# SEO Demystified: Practical Techniques that Produce Astonishing Results – Dave Collins

Channel: Rob Walling
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzRZYxWOc2I
Duration: 57 min
Language: English
Words: 10288
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/kzRZYxWOc2I

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[0:00] [Music]

[0:07] [Music] I've won I'm Dave Collins today I don't have time for much by the way of small talk I've got hundred and nineteen slides to get through so it's going to be tough I'm going cram a near-impossible amount of information to the next 4550 minutes or so and the idea is this this is the small talk bit as far as it goes so some facts to set the ball rolling a little bit 70% of SEO is is simple if you arm yourself with some key ideas invest a little bit in time you can produce really good results but SEO in spite of that it's all too often neglected and

[0:53] when it's not people often do or focus on completely the wrong sort of things so I'm going to try to make sure today that that doesn't happen to any of you and my main goal is to actually show you how simple SEO can really be almost anyone can do it that 70% of SEO is doable everyone in here can do it you arm yourself with some basic principles make some good use of some pretty good tools that are out there which we'll go go through shortly you need the ability to write well then you definitely need the ability to just to just do it to make sure that it happens also SEO

[1:32] always works usually there's a guy who's actually at this conference who used our services a long long time ago ten years ago and about eight months after we finished our working together I met him at a conference and he said to me how you're Dave Collins he introduced himself and he said you're a really nice guy you wrote some good content really good stuff only one issue it didn't make any difference no difference whatsoever to our traffic from the search engines aside from that he was he was happy four months later four months Isis that's a whole year after we finish our working together I have an email from

[2:07] him basically saying it works it's as though someone flipped a switch all of a sudden these pages are kicking in the optimized pages are getting more traffic the new pages are pulling in targeted traffic it works and he was so scared of rocking the boat he didn't even want to update his copyright notice at the bottom of the page I think today he has so Who am I why'd you have to care why'd you have to listen to what I have to say about SEO Ryu K based company I've been doing SEO since 1997 these were the days of Infoseek like us hot but altovise they're probably some people in the room

[2:44] haven't even heard of some of these she's depressing a whole lots changed but in many ways SEO has actually become a whole lot more predictable more of that later sadly the SEO industry has a lot of let's put it that way there's a lot of unsubstantiated facts there's ignorance as people getting crossed wires there's assumptions an ego ultimately there's no such thing as a real SEO expert but it is all about experience and it's all pretty subjective I on the other hand I'm British their forum for more likely to be correct honest trustworthy and reliable more importantly I really dislike so you're not going to get any today I liked like help

[3:31] establish a micro comm traditions anyone have a $10 note $10 come on someone's got you what's the worst what's the worst that can happen you've got $10 20 fine I'll give you change twenties okay okay you can trust me lesson number one never give money to an SEO guy until you know exactly what you're getting despite that every example time go and give you next 45 minutes is is real every single graph chart screenshot and so on it's all going to be based on what I've actually seen and if I'm not seeing it with my own eyes and I've confirmed with what I see with clients if I hear

[4:23] about it from a good source just get quick feel how many people are spending minimum two-three hours a week on this year so what five six people I'm going to really change his talk a little bit I think okay how many people are using SEO Moz okay so smallish number what 15-20 so and open site Explorer okay where do using these tools but not spending more than two three hours but we'll come back to that this is where I need to get a little bit interactive fill in the blanks SEO is really no one's going to remember you for what you say here so feel free shout it out SEO

[5:05] is really like magic boring if this took the two is a boring as the last one would in the UK that's how we spell it there's no no wrong answers in SEO just stupid one sir come on throw them out okay how about this every person who knows what the talk about with SEO there are blank who are talking out to their blanks what 100 percent 90 what about the last blank any ideas it was so polite it it's not true what they say about Americans is it ok we'll come back to this there it there is a reason for this flashback about a year ago I studied in the heart I study in

[5:53] the hard rock cafe for my calm for 2012 talking about Google AdWords which kind of makes me one and a half trick pony in a way what we discussed these three parties that exist in the AdWords ecosystem if you like the advertisers the users and Google themselves well guess what it's the same people's the same parties so let's start with you website owners SEO is what you want what do you want from Google traffic qualified traffic who said that give you $20 for that you want relevant relevant visitors you don't want any visitors right that's pointless we want actual people who are interested in whatever you're selling Google want relevant

[6:34] visitors to actually find you it's it's SEO that actually bridges that gap it's similar to marketing bridging the gap between the product and the buyer and here's a thing legitimate SEO and we'll get into the specifics about legitimate SEO aligns your agendas with Google's which is quite an important point so what might users people who go to Google what do they want from Google answers questions they want more than that they want help and the reason they want help Google release this incredible statistic lately thirty trillion individual pages in the Google index so we don't just want answers we actually want the best ones to be hopefully in the top two or

