Search Engine Optimization All-in-One For Dummies

Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Book 1 How Search Engines Work
Chapter 1 Putting Search Engines in Context
Identifying Search Engine Users
Figuring out how much people spend
Knowing your demographics
Figuring Out Why People Use Search Engines
Research
Shopping
Entertainment
Discovering the Necessary Elements for Getting High Keyword Rankings
The advantage of an SEO-compliant site
Defining a clear subject theme
Focusing on consistency
Building for the long term
Understanding the Search Engines: They’re a Community
Looking at search results: Apples and oranges
How do they get all that data?
Chapter 2 Meeting the Search Engines
Finding the Common Threads among the Engines
Getting to Know the Major Engines
Organic versus paid results
Yahoo
Google
Bing
Checking Out the Rest of the Field: AOL and Ask.com
AOL
Ask.com
DuckDuckGo
Finding Your Niche: Vertical Engines
Industry-specific
Local
File type–specific
Discovering Internal Site Search
Understanding Metasearch Engines
Chapter 3 Recognizing and Reading Search Results
Reading the Search Engine Results Page
Understanding How People Look at Search Results
Identifying Mobile Users’ Search Patterns
Mobile SERP features
Mobile’s impact on ranking
Discovering the Features of a Search Results Page
Blended results
Effects of blended search
Knowledge Graph
Effects of the Knowledge Graph on SERPs
Hummingbird and the semantic search revolution
Effects of Hummingbird on search
Chapter 4 Getting Your Site to Appear in the Right Results
Seeking Traffic, Not Ranking
Avoiding Spam
Understanding Personalized Search’s Impact on Ranking
Personalizing results by location
Personalizing results by web history
Personalizing results by demographics
Personalizing results based on Google products
Opting out of personalized results
Using News, Images, Books, and Other Search Verticals to Rank
Video
Images
News
Shopping
Books
Maps
Showing Up in Local Search Results
Getting into Google My Business
Getting into Yahoo Local
Getting into Bing Places
Using other resources to aid local ranking
Making the Most of Paid Search Results
Google Ads
Yahoo
Bing
Chapter 5 Knowing What Drives Search Results
Using Advanced Search Operators
Combining operators for turbo-powered searching
Searching for images
Searching for videos
Searching for news
Searching with maps
Understanding Long-Tail Queries
Using Predictive Search as a Research Assistant
Chapter 6 Spam Issues: When Search Engines Get Fooled
Understanding What Spam Is
Discovering the Types of Spam
Hidden text/links
Doorway pages
Deceptive redirection
Cloaking
Unrelated keywords
Keyword stuffing
Link farms
Reporting Spam
Google
Bing
Avoiding Being Evil: Ethical Search Marketing
Search engine penalties
Realizing That There Are No Promises or Guarantees
Following the SEO Code of Ethics
Book 2 Keyword Strategy
Chapter 1 Employing Keyword Research Techniques and Tools
Discovering Your Site Theme
Brainstorming for keywords
Building a subject outline
Choosing theme-related keywords
Doing Your Industry and Competitor Research
Researching Client Niche Keywords
Checking Out Seasonal Keyword Trends
Evaluating Keyword Research
Chapter 2 Selecting Keywords
Selecting the Proper Keyword Phrases
Reinforcing versus Diluting Your Theme
Picking Keywords Based on Subject Categories
High-traffic keywords
High-conversion keywords
Understanding Keyword-Based Search versus Semantic Search
How to optimize with keywords in light of semantic search
Chapter 3 Exploiting Pay Per Click Lessons Learned
Analyzing Your Pay Per Click Campaigns for Clues about Your Site
Brand building
Identifying keywords with low click-through rates
Reducing Costs by Overlapping Pay Per Click with Natural Keyword Rankings
Chapter 4 Assigning Keywords to Pages
Understanding What a Search Engine Sees as Keywords
Planning Subject Theme Categories
Choosing Landing Pages for Subject Categories
Organizing Your Primary and Secondary Subjects
Understanding Siloing “Under the Hood”
Consolidating Themes to Help Search Engines See Your Relevance
Chapter 5 Adding and Maintaining Keywords
Understanding Keyword Frequency and Distribution
