Avinash Kaushik - world leader in web business optimisation
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SEO Best Practice Guide Blog
Up one levelThis SEO Best Practice Blog gives updates and an RSS feed for additions to the next version of the E-consultancy Search Engine Optimization Best Practice Guide. I only cover significant new algorithm changes and tools, posting a few articles per month. My other blogs on this site are accessed via the Blogs tab above.
Please select a link below to see my articles and posts for SEO Best Practice Guide Blog. Alternatively, click on tags above to show articles related to SEO Best Practice Guide Blog.
How important is Universal Search within Google
The implications of the inclusion of Universal search within Google search results is an important issue for search marketers. This data from Comscore shows that already Universal Search is surprisingly important.
Google keyword analysis tutorial
This tutorial is designed for those new to search engine marketing. It explains how to use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator to identify keyphrases to target for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or keywords to include within an account for Pay Per Click marketing. Updated April 2008 to include new Google tips on using keyword tool for PPC.
Analysis tools for assessing backlinks - tutorial
Success in SEO depends on creating content which is valuable to site visitors so that they will link to it or bookmark it. This tutorial introduces 3 tools for finding backlinks pointing from other sites to your sites. You can repeat this analysis for competitor sites and then identify similar sites you can ask to link to you.
Google Site Links (officially Sitelinks) explanation
Google has refined its Site Links (formally SiteLinks) since the first version of our Best Practice Guide was released in April 2006. These supplementary links are only included below search results snippets for the largest sites - this Sitelinks explanation also gives other reasons.
SEO for Wikipedia & online PR implications
With Wikipedia dominant in the Google Search Engine Results Pages, it is important for SEO, but it requires careful treatment. This post explains some approaches and shows how to find the number of visits in wikipedia for different terms
Main SEO Ranking Factors Reference
Published by SEOMoz in April, 2007. If you didn't catch it at the time it is a great top-level reference of the relative importance of SEO factors:
Sub-domains for SEO - new Google algorithm change
In Dec 2007 Google announced a plan to update the way it treats subdomains. Post describes the implications for SEO.
Do meta descriptions affect ranking in Google?
In a word, "No" according to this post from Google Webmaster tools which also good tips for the meta descriptions, which are nonetheless useful for other reasons I will outline.
Check date pages first indexed in Google - New tool
Google has released a tweak to its date filtering available via advanced search - this has several really valuable applications for SEOs and normal searchers.
Google index update frequency / Supplemental results
Google's Matt Cutts has blogged a fair bit about these. These are some clear definitions on how often Google updates its algorithms and data and the status of a current update wrt supplemental results.
SEO innovations round-up
This summary of the latest innovations in Search Engine Optimisation is from SMX. Also includes PPC innovations. I have summarised coverage of the 5 most useful SEO topics that were covered including the new Google SEO Guidelines.
Google debuts Universal Search
In what is the most dramatic overhaul to the search results page in years, Google has now blended in results from different types of search into its pages.
Innovative SEO Techniques - SEO innovation
Here are three new examples of innovative SEO approaches from my SEO Best Practice Gallery. The first two are great methods of generating fresh pages which target particular keyphrases cost-effectively. The third uses a database driven site to target additional keyphrases on a subdomain.
New Google backlink checker
The New Google backlink checker is part of Google Webmaster tools.
New Googlebombing penalty
"Googlebombing" is the practice of directing many inbound / backlinks at a page which refer to a keyphrase, usually a person to denigrate them.
SEO Best Practice Gallery
Learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by looking at what other companies are up to. These mainly UK examples illustrate a range of techniques we cover in the E-consultancy Search Engine Optimisation Best Practice Guide. Its easier to cover on-page optimisation and internal linking than external link-building, so I've concentrated on those. Here are 5 for starters.
Simplifying SEO - Five laws of effective SEO
I have defined these five laws of effective SEO as hopefully a simple way for you to assess your strategic focus on SEO - are you covering all five of these key areas? I've also created a new SEO Gallery which is referred to beow showing best practice from UK companies - you may want to checkout the Advanced SEO techniques being used.
What is black hat SEO? What is White hat SEO? What is ethical SEO?
When selecting an SEO agency it is important to review how they balance ethical SEO with the need to maximise search rankings, particularly for competitive keyphrases, through exploiting understanding of how the search engine ranks position. Some commentators talk about black-hat and white-hat SEO, but unfortunately it is nowhere near as a simple as that. This post looks at a great source to discuss and define Black-hat SEO.
Why use Google Sitemaps?
This post reviews the Advantages & Disadvantages of Google Sitemaps which is now part of the enhanced Google Webmaster tools. It also gives a short 'how to'. In November the standard was also adopted by Microsoft Live Search and Yahoo! - checkout the new Sitemaps.org.
Matt Cutts SEO Videos - the transcripts
Until recently, much of what was written about improving your results from Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) was speculation. Only search engineers at Google and the other search engines really know. But that has now changed.
Backlink building for SEO - what is a quality backlink?
It is now widely known how important backlinks (or inbound links) are to SEO, but what makes a quality backlink? This post summarises new research assessing backlink quality. and indicating the most important SEO ranking factors and how they differ for different search engines.
SEO Learning / Lessons from the AOL data leak
The AOL data leak has been widely reported. But how can we can we learn from it to help inform SEO? Here I show how it demonstrates different types of search behaviour that we should take into account in our search engine marketing and web design. It could become a full-time job analysing this data, so this article also points to some of the most useful sites developed so far for search marketers. The most interesting examples for me of real live searchers are at the BOTTOM of this article.
New backlink checker for SEO & PR
Backlinks or inbound links to your site are useful for generating more PR and Google PageRank by identifying backlinks from backlinks to your site and backlinks to competitor sites. You can then approach these sites to improve the backlink quality. This is a great new tool for backlink checking.
Search engine index inclusion tools
These domain checking tools can be used to assess problems with index inclusion
KeyWord Discovery - Additional SEM Keyphrase analysis tool
Add to SEO BP Guide a reference to this additional Keyword Discovery Tool to Table 1.6 in 1.3.10 Keyphrase identification tools.