[7:20] three so you don't have to click away through millions or even trillions of results what about Google what Google want sorry anyone shout out Google want money yes so cynical people Google want people to find what they're looking for reasonably quickly right not too quickly but reasonably okay so that's what the three part is that's what we all want how we're going to get how we're going to get what we want we'll start with Google in a sense men people say Google set the agenda a lot of those truly 30 trillion pages there's a problem with them they're really really really bad so Google needs some

[8:03] sort of system to identify and recognize good content so in a sense Google are going to find the potentially good content and users are going to ratify it so again in this same document that Google released recently they indicated what how they rank results research did good things things that give them a green light and this is this outline the factors that they say are related to good content Google being Google they're then casually referred to over 200 more factors but okay we get the idea they also in red identified the different types of spam gibberish cloaking scraping keyword stuffing user-generated nonsens hidden text and so on nothing

[8:47] news being revealed here but Googler identifying there's very very different types of garbage in there going after all them most interesting of which in my opinion was this one thing content Google are now branding poor in substantial content with the same brush as invisible text as tricks and hacks I've long suspected this to be the case most people have but now now it's actually official so that's Google that's how Google are going to get what they want what about the SEO you notice how I've changed into business owners to SEO s we do that how do you fit into this well it's about guiding it's about

[9:26] guiding Google to help them understand what's on each page and find other contents very different from tricking or manipulating these are two really really distinctly different ideas and brute force it just doesn't work but the good news is Google make it really easy they give you a huge amount of information probably seen some of it regular updates on what works what doesn't what to avoid how to handle different scenarios different questions and so on there's no shortage of information from Google now we get them to the users how to use this fit into this now this is really interesting I find this strange that most people don't quite seem to

[10:05] understand the importance of the role of users in this whole equation Google set the agenda they say what's in their index right they decide where your pages get displayed but it's actually users who vote effectively and ratify what's displayed so if Google sees a certain page I said when your pages for given keywords in third place Google see that everyone clicking on that spends about three or four seconds there clicks back and go to click on number four you're going to you're going to vanish they're going to replace you by something something better so Google set the rules we apply them to our websites users vote

[10:43] effectively Google then update their algorithms and so on we adapt to the new rules on our website and so on so you get this sort of this cycle an SEO is underpinned fundamentally is underpinned by the power of the masses which is a really weird idea if you think about it's like a democracy in theory the legislators make the rules and we the people ratify them that's the frequent misconception that it's only Google who called the shots here but more or less any of the measures any of Google's measures can be overturned by the actual users it's only users that get to vote get to influence and effectively ratify

[11:22] policy and this is a really important point of SEO and this whole cycle this whole SEO cycle it's our lines itself perfectly aligned allows itself perfectly only when SEO is give Google exactly what the user is looking for and that's a really important point you don't give Google what Google are you looking for you give Google what the users are looking for so how do we do that people familiar with black hat white hat SEO yeah ish nutshell explanation white hat SEO is squeaky clean do everything perfectly play by the rules no risks black hat you do anything possible to hack manipulate trick the system whatever you can to get your your

[12:06] site ranked higher get more traffic in my opinion black hat SEO has become more or less an oxymoron in the sense of SEO is all about optimization of your site so that Google can find it black hat is about using a whole load different technique at Google are really trying to find and stamp down on hard don't get me wrong it's not a moral issue it's not law we did this sort of thing in the past not literally this but this type of thing in the past we did it and you know what it worked there was more room to manipulate far more room to experiment remember

[12:40] things like keyword density invisible text one-pixel gifts a long time ago we did that stuff and you know what it worked it really really worked it was very much a area of experimentation today today it's different a whole lots changed today you don't need to incur a human review to actually be penalized I've heard this a thousand times people saying you know what Dave we're not CNN we get four or five hundred people a day from Google we're below the radar there's no such thing as below the radar anymore those days are long gone it's become a thing of the past and if you consider the ramification of using these

[13:16] tricks blackout strategies you have something looks a little bit like this you've got totally safe white light all the way over to horribly risky evil black hat white involves less mistrust in other words Google trust black more mistrust I'm sure I could have phrased that better as you move from white to black the level of mistrust actually starts to increase and as the level of mistrust increases so do the actual risk of penalties and then that what happens that line starts to move higher with each crackdown that changes white hats getting tougher even the BBC I don't know how much coverage just got here in the US but the BBC got slapped by Google

[13:57] for unnatural links this is the BBC do they not know what the B stands for in BBC News sites or sites with low authority very little breathing room and here's the problem he keeps getting higher with each update each new filter each algorithm change it keeps pushing that line higher making it increasingly harder to earn and essentially retain Google's trust so what happens what happens when you get caught breaking the rules the term is you get slapped and I'm in real life beyond SEO slaps are kind of fun they sting a little bit or they're really quite serious but no one gets hurt by a slap it's a stupid name anyone

[14:40] here in this room gets slapped by Google in the last year is oh okay did it tickle did it make you laugh or did it feel like this slaps are painful and slaps a slap by Google translates to real pain financial loss there's nothing funny about them businesses have been decimated and this is what it looks like we work with a company who were hit by a very early version of Panda we took them on after they were hit by the way it wasn't anything that we did obviously they were getting some like 13 1500 visitors a day from Google eight to nine hundred which were really targeted

