One of the most important ranking factors has been Google Page Rank, a number assigned to each Web page as per its robustness in terms of quality as well as the number of incoming links. It is a link analysis algorithm that rates a page on a scale of 0-10, of which 10 means the highest rank. Usually, Google shows this number in its browser toolbar after which several SEO tools began utilizing it as a relevant measure to assess the Google Juice of a page.

What happened after the advent of PageRank?

The increasing importance of Google page rank triggered almost an obsession amongst a majority of Webmasters and SEO experts. This resulted in black practices such as selling links and demanding more money for getting links from a blog or site having a higher Page Rank (PR). Obviously, this is something that Google never supports. Further, because of time gap between the two updates,  there is also a mismatch between the Google generated and the publicly available PR.

The final outcome…

Traditionally, Google updated the much-heralded page rank algorithm approximately after every three months. However, since the beginning of 2013, there has been no update. While PR is one of the more reliable metrics for evaluating the site’s quality when in service, it now seems to have taken a permanent retreat.

Since 2009, the support for PR has been dropped, starting with the withdrawal from the Webmaster Tools. Google has never introduced its own toolbar or add-on for Chrome to show PR values. In 2011, it took back the support from Firefox; while Internet Explorer was the last browser to continue with the Google’s PR display.

The PR update happened in December 2012 but was not completely intentional. According to Google, the team was fixing a back-end service along with which a PR update occurred. The data flowing into the toolbar has not seen any update even in 2013.

The absence of any update in 2013 made many experts to believe that there might be some problem in the algorithm. Well, there was no problem with the algorithm. To this, the search spam head of Google Matt Cutts said, “The ‘pipeline’ to send rank updates to the toolbar is broken,” which indicates that the PR in the bar will not update automatically.”

He further explained that the team knew about the ‘no update’ decision in the Google Toolbar and that there is a good reason behind it. According to Google, several people obsess over this metric even though it is not a vital one anymore, due to which it is not a priority to fix it. This indicates that the PageRank meter, formerly designed to assist the visitors judge the quality of a Web page, now has data that is obsolete. Recently, Google’s John Mueller conveyed in a Google+ hangout video that Google would perhaps not update the Google Toolbar Page Rank anytime in future.

But Google might not remove forever

Yes! You heard it right. In early 2013, Google asserted that PR in the toolbar would not be going away as long as the users continue to use it. Cutts clarified that the consumers still consider PR as a useful metric. This is perhaps because anyone still having the toolbar obviously sends back the data to Google about what they are viewing, which persuades Google to retain the value for that particular page for further assessment. This means the last saved page rank values, although not latest because they are not updated, will be still in use by Google for allotting the position of Web pages on the search result pages.

Stop being obsessed about PR because…

Seriously speaking, PR is just a temporary influencer in fulfilling the objectives such as attract more readers, make more money, and have more leads. Considering PR as a success metric works only if one assumes that a higher PR is essential for better ranking, driving more traffic, and having more leads. Only those who believe this would consider giving importance to the page rank metric. However, Google does not believe in this assumption, which is evident in its ‘no update’ approach since more than two years.

One must remember that although the page rank is not updated, the SEO value of sites engaged in black or spammy practices are bound to go down; all thanks to the regular Penguin updates. So, why give importance to a page rank value when you can directly measure with the latest metrics that Penguin focuses on?

Still not convinced? Here are top 5 reasons why PR should not be a focal metric:

• Discrepancy between the displayed and generated rank
• No correlation with organic SEO ranking, as sites with 0 PR has considerable traffic for competitive search terms
• Irrelevant for social media results and real time search, for example, real time news and status updates having a PR 0 are shown up quickly in the search results
• Not a result-inclined metric because PR is not associated with any real results or with stuff that links directly to other Google-liked metrics
• Held insignificant by Google

So, What’s next in the metric list

Well, right now, it is hard to say what Google shall give importance to in its metric list. However, it is easy for a Webmaster to find the metrics directly related to meaningful gains or business goals for the site instead of just focusing on the page rank, says Susan Moskwa who is Webmaster Trends Analyst.

Moreover, it is worth considering metrics that are updated at fixed intervals instead of only a few times a year, as the latter is too gradual to know about the changes reliably. Susan suggests focusing on conversion rate, bounce rate, and clickthrough rate (CTR) through services such as Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics, which are the more critical metrics than page rank.

So, don’t you think it is time to leave behind the page rank metric?

A Beginner’s Guide to Google Schema Markup

Schema markup is one of the recent SEO evolutions introduced in 2011, which acts as a new, powerful medium of optimization. Despite this, it remains one of the least used SEO forms. It is a new branch reflecting Google’s support for structured data markup, a mechanism that helps expressing a relation between things in a machine-readable format.

Since some years, Google has supported three standards for structured markup namely, RDFa, microformats, and microdata. However, schema markup focuses only on microdata standard for keeping the implementation simpler as well as boost uniformity across search engines by achieving a balance between the simplicity of microformats and extensibility of RDFa.

Including schema microdata in digital pages is a hot topic in the SEO world, as it is a ranking factor recognized by Google. Although structured markup formats are popular since several years, very few sites tend to use schema microdata, and surprisingly, even fewer individuals truly know about what it is or what its importance is.

As per a recent study posted on Searchmetrics, less than 1% of domains include schema markup. Nevertheless, over 33% of Google search results show rich snippets that refer to add pieces of information to stand out a result on the search engine result pages (SERPs) and increase the chances of click-through rates and consequently ranking.

This itself says how essential it has become to include schema markup in your SEO strategy portfolio. Therefore, this guide is dedicated to all those who wish to include the schema in their Web pages.

Overview of Schema, Schema markup, and Schema.org

Fundamentally, schema refers to a kind of microdata that allows a search engine to parse and decode the information on pages more easily as well as effectively. This helps them in offering relevant results to the visitors as per the search queries.

A schema markup is the novel best friend of an Internet marketer, as it is a distinct set of HTML tags (metadata) to be added to HTML pages for assisting the search engines in having a deeper insight of what that specific page is about. As a result, it easier for visitors to get exactly what they are searching online and consequently enjoy a better search experience.

While a majority of HTML tags conveys search engines what the site says, schema markup informs what your site means. This point of distinction aids the search engines in delivering search results of better quality.

Schema.org is the centralized hub for the Schema project on the Web, as collaboration amongst Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex (Russian search engine trying our search without links) to standardize the mechanism of structured markup. The outcome is an agreed set of code markers conveying the key search engines, how to deal with the data on sites.

Schema.org is not a markup protocol or language, but a collection of schemas or Microdata markup vocabulary detailed and organized on the site. It is a standard vocabulary for search engines to deal with data for ranking. In simple words, Schema.org is an initiative to make structured markup simpler for search crawlers and site owners.

Technically, a schema is a type of rich HTML snippet for adding additional detail to the text below the URL shown on SERPs. Rich snippets help you in informing search engines directly about who you are, what you are offering, and any other information you are providing. They are like a signpost that eliminates any confusion. For example, a schema tells search engines that the given content on ‘Titanic’ is related to the ship that sank in early 20^th century rather than the Oscar nominated film.

Therefore, schema is also the preferred method of markup for most search engines. A schema markup offers all types of options to make the listing of a site look flashy as well as relevant on an SERP. It refers to a code (semantic vocabulary) on your site to assist search engines in returning more relevant and informative results.

For example, implementing a proper schema markup for a page optimized for ‘vegetarian thukpa recipe’ can show an image, calorie count, starred rating, cooking time, and other bits of such interesting information under its URL on an SERP. This simply allows the click rate to increase. Here, the right schema markup tells the search engine that the keyword is not just a set of random words, but a cooking recipe that the Web page offers. Therefore, it can be concluded that a schema markup uses a distinct semantic vocabulary in the format of microdata.

When a site has schema markup, the users can observe on the SERPs what a site is all about, what is does, where it is, what its rating is, what is the cost of an item, and more. Therefore, from another viewpoint, schema markup is for users, which webmasters implement as a ‘virtual business card’. This is a user-focused progress that fulfills the goal of giving the most relevant information to the users.

Google names schema markup as the ‘preferred’ method to arrange (structure) the content in case you wish to show a rich snippet in an SERP. Well, the good news is that you are not required to learn new coding skills, as knowledge of HTML is sufficient. The only difference is inserting pieces of schema.org vocabulary to microdata existing in the HTML form.

Working of Schema Microdata

Just like other markups, schema microdata is directly applied to page content for exactly defining what it means and how a search engine should treat it. A webmaster needs to add schema elements and attributes directly to the HTML code of a page for offering additional information to search crawlers. Let us take an example of a rich snippet of a schema markup.

In the above example, the emphasis is on the content about Alfonso Cuaron’s 2013 movie, ‘Gravity’. By adding the itemscope attribute, you are conveying that the code below the <div> tag is about a particular item named gravity. If you ignore the itemtype attribute, the code then does not specify what kind of item it is. Therefore, itemtype attribute specifies that the item is a movie whose definition exists in schema.org type hierarchy. Kindly note that item type is specified as a URL. It specifies that the information within the <div> block is about a movie.