Adjusting Keywords
Updating Keywords
Using Tools to Aid Keyword Placement
Book 3 Competitive Positioning
Chapter 1 Identifying Your Competitors
Getting to Know the Competition
Figuring Out the Real Competition
Knowing Thyself: Recognizing Your Business Advantages
Looking at Conversion as a Competitive Measure
Recognizing the Difference between Traffic and Conversion
Determining True Competitors by Their Measures
Sweating the Small Stuff
Chapter 2 Competitive Research Techniques and Tools
Realizing That High Rankings Are Achievable
Getting All the Facts on Your Competitors
Calculating the Requirements for Rankings
Grasping the tools for competitive research: The Single Page Analyzer
Discovering more tools for competitive research
Mining the source code
Seeing why server setup makes a difference
Tracking down competitor links
Sizing up your opponent
Comparing your content
Penetrating the Veil of Search Engine Secrecy
Diving into SERP Research
Chapter 3 Applying Collected Data
Sizing Up Your Page Construction
Landing page construction
Content
Engagement Objects
Learning from Your Competitors’ Links
Taking Cues from Your Competitors’ Content Structure
Book 4 SEO Web Design
Chapter 1 The Basics of SEO Web Design
Deciding on the Type of Content for Your Site
Making a User-Focused Website
Choosing Keywords
Running a ranking monitor to discover what’s already working
Matching Meta tags and keywords to page content
Using Keywords in the Heading Tags
Keeping the Code Clean
Organizing Your Assets
Naming Your Files
Keeping Design Simple
Making a Site Dynamic
Making Your Site Mobile Friendly
Developing a Design Procedure
Chapter 2 Building an SEO-Friendly Site
Preplanning and Organizing Your Site
Designing Spider-Friendly Code
Creating a Theme and Style
Writing Rich Text Content
Planning Your Navigation Elements
Top navigation
Footer navigation
Side navigation
Implementing a Site Search
Incorporating Engagement Objects into Your Site
Video
Audio
Allowing for Expansion
Developing an Update Procedure
Balancing Usability and Conversion
Usability and SEO working together
Creating pages that convert
Creating a strong call to action
Chapter 3 Page Experience Update
Mobile Usability
Security Issues
HTTPS Usage
Trusted Hosting and Server
Strong Passwords
Core Web Vitals
What Are the Core Web Vitals?
How Can You Improve Your Core Web Vitals?
How to Fix Largest Contentful Paint
Tying the Core Web Vitals Together
Ad Experience
Make Your Ads More Relevant to Keywords
Improve Your Ad Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Create a Flawless Landing Page
Chapter 4 Making Your Page Search Engine Compatible
Optimizing HTML Constructs for Search Engines
The Head section
The Body section
Enriching Your Site with Rich Snippets
Marking up content for rich snippets
Understanding how rich snippets affect rankings
Using Clean Code
Making Your Site W3C-Compliant
Externalizing the Code
Choosing the Right Navigation
Image maps
JavaScript
Text-based navigation
A word about using frames
Chapter 5 Perfecting Navigation and Linking Techniques
Formulating a Category Structure
Selecting Landing Pages
Absolute versus Relative Linking
Dealing with Less-than-Ideal Types of Navigation
Images
JavaScript
Checking to see what Google sees
Naming Links
Book 5 Creating Content
Chapter 1 Selecting a Style for Your Audience
Knowing Your Demographic
Finding out customer goals
Looking at current customer data
Researching to find out more
Interviewing customers
Using server logs and analytics
Creating a Dynamic Tone
Choosing a Content Style
Developing a Blog
Using Personas to Define Your Audience
Creating personas
Using personas
Chapter 2 Establishing Content Depth and Page Length
Building Enough Content to Rank Well
Developing Ideas for Content
Brainstorming to get ideas
Looking at competitors for content ideas
Utilizing your offline materials
Listening to customers
Using Various Types of Content
Optimizing Images
Naming images
Handling image size
Mixing in Video
Placing videos where they count most
Saving videos, plus a word about formats
Sizing videos appropriately for your audience
Choosing the best video quality