[15:18] really really good keywords converted really well brilliant they got hit by one of the very early panda updates maybe the first one even and what happened was within 24 hours sales dropped sales dropped by eighty five percent two months later two people in the company had lost their jobs not because they did anything wrong because there was wasn't enough income coming in to to pay their wages there was nothing funny about it's a bleak picture so what I'm saying is if you choose to follow or continue to follow blackhat your day of reckoning lies ahead I really really strongly urge you to consider what you're doing if someone else is doing

[15:57] your SEO ask them some hard questions make sure you know they're doing is like it's like signing off and your company accounts it's not your accountant who's liable if there's only lies or discrepancies you and the same applies to SEO so if someone for you outsource your SEO ask them what they're doing understand what they're doing I know two people in this room two people have been burned by trusting an SEO company not not me obviously so blackhat is no longer a viable long-term strategy so we're not going to focus too much on it so let's talk about real optimization even with these bizarre misspellings that you insist on

[16:34] this side the Atlantic a well optimized page shouldn't look like this you've seen pages that look like this right anyone here's keyword density you know these ideas you take your keyword that the keyword you're optimizing for total number of words what's the percentage actually keyword dancing the best percentage is 1.5 percent 3.2 percent it's rubbish is garbage it's the best density is whatever happens to be produced by a well written and authority and unique article that's it there's no figure we ran the seminar on SEO for local business recently someone asked a pretty good question which was what happens if you have a dark high density or high keyword density without

[17:13] actually trying to know meaning to you not trying to trick Google it just so happens whatever reason you've got that really high density how do you know if you're breaking the rules and it's a good question but Google as I mentioned Google go into enormous detail on what you can and what they can't what you can't do what they consider legitimate and what isn't and in my opinion there's actually very little in the gray area it really is black or white good rule of thumb is if you're not sure imagine you sitting in a room with these two guys from Google pretty unlikely but they've called you in because of one clashes and

[17:48] questions about your website if you're sitting there sweating thinking I really hope they don't spot that tiny link at the bottom I hope they're not spotted that directory of respawn articles I really hope surely Google can't figure out that we got this link networking with all my college friends right if you're sitting there with those thoughts you gonna be in trouble maybe not today but at some point if you're sitting there and saying I don't care I've got nothing to hide then you're probably okay you can probably sleep at night so let's look at some of the fundamentals that really underpin real real SEO his interesting thing this is worth

[18:24] mentioning 16 years of experience of SEO and the core techniques that we apply to our clients websites haven't actually changed very much at all why because the principle of guiding Google always works and it never gets you in any sort of trouble the reason is quite simple Google always have and always will be interested in good content and that's it your role as an SEO is to give them the helping hand to guide them to make sure they understand what they're looking at so SEO is driven by data every single SEO decision has been driven by data based on data that you're in the data and the cleaner

[19:01] analysis the more likely you are of a good outcome we all know that right but we make mistakes we make mistakes the whole time everyone loves data today we all love it absolutely love we're all data fiends data addicts we've got charts spreadsheet analysis and so on it's astonishing how often data is actually misunderstood from the beginning and the real risk is once you have that it's label now this is data you can't argue with data we've seen so many examples of this where people said this is written in stone data we can't argue with the facts so be careful and when I talk about data

[19:34] I'm not talk about Google's algorithms chasing Google's algorithms it's it's similar to chasing your competition towards you one step behind them anyone doing that all right that's the idea it's a really bad idea the best case scenario if you choose to chase the algorithm is you're always going to be one step behind Google more realistic scenarios you're always going to be three four five steps behind what you think Google are doing and that's pretty different turns conditions apply here obviously but up to a point if you give Google what they want you can more or less ignore the algorithms ignore the filters ignore the updates because

[20:13] Google aren't interested in punishing legitimate content so pretty much common sense to this point right and you can stay clear of any any tricks it doesn't matter how clever the different formulas people have linked maps directories reusing content good content doesn't need to be clever good content is good content and it doesn't matter how clever how clever the idea is whether it's your idea of something you've read about or come across it won't work and if it does it won't work for very long and when that day comes you could really end up regretting it really regret what you've been doing which brings us neatly onto

[20:53] panda penguin it's what Google had been doing to clean the pollution clean up this mess people have heard about this yet panda penguin exact much domains all these different things I'm not going to go in the specifics because they don't matter but it doesn't matter it's irrelevant they're all the same thing it's getting rid of the garbage it's getting rid of the really bad results the really bad content and the scale and pace of ongoing development is absolutely amazing some people are a little bit concerned right now why because he's gone quiet nothing much has happened for a few months now so the paranoid are starting to think

