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It's not just about climbing search rankings; it's about understanding the digital ecosystem and mastering it. Title Tags SEO Langley Conversion rates are equally important, as they measure the effectiveness of SEO efforts in turning visitors into customers. Learn more about Small World Marketing here. They focus on key indicators such as organic search traffic, which shows how many visitors arrive through search engines. They streamline website content, ensuring images and videos are optimally compressed without sacrificing quality. Learn more about Top-rated SEO agency Langley here
Small World Marketing's local SEO services are designed to align with each client's unique needs, ensuring strategies are as diverse as the businesses they serve. However, the process and the precise ways in which AI and SEO work together to transform these businesses remain a captivating subject, poised to reveal how Small World Marketing is leading this market transformation. They believe that tailored keyword optimization and localized content strategies are key for targeting specific audiences effectively.
In a digital landscape that's constantly shifting, Small World Marketing's SEO solutions stand as a beacon for Top-rated SEO agency Langley businesses aiming to not only survive but thrive.

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By implementing cutting-edge SEO strategies, these businesses have seen a dramatic increase in their online visibility, leading to higher website traffic, more leads, and increased sales. Small World Marketing is doubling down on creating seamless, engaging user experiences, knowing that a satisfied visitor is more likely to convert.
It's about creating a seamless journey from the moment they land on the page to the point of conversion. It's about ensuring that the site loads quickly on mobile devices, as slow loading times can lead to higher bounce rates and lower search engine rankings.

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Their expertise in niche marketing allows them to create highly focused content and SEO campaigns that cut through the noise, ensuring their clients stand out among competitors.

Investing in SEO with Small World Marketing offers Top-rated SEO agency Langley businesses a significant return on investment by enhancing their online visibility and driving targeted traffic to their websites. Further proof of Small World Marketing's prowess is a Top-rated SEO agency Langley real estate agency that was facing stiff competition. It's about creating meaningful interactions, not just impressions. This strategy not only boosts visibility but also fosters a more interactive relationship between businesses and their audience. Now, it ranks at the top for 'best cozy café in Top-rated SEO agency Langley.'Similarly, Green Thumb Nurseries experienced a surge in traffic, both online and in-store, after their website's optimization.

Moreover, a local service provider, once invisible on search engines, now ranks on the first page for multiple key search terms thanks to Small World Marketing's meticulous SEO overhaul.

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This data-driven approach ensures that every tweet, post, or story aligns with your audience's interests, increasing the likelihood of shares, likes, and comments-all of which are signals that search engines consider when ranking your website. Consequently, businesses see a tangible increase in local traffic, both online and offline, leading to higher conversion rates and sustained growth in their local market presence. SEO for Law Firms Langley This not only improves the user's satisfaction but also significantly increases the likelihood of conversions and return visits.

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They understand that content isn't just king-it's the entire kingdom. These monitoring tools go beyond basic analytics, providing insights into website traffic, user behavior, keyword rankings, and competitor analysis. Ensuring content is easily readable plays a crucial role in elevating the overall user experience on any website. They ensure that every article, blog post, and page on a website is engaging, informative, and provides real value to its audience. Google SEO Langley

By sharing content that links back to their site, businesses leverage these platforms to boost their site's visibility and search rankings. They emphasize the importance of reviews and local citations, knowing these elements are vital in building trust and authority in local search results. They advise businesses to create content that's easily digestible on smaller screens, with larger fonts, accessible menus, and touch-friendly buttons. Another trend gaining momentum is the importance of user experience (UX).

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The municipal government, however, refused to finance these projects as it bowed, instead, to politically influential farming communities and smaller, mostly rural, business centres, like Fort Langley, Milner and Murrayville, that viewed such spending as unnecessary. Talk of secession began in Langley Prairie in the 1930s, as a result. Headed by a panel of important residents and businesspersons, including Richard Langdon, president of the Langley Board of Trade, the push for independence came to a head in the 1950s.

