SFC Edu

The largest education center for SEO/Web marketing in making

This is the largest education center for SEO/Web marketing in making, please ASK all questions and we will answer them all. Even you can check our /blog/ for regular updates.

Search Engine Marketing help and guidelines by Google

PDfs (detailed documentation of various works)

Run time logging of applications

How to use twitter
Important points for website designing or programing
Google analytics help – Know all the important things.
Media Wiki and SEO
Duplicate content study
SEO FAQs

Structural learning web marketing/SEO

Based on Associative theory of memory, covering 80% of SEO. Get things right in few hours. Let’s understand SEO in the fastest possible way.

If SEO/web marketing word was haunting you so far in your career, here is the final full stop. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is not everything but just a significant part of web marketing. This exclusive document is aimed at:

Simplifying SEO and web marketing (Actually it is very simple, people with less understanding are complicating it)
Making it more practical. (With worksheets, checklists and step by step execution for various processes)
Giving you tools and attitude to think for future web marketing changes.

Who should read this section?

Very helpful for business owners/managers/clients who are getting web marketing/SEO done by outsourcing or by using an internal team.
SEO teams (SEO managers, link developers, content writers, technical people and everyone involved with web and web activities)
Marketers. I am teaching in business schools and I know how useful it is for people involved in various forms of marketing. Now they are using web marketing as a component to their marketing mix.
You (Anyone interested in web)

11 requests before you start reading this book

Web marketing is a combination of common sense and technical concepts, but more of common sense. So keep your eyes open for detailed observations.
Web is surely technical and you will have to learn it step-by-step. Most of the technical learning is connected. So you will have to learn it going forward and coming backward. You won’t understand the concept in the first reading. Don’t get discouraged, keep moving forward and then come back to the topic again. That’s the secret of technical learning. Know that it will take time, know that you will not understand it in the first reading, know that you will have to keep moving forward and reading all the connected topics, know that you will be able to understand a lot of things after a few months. Didn’t I spell out a lot of secrets behind technical learning?
Learn non-technical topics first. Non-technical topics are more of common sense and can be learned easily. So learn the non-technical topics to generate interest in the subject. Once you are interested in the topic, you can travel the extra mile to learn the related technical topics.
Know that a lot of information is available on web. All you need to do is asking the right question in right forums. Do the right searches in Google. That’s it; keep reading (I used to read around 5 hours every day after spending 10 hours in office).
80% to 90% of the SEO and web marketing work is simple and can be learned easily, rest 10% to 20% is a little tough and one needs to keep himself updated with the latest. Most of the first timers enter the 20% hard learning zone before covering the 80% easy learning zone. We will make sure that we are able to learn the 80% easy learning and then only we enter the 20% hard learning zone.
Think like a customer when you are marketing. Think like a website visitor for web marketing. And think like a Google Engineer for SEO. (Google Engineer thinks of putting the most useful websites on the top results. I keep asking, “If I was a Google Engineer, would I do it”). TO BE A WINNER THINK LIKE YOURSELF, there is so much value for unique thinking. So read from everywhere and think uniquely.
Don’t bother too much about perfection, think of the best you can do. Keep doing it and you will learn more. Success is not about make some big thing work but it is about making a lot of small things work together. So focus on details. Consultants generally talk about general formulas but a true web marketing analyst will look deeper for detailed observations.
After learning web marketing it is not necessary that you have to enter into this field. Learning web marketing is like learning computers. You don’t always enter into software or hardware industry after learning computers, you use computers for your own sector. You too can use the web marketing knowledge for your own sector.
It is more important whom you know than what you know, so keep making good friends in the industry. Network > Net work > Work (my old formula), so keep building your network.
Failure will happen. Do take pride in failures. If someone boosts that he has never failed in his life, most probably he has never tried anything new. So NEVER BE DISCOURAGED WITH FAILURES. Sometimes you will lose clients, sometimes you will end up with bad testimonials, sometimes you will end up with tough times with learning but it is you who needs to believe in yourself and bounce back. Keep trying.
Last but the most important one. Focus on structural learning, PLEASE DON’T LEARN RANDOMLY. Always add the new topic to some node of your learning. Example: If you learn about a new topic then see how you can apply that to any project and what steps are needed for implementation.