[21:28] something huge coming and maybe it is probably it is so the question is will the updates get worse anyone and you want to see bad results in Google any way at all nowadays or you're 100 percent happy you're finding only good quality content right there's bad results out there so it's going to get worse so why why Google doing this why do Google care so much about this why they need to clean up the mess it works right we all use Google we all use it there's some pretty crappy results but it's part of life right there's one reason why Google are doing this and it's a pretty big reason and it's that

[22:06] fifty point two billion dollars revenue in 2012 that's why they're doing this imagine you go searching for Google and you know what you're doing you search for whatever it is you try and find an answer for click on the first link rubbish second rubbish third and so on how many times will that experience have to keep running and running a repeating itself before you actually start thinking unthinkable and think maybe I'll have a look at Bing maybe I'll have a look at Yahoo and this is what Google have got to deal with this is what scares Google this is what face this is the threat that they face

[22:43] if they don't deal with with spam most of them money obviously comes from ants so in a sense the whole organic listings the ones that we're working so hard on to get a good rankings for their little more than the platform for ad delivery essentially but this doesn't detract from the value even a little bit not for you the website owners not for the users of Google and not for Google themselves so Google got a whole lot to protect here fifty point two billion reasons to do this this war this war on qualities only just begun but give Google what they want and everyone gains some people

[23:20] in this room guaranteed are thinking of going head head you might not want stand up fast for a show of hands but some of you thinking yeah but I've got this really clever idea Google or never figure this out she think you're going head head google think about what you're up against you're up against the number one search engine Google don't overlook that think how much data they have in there they run analytics on Google can you imagine that's that's an analytics account I would really like to see number one browser number one mobile operating system at display network web analysis tool the odds are pretty pretty hefty

[24:00] let's say so if you like this crazy romantic idea taking on Google cuz you're smart you can be Google realistically it's not going to happen but you can work with them guiding and steering them helping them that really really really works and it's not only Googlers stand between you and your dreams of massive volumes of traffic people familiar with not provided yeah a few not many you notice this when you go into your analytics you look at the keywords and you start see not provided this was introduced October 2011 Google had this brilliant idea they said if you're logged into any of our services any of them Gmail AdWords whatever you

[24:40] go to Google they're going to automatically divert you to the secure Google HTTPS okay what's the big deal the reason is quite simple how many people in this room right now are logged in to all got most people got laptops they logged into Gmail blogger AdWords analytics Adsense most of you right you go to google carry out a search click on one of the links that will show up in their analytics account as an organic search but it's not going to give you the keyword it's going to be written up as not provided and that's a really big problem and it's a growing problem 55% fifty five percents become a fairly

[25:19] standard figure for loosely what I call tech sites probably most of you thing in the region of 50 60 % or so we've seen 68% on one of our clients website 68 percent that means 68 percent of our keywords are not provided how's that for in the doc and the two problems that one is you can pretty clearly see which direction that lines going yet it's going up it's going to get worse but there's another problem that's 68% of that one world client s but 32% that's not representative data what's 32% it's nothing the reason being that most so-called tech users are going to be logged into something as all of us

[26:01] are and the way you and I search Google is very differently from how our parents search Google definitely different from how my parents search Google that's a whole different story so this data is no longer representative Google Webmaster Tools is a partial solution will will come under that shortly that's a big problem do not tracks another problem right now it's all I think it's optional still in all the browser's but that's going to change this this fear the fears the the paranoid that people have about online privacy doesn't matter whether they're justified or not it's it's growing it's a ever-growing issue and you can expect the service providers like Google to to

[26:42] protect their interest meaning there's going to be more of this okay so you know what's going on got a feel for what's going on in the Google world and you know why it's happening so what lies ahead or generally generally in life I'm reasonably optimistic not so with SEO I think a lot of pain lies ahead even if yeah I winced when I still went when I said even if you 100% clean things can still go belly-up your competition can beat you it's that simple negative SEO could be applied to you that hurts dodgy firm could get you slapped you could even be slapped for something you

[27:19] didn't even know was wrong to people in this room right now they know what I'm talking about as well as pain there's more frustration it's hard SEO is hard and it's getting harder it was a whole lot easier when I started in 1997 really easy few people even knew what SEO was never mind actually did it so yeah there's gonna be more frustration there's also gonna be more punishing the innocents collateral damage - no three three people in this room that I know of three people have been hurt without actually doing anything wrong you've just been caught up if this mess googles war is stamping down on quality there's also going to be

[27:56] less accuracy more extrapolation we just looked and not provided most you probably seen fifty five fifty sixty percent or so not provided so there's going to be more interpretation more extrapolation what the core facts the real actual facts are going to dwindle away more or less two to nothing it's an amazing step backwards I actually believe that in five ten years or so people are going to look back to where we stand today in certainly five years and go and say these were the days when we had data we had amazing access to keyword data and that's going to more or less dry up it's going to it's going to

[28:29] get worse it's hard and it's going to get harder but those with SEO skills will definitely rise above those who don't happen so enough complaining yeah let's talk about what what we're actually going to do about it it starts with keywords this is a really important point keywords are not the Holy Grail reason being users don't go looking for keywords they go looking for solutions go looking for answers Google Google go looking for keywords the keyword research lies very much at the heart of the process if you like it's the base it's the basement which you build everything else on you get the wrong keywords at the beginning

