The 3 layers of SEO

As I am working for a while as a SEO expert and PPC professional, I would like to share with you some basic facts that I learned in a live environment. You may search and find a lot of theory about SEO on the Web and you can even conduct your own successful SEO without too much of investment. However, I’ve noticed that there is a boundary for a self teaching person, and that’s not because of lack of ability of that person, but rather because of lack of information. I must ascertain that there are on the Web lots of contradictory theories regarding SEO, which makes even harder for a newbie to get to the right point on this area without a minimum of experience.

Why 3 layers?  And why layers, term that make us think of design or even programming?  Well, because though everybody seems to know the difference between on page and off page seo, not every single person gets the right relationship between these 2 and the 3 one, which is traffic they finally would like to generate, or – even more specific – money.

I. ON PAGE LAYER

OK, there is a lot of stuff on the internet about how to do on page seo as it should. Let me pinpoint some of the major mistakes “self seo professionals” do:

1. Title: even at the faster glance it’s obvious that most sites don’t have the proper titles. And am not referring to the html source, where title must be the first tag after opening page tags, but the title’s structure across the site.  There are basic rules to be followed for the title.

Remember:

a. Keyword frequency

Frequency is the number of times your keyword is used in the analyzed area of the page.

Example: If the page’s first heading is ‘Get the best ABC services provided by ABC Company’, frequency of keyword ‘ABC’ in the heading will be two. Frequency relates only to the exact matches of a keyword. Therefore, frequency of key phrase ‘ABC services’ will be one, because as exact match, this keyword is used only once.

Search engines use frequency as a measure of keyword importance.

Search engines rate pages with more keywords as more relevant results, and score them higher. However, you should not use too many keywords, since most search engines will penalize you for this practice for being seen as an attempt to artificially inflate rankings.

b. Keyword weight (density)

Keyword weight is a measure of how often a keyword is found in a specific area of the Web page like a title, heading, anchor name, visible text, etc. Unlike keyword frequency, which is just a count, keyword weight is a ratio.

Keyword weight will depend on the type of keyword, that is if the keyword is a single word or phrase. If the keyword includes two or more words, for example, ‘ABC services’, every word in the key phrase (i.e. both ‘ABC’ and ‘services’) contributes to the weight ratio in the weight formula, and not as one keyword (‘ABC services’).

Keyword weight is calculated as the number of words in the key phrase multiplied by frequency and divided by the total number of words (including the keyword).

Example: The title of a Web page is ‘Get Best ABC Services’. Keyword weight for ‘ABC services’ is 2*1/4*100%=50%. If you reduce the number of words in the title by removing the word ‘get’, so the title becomes ‘Best ABC Services’, than the keyword weight will be larger: 2*1/3*100%=67%. Finally, if you only keep ‘ABC Services’ in the title, the keyword weight will become 100% — 2*1/2*100%.

So, to increase the keyword weight, you should either add some more keywords or reduce the number of words in the page area. The proportion of the keywords to all words will become larger, so will the keyword weight.

Many search engines calculate keyword weight when they rank pages for a particular keyword. Normally, high keyword weight tell search engines that the keyword is extremely important in the text; however, a weight that is too high can make search engines suspect you of spamming and they will penalize your website’s rankings.

c. Keyword Prominence

Prominence is another measure of keyword importance that relates to the proximity of a keyword to the beginning of the analyzed page area. Being the keyword that is used at the beginning of the Title, Heading, or on top of the visible text of the page is considered more important than other words. Prominence is a ratio that is calculated separately for each important page area such as a title, headings, visible text, anchor tags, etc.

HTML pages are written in a document-like fashion. The most important items of a document’s visible text are placed at the top, and their importance is gradually reduced towards the bottom. This idea can be also applied to keyword prominence. Normally, the closer a keyword to the top of a page and to the beginning of a sentence, the higher its prominence is. However, search engines also check if the keyword is present in the middle and at the bottom of the page, so you should place some keywords there too.

The prominence formula takes the following factors into account:

i. Keyword positions in the area,

ii. Number of words in the keyword, and

iii. Total number of words in the area.

100% prominence is given to a keyword or keyphrase that appears at the beginning of the analyzed page area.

Ok, this recommendations are taken randomly from a desktop SEO optimizer, but it look like everybody writes about but very few follow them.

2. Headings

Your pages must have a h1 tag and a well defined headings structure. This is one of the most overlooked on page seo rules.

3. Semantics

The SEs are looking for the theme of the page rather for the keywords. Keywords are only indicators for the theme. Their density has a certain importance, but it’s rather about context than isolated keywords.

4. Internal links

Too much javascript may keep away good rankings on SERPs. SEs can read it, but don’t rely on that.

5. HTML errors

You may not realize the impact of too many html errors on SEs. That causes pages to load slow and DOM errors may puzzle the spiders.

II. OFF PAGE LAYER

I may refer it as a layer, as long as SEs see external links as a part of the target site. In my previous post I said, somewhat metaphorical, that SEO is going to die in a certain regard, as more complex search optimizations replace it. But, on the other hand, I believe, based on what a IT system means, that search engines are going to survive and rule the internet long time since now on. Actually, technically speaking, you cannot replace the role of a search engine, as you cannot put anything else instead of a database. Therefore, different types of marketing will come and pass but they all will gravitate around SEs. There is the new trend with SMM (social media marketing), VSO (video search optimizing) and so on, but they all rely ultimately on a kind of search engine. And you cannot get rid of Google, Bing or Yahoo (as some folks would want to) because of the simple fact: they have (1) technology and (2) the know how, the human resources, the intelligence.

So think of Search Engines as of a very large database to which users send queries for relevant results. Please have in mind that SEs treat each user as his own client, which means will do their best to provide meaningful results. We are clear so far with FROM clause and SELECT query but what about WHERE clause? Or ORDER BY?  Order by what?  This is where off page seo comes in place. You would be amazed if you saw how many entities are trying to spam the SEs index. Behind the scenes, there is an ongoing battle between spammers and SEs. Why?  Simple, because for many of them good rankings mean money. So, a few words about the 3^rd layer, the money layer.

III. THE MONEY LAYER

Called real traffic by some folks   You know, when a site owner asks for seo, he/ she actually is not that much interested in links, tags or whatever technical term, but only to be on top of SERPs. I explained in one of my previous posts why pure SEO cannot reveal as an isolated method certain ranking factors, as there are some other variables as well as players. SEO is not like playing a ball against a wall but playing with a real, opposite (from market share prospective) opponent. So, you are in a game where each player wants to outsmart you.

According to my experience, I dare to affirm that internet is a very large and there is still place for everybody. If you are smart enough, you may pinpoint your niche and see your business easily growing. However, if you want a large piece of pie, you must exercise your “muscle” and invest some big buck before feeling the taste of success.

Am going to talk more about the money layer in one of my future posts. The idea is that not all traffic is money traffic and that users may move back and forth on your site without bringing much value or profit to your business if you don’t know how to play this game.

So, have in mind that traffic doesn’t mean necessary money, leads and conversions and that SEO itself brings traffic only as a “secondary effect”, as it’s not its main goal.

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