Why web and web search is important?

Web has redefined communication and thus marketing and our lives. People use web as it is cheap, extremely fast and can act on demand. Most of the people start their web quest with a web search making search engines extremely important. Search Engines (esp Google) is considered the first page of internet as people visit Google to start their web navigation.

It has become very significant to place your website on search engines to get the most out of web. This book will help you understand on how to get a prominent placement on search engines.

Index for SEO Learning

We will start with learning about SEO on this page. This is a wiki based page.

Understand keyword and key phrase:

Though there is no fix definition of the terms used under SEO but we will define key phrases as the phrases (even single word) used as searches and the keywords as the single word used in the phrases. Let me explain, what it means with the help of an example. I asked the class to search of 5 students to search in Google for my marriage suit 3 times, so we had something like this:

Wedding suits (3 people)
Marriage or wedding suits (3 people)
Wedding suits in Kolkata (2 people)
Buy wedding suits
Best wedding suits
Raymond wedding suits
Cheap wedding suits
Kolkata wedding suits
Tips for wedding suits
suits

Here you can see around 10 key phrases and few keywords like:

Wedding
Suits
Kolkata
Marriage
Raymond
Buy
Best
Cheap
Tips

Here we can see around 9 keywords (Again I repeat there is hardly any distinction between keywords and key phrases, we are redefining for our own convenience.)

A lot of things are based on keyphrases as people are using these keyphrases to search in search engines. Some keyphrases are searched more often than others. Key phrases have following properties:

Priority
Relevancy
Search Market
Relevant Market
Competition

Priority: We want our websites to rank for some of the keyphrases, so the priority is set based on our preferences. Many times we want to rank for our brand name and some of the main keyphrases are given high priority.

Relevance: Some keyphrases are more important and some are least from the perspective of sales and participation . So we will have to calculate the relevance of the keywords based on the expected user experience of 100 people visiting the website after searching for the keyphrases. (It can be better estimated by running PPC campaigns for the keyphrases). Let’s take an example: For a San Francisco- based reusable bag shop:

Reusable bag in San Francisco: Out of 100 people visiting the website by searching “Reusable bag in San Francisco”, we can assume that 95% people will be interested in the shop and services.
Reusable bags: Out of 100 people visiting the website by searching “Reusable bags” may be 90% people will be interested in reusable bags services and may be only 60% people interested in the services and because of limited service in San Francisco and nearby location only 5 to 10% will be of any use from sales perspective.
Green bags: Relevancy will be even lesser as some people might be looking for green color bags than environmental friendly bags.
Bags: Relevancy will even be less.

Relevancy starts with estimation and is reviewed and corrected using the real data collected from analytics and PPC.

Search Market: Search Market is the number of times a keyphrases is searched across various search engines. In the above example, we could see that out of 5 students (15 searches) 3 searched with wedding suits and only 1 searched for “tips for wedding suits”. So we can assume that every 5 person and 15 searches, you will get 3 “wedding suits”, so we can calculate the % of search and extend it to total search population. With the larger and diverse samples, the accuracy will improve.

There are companies that collected data from ISP (Internet service provider, where all the URLs are logged, so these companies will collect the search behavior of few millions from different locations) , other data. Google collects the data from Google searches and makes it available for public (It is very recent that Google has started showing this number).

There are 3 types of keyphrases search (Google explains it really well, so will use their page here) – See the tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal :

(Google Keyword suggestion tool, see 1) Location 2) Synonyms 3) Filters 4) Keyword search type 5) Search Volume per month)

Broad Match for tennis shoes: This is the default option. When a user’s search query contained either or both words (‘tennis’ and ’shoes’) in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Search volume could also show for singular/plural forms, synonyms, and other relevant variations. Broad match keyword: Search volume may count:
- tennis shoes
- tennis
- shoes
- buy tennis shoes
- tennis shoe photos
- running shoes
- tennis sneakers
Phrase Match for tennis shoes: When a user searches on the phrase tennis shoes, with the words in that order. It can also count searches that contain other terms as long as it includes the exact phrase you’ve specified.Search count may count on searches for:
- “tennis shoes”
- red tennis shoes
- buy tennis shoes
- tennis shoes photo
- But won’t count for:
- shoes for tennis
- tennis shoe
- tennis sneakers
Exact Match for tennis shoes: When a user searches for the specific phrase ‘tennis shoes,’ in this order, and without any other terms in the query. Search count won’t count searches for:
- red tennis shoes
- tennis shoe
- Buy tennis shoes.