[29:06] everything you're doing beyond that point is wrong wasted futile can even damage you but what you don't want to do is what so many people do is get this huge list of hundreds of keywords and effectively just vomit them out all across every single page all over the place and let's see what happens the idea is you identify one main keyword for each page just one and this is quite important why why just one main keyword people familiar with this this allusion I suppose you can call it the candlestick the face the amazing is the human brain can only settle on one perception it's time I almost did myself

[29:45] damage I think I was so determined to see the face resting on the candlestick something weird happen to my eyes and that's that's our brains we we are pretty amazing our brains while your brains are not sure about mine they're pretty incredible Google spiders Google system is surprisingly simple it's surprisingly primitive and not to a point they're only going to identify one main subject theme if you like of the page so once you've got your single keyword what then how do you write good content for Google well the answer to that is you don't write good content for Google you write for the people and which people loads of people

[30:26] the people are looking for your solution the people who are interested in what yourselves or common sense right no one's going to write this down or few people are going to write it though but they're tricky to find and you may well be in this scenario that a lot of people say that we actually for all the keywords we have we only have to have one or two that are really effective really really good keywords that count for most of our sales most well conversions anyone familiar with that so how do you deal with that how do you deal with just having one or two real

[30:54] key words you can't optimize every single page I've seen a site that did they say optimize every page on the website for one keyword they thought it's a really smart idea be effectively they're just competing with themselves there one got that one shot to show up as for a resultant it's a lot of missed opportunities so you go for longtail three or more words it's more specific this how people search so as an example we were the company that sold network monitoring software now optimizing going after the keyword network monitoring software really really really tough we had to do it but we're not going to put

[31:28] all our eggs in one basket we're going to reach out for other things so we wrote content for things like free network monitoring software software to monitor your network how do I monitor my network and so on his amazing thing is when you do that and you get it right Google soon start to figure out that your site is actually an authority on network monitoring and if you get it right this long tail starts to boost even the shorter Satele keywords you need to work on it you need to be patient we've got churn out good quality content but it works and I know again a few

[32:02] people in this room who who can share share that experience so keyword research process and going oh really quickly I'm really getting behind this is how I carry out keyword research I do this too many times a week it starts with pending high I am NOT a pen and paper person for a whole lot of reasons but keyword research is really good start with pen and paper then you go into analytics don't do the other way around if you start in analytics it's like it's like putting blinkers over your eyes you see a line linear line here and here and here and you've only got these sort of

[32:34] misconceptions start with a brainstorm ideas all over the place then you go to Google have a look who else's who's ranking for this just not see the same names over and over again then use your keyword research tool we'll look at that in a moment then you want to identify this primary keyword this main keyword for each page then you're supporting keywords I'll show you how that works in a moment then you go and try analytics to see how we doing for this keyword how much traffic are we getting right now and not only how much traffic but which pages are they actually landing on and

[33:04] how long then you've got that little dilemma if the good keyword what you think's a good keyword but people are coming only spending five or six seconds is because the keyword isn't so good also because the landing page isn't so good for the keyword got all that fun to figure out yourself then you've got the actual analysis where you put all this data together and then you have this heart-stopping moment that anyone who works in SEO is familiar with the decision time do i optimize an existing page and risk breaking it or do i create new content doesn't exist before no one's linking to it Google doesn't

[33:38] know it exists start with a blank page and wait weeks months or longer for it to start ranking you make the decision create the content link it in and your jobs done so I'll show you how I how I research keywords really simple and it's unbelievably effective do a search on Google for Google Keyword research tool guess who guess who wins guess who gets the first spot most people use Google Keyword tool some okay thought that meme or if you see some like this with the catchy and not logged in it's better if you log into your AdWords account you don't have to be but you get more

[34:15] results and you don't have the CAPTCHA and it looks like this I hate Google's captures don't know don't work with my brain so carry out keyword research so for this example going to do keyword research for the phrase email software so search for email software you don't want that tab whereas the laser you don't want that tab there the ad groups ideas you want the next on long T words ideas that give you typically 800 801 usually results then you simply download the data downloads are CSV open it in Excel so you get something looks like this it might vary a little bit depending on what columns you've got set but

[34:52] basically you're not interested in any local data assume I assume that's the case you're not interested in any paid CPC datas you get rid of those and what you have left or three columns got the keyword you've got the level of competition and the number of searches love the competition in theories a number that goes from 0.01 all the way up to 0.99 the lower the figure the lower the competition then you've got the number of monthly searches bizarrely he figures that google give you but still better lies from the people that know that then lies from people who are absolutely clueless so it's something to