Choosing the right video length
Posting your videos to increase traffic
Making the Text Readable
Allowing User Input
Creating User Engagement
Writing a Call to Action
Chapter 3 Adding Keyword-Specific Content
Creating Your Keyword List
Developing Content Using Your Keywords
Beginning to write
Keeping it relevant
Including clarifying words
Including synonyms to widen your appeal
Dealing with stop words
Freshness of the content
Deepening your content
Dynamically adding content to a page
Optimizing the Content
Setting up the HTML
Digging deeper by running Single Page Analyzer
Finding Tools for Keyword Integration
Competitive Analysis Tools
Chapter 4 Adapting Your Content for Local Search
Taking Advantage of Local Search
Understanding local search results
Introducing local SEO
Optimizing Content for Local Searches
Creating region-specific content
Chapter 5 Dealing with Duplicate Content
Sources of Duplicate Content and How to Resolve Them
Multiple URLs with the same content
Finding out how many duplicates the search engine thinks you have
Avoiding duplicate content on your own site
Avoiding duplications between your different domains
Printer-friendly pages
Dynamic pages with session IDs
Content syndication
Blog index pages
Press releases
Syndicates
Social media sharing
Curation
Localization
Mirrors
CMS duplication
Archives
Duplication by Outsiders
Scrapers
Clueless newbies
Stolen content
Chapter 6 Crediting Your Content
Factoring in Intellectual Property Considerations
What to do when your content is stolen
Filing for copyright
Using content from other sites
Crediting original authors
Sourcing and protecting images
Chapter 7 Using SEO to Build Your Brand
Selecting Keywords for Branding Purposes
How to Build Your Brand through Search
Writing press releases
Optimizing for blended search
Using Engagement Objects to Promote Your Brand
Building a Community
Being who you are online
Blogging to build community
Using other social media to build community
Connecting to your audience with social networking
Spreading the word with social share buttons
Book 6 Linking
Chapter 1 Employing Linking Strategies
Theming Your Site by Subject
Web analytics evaluation
PPC programs
Tracked keyword phrases
Keyword research
Implementing Clear Subject Themes
Siloing
Doing physical siloing
Doing virtual siloing
Making the Most of Outbound Links
Obtaining Inbound Links
Link magnets
Link bait
Link buying
Chapter 2 Structuring Internal Links
Subject Theming Structure
Optimizing Link Equity
Creating and Maintaining Silos
Building a Silo: An Illustrated Guide
Maintaining Your Silos
Including Traditional Sitemaps
Using an XML Sitemap
Chapter 3 Obtaining Links
Understanding the Benefits and Risks of Link Building
Why links are important
Why links are dangerous
Identifying Quality Links
Complementary subject relevance
Expert relevance reinforcement
Quality testimonial links
Attracting Links
Generating link magnets
Spreading the word through social media and press releases
Guest posting
Fostering relationships
Soliciting paid links for advertising
How Not to Obtain Links
Chapter 4 Vetting Inbound Links
Identifying Inbound Links
Avoiding Poor-Quality Links
Reciprocal links
Incestuous links
Link farms
Bad neighborhoods
Dealing with Search Engine Spam
Identifying inbound link spam
Removing unwanted links
Chapter 5 Connecting with Social Networks
Making Use of Blogs
Discovering Social News Sites
Promoting Media on Social Networking Sites
Optimizing Social Media
Social Signals as Search-Ranking Factors
Building Community
Incorporating Interactivity
Book 7 Optimizing the Foundations
Chapter 1 Server Issues: Why Your Server Matters
Meeting the Servers
Using the Apache server
Using the Microsoft IIS server
Using other server options
Making Sure That Your Server Is Healthy, Happy, and Fast
Running a Check Server tool
Indulging the need for speed
Testing your page speed with Google
Excluding Pages and Sites from the Search Engines
Using a robots text file
Using Meta robots tags
Being wise to different search engine robots
Creating Custom 404 Error Pages
Designing a 404 Error page
Customizing your 404 Error page for your server