I try to use exact phrase for better estimation but Google APIs are only available for broad phrases.

Competition: Next parameter to key phrase is key phrase competition. Generally the links are difficult to achieve and thus the competition is directly proportional to links. So find following things to get the competition score

Step1: Go to google and search for the keyword and get the top 5 websites and do this on Yahoo:

linkdomain:example.com (Total links to the site)
link:http://www.example.com/url (total links to the page)
linkdomain:example.com key phrase (Example, linkdomain:seoforclients.com seo . This will find the relevant back links to the domain)
link:http://www.example.com/url keyphrase (Example link:http://www.seoforclients.com/blog/ seo. This will find the relevant back links for the url)

Now use the above 4 values to compute a competition score.

Relevant market: Relevancy * Search market = Relevant market. Example if 1000 people are searching for reusable bags and relevancy is 5% and 100 people are searching for “reusable bags in San Francisco” and the relevancy is 100% then the relevant market will be 1000*.05= 50 for “reusable bags” and 100*1= 100 “reusable bags in San Francisco”. We will only consider relevant for computations. We won’t consider raw search market as that is not of much use.

ROI (Return on Investment): This is an investment ratio. It guides you towards more potential keywords. Example:

“Reusable bags” relevant market: 50 and competition is 5000, ROI = 50/5000 = .01
For “reusable bags in San Francisco” relevant market: 100 and the competition is just 500. = .2

So we should invest on “reusable bags in San Francisco before investing on “reusable bags”. There are other parameters that are included in my ROI calculation like Backlinks to your domain, backlinks to your URL, current rank etc (that is beyond the scope of this course and book)

How to think like a Google Engineer?

I have always advocated on thinking like a Google Engineer to be a good SEO manager. Here are some tips on how to think like a Google Engineer.

Search engines will always like to satisfy its users (People who are searching for information in search engine). So always ask if I will consider Title (or any factor) in ranking algorithm how it will improve the Google results. If you are convinced that it will improve Google results then most probably it is a positive ranking factor. With experience you will start getting more and more factors correct.
There are two dimensions to searches (You need to see your keyword and keep a balance of it) – When Google is not sure of the type of search, it will be try to show a mix of commercial and information site. Also if you search for “Car”, you will see there are information about cars (buy and sell), Movie “Car” and a mix. Now if you search for “car san Francisco” you will get the local search as Google feels a person searching with local area are looking to buy the searched product. So considered following two dimensions:
- Commercial (Where people want to buy the searched item)
- Information (Where people want information about the searched keyword)
- And the mix of information and product buy.
Signal Vs Data: There was a time when data was too less and the period was small, at that time Google mainly worked with data (as in how many backlinks, what’s on the page etc) but now Google checks the history of the backlinks and the content of the page. So focus on following things:
- Rate of ____ (links, content changes, topic changes)
- Consistency in everything you do
- So think it like a graph and anything that is abnormal can have Google eyebrows high.
Where all to collect the data for user behavior of the site: 1) Page Rank Toolbar, 2) Adsense 3) Google analytics, 4) ISP, and everything else possible.

How does Search Engines work?