[35:29] go on what you don't have to do you need to factor in both these things you don't want to optimize you don't want spend page time creating pages of content for a keyword that you get for searches a month right so you want keywords with a high level of content but ideally you also want keywords with a fairly low level of competitions you need a way to factor both in I use a really really simple really simple formula I call it little bit tongue-in-cheek KPI keywords performance indicator and all I do it's the monthly searches squared divided by competition that's it people have different ideas different models

[36:07] but this works it's quick and easy it's a bit dirty but it gets the job done so you set that up copy it and then your spreadsheet starts to look something like this now this is the tricky bit what you then have to do this is Google's version of which keywords are related to your original your seed keyword loads of them you're not interested in if you're selling email software you don't care about HTML email software if that's not what it can do you don't care about free mass email software first not what you can do so you have to go work your way through the

[36:34] list oh sorry left out a step you need to sorry need to sort the KPI by largest to the slowest lowest okay this is going downhill fast so what you then do she starts selecting all the terms that don't apply to what it is that you're trying to sell and start cleaning up the list now two important points about this number one do not ever ever do this after 4:00 in the afternoon because you know how easy it is at 4 o'clock when you start to glaze over a little bit caffeine isn't work anymore you delete one these keywords it's a good keyword it's gone you could be missing a phenomenal

[37:09] opportunity because it's the ones at the top that are the most powerful so don't do this when you really brain-dead clean up the list for this example I've end up with 21 22 doesn't need to be any sorry 21 examples it doesn't need to be anywhere near that maybe for one page if you're not interested take it further three four keywords is fine so how we going to actually use and so I did a quick search online that copied and pasted some text no one ever does that on the internet for real obviously so there's your article what are we gonna do what we actually go and do this

[37:40] content how we're going to optimize it what you do is you insert a small number of these keywords in such a way that they blend seamlessly with the content they shouldn't jump out in terms of appearance or how it sounds if you read it out loud need to blend in perfectly if they stick out when you read it out you're not doing it right and an article like this has got a reasonable chance of ranking well why because the keywords are more or less invisible why'd I only use three I had 21 keywords but threes got threes invisible you're not going to spot them if you

[38:15] read it and if it doesn't sound right when you read it out then it isn't right why are we doing this this is the SEO version of paraphrasing this process is me go and Google saying hi Google what do you think which keywords would you say related to email software Google say ah we think we think the following 801 keywords are relevant to email software what we then do is we then basically fans that back on Google so we optimize the page for email software we all know how to do that title h1 description all that rubbish we optimize for email software and then we take some of the

[38:52] keywords that Google has said are related to email software and we blend them in Google spiders member said they're dumb they come along they crawl over the page and they go yeah we can see this is pretty clear this is optimized for email software and hey it's using some of the terms that we ourselves think are related to email software it sounds too simple it sounds too good to be true but it really it really works but it doesn't work if it starts to look like this if you get carried away and you try to use too many of your keywords it doesn't blend in what's the best windows email

[39:27] client do you need email software many people see the advantages of using Gmail software it doesn't sound right and if reading it out loud makes you sound slightly deranged then don't do it don't use it scale back it's all about subtlety it's also all about content keywords on just the building blocks to actual real content content isn't just a mass of words these real content is actually supposed to be worthwhile but the thing is any old content won't do and this is the thing that amazes me we somehow we've lost our way we've become so used to reading bad content thanks to the internet we've become so used to

[40:06] reading bad content that we no longer look at something read it and go why on earth is someone writing that we don't have that anymore and I think up to a point Google also lost their way but now they're remembering and the starting to ask with someone much you want to read this to ranked in the top 10 listings you have to add value to the top 10 listings faking it pretending to add value it just doesn't work not anymore we've also forgotten that people are actually supposed to like to enjoy what they read this is Esther my six-year-old little girl Esther loves reading but she

[40:43] only liked reading what she considers is actually worth reading if I give one of my workbook like an SEO book or Sunday paper or whatever she's not interested it takes her five seconds she's gone she knows good content when she sees it and when she really likes it when she really likes what she read she shares it you see what I'm going with this this is my little boy Edwin now this point in time he trusts Esther's definition of what's worth reading I think that may change Esther doesn't know if it's going to happen Google relying the same principles as Edwin and you and I it's not just about

[41:24] what's being said but it's also who's saying it it's about reputation and it's about authority both of which are harder to trick they're harder to manipulate they're more accurate so for instance bass example number of people that follow me on Twitter who cares real live people engage with me actively follow me that counts for something the days of Google just counting the numbers they're long gone and sadly just having the right content it isn't enough just having a well thought to my site isn't enough you need to be known within your industry you need to be an authority or you need to be the very least known

[41:59] within your niche within an industry so if Google see people referring to you people linking to you okay so what that's okay if Google see people referring to you as an authority in your field that's a bit better if Google see relevant people referring to use and authority in their field that's the best of all someone unknown to Google not so good doesn't count for anything let's also not forget links getting tight for time I knew there wouldn't be time to go into this so I'm just going to fly through this ignore the idiots who say the days of links are dead finished it's it's nonsense quality

