Since the invention of all the search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and some others, the effectiveness and usefulness of search engine optimization has always been over-emphasized. But most people who are new in the website designing field wonder whether or not it is really something that must be concerned in order to achieve something big. Every webmaster’s dream is to rank their websites higher in search engines so that the highest number of people can visit their site and sign up with them. SEO certainly helps and any website that employs it will certainly stand out in the crowd. You must keep on developing your knowledge on SEO so that you can boost the search engine rank of your website and also your profitability.

On-page SEO tactics that can guarantee a big difference to your website rank

Though we all know this but on-page SEO is the only thing that we can control ourselves and these are some of the factors that you can do without having to rely on the other external factors. Have a look at some of them.

  • Use killer content: It takes just a few minutes to set up a new website and fill it up with content that is stolen from other websites and using all the other bad stuff. This may fulfill your dream of creating a website but will not ultimately help you in the long run as there will be very few visitors to your website. Always remember that the timeless pillar of your website is always your content and this is the reason why you need to provide killer content to your website. Hire a content writer who specializes in writing unique content for websites. Keep it fresh as this is the key to a higher rank.
  • Perfect usage of keywords: When it comes to making the most of SEO, you must remember that you write for search engines. Though this is the truth but you must always make sure that you write first for your readers and then for grabbing a better search engine ranking. There are some particular ways in which you should use your keywords. Try using the keyword in the title of the article, in the other title tags, within the first 50-100 words of the article and also within the images used in the website. Don’t forget to make a proper research of the keywords before using them.
    • Image by darynduff.com
  • A catchy title: The content and the keywords are on one side and the title is on an entirely different side as it is too important for grabbing a good search engine ranking. Use catchy titles, headlines that grab the attention of the visitors and make it as unique as possible. Try to use the keyword in the title too as the visitors will sooner be directed to your website in this way.
  • Appropriate links: If you link to other websites, this will not only show your appreciation for others but also will enhance the form of sharing what others say. The positive effects of using links always outweigh the negative ones. However, make sure that the outbound links are to trusted resources and not to “bad neighborhood”.

Therefore, if you’re interested in securing a higher search engine rank, ensure that you’ve used the above mentioned SEO techniques. Boost your profitability and your returns.

    This is the guest post from Jack Hudson from StudentLoansCompany.info

Featured image by nevermoresearch.com

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SEO 101

September 29, 2011
Rad Basta
0 Comments

This is the perfect topic for starting a young and possibly successful SEO blog. I will go over all of the steps of the process you need to pay attention to if you want a successful SEO campaign.

1. Keyword research

This is probably the most important step of the process since if you mess this up, you’ll have a hard time fixing it later in the game.
Basically, if your website has been active for some time and if you have created your Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytic accounts you’ll have some data to work with.

First, check the GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) for all keywords and phrases that get you to show up in search queries and then cross-reffence them with the GA data. Find the crossover between the easiest and the most rewarding keywords and analyze them by checking competition, manually and by using Google Keyword Tool (it lacks precision but it will do the job). Test both options there, your newly found keywords and your website URL (for all the suggestions Google might give). Just make sure to set your geo location and language correctly. When you’ve picked your targeted keywords it’s time for the next phase.

2. On-site Optimization

On-Site Optimization
Image by web-marketing-toronto.com

When you have your keywords, the most important thing (as far as I’m concerned at least) is to properly optimize your website for them (and for the best user experience as well).

Simply, you need to do everything that Google and the other SE suggest:
make your website faster (good starting point is checking your website in GTmetrix), make it highly visible for mentioned keywords. Forget meta keywords and stuffing your meta description with keywords, that will just dissuade visitors from clicking on your listing in the SERP. Pay attention to the use of your page title and H tags. Optimize content for your keywords, pick inner pages for specific keywords, but avoid keyword stuffing (you can use one neat tool on WeSEOAnalytic).
Build your inner link structure, let the link juice flow trough your website. Use canonical tag to avoid any content duplication and “noindex, follow” command for a finer tuning of your content.
Keep checking your website in the SERP for any URLs that might have been mistakenly indexed by Google by using a simple command: site:yourURL in the Google search box. You can fix that with the new addition to the Google Webmaster Tools called “Remove URL”, under “Crawler access” tab.

That’s the way you wanna roll. On-site is far to complex to be fully explained in one article so I will get back to that in some of the next ones. Also, make sure you avoid duplication of page Titles and Descriptions. We are all creative enough to make something up for every page.

3. Off-site Optimisation

Link building tips and tricks
Image by rylanclayne.com

Off-site optimization or, how many like to call it, LINK BUILDING is highly important for whole SEO. Unfortunately, it’s so much more then plain (and it’s even not that plain) link building.
Word alone (optimization) is telling us that you already have something to optimize or work with. Let’s be optimistic and suppose that you already have a website that has been up and running for some time. Let’s also suppose that you’ve spent that time acquiring some links, in organic way or you just built them yourself. Now you have a new set of phrases, and you have your old links pointing to your website with wrong anchors…. Yeah, you’re getting the point. If it was you who built them, just use your previous contacts and ask them to change the anchors to your new targets. Use your old accounts to fix the links you created manually and also use Google Alerts to check for possible mentions of your website’s name/brand without a link, so you can contact the people mentioning you and ask them to add a link to it.

There are numerous ways of building quality links and this article would become boring quite fast if I started to mention them all, so I’ll list just a few of them:

  • guest blogging
  • sponsoring
  • quality directory entries
  • quality profile links
  • plain old asking for a link
  • etc.

Try to keep the link income steady to avoid drawing any kind of bad attention from the Google’s Webspam Team. Build some noFollow links, just to get your backlink portfolio a bit of that natural look. Don’t be insane and buy like 10.000 bad links for a bit of cash and then just lay back and enjoy your rankings. They will last about 3 weeks and then your website will be doomed to Google Hell.

4. Soc.Media promotion

Soc.Media Promotion
Image by talkofthetownworkshop.com

For a quicker indexation or reindexation you can use another addition to the Google Webmaster Tools called “Fetch as Googlebot”, but I prefer the old way of social sharing (twitting, liking, +1) to draw attention of the crawlers. Search engines also like the content that is loved, shared and similar, so they tend to give better rankings to websites that have this kind of content. Soc.Medias are at your disposal, you just need to tame them.

Enough for the first article but stay tuned, there will be some fresh articles from my friends and colleagues and maybe some guest posts soon.

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About Author

Radomir Basta

CEO and lead SEO strategist at @theFourDots and lecturer at Digital Marketing Institute. Co-founder of @Dibz_tool Huge tattoo fan. In love with growth hacking.

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