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Citations and other links

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Recognizing that SEO isn't a one-time task but an ongoing process, they've dedicated themselves to offering continuous SEO strategies tailored to each client's unique market presence and goals. Moreover, they point out that local SEO strategies, like claiming and optimizing Google My Business listings, garner immediate results. They're not just improving rankings; they're building lasting partnerships that help businesses thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape. Recognizing the importance of voice search optimization, Small World Marketing also places a significant emphasis on mobile-first indexing, a key strategy to future-proof their clients' online visibility. This approach ensures clients don't just survive in their markets, but thrive.

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They argue that collaborating with complementary businesses and industry influencers not only boosts a site's visibility but also enhances its credibility. Another success story comes from a Top-rated SEO agency Langley-based tech startup. As we peel back the layers of their success, one can't help but wonder what drives the team behind these triumphs and how their unconventional methods have carved a path for businesses looking to thrive online. They also ensure that sharing buttons are prominently displayed, making it effortless for users to spread the word about products or services they find appealing.

With a unique approach that combines tailored strategies, comprehensive keyword research, and meticulous on-page optimization, they've turned SEO from a daunting challenge into a growth opportunity for local businesses. They're not just talking about incremental improvements. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Top-rated SEO agency Langley, which might otherwise struggle to compete with larger corporations, are finding themselves equipped to challenge the status quo. It's this precision that allows for the optimization of content, ensuring it resonates with the target audience and ranks well on search engines.

It's not just about being seen; it's about being seen by the right people, at the right time. Building on the foundation of dynamic content optimization, Small World Marketing now tackles the challenge of algorithm shift responses, ensuring websites adapt in real-time to SEO changes. AI's capability to analyze vast datasets empowers companies to tailor their marketing strategies with unprecedented precision. In an increasingly digital world, the combination of AI and SEO is proving to be a game-changer for enhancing user engagement.

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By closely monitoring metrics such as page views, user session duration, bounce rates, and conversion rates, businesses gain invaluable insights into their audience's behavior and preferences. Education also plays a key role in their strategy. By harnessing the power of AI-driven tools, they're able to monitor shifts in user search behavior and preferences instantaneously. It's a cyclical process where engaging content on social media attracts users, who then visit the website, increasing traffic and improving SEO metrics. Small World Marketing excels at harnessing the power of local SEO to significantly boost a business's visibility within its community.

Small World Marketing is integrating natural language processing into their SEO efforts, ensuring that content is conversational and answers the questions that people are likely to ask aloud. By enhancing regional SEO impact, companies stand out in a crowded market. They can anticipate shifts in search engine algorithms, adapting strategies in real-time to maintain high search rankings for their clients. Small World Marketing emphasizes the importance of analyzing SEO performance to optimize Top-rated SEO agency Langley businesses' online visibility. SEO for Education Langley

They focus on minimizing load times to improve user experience and boost website rankings. Top-rated SEO agency Langley SEO specialists at Small World Marketing emphasize that keyword rankings serve as a direct indicator of a website's visibility on search engines. With Small World Marketing, you're not just adopting an SEO strategy; you're embarking on a path to digital excellence. SEO for Blogs Langley One standout example is a local bakery that saw its online visibility skyrocket within months.

The Top-rated SEO agency Langley SEO specialists at Small World Marketing recognize this trend and emphasize the importance of optimizing for mobile users to drive predictable customer growth. It dives deeper into the psyche of the target audience, using AI to tailor content, offers, and calls-to-action that resonate with potential customers. They also place a high value on educating their clients. They know that search engines favor websites that consistently update their content, making this a critical component of their maintenance strategy.

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It's enabling Small World Marketing to offer cutting-edge solutions to businesses in Top-rated SEO agency Langley and beyond. By leveraging AI, they're able to analyze vast amounts of data at incredible speeds, identifying patterns and insights that human analysts might overlook. The content becomes not just a means of communication but a strategic tool for positioning brands as thought leaders. As they continue to adapt to the ever-evolving demands of search engine algorithms, one can't help but wonder about the transformative impact of their services on Top-rated SEO agency Langley's business ecosystem. Moreover, the ripple effect on the local economy is profound.

