Learning SEO and doing SEO for a year, but he is not truly satisfied with the result. Though it had appeared positive enough to help him start consulting and applying his own methods on other SEO projects, he always found reasons to doubt his achievements. Because NO ONE in this world can thoroughly understand Google Algorithm like the back of their hands. He is curious about the feeling of top 10 SEO gurus who are considered as the leaders in the SEO industry. Are they confident of what they have consulted to clients or trained their padawans? How many percentage do they understand the Google Algorithms? We can never know.
For me, I will never place myself on an electric chair to answer that question until someone off the list can take the risk to point out.
Frankly, if there was a SEO standard which can make SEO jobs transparent, it would not only improve quality of search engine result pages (SERPs) but also filter out scams. Many “gurus” will take issue with me. Since as long as people get confused, benefits generated from this job will increase tremendously for years, especially the period after releasing an algorithm update. Either SEO gurus or newcomers, however, should treat Google well enough to reach potential clients and get better rankings.
I named this blog post as “The art of applying SEO methods” after reading a document about advanced SEO techniques. Why I’d like to call it the art rather than a dollar keyword “Advanced SEO techniques” because Google is not that dumb. We have learned and applied the art of communication in the verbal activities to help our speeches stand out, so why don’t we communicate with Google gently as we are talking to a person?
Let’s say, if Google can talk, what should it speak out firstly? I guess, “treat me as a human!”, “I’ve got a brain” or “Stop fooling me!”. Well, I let you choose after reading those arts below.
1. Link Building – The art of communication
Modern link building is difficult because many webmasters afraid of being penalized by Google. Besides, many tricks have been told differently which makes newcomers harder to follow. In fact, I do not believe building link is too much risky, since your link could be removed overnight even if you are not building link at all.
This is one example: My article “Top 5 things to do in Saigon” were removed after holding the 1st position in 3 months. It disappeared as if never existed. I was too depressed to find the out the answer days and nights. Finally, I discovered server’s maintenance had caused the issue. It somehow auto-changed the post’s URL and affect redirect function which alarmed Google Webmaster for not being able to access the site.
Insight: When you are on top, must be careful of any changes in your site and every time your server runs a maintenance. If your site must temporarily move to another server for a short time, your webmaster must ensure that Google bot can access the site and robots.txt during that time.
It’s hard to be the #1 but it’s even harder to hold your position as long as it could be. When your article has a high relevancy, Google fairly rewards you with the 1st rank. But if you disappoint them by making the bounce rate up too high in a certain period, you might say good bye to the SERPs after one night. (I will post a solution to help get it back within 5 days in another post.)
Now, the question is how many back links are enough and how to create a sustainable links which is seldom removed by moderator or web’s owner?
The first art is that the link profile must be seen as doable and believable by Google. A doable link profile means that your backlink profile looks like all backlinks were made by “real” internet users, who’d like to share your works due to your quality content. Thus, not only high PR websites strive to reward your work but also varied normal websites. So, don’t stress yourself with building links only on high page rank sites.
2. Keep the speed of generating backlinks
Do not fool Google bots in terms of number of backlinks. It is not normal at all if in few days the website gets hundreds of links. Google indeed can track the total number of backlinks and when you got them. It looks weird if your site gets 100 links per day and then suddenly stop getting any more.
The way you build backlinks is like the way you notify to Google that your website is concerned by the public. As usual, people gradually stop mentioning about your story, but they never instantly stop talking about yours. Google bots can also understand and will trigger algorithm to investigate the previous backlinks and stop considering your site an authority anymore, so it probably do not deserve good rankings.
The second art is to regularly build links to your sites. Plan a weekly schedule to proceed the link-wheel sometimes more, other times less to reduce the chance Goole penalize your sites.
3. Latent Semantic Indexed Keywords – LSI Keywords
The third art is to make your article sound naturally. For any SEO gurus, how to keep a natural keyword / content ratio is always a hard part of content production. It considers unnatural if Google bots figure out the keyword density above 10%. So now the art of using synonym in verbal communication cal apply in this case by placing LSI keywords throughout the article.
LSI keywords is the method of using a strategic keyword with suffix and prefix or adding another word (different roots). For instance, you are writing about “wine taste”, it will help lowering keyword density of “wine bar” if you also include “enjoy wine taste”, “taste wine with”. So, before wrting any article, a keyword research for LSI keywords should be prepared to make sure you use proper LSI keywords.
To be continued….