It is interesting to note that <h1>Gravity</h1> informs the browser to display Gravity in the format of Heading 1. However, the tag itself does not provide any information about the meaning of the string. This makes it tough for search engines to display content that is relevant to a user, intelligently. However, the itemscope and itemtype attributes remove this difficulty. Let us look at one more example:

In the above example, the schema markup says to search engine that an event (itemtype is an event) will be taking place on a particular day (StartDate and datetime). This makes it simpler for the search engines to display relevant results to the seekers without any kind of ambiguity. Dates and times are actually tough to interpret precisely by search engines due to differences in formats. However, such a schema markup simplifies this interpretation.

By defining item types and item prop (properties), search engines receive structured information for delivering results that are most relevant. Without such semantics, the crawlers have to interpret the date on the site on their own, which means the listing made by them might not be the site’s best representation.

The Significance of Using Schema Markup

 

It is imperative to include a schema markup if you wish the listing of your site to stand out from the rest. Chances are high that you might have set up Google authorship that may have improved your rankings or at least make a visual appeal. To this, if you simply add some more interesting details for the users, the rate of appeal would surely increase.

Including schema markup is not only for SEO purpose but also for benefiting the searcher. With more relevant and useful details shown on SERPs, they are in a better position to go with a more informed choice. The ultimate picture is to make the World Wide Web a better place offering most reliable as well as relevant results on results pages.

Considering the fact that less than 1% of Web pages are using such rich snippets and that more than 30% of results contain schema-derived markups, there is a big and empty playing field for you enter and experience the benefits quickly. Moreover, pages with schema.org schema rank better than the pages without it. While markups as per structured data are rarely in use by webmasters, they are massively displayed in Google SERPs. This itself points to the growing significance of schema markups.

The Benefits of Using Schema Markup

 

Although schema.org semantics do not improve the ranking directly, pages implementing the schema markup have more chance of gaining greater visibility, which in turn, can increase the traffic and consequently ranking. This is something that Google says and focuses all the time. In addition to a prominent position, this new form of optimization offers benefits to searchers, search crawlers, as well as webmasters.

For the Searchers

• Find quickly what they are looking for precisely as the rich snippet offers information in a summarized form (rating, price, description, and so on).
• Click the right URL based on the information seen and mapping it with what is needed
• More relevant results for the query

For the Crawlers

• Easier, more accurate, and intelligent interpretation of data on site in an organized way
• Smartly display of rich snippets on SERPs
• More relevant detection of pages as per the user’s query
• Increased efficacy

For the Webmasters

• Make the Web a more useful world of information
• Increased Click Through Rates (CTRs) by 15-50%
• Time-saving due to a joint effort of schema.org being associated with Google, Yahoo, and Bing, which eliminates the need to add different markup codes for each search engine
• More chance to appear higher in search with the usage of more schema types
• Major opportunity due to less than 1% of sites using schema currently
• Reduced bounce rate
• More effective email marketing as well as local SEO
• No clash with the usage of social media tags
• Easy conversion of a site not developed in HTML5

 

Top 5 Motivations to Use Schema Markup in Your Web Pages

Even after reading the above discussion, you might have a doubt as to whether should you use schema markup for your pages. In that case, here are the three facts that can motivate you to use it right away!Matt Cutts, who has shut down countless sites utilizing dubious SEO strategies, has been recommending using schema markup for Web pages since a few years. Because he is controlling the largest search engine on the planet, his words have weight to influence your mind for taking the right decision.

As per a webmaster help video in 2012, Cutts said that implementing schema.org does not necessarily give the output of ranking higher, but if you typed ‘lasagne’ and clicked ‘recipes’ in the left hand side, this is where schema.org might help, as you are more likely to show up in that.

Rich Snippets Deliver Higher CTRs

Using schema.org confers visible benefits, one of which is improved listing on SERPs. While generally items such as titles and page snippets are included, a targeted schema markup allows including customer rankings, photos, date/time, and more. The latter is not only more appealing aesthetically, but also more effective.

According to Search Engine Land, rich snippet listings that show more details than standard listings can increase the CTRs by 30%. This means 30% more traffic, which is truly significant for any company to reach the next level while increasing search engine visibility.

Apart from making it easier for the crawlers to chunk and organize your site’s content, schema microdata defines as well as display rich snippets of your information on SERPs. Contrary to a widespread misconception, Google uses schema markup to show up information snippets. If the snippets are clear and concise, they can generate higher click through rates because the visitors can easily as well as quickly determine whether the site’s content is what they are searching.

Schema-implemented Pages Averagely Rank 4 Positions Higher on Google

Although very few Webmasters have implemented schema markup, they are being rewarded at present! Their sites now rank four positions higher on Google, which means a fourth ranking page is now ranking first. The study explains further that Google shows results for pages with Schema markup for more than 36% of keyword queries, whereas those without markups are shown less frequently.

Continued Support to Existing Rich Snippets Markups

In case you have some kind of markup existing on your pages done with the help of RDFa or microformats, Schema.org will support it. This means you do not have to start from scratch and remove the existing markup, which saves a lot of time and energy in implementing this new schema markup. However, utmost care should be taken that the formats should not be mixed together on the same page, as doing so can confuse the crawlers.

Proactive Testing

Just as testing your Web page, it is useful to test the view of markup. If successful, it simply tells that the crawler is able to parse the data precisely. You can do so by using the rich snippets testing tool. While this tool shows the parsed marked up information, its preview still does not show the text for schema.org markup, a functionality that will be added soon.

The bottom line is that experts of the top search engines recommend schema, which means implementing it is surely not going to hurt in any way, but rather increases your chances of higher click-through rates and consequently higher rank.

Applications for Which You Should Use Schema.org

The new schema markup improves the visibility of your site for almost all content types. There is a markup for movies, events, products, articles, restaurants, book reviews, local businesses, TV episodes and ratings, blogs, authorships, and software applications. Countless markup types, ranging right from toy stores to IT apps exist. Therefore, you can associate almost any type of data on your Web page with ‘itemscope’ and ‘itemtype’ attributes. Several ways exist for implementing schema markup in Web pages, which include:

• Videos: Matt Cutts has revealed that Google recommends using rich snippets on a distinct video landing page even the video is embedded.
• Testimonials: This is another worthy application of schema markup, which can show review description and rating of the item being reviewed. Most consumers rely on online reviews, which makes it sensible to markup testimonials on SERPs.
• Brand Identity: This includes Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) that reveals your business’ contact as well as geographic information precisely. You can use local schema categories in the footer or page saying ‘Contact Us’.
• Events: This one announces the happening events whose details on SERPs is truly handy for the visitors.

When Google introduced schema.org, several webmasters were disappointed to know that type of information supported by other structured formats is incompatible with this new microdata. The good news is that this problem is now solved, as the schema supports several data types featured in other structured formats. For highlighting the aforementioned information, Google supports the following types of data (schemas) officially:

• Reviews: For showing reviewer, average rating, total number of reviews, description, and so on
• Products: For showing availability, price range, image, description, brand, seller, and so on
• Products: For showing time, video thumbnail image, and so on
• Products: For showing the date, place, time, and so on
• Products: For showing payment method, delivery method, place, availability of items for which an offer such as coupon or discount is on offer, and so on
• Products: For showing location, organization, position, and so on
• Products: For showing local business’ address, phone, geo-location, logo, and so on

• Products: For showing calories, cooking time, ingredients, and so on
• Products: For showing title, child, and URL
• Products: For showing song, album name, duration, and so on

Do you think the above schema vocabulary is insufficient? If yes, you might have a question as to whether you can add your own types to the schema vocabulary or not. The answer to this is neither ‘yes’ no ‘no’.  Schema’s type hierarchy has several commonly used item types, each with relevant subtypes. However, the level of these subtypes can differ. At times, you might prefer adding a custom itemtype, which is possible by using extensions.

For declaring your own item type, you only need to add a slash as a suffix of a present item type and mention the new term. For example, you can write as ‘Person/Doctor/Dentist’, wherein Person is the present itemtype, while the Doctor and Dentist are the custom types. You can find information about naming conventions and customizing the properties and enumerated items on Products.

Mechanism to Markup Pages with Schema Microdata

Literally sitting and adding markup code in the HTML of each of several pages can be painful, especially if the number is in the hundreds or more. Manual addition means lots of more work for bigger sites than the ones that are smaller. For simplifying work for bigger sites, it is best to use plugins that are on offer by WordPress or you can consider using the following Google tools:

• Products: This is a real time saver because it automates the task of marking up your page details in a user-friendly manner. It helps in decoding what the schema requires to be added to a page. Just select a data type and enter your page’s URL for marking it up.
• Products This is like a testing tool that diagnoses any code errors or issues after implementation. You are only required to enter a URL and instantly get direction on the required changes for yielding the correct code. Use this tool only after you are done with including all markup tags.