Monitoring your 404 Error logs to spot problems
Fixing Dirty IPs and Other “Bad Neighborhood” Issues
Serving Your Site to Different Devices
Server setup for a responsive website
Server setup for a dynamic website
Chapter 2 Domain Names: What Your URL Says about You
Selecting Your Domain Name
Registering Your Domain Name
Covering All Your Bases
Country-code TLDs
Generic TLDs
Vanity domains
Misspellings
Pointing Multiple Domains to a Single Site Correctly
Choosing the Right Hosting Provider
Understanding Subdomains
Why people set up subdomains
How search engines view subdomains
Chapter 3 Using Redirects for SEO
Discovering the Types of Redirects
301 (permanent) Redirects
302 (temporary) Redirects
Meta refreshes
JavaScript redirects
Reconciling Your www and Non-www URLs
Chapter 4 Implementing 301 Redirects
Getting the Details on How 301 Redirects Work
Implementing a 301 Redirect in Apache .htaccess Files
To add a 301 Redirect to a specific page in Apache
To 301 Redirect an entire domain in Apache
Implementing a 301 Redirect on an NGINX Server
Implementing a 301 Redirect on a Microsoft IIS Server
To implement a 301 Redirect in IIS
To implement a 301 Redirect with ISAPI_Rewrite on an IIS server
To 301 Redirect an old page to a new page in ISAPI_Rewrite
To 301 Redirect a non-www domain to the www domain in ISAPI_Rewrite
Using Alternate Ways to Redirect a Page
Implementing a 301 Redirect with header inserts
Implementing a 301 Redirect on a WordPress site
Chapter 5 Watching Your Backend: Content Management System Troubles
Avoiding SEO Problems Caused by Content Management Systems
Understanding why dynamically generated pages can be friend or foe
Dealing with dynamic URLs and session IDs
Choosing the Right Content Management System
Customizing Your CMS for SEO
Optimizing Your Hosted E-Commerce Site
Avoiding Problems with JavaScript Frameworks
Chapter 6 Solving SEO Roadblocks
Inviting Spiders to Your Site
Avoiding 302 Hijacks
Handling Secure Server Problems
Book 8 Analyzing Results
Chapter 1 Employing Site Analytics
Discovering Web Analytics Basics
Web metrics
Web analytics
Measuring Your Success
Identifying what you’re tracking
Choosing key performance indicators
Measuring reach
Acquisition
Response metrics
Conversions
Retention
Examining Analytics Packages
Google Analytics
Log Files Analysis
Log-file analysis tools
Check out traffic numbers
Chapter 2 Tracking Behavior with Web Analytics
Measuring Website Usability
Personas
A/B testing
Multivariate testing
Cookies
Session IDs
Tracking Conversions
Measuring marketing campaign effectiveness
Building conversion funnels
Preventing conversion funnel drop-off
Analyzing your conversion funnel
Making site improvements
Assigning web page objectives
Tracking the Success of Your SEO Project
Analyzing Rankings
Chapter 3 Mastering SEO Tools and Reports
Getting Started with Conversion Testing
Getting ready to run a conversion test
Discovering Page and Site Analysis Tools
Viewing performance of paid search campaigns
Measuring traffic and conversion from organic search
Defining goals in Google Analytics
Viewing traffic from social networks
Seeing Visitor Paths through the Site
Understanding Abandonment Rates
Book 9 International SEO
Chapter 1 Discovering International Search Engines
Targeting International Users
Domains and geolocating
Site architecture tips
Identifying Opportunities for Your International Site
Single sites
Multiple sites
The blended approach
Realizing How People Search
Chapter 2 Tailoring Your Marketing Message for Asia
Succeeding in Asia
Assessing your site’s chances
Sizing up the competition and sounding out the market
Determining your plan of attack
Discovering Japan
Succeeding in China
Finding Out about South Korea
Operating in Russia
Chapter 3 Staking a Claim in Europe
Succeeding in the European Union
Knowing the Legal Issues in the EU
Working within the United Kingdom
Discovering France
Operating in Germany
Understanding the Netherlands
Chapter 4 Getting Started in Latin America
Succeeding in Latin America
Geotargeting with Google Search Console
Working in Mexico
Operating in Brazil
Discovering Argentina
Appendix: The Value of Training
Index
EULA