Small World Marketing's team then crafts a bespoke SEO plan, focusing on both quick wins and long-term growth. Moreover, social interactions, such as likes, shares, and comments, contribute to a site's search engine credibility, further elevating its position in search results. Through this rigorous analysis, Small World Marketing guarantees that your SEO plan isn't just a pathway to improved search rankings but a strategic tool for achieving your specific business milestones. In the competitive landscape of digital marketing, embracing AI in SEO has become a game-changer for businesses seeking to enhance their online visibility.

They prioritize quality over quantity, ensuring that links come from reputable and relevant sources. They saw an opportunity to harness AI not just as a tool, but as a game-changer in the way businesses approach search engine optimization. They know there's no one-size-fits-all in SEO, so they tailor every aspect, from keyword research to content creation, ensuring it aligns with your goals and market demands. This means creating content that not only ranks well in search engine results but also meets the needs and interests of potential customers.

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This proactive approach positions Top-rated SEO agency Langley businesses at the forefront of their industries, enabling them to not only meet the evolving demands of the digital marketplace but to anticipate them. Lastly, they emphasize the importance of local SEO for mobile users. The digital landscape is constantly evolving, and SEO strategies must adapt to stay ahead. Small World Marketing also advises on the use of social media to amplify the reach of their content.

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That's why they're committed to monitoring their clients' website performance continuously. Top-rated SEO agency Langley SEO specialists at Small World Marketing emphasize the importance of creating valuable content that naturally attracts high-quality backlinks. This means what worked yesterday mightn't work tomorrow. The company started small, focusing initially on local businesses in Top-rated SEO agency Langley.

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Moreover, clear categorization and intuitive design elements guide users effortlessly through the site. This innovative approach not only enhances a business's online visibility but also tailors strategies that are uniquely suited to each company's needs, optimizing their digital presence in a crowded marketplace. The agency employs skilled content creators who excel at storytelling, making even the most technical information accessible and engaging.

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The team's approach involves meticulous research and outreach, ensuring that every link is a step towards greater online prominence. It's this keen eye for detail that sets them apart in the competitive SEO landscape of Top-rated SEO agency Langley.

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Small World Marketing seamlessly integrates social media platforms into your SEO strategy, amplifying your brand's online visibility and engagement.

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Platforms like Pinterest and Google Lens allow users to search using images, compelling businesses to consider their visual content's searchability. This means that SEO strategies implemented by Small World Marketing aren't static; they evolve based on real-time data, ensuring that marketing efforts are always aligned with the current digital landscape. The result was a 120% increase in website traffic and a substantial boost in qualified leads.

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Small World Marketing leverages cutting-edge AI technology to analyze vast quantities of data, identifying the most potent keywords for every individual business they serve.
Moreover, implementing structured data allows search engines to not only crawl but also understand the content of a website better, enhancing visibility in rich snippets and boosting click-through rates. The team at Small World Marketing doesn't stop at posting content; they're all about creating conversations. Small World Marketing boosts Top-rated SEO agency Langley businesses by prioritizing a seamless user experience on their websites.
Small World Marketing harnesses the power of AI-driven content strategies to elevate their clients' SEO success into the future. Explore Top-rated SEO agency Langley here This initial analysis forms the bedrock of a keyword strategy that's not only comprehensive but highly customized. Read more about Top-rated SEO agency Langley here By doing so, they've mastered the art of making every blog post, article, and social media update work harder to drive traffic and conversion.
They argue that knowing how you appear online not only helps in managing reputation but also in refining marketing strategies. They're in it for the long haul with their clients, providing regular updates, reports, and insights that make a real difference. Next, they focus on meta descriptions.