For a first timer, a question might arise that is it essential to include every property or attribute of marking on every page or not. Well, it is not mandatory to do so, but the more properties you tend to apply schema microdata to, the more transparent the content’s nature and purpose will be to the crawlers.

Moreover, do keep in mind that you need to apply markup to a few properties prior to Google generates rich snippets by referring your microdata. With the help of the testing tool mentioned above, it is easy to check the kind of information to be extracted from the specified markup.

Integration with Social Media Tags

Social giants such as Facebook and Twitter have come up with their own rich data types for markup. Facebook has released Products formed on the foundation of RDFa due to which most tagging goes under <meta>. As a result, the tags remain invisible to humans. Twitter has come up with Products. Well, no official declaration from any of the two giants exists about their support for new schema microdata. However, webmasters are successfully using these protocols and Schema.org together on one page.

A few marketers wrongly think that including these two are enough to ensure that the given content is highly shareable. However, you can use schema microdata along with social media tags to offer even more details about content on a page to search engines. Consider including markup next to Open Graph tags, which deliver not only optimized but also shareable content.

Tips on Using Schema Markup

Consider the following tips to dive even deeper into the world of schema microdata and obtain richer results. All you need is to follow the tips proactively.

• Explore schema.org in detail to know about the data types and properties supported and the extent of customization possible.
• Find all schema types that are useful for your Web pages.
• Identify the types that are most commonly implemented in similar Web pages as those of yours. Doing such comparison can also help in choosing the most useful markup types. Schema.org contains most common markup types. In short, because of an assortment of markup types, you need to explore the Products.
• The more you mark up your pages, the better will be the results. When you start comprehending the diverse collection of itemtypes, it is easy to conclude how much is there on the page for marking up. However, this does not mean that you need to markup all content. The key here is to mark up the content that is visible to humans who visit the page, not hidden content in the div tag and other hidden HTML elements.
• Avoid overusing the markup in a misleading or inconsistent manner, which can certainly force Google to impose a penalty that will trigger a negative effect on the ranking as well as the reputation of your site on the World Wide Web. Therefore, be ethical and play fair.
• There is no need to mark up every property.
• Do not redo the existing content in the new format of schema.org, as Google continues to support snippets for the prevalent content. Moreover, schema.org supports all types of information that even microformats and RDFa support. Nevertheless, consider switching to the novel markup format for gaining more benefits in the long run.
• In case the site has content that scehma.org does not support currently, consider using a less specific markup type or utilize Products as a powerful customization tool to create a new type.
• Do set up a Google+ business page for boosting business or brand exposure as well as fetch better reviews. Although this is not directly related with the schema microdata, it can get you more reviews as well as schema information. This is because this social media platform has integrated with Google Places for having a well managed page.
• Do implement Google Authorship.
• Always test your schema markups. If you are satisfied with the results, it simply means that search engines can easily crawl it the next time and interpret the data more effectively. This simply means increased chances of being more visible on SERPs.

 

Conclusion

Despite the significance and SEO benefits of schema markup, its acceptance has been low, perhaps due to the lack of technical expertise or even awareness. This has actually created an amazing opportunity for Webmasters and businesses, particularly those in IT and marketing, who are working together for achieving a single goal. While marketers might comprehend the importance of structured data markup, webmasters need to implement it with the help of more advanced HTML knowledge.

In other words, millions of sites are missing a lot by not being a part of this big SEO potential. By using schema markup, you will have a leg up automatically on the big ladder of competition. Including schema microdata in HTML surely increases visibility, but in no way it is a quick or a bad SEO strategy to get a higher rank.

Rather, it is a best practice to make it simpler for you to be recognized by search engines for a set of keywords for which your pages can prominently appear on SERPs. Schema markup is an SEO innovation that is perhaps going to last for a long time. Therefore, it is the right time to learn and implement the most suitable microdata for boosting your search results. However, you need to do in the right way to be ahead of the curve. I hope this exclusive guide helps in using the schema markup for achieving the SEO benefits in an easier and quicker way.

It was almost a decade ago when local search gain momentum on the World Wide Web with customers searching for places and ways to reach those places. However, today more than 750 million GPS-enabled phones are aiding customers to explore places locally. As per the latest statistics, over 85% of users search locally on their smartphones through Web browsers and apps such as Facebook and Google Maps. This inspires Rob Reed to say that local search is a mobile experience at a social level.

In 2012, it was found that over 60% local searches triggered successful purchases. As compared to other digital marketing initiatives, local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ensures a high investment return. According to a survey in 2013 by Marketing Sherpa, around 54% marketers under survey agreed that local SEO positively influenced their brand.

Search Engines and Local SEO: What’s the Current Impact

With the introduction of Google’s Hummingbird update in 2013, search engines have become more intelligent in returning relevant and localized results for people’s searches. Adding the updates of Panda and Penguin, local SEO has actually become a challenging necessity for businesses. This has triggered the need of targeting location-based keywords without schlepping Google with plenty of inapt local search terms.

However, forecasting local SEO trends is a bit difficult because local SEO is actually not a fad or phenomenon. In fact, it is a never-fading asset that allows optimizing the search experience for users residing in any part of the globe. It is a basic mindset that cannot be implemented later. However, the difficulty does not remain when you choose to have a Google-friendly strategy.

Getting Ready to Prepare a Local SEO Strategy: Gaining the Vision

Due to the Google Pigeon update, global brands are forced to reconsider their global SEO strategies that now need to be competitive even among the local businesses in the nations targeted. Whether you are a small or big business brand, local SEO is bound to increase your customer base, boost brand awareness, and expand your business growth as well as success.

So, is it possible for a global brand to compete locally? Yes, it is! Even a small business can compete with global brands. In both the situations, only a good local SEO strategy is going to work. For the strategy to work, one needs to have a comprehensive vision. Just as in case of content marketing, the key here is to think like a customer who is always interested in getting the desired information through the replies for different questions.

When you put yourself in the position of your customer, you can easily identify the dos and don’ts in each of the technical and non-technical aspects of local SEO. The common and bigger picture goes like this: Assuming you have your upfront stores in different countries, you need to create individual Web pages for each of them and optimize them to target local customer base first.

Before Creating Local SEO Strategies

Before we check the strategies, here are some factors to consider for preparing the most effective local SEO plan!

• Local Laws and Ordinances: These might not apply to all businesses, but for some they act as the primary set of considerations. For example, if your business is swimming pool or home repair company, it is obvious that your customers need to follow the zoning and setback laws. Remember, each nation has its own regulations due to which the customers are more likely to search with phrases such as ‘home repair laws in Chicago’ or ‘swimming pool company in Chicago’.
• On-site, Off-site, Social/Mobile, and Review: Once you know about the local laws and ordinances, you can easily determine its impact on the keywords and other SEO elements present on the pages, off the pages, on social networks, and on review sites.

Effective Strategies for Different Business Types

• If You Are a Global Brand Having Local Branches or Separate Franchises Run by Locally Registered Firms: Consider developing a separate Google+ page for each and creating local listings on major sites permitting customer reviews, such as Facebook and Yelp. It is suggested decentralizing a sole G+ page into individual branches. Many few search engines prefer brands that have verified their site, running on local IPs, with the search engine.
• If You Are a Brand Allowing Sales through Partners or Distributors: Consider motivating them to build awareness of your brand locally. Although the officially registered business directories allow personalized names, your goal should be to gain local back links whose anchor text contains a brand name, for instance, the links can refer to a partner.
• If You Are a Global Brand Having Centralized Approach Without a Local Presence Anywhere: Consider purchasing local domains and localize the site. An ideal way to improve local backlinks without hurting the famed global presence is to subscribe to local domains called ccTLDs. These domains help developing brand awareness among local communities effortlessly. You can even establish your location-based target in Webmaster Tools. Do also include the target country in your site and localize content forms such as metric units and currencies.
• If You Are a Global Brand with Some Local Popularity but Without Local Branches: Consider having your name, address, and phone (NAP) in your site or subdirectories on a consistent basis. Your brand might be popular through showrooms, training centres, or warehouses. As a result, gaining a phone number should not be difficult. Utilize schema.org to mark NAP so that it can be easily seen in the result pages of search engines (SERPs). This is because business functioning locally to some extent is preferred by search engines that can increase the rankings.
• If You Are a Globally Reputed Yet a Local Brand: Consider having a single-domain, multilingual site in case you are running a university, tourist agency, or family-operated business. Never buy local domains such as ccTLDs or rely upon local SEO providers in different nations for the half link building task. Doing so can bring your reputation down, which has been earned by growing your brand locally. Rather, utilize your local domain power to create a single site, but offering subdirectories (<sitename.de>/Spanish) for different languages for reaching out to customers.

