EO isn’t actually dead but there are a few If you use it as an amplification technique, you get the chance to rich a broader audience. There are a lot of trustworthy websites that publish syndicate content and have a large number of people that are subscribed to the newsletter and RSS feed through a dedicated service like Feedly. syndication 3. It’s Better to Have More Links Than More Content There was a time when it was better to have more links than content to rank higher in Google. Back then, links had more value. Building links on
Syndication can really help you if done correctly.
specific anchor texts was essential for SEO industries and to boost your search rankings. And since it began to have such a huge effect on rankings, all kinds of webmasters and SEO pros started to do link building just to create chunks of links, thinking only about quantity and not at all about quality. Google realized that people abused this technique and flooded the SERP with irrelevant and bad sites getting triggered there only by having bad inbound links with no value for the user. The solution Google found was the Webspam Update, named Penguin afterward. This big change happened on
April 24, 2012, when Penguin was released for the first time. Back then, it addressed problems such as keyword stuffing and link schemes. Later on, they took the problem into their own hands and penalized sites with unnatural, manipulative inbound link profiles. Both Matt Cutts and Andrey
Lipattsev confirmed that content, links and
RankBrain are the first 3 rankings factors. All of them are equally important. None of them is more important than the other (according to Google). But here is just one of the myths you should leave behind: links value more than content. Put your ideas into action and start creating an abundance of new pieces of content or improve the ones you already have.
Information is in your pocket. A natural link profile and good content can bring you high rankings. And the best way to do it comes from the SEO masters and people that went through all Google dances and managed to dance all the way up to the present. Bill Sebald, from Greenlane, managed to improve the rank from #5 to #2 for the period of time they optimized the content with the help of Content Assistant. And he’s not the only one. The knowledge and tools are here; you just have to
create the strategy and take some time to do it.
Within 24 hours, we saw our rank improv botim database from #5 for the term we were optimizing for to #2. This fluctuated over the next few days but then we settled into the #2 spot and have remained there since. Read the full case study. Bill Sebald BILL SEBALD
Founder Greenlane sebald 4. The Disavow Tool
s Useless After Penguin 4.0 To disavow or not to disavow? That is the question. We get tons of emails and questions from people saying they know disavow tools are useless and Google knows which links they built and which they didn’t. Let’s take the example above that can prove our point: I saw that I have some links marked as unnatural,
but I have never built those links. Google says if you never built the link then don’t worry about it. I only built the link to a single post which is 100 photoshop tutorials post so that is why I am shocked to see that all of my links are marked unnatural by your tool. The 100 photoshop tutorials post is
unnatural itself. Google might ignore it, but it might
not. Google doesn’t know if you built those links. They are pointing to your site and that’s it. Maybe someone did a negative SEO attack on your website. Google could see that as something you did and penalize you. What Matt Cutts and John Mueller say is different from what the algorithm does. When Google Penguin 4.0 went live, Gary
Illyes said: Traditionally, webspam algorithms demoted
whole sites. With this one, we managed to devalue spam instead of demoting AND it’s also more granular AND it’s real time. Once the rollout is complete, I strongly believe many people will be happier, and that makes me happy. Gary Illyes Gary Illyes Google spokesperson / @methode People still asked if the disavow tool was still necessary,
along with this update: Gary Illyes disavow tool John Mueller disavow tool 5. Links in Comments and Forums Will Attract Google Penalties SEO myth busting again; here’s the urban legend that has been brought to life: all community engagement is toxic, such as links in comments and forums. Don’t
confuse blog commenting and forums with cta (call to action): call toaction directories. The latter are more suspicious, but for sure in that case, also, there are white-hat directories. One of the clearest differences to emerge is that a forum is a discussion panel and a directory is an online list or catalog of websites. The mirror has two faces. If we’re to take forums in general and links in comments (even nofollow links) we would say
that they have low-quality, because there are a lot of spammers.
