B3-CH12 – On-Page Optimization

To understand what on-page SEO is all about you first need to have at least a rough idea of how a search engine (e.g. Google) works. So let’s understand how Google works first.

Google’s primary stated mission is to serve the Internet community by helping us FIND information on any topic there is. Apart from the OBVIOUS fact that they also need to make money while doing it, their PRIMARY mission is to serve the online searchers. If the quality of the results they provide is low, people won’t hesitate to try other search engines. If the quality is great – people will keep coming back.

[emember_protected for=4-5]

Eventually, people discover that the way Google organizes the results is because of Google’s understanding of what matters most to most searchers. So, if you type “indie music” into the search engine, Google will find MILLIONS of pages, all of which refer to “indie music” in one way or another. HOW then does it decide to list “page A” first and “page AA” 27th?

What would YOU do if you were Google?

Given that your mission is to serve the online searchers, and that you need to be able to index and evaluate BILLIONS of pages programmatically, many of which are written in languages you don’t even understand, you would have to construct your algorithm in such a manner that it not only be able to “make sense” of all that data, but also be able to organize it in a way which – to a searcher – would be the most satisfactory and intelligent.

So, if the first page listed by Google when you type “indie music” were something like “West Indies” the searcher would almost certainly not be as satisfied with that kind of a recommendation (which is what Google’s results actually ARE), as with, for example, “MusicXRay” a website which deals with “real” independent music.

But YOU know this, because you’re human and can read. Google’s algorithm, on the other hand CAN’T “read”, because it does not have a human intelligence! It’s just a program. It must therefore employ other means of establishing which content is RELEVANT to your search and which is not.

So, on your list of instructions for your programmers, you would insist that they find ways to:

• Always provide the most relevant results, ordered from the “most” relevant to the least relevant. (Relevant vis-à-vis the keyword the searcher entered)
• Evaluate the input search term (i.e. “the keyword”), look up what it means and how it tends to be used in daily speech, and how that term relates to other terms on the page.
• Study how respectable the given page is, by checking who is linking to it and how many of those links exist (and also how respectable the pages which link to this page are!)
• Determine which keywords are the most relevant/important basing on how they are placed on the page and earmark the page for OTHER searches which may be more relevant still.
• Find ways to discover cheats, i.e. people who create pages only to rank, but not to provide the kind of content your searchers value. This means people who either “keyword-stuff” or people whose pages are linked to other low-value pages, etc.

You’d come up with many more such rules and requirements, but even at this early stage you should begin to see what matters most to Google. It simply wants to find the best content! And once it finds it, it wants to list it in order of relevance.

If you could figure out a way to program this – as Google has – surely, you can already see the kind of RULES you would want satisfied in order to grant pages a high ranking! And if you can MAKE those rules – you can FOLLOW them!

So here are some simple on-page optimization rules to keep in mind:

• Relevance – When you write about something important in an article or on a page of your website, then make sure that the WHOLE text makes sense (to a human) and leads the reader straight to the point. But if you write about “how to buy a used car” and you never mention words like “spare parts” or “mileage” or “changing gears” a HUMAN reader may still understand perfectly what you mean, but Google… might struggle. I will show you how to determine which ADDITIONAL words to use on your pages in order to “un-confuse” Google! (They’re known as “LSI” keywords, by the way).
• Density – When you write about, say, a “car” – how will Google know that you wish to rank for “car” and not for “spare parts” which you have also placed on the page? You accomplish that by using your target phrase (or, as we call it, “primary keyword”) “enough” times for Google not to have any doubts. But you must also be sure not to use that word “too many” times, so as not to make Google suspicious that you are “keyword-stuffing.” We will teach you how to optimize pages to win not just your primary keywords but also your secondary (”semantically related” or “LSI”) keywords.

• Semantic Environment – That’s a level of consistency between not just words on one page but also divergent pages on the whole site, as well as all incoming and outgoing links. This concept has a lot to do with LSI keywords, but is broader still. I’ll soon show you how creating powerful Semantic Environments can help you multiply your rankings and authority on Google. Really fast!
• Trust Rank – You need to establish “how trusted” your site is on Google. Trust Rank is one of those semi-secret concepts on Google which some  less-initiated webmasters even doubt exists. Google barely even mentions it on their webmaster pages. And those who do accept that it exists, usually don’t know how it’s calculated or how important it is. And Google isn’t saying! So, if you understand that it does indeed exist and how it’s calculated, you’ll soon know how to optimize your pages to generate maximum trust with Google’s algorithm! This method is as upgrade-proof as anything you’ll ever learn!

• Internal Links – You need to provide your readers with links to related content on your own site. You do that by “anchoring” specific words or phrases within your text and hyper-linking that to the target pages on your site. The “old-fashioned” way to do this was to hyperlink your target keyword, thus ensuring that Google would see that THIS is your targeted keyword you want to rank on. But today this approach is seen as “keyword spam” – if you overdo it. It’s advisable to use LSI keywords for hyperlinking as well as irrelevant keywords! Basically the breakdown should be about 10-20% of hyperlinks using primary keyword, 50-70% using secondary LSI keywords and the rest using irrelevant keywords such as “click here”.

For more information please refer to the enclosed Site Optimization Guide.

[/emember_protected]

Book 3 – Chapter 11SEO & SEM	Course Overview	Book 3 – Chapter 13Off-Page SEO

Book 3: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, , 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, Overview

Bonuses: templ, lib, tips, kwds, models  Link Res: aff, class, cpa, cpv, cpc, write, mob, outs, rss, soc, traff, var, exch, srcs, vid  Sub-courses: sens adw, aff, ar, bkm, cpy, cp, fb, fun, goo, lst, loc, mem, opt paid, ppal, sbox, prod,  seo, opt, socn, vidm, host, wp, lnch