Local SEO Strategies 2014 for All Businesses

You may have optimized your site for local SEO whose rules still are effective, but some newer strategies are likely to be more effective in 2014 regardless of the business type. Let us check them out!

Keyword Strategy: Make it Local and Long Tail

Local SEO might not be vital for e-commerce webmasters but finally, Internet-marketing professionals consider localizing their sites. This is because local SEO can bridge the difference between the happening 500 clicks per week and the desired goal of 2,000. One of the ways to achieve this bridge is to include the geographic location in the keyword.

While localizing your site, it is essential to revamp your keyword strategy to change keywords into more meaningful phrases for attracting local customers. As per Moz.com, webmasters should act wisely to include the city and state name in which the corporate operations take place, within meta title and description, page title tag, H1 headings, URLs, page content, and in alt tags. These elements exist for each page, which should include the local keywords including the city and state name. However, do not stuff too much on page content such that Google is forced to penalize you.

After the Hummingbird update, keywords in the question form deliver better and more relevant search results than robot-friendly equivalents that do not have question format. For example, ‘Which is the best pizzeria in Belgium’ delivers better results than ‘Pizzeria in Belgium’.

Before a few years from now, both these keywords would show similar results. However, if you see today, most of the result pages shown in both differ drastically. This is because Google now comprehends the user motive in a better way. Therefore, consider long tail keywords throughout the content of your site and linked sites for targeting the second class of search users.

However, keep in mind that using these keywords does not mean ranking on the first page of results by Google Map for that keyword. For this to happen, you need to take of more things that are discussed ahead.

Organic SEO Strategy: Directly Influencing Your Local Search Results

According to Mike Blumenthals (Blumenthal.com) and Adam Steele (Lean Marketing), the individual site’s organic SEO rank highly influences the local results. Both performed some local searches to prove this relation between local and organic SEO. It directly says that ranking well for local SEO requires ranking well for organic SEO.

This itself means to continue working on organic SEO efforts, which include optimizing meta title and meta description, images, page speed, URLs with customization, strategic link building, social media, and conversion, and content marketing.

Social Media Strategy: Tapping the Power of Google+, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Maps

Are you ignoring social media for localizing your brand awareness? If yes, then it is high time to stop it! This is because such a platform is the biggest off-site SEO opportunity to spread the awareness of your brand.

Nowadays, not all searches occur in the browser, as several customers use apps to perform a local search. Do you know that the Facebook app is highly used after Google Maps for local search?

Consider learning and implementing new ways of exploring social media sites as a means to expand your business, even locally. While doing so, consider some vital SEO points. First, whatever you do, keep it fresh. Stay active on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to posting new but quality content, which shows search engines and visitors that your brand is flourishing. Search engines favor such fresh updates for a higher rank.

Second, consider increasing the number of likes/shares/retweets by publishing interesting posts. The more their number, the more is the interest of the customers in your content and the more favor you receive from search engines. However, avoid congesting with worthless information, which neither the visitors nor the customers like.

Third, engage with your visitors frequently by responding to them irrespective of the social platform. This shows that you care for your business as well as an online community, which is a plus point for better SEO results.

Lastly, give priority to Google+, as Google is still the giant player when it comes to site ranking. Do create a Google+ account for your brand as well as yourself, add to your circles, share relevant content on your corporate and personal pages, and follow people. For local SEO, consider the following two strategies in addition:

• Place Pins in Pinterest: This is actually the latest feature of Pinterest, which is of great interest to local businesses, especially those in the service sectors. As a user, you can pin new destinations present on your boards or search novel locations on the FourSquare’s map. In case of a good fan following for your products/services offered to local visitors, pinners can see your service and NAP information along with images of your products and services directly shown on the map.
• Optimize Google+ Local Page and Google Maps: Both these media are a core factor for local SEO ranking. The integration of Google maps in your site and business previews from Google+ Local are strongly associated to local SEO. While optimizing maps and G+ Local pages, you need to ensure that you provide precise NAP information that needs to match with the one existing on your site. Similarly, try to increase the number of reviews on Google+ page, links from popular and quality sites that speak about your business or site or NAP details, local citations from local listing or review sites, and third party reviews gained on sites other than Google+. In case of maps, ensure correct proximity shown for a city recognized by Google.

Local Citation Strategy: Increasingly Important and Essential One

Although nothing new needs to be done if you are already having proper and adequate local citations (business listings), it is vital to know that this strategy is acquiring more importance than before. After Hummingbird era, getting local citations from reputable and authorized directories apart from locally relevant sites is more important for a higher ranking on local searches in Google.

To know how well your site is listed on locally relevant sites across the Web, visit Get Listed that shows whether you are listed in the precise category with Google Places. Track all these business listings through an Excel worksheet that can be your template to save as well as update local listings with right NAP information.

In case you need to create citations, consider publishing a citation each on Google Places, Foursquare, and Yelp.com. Currently, these are the most reliable and highly targeted business directories. Moreover, they are important for obtaining local but competitive keywords. As per the Search Engine Journal, professionals can wisely submit citations to other directories like industry-specific sites (Avvo), data aggregators (LocalEze), and region-specific sites such as Ontario.com/attractions. In short, consider increasing the number of valid citations by retaining NAP details consistently.

Ensure that fully informed and consistent NAP across all listings. It might be possible for your business to be already listed by someone somewhere. In such a situation, just claim the listing (known as citation). To do so, you need to look first to see whether another business of the same name exists at the same location. For this, use Yext or Localeze tool to spot local listing online, use Google MapMaker to look for phone number to check for duplicate listings and removing them, and look for different names of your business.

Claiming means to accept and verify that you are the proprietor of the revealed business by phone or email. Yext and Localeze tools can help you accelerate this process by creating citations or making them more consistent for ensuring precise local information of your brand or company.

Strategy to Have More Online Reviews: Highly Effective

As per a study published on Search Engine Land, the search engine giant Google considers online reviews as a key factor for ranking a site. As a fact, your reviews are for users of this giant player who view your brand on a search engine result page. Reviews perhaps allow the consumers to decide whether your site’s link should be clicked or not. They facilitate to take this decision quite quickly.

Therefore, you should try to increase the number of positive reviews online. Luckily, several ways exist to improve the reviews of your company along with the numbers. Because you wish to avoid any fake reviews or offer some presents to those leaving good reviews, you will have to follow natural ways of obtaining reviews, which is what Google likes.

One of the ways to get true reviews is to put a button on your home page for an easy start, prompt visitors to write a review after buying a product or hiring a service or after visiting a specific landing page, or talk with customers in stores for leaving a review.

Mobile SEO Strategy: Just Cannot Be Ignored

With more than 85% users of Internet accessing sites through smartphones, it is obvious that an effective mobile SEO strategy is essential for successful local SEO. As per a recent survey, near 40% of mobile searches are targeted locally, which encourages every business to go locally mobile.

While local SEO is yet to get influenced by mobile SEO, it surely governs mobile SEO. This is because not all small and big businesses have successfully optimized their sites for mobile usage. This also means that the rankings of these sites accessed on the desktop cannot be affected as per their corresponding mobile performance. However, a possibility is there in the near future that the search engines will rank sites with their mobile-friendly versions, considering the tremendously increasing users of smartphones and tablets.

The other scene is that if you rank high for your local SEO, chances are high for you to rank great for mobile SEO. In such a situation, in case a mobile user visits your site, it is essential to offer them a matchless mobile experience in the absence of which your local rankings for responsive design will fall. Here are some statistics that prove why mobile SEO is essential for local SEO.

First, 90% of American adults have a cell phone and 58% of them own smartphones as per PewResearch. The same institution has also found that around 63% use the phone for accessing the sites. According to Google, 40% of mobile searches are made for local places, resources, products, or services. Even Econsultancy states that 75% of mobile searches are done for follow up actions that encompass tasks like social media sharing, store visit, research, and even a phone call.

These statistics themselves speak about the importance of having a mobile-friendly site or responsive design. In case you do not have a mobile site, it is wise to start looking for responsive web design tools and tutorials. Remember, quality search engines like Google invest no extra time in changing or updating algorithms for boosting the quality of local search engine result pages. Well, although this is beneficial in the long run, it imposes a challenge in the short run, particularly for the mid- and small-sized local businesses that really do not have a good budget for hiring local SEO experts to keep up with the latest and changing trends.

Despite the challenge and absence of local SEO experts, small business can really overcome all difficulty on their own. This is possible by only knowing what you need to do and why you need to do, which helps in prioritizing the local SEO strategies accordingly. Quick adoption of popular or standardized practices, avidly reading case studies, and readiness for experimenting personally is critical to survive in this mission of Internet marketing.

In short, the time is near when you will race with bigger brands on search that is local and highly specific. Therefore, optimizing all your Web pages for local SEO is truly inevitable.