Along the years, lots of forums were bombarded by constant spam messages from marketers trying to cash in on a captive audience and build lots and lots of spammy links. It was a time when forums were popular, that’s why the bad guys focused their attention on them. Forums have some advantages: Have niched users; They bring
topical relevancy; Have loyal users, that help increase website traffic through repeated visits; Easily create a connection and build a relationship because you no longer have to search them and capture their attention; Easier to gain trust. So you can understand why spammers were attracted by building links there through comments. But with time, just like Google, proper forums that delivered relevant
information started to have more restrictions on
user-generated content (UGC). The next wave of th snbd host Web is going to be user-generated content. John Doerr John Doerr General partner KPCB / @johndoerr You can find lots of trustworthy forums and social communities built on user-generated content that provide valuable information from experts and pros. Reddit, WebmasterWorld, Moz Forum, Quora, Campus Society, Stumble Upon, Tumblr are just a few examples of communities built on user-generated content, each of them focusing on a specific audience. Did you know that
millennials spend 30% of their media consumption time with content that is created by their peers (UGC) and consider it to be more memorable than other media? But that’s not all, user-generated content is trusted more than traditional media (59%) according to a research made by Ipsos
MediaCT/Crowdtap. media trusworthiness Millennials are also committed to engaging with social media on a daily basis above all other media types. Let’s debunk this myth together. Community engagement is not toxic if it observes Google’s quality guidelines and comment links from forums and user-generated communities are naturally placed there. 6. Social Signals Don’t Impact SEO Come into the mythical place named Narnia, where everything is possible and social activity has no value for SEO. Well, let’s see why it is a myth and which is the truth behind it. I hear lots of people saying
things like: “Is it true that likes on Facebook, Twitter, and so on, do not count towards Google rankings? Well, why bother improving my social activity?” Or even asking: What would be the SEO benefit of linking to Instagram/Facebook/Twitter posts? But the real question should be “Is your site providing added-value for your users?” rather than thinking of the “SEO benefits”. Let’s get one thing straight: it is true that a “like” on a social account doesn’t influence Google rankings, but they have a
positive influence among shares, engagement.
John Mueller states that there is no direct ranking signal in Google’s ranking algorithm. Google treats Facebook and Twitter posts like any other web pages for search, but NOT as a ranking factor. But this doesn’t mean social signal has no value for SEO. It indirectly influences website rankings. Social signals have a lot of value in this manner.
You build your brand and drive traffic to your website, therefore influencing your rank on Google. Social Signals and SEO Source: blindfiveyearold.com We conducted a study on this topic and the numbers were clear: a strong presence on social networks is correlated with better rankings. This means that, in general, the higher the ranking of the website, the higher the chances that the average
presence on social network is larger. Another interesting discovery was the fact that Facebook post engagement has a strong connection with organic search CTR. Larry Kim saw that Facebook posts with extraordinarily high engagement rates tended to have above expected organic search CTR.
relationship between organic rankings & social
shares Source: wordstream.com In the end, it is about how engaging your content is. goosebumps If you have a successful activity on your social accounts and create engagement, you have the possibility to attract a larger audience and send it to your site. On top of that, that audience can share the information and amplify it, organically. Influencers come
to your site and in no time you can increase the number of links, which boosts your SEO efforts. Links are the confound in the correlation between social shares and rankings. AJ Kohn AJ Kohn Owner, Blind Five Year Old / @ajkohn Remember that social engagement sends positive signals to Google.
Long story short, social signals have an indirect impact on SEO and a powerful impact on search rankings. The result of the social activity is more valuable than the action per se. That’s the one that counts. 7. All Backlinks Are Created Equally Oh boy! Oh boy! They never stop coming. I’ll boil this down to the bare facts. You know and I know that there are bad and good links. Getting at this point,
we can see that backlinks are not created equal.