It has 3 parts:

Robots/bots/spiders/crawlers (known by these and few more names): These are automated programs that go to different web pages and get the content from it. It gets a copy of the page and stores it in the Page repository (or Cache server): Bots get a snapshot of the latest page and store it in the page storage house.
Algorithm/Logic layer
- Logic layer for Bots: It checks following things:
  - Is the page getting updated frequently? If yes then ask the bot to visit more frequently else reduce the frequency or continue the crawl rate.
  - See if there are new URLs that are on the webpage. Add the new URLs to the crawling list so that bot can visit those new pages too.
- Logic layer for Ranking: It does following things:
  - Extract the attributes from the page.
  - Store the attributes of the page in a proper way.
  - Use the stored attributes to rank the pages for various queries and store it into the doc servers in cached format.
Produce Ranking Indexing for faster querying.

How search Engines Rank the websites?

It can be divided into 8 sections:

Onpage Value say X … -100 < X < 1000 (Can’t stretch beyond a limit) – You need to strengthen your page content. This is what you say about your page. It is like a talk given by you.
1. Title of the page:
2. Keywords in URL:
3. Meta Description: It doesn’t affect the ranking directly but indirectly it affects the CTR
4. Meta Keywords: Not of big use from Google’s point of view but other search engines may be using it. Also be careful with keyword stuffing in meta keywords, only put relevant ones and make sure that the keywords that you are putting is somewhat related to the page (May be it is contained in the page or is an abbreviation of the words used on the page)
5. Keyword density in body text: I am not sure of keyword density but I am sure Google tries to see how much of the page is actually about the keyword. So put keywords in relevant positions, don’t worry too much about keyword density. Try not to do over optimization to avoid any filters/penalties. If the links pointed to the page has the right anchor text then the website content can be justified. There is keyphrase density as well as keyword density. Both are important. So have the keyphrase as the keyphrase too. We call it the proximity of the keywords. Frequency of the keyword appearing together is important.
6. H1, H2 … H6 tags: This is important, do try to accommodate your keywords in the text.
Offpage Value say Y … -100 < Y < Infinity (Can stretch to any limit) – You need to strengthen your public opinion about your page content. This is what others say about your page. It is like the feedbacks given by other about your talk. Along with the number of feedbacks, you also need to see who is giving you the feedback. So the value of feedback is (Value of the person X knowledge of the person about this subject x the factor on how often the person recommends people x context of recommendation x local value of the recommendation, we will be explaining this in detail soon)
1. CTR (Click through rate at different ranking) for the keyword: At different ranking position it is expected to get different CTRs, if it goes above or below it, it can be calculated as a factor. One good example is Wikipedia, I heard from Adam when I was at Google that Wikipedia gets more clicks even when it is at #7, so certainly people are liking the website.
Onsite value say X1 … -50 < X1 < 5000 (Can’t stretch beyond a limit). You need to strengthen the value of your site content. This is what you say about yourself and your services. It is like your value.
1. Keywords in the domain name
Offsite value say Y1 … -50 < Y1 < Infinity (Can stretch to any limit). You need to strength your public opinion about your site. This is what others say about your site. This like what others say about you in general and with respect the topic.
1. CTR for the site: See the CTR for the page, CTR for the page is less of important that CTR for the site as Site is more about brand and trust value. We always tend to click more on Wikipedia (for information), Amazon (for books and some other products). This trend can act as a signal for the website value.
User satisfaction point for the page… -100 < Z < 500 (Can’t stretch beyond a limit). Are people satisfied by visiting your website? Google can measure it in different ways, so you need to check the bounce rates and the total number of visitors (both new and recurring). This is the user satisfactory point for the page. This is like were people satisfied by your talk. You may have delivered an amazing speech but are people satisfied with it.
User satisfaction point for the domain… -100 < Z1 < 2000 (Can’t stretch beyond a limit): User satisfaction of the overall site.
Local Value for the site … – 100 < A < 100 How relevant is the site for the local users and local queries.
Signal value for last few weeks… -100 < B < 1000 (Traffic, links etc)

Risk:

Leaving a trend with:
- Anchor text: Same type of anchor text for most of the links is somewhat unnatural.
- Links to the page: It is somewhat unexpected if all the links are coming to one page for a month and then to some other pages in the next months.

Formula = X x X1 x Y x Y1 x Z x Z1 x A x B (Here negative will not be treated as numeric negative, negative means zero sometimes, penalty sometimes and ban sometimes)

Other-

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