Magento SEO 101 – A Definitive Guide To Master Your CMS

When you think of eCommerce Management Platforms, there are quite a few names that will cross your mind like Big Commerce, Woocommerce, Shopify and Magento. It doesn’t matter if you are already an eCommerce Store Owner or an aspiring webmaster thinking of starting an eCommerce store or planning to upgrade an existing one. A good platform can make the management easier by covering all your requirements ranging from inventory management, product updates, catalogs, user accounts, wish lists, comparison windows, check-outs, etc. in one panel.  
In this guide, I am specifically going to address the Magento platform because I feel that it is one of the best CMS available today. Magento is used by most global brands like Nike, Rovio, Paul Smith, etc, and the only setback it has is that it cannot be customized without extensive knowledge. Let’s take a step towards Magento success. I will try to update this guide as and when Magento platform receives an update in the future.  

Take a look at the Table of Contents below.

Contents:

1. What Is Magento SEO, Why Indulge?

---

2. Common Magento SEO Mistakes To Avoid

---

3.1 The Art Of Optimizing Magento

 3.1.1 Fundamentals Of Optimization

 3.1.2 Setting Up Headers

 3.1.3 Content Management System Pages

 3.1.4 Managing Categories

 3.1.5 Managing Products

 3.2 Optimizing Magento Theme

 3.2.1 Free Themes vs. Paid Themes

 3.2.2 Customizing Headings

 3.2.3 Clean Your Code

 3.2.4 Speed Optimization

 3.3 Duplicate Content and Advanced Optimization

3.3.1 Nofollow Redundant Links

3.3.2 Canonical URLs

---

4. Dealing With Layered Navigation In Magento

4.1 Canonical Tag

4.2 Parameter Handling in Google Webmaster Tool

4.3 Meta or X Robots

4.4 Ajax Navigation

---

5. The Advantages of Magento

5.1 Search Engine Friendly URLs

5.2 Google Site Map

5.3 Most Viewed Products

5.4 Top 5 Incoming Search Terms

5.5 Undoubtedly the Best CMS

---

6. Make Your Custom Robots.txt File

---

7. Measuring Your Magento Success

7.1 Check Your Popularity

7.2 Google Analytics for the Win

---

8. Conclusion Strategy

---

 1. What is Magento SEO and Why Indulge?

Magento is an open source, robust, and scalable eCommerce platform best suited for those businesses, which have a web-store. If you are an eCommerce storeowner, then you should definitely read this guide and if you are an aspiring eCommerce web-store owner, then you should read this guide again.

Magento is extremely stable today (far more than what it used to be back in 2010), and its latest version is very SEO friendly and can easily be customized by Search Engine Experts. If your online web store is lying un-optimized, then you are not only killing the potential of your website but also wasting a lot of energy, time and resources. Reconsider your decisions today.

Some Webmasters tell me – We have the Magento SEO Plugin. It is easy to use, then why bother investing in Magento SEO?

Yes! The Magento SEO Plug-in is a great choice, and I always encourage using it, but you should u understand that there is a fine line between bravery and stupidity. Magento is a “MASSIVE” platform and the SEO plugin does give some handy optimization techniques like editing the Title tag, Meta Tag and Anchor text, but it is not magic. The intricacies of SEOing a Magento Platform go far beyond the reach of a pre-designed program. Thus you need to have someone experienced work on the Platform to maximize its full potential

I hope that by the end of my post you will be able to make up your mind about taking a step further towards your Magento eCommerce Success. Moving on, here are some common Magento SEO mistakes that are easily avoidable.

---

2. Common Magento Loopholes That Are Stepping Stones For Every Webmaster

Let us look at some of the most common inherent Magento mistakes from the development phase, which are always overlooked. These make the most difference in carving your ‘stairway to heaven’ in your eCommerce escapade.

#Mistake No 1

Leaving the Homepage Title as Home

Most Homepage(s) are CMS Pages. It would be in your best interest to give it a personalized title like – Prime One Global Online Store – Prime One Global.com.

#Mistake No 2

Leaving the Default Description un-optimized

Always leave the default description field blank, or Magento has the tendency of duplicating it for search engines to such an extent that it looks more like spam.

Go to – System -> Configuration -> General -> Design -> HTML Head -> Default Description and “leave it blank.”

#Mistake No 3

Forgetting to use rel=canonical

Again, a simple command if not used can make your Magento web-store look like a spam farm with multiple duplicate content issues. Always use “rel=canonical” for both products and categories.

#Mistake No 4

Forgetting to change meta robots to index, follow – after migrating to live website

After migrating to live website, lot of developers forget to change meta robots from noindex, nofollow to index, follow.

Go to – System -> Configuration -> General -> Design -> HTML Head -> Default robots “index, follow”

#Mistake No 5

Sticking with Default Layered Navigation

Layered Navigation is a nightmare for SEO. I will let you in on the details in another section. (check Section 4)

#Mistake No 6

Ignoring or Forgetting the XML Sitemap

Before submitting your website to Google, it would be a good idea to check the XML Sitemap. Most developers create a sample Sitemap and leave it at that, which is always a no-winner.

CALL TO ACTION – Make sure you avoid these mistakes and let me know if I missed out something in the comments section below.

---

3.1 The Art of Optimizing Magento

Take a look at the definitive Art of doing Magento SEO, known only by a few, but brandished by all. I will show you some basic measures that are followed by most Magento SEOs.

3.1.1 Fundaments of Optimization

Enable Server Rewrites – Go to – System -> Configuration -> Web -> SEO -> Enable Server Rewrite

Under the URL Options section, you will find another handy edit,

Store Code To URLs – Always set it as “No” or your URLs will look like a mess with unnecessary characters.

Www or non-www – Under Secure and Unsecure, there is an option to select a preferred domain, select a particular URL type either www.mystore.com or mystore.com

3.1.2 Setting-up Headers

Search Engines appreciate those websites, which have their chief keywords near the page start. For this purpose, leaving your Header in default condition “Magento Commerce” is never a good route to take.

Go to – System -> Configuration -> Design -> HTML Head

NOTE: This title will only be visible on most basic-pages of your website.

Remember to leave your Default Description and Default Keywords field blank for reasons discussed in the Mistakes to avoid section.

3.1.3 Content Management System Pages

Keeping the above-mentioned trick(s) in mind, it is time to move onto the crux of Magento Platform. After you have put up some content on some of your CMS pages, choose a Search Engine Friendly URL and Descriptive Page Title for each page. Change the description of your most important pages in the Meta Data section, always write something, which is meaningful and will attract customers to your page.

In case you decide to leave the description field blank, then the Search Engines will find a keyword that is being searched for by users and show them an excerpt from around your keyword in the page.

3.1.4 Managing Categories

When making categories for your products and/or services in Magento, it is important to remember that this platform has the tendency of creating duplicate pages for product/services that fall under multiple categories.

This is turn is not a very welcoming signal for Search Engine crawlers, as they may end up taking those duplicate pages as spam content and flag your website.

To ensure that this does not happen, Go to – System -> Configuration -> Catalog -> SEO -> Choose “No” for Use Category path for product URLs.

After you have done the above, it is time to Manage Categories:

Go to System -> Configuration -> Catalog -> Manage Categories and make the necessary edits.

• Meta Description – Do not underestimate the importance of a good, keyword rich and attractive Meta Description.
• Page Title – It is in your best efforts to leave this space blank. This will display the category name along with parent categories (if any).
• URL Key – Try to keep your URL, as keyword rich as possible. Do not give special characters or number or stop words in your URL.

3.1.5 Managing Products

It is almost the same as managing the Categories. However, a handy tip to enhance the SEO of your Magento platform would be to optimize the images properly.

• Choose clear Images that are attractive for your products
• Remember to name the image files with proper keywords and avoid special characters and numbers
• Set label for each image under “Images” tab – this Label will be used as Alt tag and Title for your images.

3.2 Optimizing Magento Theme

3.2.1 Free Theme vs. Paid Theme

I go by the rule of the thumb, which states that nothing good in life comes free of cost. I personally do not like using anything free, just because it is unreliable, and a developer who would spend the proper time and patience in customizing a paid theme would never do the same if the theme was free.

CALL TO ACTION – Select a Premium Theme for Your eCommerce Store or get one designed by a professional.

3.2.2 Customizing Headings

The default logo should always be in Heading 1 on the front page. All the subsequent pages, the main idea should be to put in as many keywords in the Titles as possible so I normally choose Heading 3.

Do not over use headings. Remove all unnecessary heading from your pages to throw light on the main content of the page. Also, remove all headers in the Side columns and replace them with a bold <strong> font if required.

In category page, <h1>Category Name</h1> and <h3>Product Name</h3>

In product page <h1>Product Name</h1>

3.2.3 Clean Your Code

Remember to remove all those unnecessary JavaScript and CSS that you might have in your themes. They do not help in SEO of your Magento platform in any manner and removing them ensures a faster load and that users can get to your website quickly.

3.2.4 Speed Optimization

Here are a few things that you can keep in mind, which would greatly enhance the customizability of your Magento Platform.