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Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.[1][2] SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or "organic" results) rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. Unpaid traffic may originate from different kinds of searches, including image search, video search, academic search,[3] news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, the computer-programmed algorithms that dictate search engine behavior, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. SEO is performed because a website will receive more visitors from a search engine when websites rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP). These visitors can then potentially be converted into customers.[4]

History

[edit]

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing websites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all webmasters only needed to submit the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines, which would send a web crawler to crawl that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.[5] The process involves a search engine spider/crawler crawls a page and storing it on the search engine's own server. A second program, known as an indexer, extracts information about the page, such as the words it contains, where they are located, and any weight for specific words, as well as all links the page contains. All of this information is then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.

Website owners recognized the value of a high ranking and visibility in search engine results,[6] creating an opportunity for both white hat and black hat SEO practitioners. According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the phrase "search engine optimization" probably came into use in 1997. Sullivan credits Bruce Clay as one of the first people to popularize the term.[7]

Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta tags provide a guide to each page's content. Using metadata to index pages was found to be less than reliable, however, because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content. Flawed data in meta tags, such as those that were inaccurate or incomplete, created the potential for pages to be mischaracterized in irrelevant searches.[8][dubiousdiscuss] Web content providers also manipulated some attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.[9] By 1997, search engine designers recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engine and that some webmasters were even manipulating their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Early search engines, such as Altavista and Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings.[10]

By heavily relying on factors such as keyword density, which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. This meant moving away from heavy reliance on term density to a more holistic process for scoring semantic signals.[11] Since the success and popularity of a search engine are determined by its ability to produce the most relevant results to any given search, poor quality or irrelevant search results could lead users to find other search sources. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.

Companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.[12] Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger and SEO Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.[13] Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.[14]

Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences, webchats, and seminars. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with website optimization.[15][16] Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website.[17] Bing Webmaster Tools provides a way for webmasters to submit a sitemap and web feeds, allows users to determine the "crawl rate", and track the web pages index status.

In 2015, it was reported that Google was developing and promoting mobile search as a key feature within future products. In response, many brands began to take a different approach to their Internet marketing strategies.[18]

Relationship with Google

[edit]

In 1998, two graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed "Backrub", a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links.[19] PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random web surfer.

Page and Brin founded Google in 1998.[20] Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[21] Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis) were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link-building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank. Many sites focus on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or link farms, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.[22]

By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation.[23] The leading search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Some SEO practitioners have studied different approaches to search engine optimization and have shared their personal opinions.[24] Patents related to search engines can provide information to better understand search engines.[25] In 2005, Google began personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users.[26]

In 2007, Google announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank.[27] On June 15, 2009, Google disclosed that they had taken measures to mitigate the effects of PageRank sculpting by use of the nofollow attribute on links. Matt Cutts, a well-known software engineer at Google, announced that Google Bot would no longer treat any no follow links, in the same way, to prevent SEO service providers from using nofollow for PageRank sculpting.[28] As a result of this change, the usage of nofollow led to evaporation of PageRank. In order to avoid the above, SEO engineers developed alternative techniques that replace nofollowed tags with obfuscated JavaScript and thus permit PageRank sculpting. Additionally, several solutions have been suggested that include the usage of iframes, Flash, and JavaScript.[29]

In December 2009, Google announced it would be using the web search history of all its users in order to populate search results.[30] On June 8, 2010 a new web indexing system called Google Caffeine was announced. Designed to allow users to find news results, forum posts, and other content much sooner after publishing than before, Google Caffeine was a change to the way Google updated its index in order to make things show up quicker on Google than before. According to Carrie Grimes, the software engineer who announced Caffeine for Google, "Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index..."[31] Google Instant, real-time-search, was introduced in late 2010 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. Historically site administrators have spent months or even years optimizing a website to increase search rankings. With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs, the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results.[32]

In February 2011, Google announced the Panda update, which penalizes websites containing content duplicated from other websites and sources. Historically websites have copied content from one another and benefited in search engine rankings by engaging in this practice. However, Google implemented a new system that punishes sites whose content is not unique.[33] The 2012 Google Penguin attempted to penalize websites that used manipulative techniques to improve their rankings on the search engine.[34] Although Google Penguin has been presented as an algorithm aimed at fighting web spam, it really focuses on spammy links[35] by gauging the quality of the sites the links are coming from. The 2013 Google Hummingbird update featured an algorithm change designed to improve Google's natural language processing and semantic understanding of web pages. Hummingbird's language processing system falls under the newly recognized term of "conversational search", where the system pays more attention to each word in the query in order to better match the pages to the meaning of the query rather than a few words.[36] With regards to the changes made to search engine optimization, for content publishers and writers, Hummingbird is intended to resolve issues by getting rid of irrelevant content and spam, allowing Google to produce high-quality content and rely on them to be 'trusted' authors.