But let’s not stop here. Let’s go on with the good links and say that they are created equally. At this point, I have to ask you: is a link on Forbes equal with bananaroots.wordpress. com? The first domain is an American business magazine and the second one is a blog about bananas. Firstly, the two domains are different by the industry, secondly by the
domain influence/authority and page influence/authority. There are so many aspects to take into consideration when we talk about backlinks that this could take an entire post and lots of coffee to bare all the SEO myths that are out there and debunk them. But, I’ll save your energy and go with the
one that interests us today, at this moment. To figure out this backlink equality issue, let me present you two situations. If you search for “brown recluse” you’ll see search engine results from EmedicineHealth and LiveScience. The first page has a well-covered topic with lots of on-topic content as you can see in the next screenshot: emedicinehealth The second page was a short article,
poorly-covered with a lot of general information
about a lot of things. livescience And then we checked the number of links. If we were to compare the two sites, the LiveScience has lots of links, it is a big site. links for 2 different domains 1 If I had to choose, a link on EmedicineHealth would be
more valuable than LiveScience. Equality is not always the answer. Equity is. Backlinks equality and equity Source: culturalorganizing.org Link equity (formerly named link juice) is an important part of off-page SEO since it passes value and authority from one page to another. Let’s accept and embrace the fact that backlinks are not created equal and focus on those which are more “juicy” or equitable. Some links are more equal than others. 8. Keyword Optimization Matters Most in SEO Targeted
keywords optimization is one step in all the SEO
process that happens on-site. The first would have to be keyword research. You can do that through multiple alternatives. Keyword Planner from Google Adwords has been one of the most popular options for a long period of time, but since SEO evolved, lots of agencies have proposed lots of other tools. Some other opportunities that we can find in Google are the autocomplete suggestions we can see when we start typing in the search bar for a specific
query (as represented in the next screenshot). Or, review the list of searches related to autocomplete suggestions that we can find at the bottom of the first page. funny google searches autocomplete There is also the Keyword tool and Content Assistant which is a complete option that includes the keyword research, competitor spying for that keyword, keyword and content optimization. All the
keyword phrases we use in a content create a vocabulary and therefore give a context to the topic we’ve written about. Due to that, Google uses Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) to understand if your content is related to a search query. In case you need guidance using keywords suggestions that take this algorithm into consideration, Content Assistance can give it to you in seconds. The tool uses the
same algorithm for extracting keyword recomme
ndation you could use in your content. But keywords do not represent everything, context does. It just started to have a major impact on search results. And let’s not forget RankBrain, which helps Google process its search results through artificial intelligence. So Google will start to offer more personalized results based on each individual behavior.
It goes through billions of pages and selects only the most relevant for particular queries. Nowadays, as we mentioned several times, Google’s trying to optimize the page for the user. So if you’re trying to use specific words over and over again just to optimize for the search engines, it will only weaken your website. In the end, you might get penalized and suffer a great loss. Taking into consideration the
SEO process we talked about, keyword optimization is not the crucial SEO element or the most important one, but it is the first one. It is a dwarf among giants. There are arguably even more relevant aspects. At the moment, we can not point to a specific SEO element that is the most
important one, but rather there is a handful of
steps and aspects that create a synergy. 9. Artificial Social Shares Will Boost Your Rankings We’ll start by saying that artificial or fake social shares are considered to be black hat social media techniques. We talked before about social signals and you know by now that they are emerging as ranking factors as search engines try to understand our social
interaction and behavior. In this manner, a page with lots of shares and links has the advantage to rank higher. But just like any abuse of guidelines, these tricks that fool the system are penalized. That being the case, Facebook says that buying fake likes, shares will only hurt you; it might get harder for those who want to advertise, too. Not once did it happen for Facebook to suspend advertising
accounts. And it’s not so easy to reactivate such an account. Pages with artificially inflated like counts are harming themselves, making it harder and more expensive to reach the people they care about most. facebook Facebook Facebook adds that they value real connection and support strong relationships created through the platform. We have a strong incentive to aggressively go after the bad actors behind fake likes because businesses and people who use our platform want real
connections and results. facebook Facebook Experts value the power of social signals but only used for the right reasons, not for inflating with artificial shares and likes that pollute the social platform. Social media is a set of modern communications channels that can be used to transmit “content” and communications to an audience. As such, it can be used, in this context, to publicize “content” and news so that more people hear about you and then link to you. And those links can help your