• Enable Caching – This feature greatly enhances the page load speed for the users.

 Go to System -> Cache Management -> Enable Cache Management

•  Always choose a good host, which is compatible for Magento Hosting.

Ensure that you limit the number of external files to as less as possible because every time a user visits your website you make them download external files. It is in your best interest to combine as many internal files as possible.

3.3 Duplicate Content and Advanced Optimization

After you have completed the basic optimization techniques, you might be faced with the problem of duplicate content, which is extremely common in Magento Platform.

I am going to show you how to let the duplicate content stay and still manage to get the right page indexed and the rest ignored by spiders. Read on to find out.

3.3.1 No Follow Redundant Links

It is important to nofollow all unnecessary links like basic-pages, add to wish list, checkout, login.

Also, remember to nofollow RSS feeds, add to wish list, and compare products, layered navigation in your theme files.

3.3.2 Canonical URLs

Canonical as the name suggests is the preferred URL for a product that you want the search engines to index. This removes the hassle of having to deal with duplicate product URLs in Magento platform.

---

 4. Dealing With Layered Navigation in Magento SEO

Layered Navigation, as I quoted earlier is the nightmare of all SEO. In layman’s terminology, whenever a new filter is applied to a product, Magento creates a new page (a replica) of the original page depicting the recent changes. To add to the mess, if a website has (n) number of products, it becomes increasingly difficult to deal with layered navigation manually, which leaves the website prone to Google’s Panda-monium, if left unattended.

Here are some of my ways of dealing with Layered Navigation in Magento:

4.1 Canonical Tag

Just like I mentioned in the section above, canonical tags are the preferred choice. This will show Google your preferred URLs for indexing purposes. I always tag this method along with the other methods due to its easy implementation.

4.2 Parameter Handling In Google Webmaster Tool

The Parameter Handling resource in GWT has created a lot of buzz amongst the SEO lately. It should be noted that the tool is efficient, and it gives varied results like the Canonical Tag. Use the Parameter Handling resource carefully, as in the end you are telling Google how to react to your pages through this tool.

This technique should be combined with one of the below techniques.

4.3 Meta or X Robots

This option is mostly preferred by SEOs for dealing with layered navigation. You can apply the Meta or x robots rules (noindex, follow), as it is efficient and easy to implement and does not consume much time.

4.4 AJAX Navigation

AJAX navigation is the best and most time/resource intensive process for optimizing your Magento webstore. The benefit of AJAX Navigation is that it applies the filters to the products without creating any duplicate entries.

---

5. The Advantages of Magento SEO

5.1 Search Engine Friendly URLs

Magento has become one of the most flourishing eCommerce platforms mainly because of its Search Engine Friendly URLs. When Magento had first released, the URLs were broken and it was difficult for Search Engines to decipher them. However, present day the URLs in Magento are very customizable and store owners can create their own custom URLs, which are keyword rich and easy to read.

5.2 Google Sitemap

Magento platform allows for faster indexing of Sitemaps in Google, which helps target customers reach the desired products faster. This is extremely beneficial of eCommerce Store Owners.

5.3 Most Viewed Products

This one is a sheer winner; it is your window to consumer magnetism right at the backend of your Magento platform. With this tool, you can see your most viewed products from the back panel. By getting a deeper insight on which products are most viewed, you can boost those pages by coupling with other marketing techniques or by using Google Adword.

5.4 Top 5 Incoming Search Terms

Wouldn’t it be a time saver if you knew exactly which keywords to optimize in your content development campaigns? The Top 5 Search Terms feature of Magneto does just that. It helps webmasters and SEOs optimize traffic by knowing the most popular incoming Search Terms to your Magento eCommerce Store.

5.5 Undoubtedly The Best CMS Around

You can make the most of the CMS section by uploading your SEO content here. This is the place where you can write product reviews, about the company or anything that will attract the customers to your store. Optimized with good keywords, this is a powerful place for making the most out of the Magento Platform and getting the conversions rolling.

---

6. Make Your Custom Robots.txt File

One of the most common mistake of Magento Store owners and developers is they forget the importance of creating a custom Robots.txt file when optimizing their Magento Platform.

Some webmasters even think that taking any generic robotx.txt file and placing it in their store is going to get the job done. I would like to stress on how important having a proper robots.txt file is. It is crucial to understand that every store is different; it has a different structure and requires a robotx.txt file of its own. A Robots.txt file of another flourishing eCommerce store is not going to work for your store, in every case you will need to make some important tweaks to better fit the URL structure of your eCommerce store and its priorities.

Always make sure that your robots.txt file is properly working through the Google Webmaster Tool before hitting the live button. A wrong robots.txt may lead to the downfall of your website.

---

7. Measuring Your Magento Success

7.1 Check your popularity

What you do, how much you invest, how hard you work is all in vain, if you are not popular at the end of the day. In the online world, where one organization wants to crush the other in the battle for supremacy, it is essential to establish an authority by the strategies and tactics that you deploy through your SEO. If you become famous, you have won the major part of the battle. One of the ways of finding your popularity is by checking the number of people who link to you. The more the number, the famous you are.

It is a give and take policy – no one will do anything for you free until there is a benefit in it for them. What I mean to say is, no one is going to link to your website until they get something back in return. A great way of promoting your products and getting backlinks to your websites is through Affiliates. If you can offer webmasters a modest commission on every sale they crack for you through their website, they are going to take interest in what your store has on offer for your target customers. There are countless number of backlink building strategies out there, you just have to reach out and employ a few of them in your website and your eCommerce platform will be flourishing in no time.

7.2 Google Analytics for the win

The internet is filled with countless ways for letting webmasters analyze and monitor their ROI. Make best use of Google Analytics to check the number of visitors to your website, where they are coming from, which website is sending in the most referrals and what are your most ranking keywords.

Also, try removing the keywords with your brand or product names and check the highest rankings for your most generic keywords. If you want eCommerce success, then you should already be ranking for your brand keywords. If you filter out your brand traffic from organic search and check your actual revenue for generic keywords; this is the real ROI of your Magento SEO campaign.

Magento is a powerful platform – extract the most out of it by combining it with great SEO.

---

CONCLUSION STRATEGY

That is it for my detailed insight on Magento SEO. Finally, I would like to state that it is crucial for all webmasters to understand the potential of a great SEO campaign and how it can positively impact their business.

For me, it has always been about staying focused and reaching your goals one at a time. Most webmasters think the web is like a huge piggy bank; they just want to scoop in and extract as much money as they can out of it. I say that their wishful thinking is not bad, but being online is more about establishing a meaningful relationship and forming connections. If you can learn to give value to your customers instead of bombarding them with mindless advertisements and sales proposals, you can be a winner.

Just work on the visibility of your Magento website, the significance of its existence and its popularity by forming connections. If you are focused in your objectives, you will see an exponential increase in the number of traffic to your website. Magento SEO will make you established and develop a brand presence that is unmatchable by any competitor.

 

The Extreme WordPress SEO Checklist of 2014

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a plan of actions that can be used to improve the search engine ranking of a website. The key element of SEO is to increase organic traffic (target specific traffic from search engines) to your website / blog. WordPress is one of THE most authoritative content management systems your website can ever have when it comes to SEO. It is essential to spend considerable time on your WordPress SEO as choosing to ignore such a valuable tool may lead to negative rankings on the search engines.If you are choosing to optimize your website for the best user experience and increased traffic, it always helps to have a checklist or a strategy to follow in order to attain the most benefits out of your valuable time.

It is the reason i have created the Extreme Top 50 WordPress SEO Checklist of 2014. This checklist is beneficial for people who are starting a new website, or want to optimize a live website.This checklist follows a step-by-step list of things that need to be accomplished, in order to create the best infrastructure for your website.

[highlight background=”red” color=””]NOTE: It is worth mentioning before jumping into the nitty-gritty’s of website optimization that on-page SEO tasks yield diminishing returns. In simple terms, there will be lots of quick benefits from fixing the easy and obvious mistakes at the start. As you delve further into the checklist, situations may get a bit tough to tackle and more technical (as problems become less obvious).The benefits for the same are not very noteworthy in the short term.[/highlight]

Extreme WordPress SEO Checklist of 2014 

Before we start, it is important that you analyze your current website’s SEO rankings in order to understand the changes at the end of the checklist. Get a detailed report from Analyze about the present SEO rankings of your website and save it to a PDF for future reference. It will help you in measuring the results later on.I would suggest reading the whole thing and applying as much of this checklist to your website as you can. By following all the parts of this detailed checklist, you will not only understand the concept of the entire picture but will have a deeper understanding of how the web works. – SEO is the Science of Synergy

ON PAGE SEO CHECKLIST

The front-end of your website (Content) and the back-end of your website (HTML) are easily the most accessible and controllable SEO elements. They serve as the best pivot for starting your SEO measures. The idea is to make all the pages in your website Search Engine and Human friendly by making use of all contents and tools, available at your disposal.