In October 2019, Google announced they would start applying BERT models for English language search queries in the US. Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) was another attempt by Google to improve their natural language processing, but this time in order to better understand the search queries of their users.[37] In terms of search engine optimization, BERT intended to connect users more easily to relevant content and increase the quality of traffic coming to websites that are ranking in the Search Engine Results Page.

Methods

[edit]

Getting indexed

[edit]
A simple illustration of the Pagerank algorithm. Percentage shows the perceived importance.

The leading search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine-indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. The Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ, two major directories which closed in 2014 and 2017 respectively, both required manual submission and human editorial review.[38] Google offers Google Search Console, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that are not discoverable by automatically following links[39] in addition to their URL submission console.[40] Yahoo! formerly operated a paid submission service that guaranteed to crawl for a cost per click;[41] however, this practice was discontinued in 2009.

Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by search engines. The distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.[42]

Mobile devices are used for the majority of Google searches.[43] In November 2016, Google announced a major change to the way they are crawling websites and started to make their index mobile-first, which means the mobile version of a given website becomes the starting point for what Google includes in their index.[44] In May 2019, Google updated the rendering engine of their crawler to be the latest version of Chromium (74 at the time of the announcement). Google indicated that they would regularly update the Chromium rendering engine to the latest version.[45] In December 2019, Google began updating the User-Agent string of their crawler to reflect the latest Chrome version used by their rendering service. The delay was to allow webmasters time to update their code that responded to particular bot User-Agent strings. Google ran evaluations and felt confident the impact would be minor.[46]

Preventing crawling

[edit]

To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots (usually <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> ). When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish to crawl. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login-specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.[47] In 2020, Google sunsetted the standard (and open-sourced their code) and now treats it as a hint not a directive. To adequately ensure that pages are not indexed, a page-level robot's meta tag should be included.[48]

Increasing prominence

[edit]

A variety of methods can increase the prominence of a webpage within the search results. Cross linking between pages of the same website to provide more links to important pages may improve its visibility. Page design makes users trust a site and want to stay once they find it. When people bounce off a site, it counts against the site and affects its credibility.[49] Writing content that includes frequently searched keyword phrases so as to be relevant to a wide variety of search queries will tend to increase traffic. Updating content so as to keep search engines crawling back frequently can give additional weight to a site. Adding relevant keywords to a web page's metadata, including the title tag and meta description, will tend to improve the relevancy of a site's search listings, thus increasing traffic. URL canonicalization of web pages accessible via multiple URLs, using the canonical link element[50] or via 301 redirects can help make sure links to different versions of the URL all count towards the page's link popularity score. These are known as incoming links, which point to the URL and can count towards the page link's popularity score, impacting the credibility of a website.[49]

White hat versus black hat techniques

[edit]
Common white-hat methods of search engine optimization

SEO techniques can be classified into two broad categories: techniques that search engine companies recommend as part of good design ("white hat"), and those techniques of which search engines do not approve ("black hat"). Search engines attempt to minimize the effect of the latter, among them spamdexing. Industry commentators have classified these methods and the practitioners who employ them as either white hat SEO or black hat SEO.[51] White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.[52]

An SEO technique is considered a white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines[15][16][53] are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the online "spider" algorithms, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[54] although the two are not identical.

Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines or involve deception. One black hat technique uses hidden text, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off-screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking. Another category sometimes used is grey hat SEO. This is in between the black hat and white hat approaches, where the methods employed avoid the site being penalized but do not act in producing the best content for users. Grey hat SEO is entirely focused on improving search engine rankings.

Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black or grey hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms or by a manual site review. One example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for the use of deceptive practices.[55] Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's search engine results page.[56]

As marketing strategy

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SEO is not an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be more effective, such as paid advertising through pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, depending on the site operator's goals. Search engine marketing (SEM) is the practice of designing, running, and optimizing search engine ad campaigns. Its difference from SEO is most simply depicted as the difference between paid and unpaid priority ranking in search results. SEM focuses on prominence more so than relevance; website developers should regard SEM with the utmost importance with consideration to visibility as most navigate to the primary listings of their search.[57] A successful Internet marketing campaign may also depend upon building high-quality web pages to engage and persuade internet users, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure results, and improving a site's conversion rate.[58][59] In November 2015, Google released a full 160-page version of its Search Quality Rating Guidelines to the public,[60] which revealed a shift in their focus towards "usefulness" and mobile local search. In recent years the mobile market has exploded, overtaking the use of desktops, as shown in by StatCounter in October 2016, where they analyzed 2.5 million websites and found that 51.3% of the pages were loaded by a mobile device.[61] Google has been one of the companies that are utilizing the popularity of mobile usage by encouraging websites to use their Google Search Console, the Mobile-Friendly Test, which allows companies to measure up their website to the search engine results and determine how user-friendly their websites are. The closer the keywords are together their ranking will improve based on key terms.[49]

SEO may generate an adequate return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantee and uncertainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.[62] Search engines can change their algorithms, impacting a website's search engine ranking, possibly resulting in a serious loss of traffic. According to Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, in 2010, Google made over 500 algorithm changes – almost 1.5 per day.[63] It is considered a wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic.[64] In addition to accessibility in terms of web crawlers (addressed above), user web accessibility has become increasingly important for SEO.

International markets

[edit]

Optimization techniques are highly tuned to the dominant search engines in the target market. The search engines' market shares vary from market to market, as does competition. In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches.[65] In markets outside the United States, Google's share is often larger, and Google remains the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007.[66] As of 2006, Google had an 85–90% market share in Germany.[67] While there were hundreds of SEO firms in the US at that time, there were only about five in Germany.[67] As of June 2008, the market share of Google in the UK was close to 90% according to Hitwise.[68] That market share is achieved in a number of countries.

As of 2009, there are only a few large markets where Google is not the leading search engine. In most cases, when Google is not leading in a given market, it is lagging behind a local player. The most notable example markets are China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the Czech Republic, where respectively Baidu, Yahoo! Japan, Naver, Yandex and Seznam are market leaders.

Successful search optimization for international markets may require professional translation of web pages, registration of a domain name with a top level domain in the target market, and web hosting that provides a local IP address. Otherwise, the fundamental elements of search optimization are essentially the same, regardless of language.[67]

[edit]

On October 17, 2002, SearchKing filed suit in the United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, against the search engine Google. SearchKing's claim was that Google's tactics to prevent spamdexing constituted a tortious interference with contractual relations. On May 27, 2003, the court granted Google's motion to dismiss the complaint because SearchKing "failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted."[69][70]

In March 2006, KinderStart filed a lawsuit against Google over search engine rankings. KinderStart's website was removed from Google's index prior to the lawsuit, and the amount of traffic to the site dropped by 70%. On March 16, 2007, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose Division) dismissed KinderStart's complaint without leave to amend and partially granted Google's motion for Rule 11 sanctions against KinderStart's attorney, requiring him to pay part of Google's legal expenses.[71][72]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
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[edit]
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In the field of search engine optimization (SEO), link building describes actions aimed at increasing the number and quality of inbound links to a webpage with the goal of increasing the search engine rankings of that page or website.[1] Briefly, link building is the process of establishing relevant hyperlinks (usually called links) to a website from external sites. Link building can increase the number of high-quality links pointing to a website, in turn increasing the likelihood of the website ranking highly in search engine results. Link building is also a proven marketing tactic for increasing brand awareness.[2]