[42:44] links still matter use small businesses you don't have a lot of time I can relate to that we're only five people we have no time you can expect yourself a really simple goal of getting one or two one or two decent real links a month a year or two from now you can start seeing a difference that's worthwhile using a $49 piece of software to get you hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands and things it's a waste of time it's all about quality it's also partly about rankings per se I think that rankings got less relevance than before first of all there's the issue of

[43:18] where you actually base there's someone carrying a search on the East Coast we'll see different results from someone in the West Coast and someone in the UK we'll see different results again I got my directions wrong didn't I but you get the idea whether you're logged in if you logged in you see different results most importantly the position of rank is actually only relevant in light of who who's above you so many years ago I trying to remember this last night there's a keyword that I became unhealthily obsessed about something like software marketing services something that whatever I did we could only get to third place until

[43:54] it took me quite a few months for Cindy Ruth it didn't matter the person in first place company in first place was an e-commerce company who sold a vague wishy-washy marketing service no one used it didn't matter persons second place was someone who wrote a blog about software marketing he wasn't selling it as a service his software was nothing do those it actually didn't matter the fact that I was in third place because I was the very first web site listed in Google's results that actually was a service actually was what people are looking for so okay how do we get lots and lots of quality visitors from Google you write

[44:31] content that deserves to be ranked highly it's it's that simple people searching for your keywords actually want to read your content it's got to be better than most if not all at the content that you're competing with and this works anyone with the decent blog can testify to this a Jason Cohen and Patrick McKenzie both write phenomenal content incredible content on their blogs I don't actually know this precise individual aims in doing so whether it makes good business sense it's a mental sounding board it's altruism oh I've got no idea but there's no doubt it helps cement their position of authority their status their relevance and Google won't look at this

[45:14] as random content the content you write isn't random content is content that you write it's relevant to you so what do Google know about you or more specifically what do Google know about you from your website a little story wasn't sure whether to share this or not people know what goodnight bed mats are these things if you're training a child training that's the right word trying to to charge the not wear a diaper at night and if they wet themselves during the night this thing sits between the sheet and the mattress and soaks up so it turns a sort of a disaster into something that's just a bit messy no one

[45:51] in this room knows it until recently I laid good nights bed mats all over my office floor every single night and I'm not that old 43 no one knows that why the reason is we had the dog called Keller who's 17 and a half years old pretty deaf pretty blind he's fine during the day but at night he became a little possessed and at night the only place in our home that he felt safe was my office and the only place where he wanted to pee all night was my office so every night that was my routine at go in and put these things all over the floor you sure don't tell

[46:25] people that story he probably wondering why I'm telling you now there is a reason Google actually know what you tell them they only know what you tell them if you what you tell them is relevant to your business that's a good thing SEO it mirrors it mirrors real life we judge by our actions by our views what we say and even who we say them to who we associate with so some facts about me it's born in Manchester the real Manchester the UK one I hate the word awesome really did my dog peed in my office probably two three thousand times to be honest been in business

[46:55] since 1997 I was the worst soldier ever in the Israeli army near inept rock-climb a whole load of stuff most of these aren't on my website my company website why because they're not relevant to what I do but these things are these are relevant so you decide what Google sees you actually are in full control what Google see on your website and services like visit ID people from movies if I one of the things they do is they show you the words that you say most commonly on Twitter so I had a look at myself and apparently I've talked a lot about Google SEO search marketing

[47:30] Adwords and whatever note there's no mention of being content and dogs in there because that is not relevant to my business if the words in your Twitter stream if your words are relevant to what you do what you care to be associated with that's a good start you're sending out the right signals there's data out there this is thing we're so used to with the data people right we work with data but it works both ways as data out there about you data that can ground you but more importantly data that can actually define you and as we said SEO is driven by data so I'm really running

[48:06] out of time so I'm going get fast Google Webmaster Tools on the subject data people familiar with it having people using it okay should be pretty much everyone if you've not used it in a long time you're going to be amazed people pay for services that contain less information than is sitting in your Google Webmaster Tools it's amazing I would say it's awesome but I'd choke or throw up a little bit or something at the very least you need to log into your Google Webmaster Tools account once a week on the same day download it screenshot it evernote it whatever macro it if you're clever so some of the big

[48:44] the big big big tools that are out there that we use keyword research we use Google's keyword tool as Howard you mentioned four years we said it was okay you get what you pay for it's free but it's better than nothing today it's really really really good we also use SEM rush pretty good and word tracker we used to use but you might you might like it terms of actual power tools or dimension SEO mods Raven tools people familiar with screaming frog it's brilliant it works a downloaded app works on your desktop works on the Mac or PC it basically crawls your site and gives you

[49:21] tons tons of information more than you can imagine about different redirects dead links duplicate titles missing tags and so on it's it's brilliant really good cool since of watching competition open site Explorer is phenomenal nothing comes close when it comes to understanding what your why the sites that rank above you do so but here's the thing here's the problem I know more than a few companies who who have all the tools or the apps or the subscriptions the books and so on but they don't use them they just never get around to actually doing SEO and I find that bizarre this is penny penny is our golden