For SEO purposes, it is best to strategize one or two target keywords for every page in your website. If you are considering focusing every page with more than two keywords, it might be the right time to step back and understand that a page with so many keywords might just lose its focus. Plan and divide all your crucial keywords into separate pages to maintain Page POV. Ready? Let’s go! Start by optimizing the On-Page elements of your website through the checklist provided below.

1) Creating The Perfect Title Tag

The title of your website is most important for your ‘on-page’ SEO success. Always try to integrate a title that is appropriate for the search engines and looks user-friendly too. There has to be a balance between ‘just’ stuffing keywords into your title and making it rhyme for your visitors. You might have observed that whenever you search in Google for a particular keyword, websites with those keywords loaded at the front of their Title Tags always appear first. If you are using Yoast SEO, All in one SEO or any other SEO Plugin then you don’t need to worry about the word count. You will get great help from plugin tool tips and hint section.

For Example: Let’s assume you are looking to rank the keywords “good habits” and you are having problems deciding between the following Title Tags:

NOTE: It is clearly visible from the above screens that Google has opted to show those websites that have the keywords at the starting of their Title Tags . Spend considerable time in making Title Tags beautiful; these are easily the most important yet overlooked element of On-Page SEO.

2) Make the URL Search Engine and Human Friendly

URL’s play a significant role in defining the action of search engines for your website – both humans and search engines choose websites that have an easy to read/find URL. The URL’s of a website should be optimized in such a way that the ‘words’ mirror the content of specific pages of that website. URL’s should contain easy to understand words, keywords for individual pages and must never contain illegal characters like ‘underscores’ ‘percentage symbols,’ etc. Your page URL may not be long like this, but it is still important to fix the URL structure – to make it search engine friendly. You must be wondering how an URL will help the SEO of your page.

It’s simple, just like the Title Tags of your page; Google uses your ‘page URL’ to decipher what your page is all about. Thus, it is a good idea to include your important keywords for the page in the ‘page URL.’ Google will choose to trust those pages which have easier to read URL and the URL’s are keyword intensive.

TIP: Don’t forget to remove all unnecessary dates and categories from the URL structure to make it clean and easy to spot.

 

3. USE MULTIMEDIA EFFECTIVELY TO RANK

 

Multimedia is that part of your website which helps in retaining the attention of your visitors. Multimedia aids in giving a better explanation to your website content and websites with properly optimized images are loved by search engines as well as the visitors, who show their gratitude by sharing your content across social media platforms.

However, without proper optimization, multimedia can do more harm than good for your website.

Here is a checklist to certify that you are on the path to salvation, when it comes to using multimedia effectively for your SEO campaigns.

Multimedia also increases the superficial value of post or article. Content with higher superficial value has more chances of ranking on Google.

<put this is a box/>

Make it a point to include at least one multimedia element (video, audio, images and lists) in every post to increase its SEO value.

4. OUTBOUND LINKS HAVE GREAT EFFECT ON SEO

 

Sharing is caring. Google respects all websites who respect their page ranks as well as the page rank of other websites. The Internet is a socializing platform and Google wants to see you as a dynamic part of this platform.

Don’t be selfish. Always link to external sources (Outbound links). If you choose to ‘no follow’ outbound links from your website, Google will take it as a mere act of selfishness.

 

<put this in a box/>

Remember to include at least 2 outbound links to external websites (famous blogs or news portals) in every piece of content you broadcast.

5. DON’T IGNORE META DESCRIPTION

It is possibly the most disregarded aspect when it comes to SEO for your website. It is noteworthy to mention that some websites choose completely to ignore the use of Meta Descriptions – You should not make this mistake.

Meta description can be defined as that phrase which tags along with your website link in the search engines. It is essential to fabricate a unique and keyword intensive Meta description for all the important pages of your website. Choosing to ignore so may lead to users completely ignoring your website link when it pops-up in the search engines.

<insert image here/>

<put this in a box/>

Creating a Meta description should be made a part of your post creation routines, so that you never overlook this seemingly insignificant and ‘easy to forget’ aspect of SEO.

6. KEYWORD RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Integrating Keywords (keyword research) can be done through in-depth keyword researching, analyzing and choosing the best keywords that will drive organic traffic from search engines to your webpage.

It is the most important aspect while doing SEO for your website and if not done correctly can result in all your efforts going down the drain. Use the Google Adword Keyword Tool to research and find out the best working keywords for your website, before inculcating them in your posts and titles.

NOTE: It is also important to include your main keywords at the beginning of your blog posts.

Why you ask? Because Google pays utmost attention to the placement of the keywords in your articles – If a keyword appears on the first few lines of an article, Google will understand that the article is relevant to that particular keyword as it is mentioned at the start.

<put this is a box/>

Always include the target keyword in the first few lines of the Article / Blog Post

7. THE IMPORTANCE OF H1 TAG IN SEO

The H1 Tag of your page is like the sub-heading of your page.

Normally all websites have one H1 Tag (Which should be user-friendly and search-engine-friendly), but some WP themes default to two tags and use H2 as the page header)

Check if your page has a proper H1 tag by looking at the page source and spotting the following code. If it is there, then your job is done, if it is not there, insert a H1 Tag into your page source.

Make sure all your pages have a H1 Tag

<insert image with H1 Tag in page source and how to insert if not there/>

<Put this in a box/>

The blog post title should always be in a H1 Tag.

8. WEBSITE SPEED AND PERFORMANCE

You may not be aware of this, but Google pays very little attention to website speed as a ranking factor (about 1%). This may seem insignificant, but for humans, optimizing website for speed and performance is the main thing otherwise you will tend to lose valuable visitors.

The Users love websites that are responsive in nature and have a fast load time. Statistics shows that many users hit the ‘X’ button even when a website is loading, due to its slow loading time.

 

Providing a fast experience for users is mandatory to boost the conversions of your website along with a slight boost in SEO rankings.

You can easily evaluate the speed of your website by using the Google Website Speed Tool.

<insert image of Google Page Speed Insight Tool Here/>

<put this in a box/>

Remember to address all the issues of slow page load for the best user experience in your website. WordPress Plugins – W3 Total Cache Tool and WP Smush It can help you in delivering faster load speed.

<Insert images of W3 Total Cache Tool and WP Smush It Tool>

 

9. TITLE TAG MODIFIERS ARE NIFTY TRICKS OF THE TRADE

 

Sometimes people search for really long set of keywords. Owing to the unpredictable nature of these keywords and their varying lengths it is impossible to optimize your page according to these keywords.

What can be a possible fix to this situation?

Such long keywords can also be ranked by using Title Tag Modifiers to your website.

<put the below text in a box/>

Try putting words like “Best” “Guide” “Review” “2014” “Top” etc. as Title Tag Modifiers for your webpages.

 

1. NEVER FORGET THE SOCIAL SHARING BUTTONS

If your article has useful content for the readers, they are bound to like and share them in the social networks. You can speed up this process by inculcating Social Sharing Buttons into your website.

Check whether your social sharing buttons are attractively displayed in your blog post. There are many free plugins out there to choose from.

<insert picture of blog post with social sharing buttons here/>

<put this below text in box/>

Ensure that the Social Sharing Buttons Appear at the Top and Bottom of your Blog Posts.

 

 

1. CONTENT IS EVERYTHING

 

Our researches indicate that Google chooses to display those links in the first 10 search results which have 1500+ words of Content.

<insert image showing the word count from a random search on Google with word count for each/>

<put this in a box/>

Make it a point to write at least 1500+ words of your most competitive words that you are trying to rank in Google.

 

2. DON’T LET THAT TRAFFIC BOUNCE

Google simply hates websites with high bounce rates. If people seem to be continuously bouncing from your website in search results, it will be a clear signal to Google that your website is not hosting quality content. Once your website gets flagged for inappropriate content or low-quality content, Google will push your website down the rank drain – trust us when we say this, it’s quite a hard way up from the rank drain and you should avoid this at all costs.

One of the best solutions to slashing the bounce rates of your website is by using Internal Links at the starting of your posts. Visitors are much more click-savvy when they come to your website, than they are half way through your article.

 

<Put this below text in a box/>

Wikipedia is one of the best examples of websites with Internal Links at the starting of their article.

<insert picture of Wikipedia with internal links/>

<Put this in a box/>

Insert as many Internal Links as you can at the starting of your article, without cashing on the overall quality of the article.

 

 

 

 

 

3. LATENT SEMANTIC INDEXING KEYWORDS TO THE RESCUE

 

You may have observed that when you type a particular word into the search box in Google, a lot of optional words are displayed in a list by Google along with your target keyword. Those optional words are LSI Keywords.

<insert picture of Google search box with LSI keywords/>

 

For Examples if you are writing about “Good habits” then you would probably want to mention words like “for kinds, “bad” “healthy” “personal” etc.

<Insert picture of Searches related to Good habits from www.google.com/>

The above words in Italics are LSI keywords for your target Word.