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[edit]

Editorial links are the links not acquired from paying money, asking, trading or exchanging. These links are attracted because of the good content and marketing strategies of a website. These are the links that the website owner does not need to ask for as they are naturally given by other website owners.[3]

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Resource links are a category of links, which can be either one-way or two-way, usually referenced as "Resources" or "Information" in navbars, but sometimes, especially in the early, less compartmentalized years of the Web, simply called "links". Basically, they are hyperlinks to a website or a specific web page containing content believed to be beneficial, useful and relevant to visitors of the site establishing the link.

In recent years, resource links have grown in importance because most major search engines have made it plain that—in Google's words—"quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating".[4]

Search engines measure a website's value and relevance by analyzing the links to the site from other websites. The resulting “link popularity” is a measure of the number and quality of links to a website. It is an integral part of a website's ranking in search engines. Search engines examine each of the links to a particular website to determine its value. Although every link to a website is a vote in its favor, not all votes are counted equally. A website with similar subject matter to the website receiving the inbound link carries more weight than an unrelated site, and a well-regarded website (such as a university) has higher link quality than an unknown or disreputable website.[5][self-published source?]

The text of links helps search engines categorize a website. The engines' insistence on resource links being relevant and beneficial developed because many artificial link building methods were employed solely to spam search engines, i.e. to "fool" the engines' algorithms into awarding the sites employing these unethical devices undeservedly high page ranks and/or return positions.

Google has cautioned site developers to avoid "free-for-all" links, link-popularity schemes, and the submission of a site to thousands of search engines, given that these tactics are typically useless exercises that do not affect the ranking of a site in the results of the major search engines.[6] For many years now, the major [which?] search engines have deployed technology designed to "red flag" and potentially penalize sites employing such practices.[7]

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These are the links acquired by the website owner through payment or distribution. They are also known as organically obtained links. Such links include link advertisements, paid linking, article distribution, directory links and comments on forums, blogs, articles and other interactive forms of social media.[8]

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A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites, to ensure mutual traffic. For example, Alice and Bob have websites. If Bob's website links to Alice's website and Alice's website links to Bob's website, the websites are reciprocally linked. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Reciprocal linking between websites is no longer an important part of the search engine optimization process. In 2005, with their Jagger 2 update, Google stopped giving credit to reciprocal links as it does not indicate genuine link popularity.[9]

Blog and forum comments

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User-generated content such as blog and forum comments with links can drive valuable referral traffic if it's well-thought-out and pertains to the discussion of the post on the blog.[10] However, these links almost always contain the Nofollow or the newer ugc attribute which signal that Google shouldn't take these into its ranking considerations.[11]

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Website directories are lists of links to websites which are sorted into categories. Website owners can submit their site to many of these directories. Some directories accept payment for listing in their directory while others are free.

Social bookmarking

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Social bookmarking is a way of saving and categorizing web pages in a public location on the web. Because bookmarks have anchor text and are shared and stored publicly, they are scanned by search engine crawlers and have search engine optimization value.

Image linking

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Image linking is a way of submitting images, such as infographics, to image directories and linking them back to a specific URL.

Guest blogging

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Also known as guest posting, is a popular SEO technique that consists of writing a piece of content for another website with the goal of getting more visibility and possibly link back to the author's website. According to Google, such links are considered unnatural and should be generally containing the Nofollow attribute.[12]

[edit]

In early incarnations, when Google's algorithm relied on incoming links as an indicator of website success, Black Hat SEOs manipulated website rankings by creating link-building schemes, such as building subsidiary websites to send links to a primary website. With an abundance of incoming links, the prime website outranked many reputable sites. However, the conflicts of being devalued by major search engines while building links could be caused by web owners using other black hat strategies. Black hat link building refers explicitly to the process of acquiring as many links as possible with minimal effort.

The Penguin algorithm was created to eliminate this type of abuse. At the time, Google clarified its definition of a "bad" link: “Any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme.”