[50:05] retriever white golden retriever I still don't understand match came into our lives around eight months ago it's brought my family a lot of joy a lot of laughter a lot of running around she also chewed four holes in the wall ripped three pairs of jeans and more t-shirts and like at the cannot she remember and that's before the expensive food that my wife insists is I flew title the vet bills and so on penny is a beautiful dog but she was a really really really bad investment SEO on the other hand SEO is a good investment how many people are actively actively engaged in SEO and that I find amazing

[50:48] because you people are proactive you've taken time out from your families from your work you've got on a plane I assume you paid for your plane flights you've registered for the conference you paying for this hotel so you're the people who are more proactive about growing your businesses your competition on here so if you the most proactive so few of you actually actively engage in SEO can you imagine what your competition are doing and that tiny minority that are doing something most of them are doing it wrong this it's time to stop meaning to get around to SEO SEO works SEO really really works it generates sales it

[51:29] shouldn't be this thing that constantly gets pushed down to the bottom of the to-do list it's an investment so now you hopefully know a little bit more about SEO than you did when I started talking let's say you know a little bit more about me anyone care to fill in the blank SEO is really I deserve that I deserve that I didn't see that coming SEO is really really easy and for every person who knows what they're talking about with SEO there are blank who are talking out of their come on I know what you're all thinking no one's going to say it for every person who knows the talk about

[52:13] with oh there are thousands for talking out of the zone of knowledge SEO produces astonishing results and SEO really really works thank you so you said the one company that got slapped by Google and you were called in did you find something that earned them that punch in the face and were you able to find it and fix it was it done yeah in terms of what what they did that was wrong effectively I don't want to sort of reinforce any stereotypes it's a country who are known for pushing the boundaries of say of what you can what you can't do what you shouldn't do in a sense they

[52:53] got penalized for doing pretty much everything that you can do that was wrong they did it but really the main thing they got slapped for was there was a big problem with duplicate content a lot of which was theirs they they you there's one these companies outsource everything so they have this great idea let's just pay however many that country's currency Schori name and rate unnamed just pay people to rewrite it and regurgitate it reword it jump it up a little bit and they didn't have five duplicate sites they had hundreds and I really mean hundreds so they got stamped on hard in terms of people been

[53:32] penalized for duplicate content anyone here said one been penalized for duplicate content when it's not you who's duplicating do you know the best way of dealing with that the best it's actually really simple it's time-consuming it's simple this is what we did with this company we we basically rewrote his main content the content that he was getting good traffic for before we rewrote it we put the rel equals canonical tag to identify it as this as a source and we then went into google webmaster tools and submitted it and most people don't know that you can do that in Google Webmaster Tools so in a sense this is you saying to Google hey

[54:10] we did this we wrote this rel equals canonical this the first time you've come across it is on our site and then in a way you've got you've got it marked as it does matter how many people duplicate in theory Google know at that point that you did it you wrote it first and it works the negative is it's really time-consuming it's really phenomena time-consuming and with him we worked with him for something like six or seven months I think and we got a recovery rate got him up to I can't remember I think some like 60% of his Google trafficked he was getting before that

[54:45] and we could not push past we couldn't push beyond that I think we could got it half we'd gone to all the pages that were getting less traffic before but it became that sort diminishing returns scenario and we just thought he was happy enough with that best thing is if you're not using rel equals and canonical use it and submit all these pages in you google webmaster tools all of them so basically tell Google this is our content before in oil no scope is it because believe me people are going to copy a content I think there's a site called copyscape copyscape comm if you've not used it before even the free

[55:19] version you can use go put some of your main content pages into copy skate and you can't get a nasty surprise most people here you go and find out people are copying your content and that hurts you so yeah it's pretty pretty simple to do whether it just takes a time okay so my questions I'm duplicate content so in terms of like for example press releases I know that kind of old-fashioned to do press releases but if you wanted to put your own press release on your website but then it gets spread out and it's the exact same content yep um so is that what you would do the rel canonical and

[55:54] what's stopping somebody else from doing the same thing and saying oh this is actually my content yeah how does Google know that this really is my content right there's two issues that in terms of Google knowing that's that's why I use google webmaster tools to submit to as soon as it's up there doesn't even need to be linked in at this point soon as you've got that page submitted to Google so Google scan it and they've got it they then know this is the first place this is the first time we saw this was on your domain and that that's quite effective we used to say days gone by we

[56:27] used to say press releases were really good at actually getting the attention of the press and they worked really well and then things flipped over and we started saying pressure releases don't get the attention of the press but they're good for SEO now we say of any anyone here got a pressure-release company put your fingers in your ears a moment now we say that press releases are tough to justify I'm being diplomatic though they have they they they do have their uses but from an SEO point of view duplicate content everyone uses nofollow it's identical content you don't get people clicking on those links and so yeah in a

[57:05] way it's gone back to actually now using pressure at least to get the attention of the press which is a bizarre I do

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