<Put this below list in a box/>

Finding LSI Keywords for your target keywords is very easy:

1. Search for your target keyword in Google.com
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the result page
3. There is a list of highlighted words under “Searches related to your keyword”
4. Those are the LSI keywords.

<Put this below text in a box/>

Make sure all your articles have at least 1-2 LSI Keywords.

 

 

WAY TO GO! YOU MADE IT THROUGH THE ON-PAGE CHECKLIST. ARE YOU READY TO DRINK THE OFF-PAGE SEO JUICE?

 

OFF-PAGE SEO

1. SPEND CONSIDERABLE TIME IN MAKING BACKLINKS

 

Backlinks serve as a crucial factor in manipulating the search engine ranking of your website. Significant amount of time should be taken to build Backlinks for your website.

There are multiple factors that should be taken into consideration for making Backlinks:

1. Quality: The position of your backlink and the authenticity of the content of the backlink play a significant role in portraying the quality of your backlink to search engines. Try to place your links in high authority websites with great Page Rank. Always optimize the Meta Tag Description for every back link to your website.
2. Text: When you are making text backlinks, ensure that the text you link your website to is directly related to your services. If you add vague or unimportant words to your website, this will hurt the SEO of your website than help it.

• Number: This is all but a number game – the more quality backlinks point to your website, the higher are its chances to rank in search engines. Make an excel sheet with all the present backlinks to your website and spend time in scrutinizing each of them for best results. Use all that you have learnt about content development to create the best backlinks.

 

Remember, 1 Quality backlink is better than 10 Low Quality backlinks.

<put this in a box/>

Create new backlinks from time to time for higher visibility of your website in search engines.

Use our Extreme Guide to Creating Backlinks to in-depth knowledge of link creation.

 

 

2. MAKE YOUR WEBSITE TRUSTED BY GOOGLE

 

Your website should be connected to all your social media accounts. If it is used in combination with your Authorship and Geo Tags – Google will understand that the website is run by a human and not a Bot – this adds ranking to your website.

Some factors that are highly regarded when it comes to trust monitoring are:

1. Authority: The best way to establish an authority online is to connect your website with your Social Media Accounts, Add HTML GEO tags and Author Tags. Make best use of all SEO techniques learnt to create quality content and get links from others. Post frequently on your website.

1. History: Websites that have a domain registered for 3+ years are highly regarded by Google as trusted websites. Always pay for the .com registration of your website well in advance to add some weight to your webpage.

• Identity: Try to link your identity with as many places as you can online. This has a positive effect on the overall weight of your website.

<put this in a box/>

Make sure your website is linked to all your social media accounts, Add HTML GEO tag and Author Tags to your website.

3. NEGATIVE SEO STACKS UP AGAINST YOUR RANKINGS

 

There are no black hat tricks to online fame. If you have ever indulged into such activities that are listed below, it is advisable to undo all that you can to dodge the penalty if your website has not been flagged by Google already.

1. Back Link Abuse: Remove all paid backlinks to your website, if any. Backlinks can only be earned over time. There are no shortcuts here.
2. Spam: Never ever ever ever (and if there is any ever after ever) hire a blog spammer to spam your links into various websites. Doing so does not help your websites reputation in any way. Always use the power of content to win love of your readers and deliver only those things / services to the people that they can vouch on and share with others.

• Piracy: Don’t ever add unauthentic or unauthorized content to your website. They could be in the form of video, music, photos, text or anything else. Posting cool freebies is definitely a good idea, but always give credit to the source for your share and check if your share is not against the policies of the source.

<put this below text in a box/>

Ensure that your website is not linked to any illegal activity or content.

 

AWESOME! LOOKS LIKE YOU MANAGED TO WADE THROUGH THE OFF-PAGE SEO LIKE A PRO. ARE YOU READY TO START WITH CORE CODING CONCEPTS OF SEO YET?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CORE CODING AND CONCEPTS

1. SITE MAP

 

A sitemap is that page of your website which categorizes and stores all the pages of your website in a list format. Your website should also have a HTML Sitemap which links to every page. It should be there in every page, normally in the footer. You should also create an XML sitemap for search engines.

<Insert image of a HTML sitemap here>

2. DISABLE JAVASCRIPT / FLASH NAVIGATION

JavaScript / Flash Navigation should be disabled in a website so that the website is easily crawlable by search engine spiders. Ensure that you have text navigation links at the bottom of every page if there are no navigation links at the top of the page.

<insert image of how to disable JavaScript/Flash Navigation/>

3. THE ROBOTS.TXT FILE

This file should always be there; even if it has to be left empty it should be there. It is a file created by webmasters to tell search engine robots how to index the pages of your website.

<insert image of a sample robots.txt file/>

4. STATIC PAGE INDEX

If your website is such that the content on your homepage constantly keeps changing, it is a good idea to have a set of Static Content on the page to not confuse the search engines.

<insert image of a news website with static page index/>

5. WWW RESOLVE

Make sure the website with and without the www in the address bar reaches the same position.

<insert image to show how this is done/>

6. SETUP NECESSARY 301 RE-DIRECTS

In case you are migrating from an old website to a new one, it is necessary to setup all the mandatory 301 re-directs so as to not lose the valuable traffic from the old website.

<Insert image showing how to setup 301 re-direct/>

7. GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Setup an account with Google Analytics if you haven’t done already. It will give you crucial information on all the SEO related statistics of your website.

<Insert image of Google Analytics>

8. GOOGLE WEBMASTERS TOOLS

The XML Sitemap needs to be submitted in the Google Webmasters Tools. Create an account if you don’t have one already.

<Insert image of where the XML Sitemap has to be submitted/>

9. 404-ERROR PAGE

The 404-Error Page, also known as the ‘Page not found’ is displayed whenever a person asks for a page linked to your website, which is not available. There can be many explanations for such errors but, mostly they happen due to careless linking or dead pages which have been removed from your website but the backlinks have remained.

Creating a custom 404-Error Page for your website is a great idea, so that visitors are not greeted with the boring and customary 404-error pages which look very dispelling and unattractive.

<put below text in box/>

Make a custom 404 Error Page for your website if you don’t have already.

1. WORDPRESS AND LANGUAGE

Declare the language of your website and try to get it converted into as many languages as possible to increase the reach of your website.

Ensure that your website has the latest version of WordPress installed for best experience.

1. CLAIM YOUR VANITY ULRs

Though it may look insignificant, but claiming your Vanity URL on major networks is vital, not only for the future SEO of your website, but also to monitor its online reputation. It ensures that no one else can take your brand name on other network accounts. Websites with the most numbers of networking presence have higher chances of dominating the search results in search engines

Claim your vanity URL for all the networking websites listed below.

A typical example of your Vanity URL would be: www.xyznetwork.com

<put the below list in an image for better looks/>

List of obtainable Vanity URLs are as follows:

• hxxp://www.twitter.com/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.facebook.com/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.yelp.com/biz/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.youtube.com/user/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.linkedin.com/in/your-company-name
• hxxp://your-company-name.wordpress.com/
• hxxp://your-company-name.tumblr.com/
• hxxp://pinterest.com/your-company-name/
• hxxp://www.hulu.com/profiles/your-company-name
• hxxp://technorati.com/people/your-company-name
• hxxp://about.me/your-company-name
• hxxp://your-company-name.posterous.com/
• hxxp://profile.typepad.com/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.etsy.com/people/your-company-name
• hxxp://en.gravatar.com/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.scribd.com/your-company-name
• hxxp://your-company-name.livejournal.com/
• hxxp://your-company-name.hubpages.com/
• hxxp://www.flickr.com/photos/your-company-name/
• hxxp://photobucket.com/user/your-company-name/profile/

2. RESPONSIVE WEBSITE

Ensure that your website theme is responsive so that it can be accessed via smartphones and tablets as well. Choose a responsive theme for your website, if you have not done it already.

<insert image of responsive website here/>

 

EUREKA! YOU HAVE NOW GAINED THE PARAMOUNT KNOWLEDGE OF EXTREME SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. ARE YOU READY TO EVALUATE YOUR PROGRESS?

PROGRESS REPORT

Not only does powerful SEO depend on the implementation of changes but also on the measure of the impact, and those changes have on your website over a period. Seeing and experimenting with keywords, tracking their statistics to understand what is best suited for your website’s needs – these don’t come in one day. It requires years of practice and an in-depth understanding of the SEO landscape.

However, we have reached the conclusion of our ‘Extreme WordPress SEO Checklist of 2014,’ and we can safely say that you have been able to do most of these things, if not all from our Extreme Checklist.

At the beginning of the checklist, we had asked you to create an Analysis of your website’s SEO ranking. Now, it is time to equate it with the ranking of your website after you have implemented these changes. Again visit Analyze to generate the present SEO report of your website and compare it with the previous report. The results will speak for themselves.

I hope you enjoyed the read.