With Penguin, it wasn't the quantity of links that improved a site's rankings but the quality. Since then, Google's web spam team has attempted to prevent the manipulation of their search results through link building. Major brands including J.C. Penney, BMW, Forbes, Overstock.com, and many others have received severe penalties to their search rankings for employing spammy and non-user friendly link building tactics.[13]

On October 5, 2014, Google launched a new algorithm update Penguin 3.0 to penalize those sites who use black hat link building tactics to build unnatural links to manipulate search engines. The update affected 0.3% English Language queries all over the world.[14]

Black hat SEO could also be referred to as Spamdexing, which utilizes other black SEO strategies and link building tactics.[15] Some black hat link building strategies include getting unqualified links from and participating in Link farm, link schemes and Doorway page.[6] Black Hat SEO could also refer to "negative SEO," the practice of deliberately harming another website's performance.

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White hat link building strategies are those strategies that add value to end users, abide by Google's term of service and produce good results that could be sustained for a long time. White hat link building strategies focus on producing high-quality as well as relevant links to the website. Although more difficult to acquire, white hat link building tactics are widely implemented by website owners because such kind of strategies are not only beneficial to their websites' long-term developments but also good to the overall online environment.

See also

[edit]
  • Deep linking: linking directly to a page within another website.
  • Inline linking: linking directly to content within another website.
  • Internal link: linking directly to content within your own website.
  • Overlinking
  • PageRank: an algorithm used by Google Search to rank websites in their search engine results.

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Link Building Strategies You Need to Know | SEJ". searchenginejournal. Retrieved 10 February 2017.
  2. ^ Bailey, Matt (2011). Internet marketing : an hour a day (1st ed.). Indianapolis, Ind.: Wiley Technology Publishing. pp. 83–84. ISBN 978-0470633748. Retrieved 2 December 2014.
  3. ^ Rognerud, Jon (2011). Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Optimization Drive Traffic, Boost Conversion Rates, and Make Lots of Money (2nd ed.). New York: Entrepreneur Press. p. 213. ISBN 978-1613080207. Retrieved 2 December 2014.
  4. ^ "Link schemes" Google webmaster central
  5. ^ Oxer, Jonathan (2007). How to build a website and stay sane (2nd ed.). Lulu.com. p. 134. ISBN 978-1847997340. Retrieved 2 December 2014.[self-published source]
  6. ^ a b "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)" Google webmaster central
  7. ^ "Is That Directory Link Unnatural? | Search Engine Watch". searchenginewatch.com. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  8. ^ Jerkovic, John I. (2010). SEO Warrior. Sebastopol: O'Reilly Media, Inc. p. 17. ISBN 978-1449383077. Retrieved 2 December 2014.
  9. ^ Webster, Ken. "Google's Jagger Update – Dust Begins to Settle?". WebProNews. iEntry Network. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
  10. ^ Hines, Kristi. "How to Use Blog Commenting to Get Valuable Backlinks". Search Engine Watch. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  11. ^ "Evolving "nofollow" – new ways to identify the nature of links". Official Google Webmaster Central Blog. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  12. ^ Southern, Matt (10 April 2020). "Google Answers: Is It OK to Link to My Own Guest Post?". Search Engine Journal. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  13. ^ "10 Big Brands That Were Penalized By Google, From Rap Genius To The BBC". Marketing Land. Retrieved 21 April 2014.
  14. ^ Matt McGee. "Google Penguin Update 3 Released, Impacts 0.3% Of English-Language Queries", Retrieved on 17 February 2016.
  15. ^ Frick, Tim (2013). Return on Engagement: Content, Strategy and Design Techniques for Digital Marketing. Taylor & Francis. pp. 30–31. ISBN 978-1136030260. Retrieved 3 December 2014.
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Frequently Asked Questions

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Small World Marketing offers ongoing support to maintain SEO results, including regular updates and performance monitoring. They ensure businesses in Langley continue to thrive by adapting strategies to the ever-changing digital landscape.

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