SEO Best Practices and Ranking Factors

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From the course by University of California, Davis

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization

2749 ratings

University of California, Davis

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization

2749 ratings

Course 1 of 6 in the Specialization Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Ever wonder how major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo rank your website within their searches? Or how content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users? Welcome to the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This course is the first within the SEO Specialization and it is intended to give you a taste of SEO. You will be introduced to the foundational elements of how search engines work, how the SEO landscape has changed and what you can expect in the future. You discuss core SEO strategies and tactics used to drive more organic search results to a specific website or set of websites, as well as tactics to avoid to prevent penalization from search engines. You will also discover how to position yourself for a successful career in SEO should this subject prove interesting to you. We hope this taste of SEO, will entice you to continue through the Specialization.

From the lesson

Current SEO Best Practices

In Module 3, we'll be discussing items that SEOs spend a great deal of time dealing with: SEO best practices, the algorithm updates that look for them and potential penalties for not adhering to them. By the end of this module, you'll be able to illustrate the concept of relevancy as it applies to search results, compare and contrast the functionality of search engine algorithm updates, and critically examine the ways in which webmasters attempt to circumvent these algorithms. You'll also be able to define important ranking factors used by modern search engines, and learn the necessary steps to avoid (or correct) any penalties applied by search engine algorithms.

Current SEO Best Practices0:53

Introduction to Search Engine Algorithms6:48

SEO Best Practices and Ranking Factors7:46

Early Algorithms: Florida, Austin, and Brandy6:48

Updates: Personalized, Universal, Vince, and Caffeine6:37

Panda: The Game Changer for Content7:25

Cleaning Up Links with Penguin9:18

Refinements: Hummingbird, Pigeon, and Mobile6:39

How You Can Avoid Penalties5:57

Meet the Instructors

Rebekah May
SEO Manager & Lead SEO Instructor, Lead Qual
UC Davis Division of Continuing and Professional Education

Welcome back.

Now that we've learned about algorithms in general,

we'll break down the best practices put in place by search providers, and

how those lay out a road map for smart web design.

We'll also talk about optimizing and

over optimizing a website to take advantage of these algorithm changes and

how that can positively and negatively impact your site.

Through this discussion you'll also gain a better understanding

of critical page ranking factors.

Part of why algorithms evolve so frequently is due to webmasters

manipulating the algorithm to obtain a high rank for a page which isn't relevant.

This is part of what gives SEOs a bad name.

As SEOs uncover more about the algorithm, some people over optimize for

these factors.

This causes search engines to have to adjust their algorithms to account for

these spammy tactics.

The payday loan field is an excellent example

as Google had to create a specific update

just to counter the notoriously spammy results within the payday loan space.

This is why it is a good idea not to over optimize your site.

It may work for a little while but it is not viable for the long-term.

To ensure your site is not affected by a penalty or

algorithm adjustment, it's a good idea to always follow best practices.

Google has provided webmasters with a set of best practices to follow.

This will help ensure websites are optimized for search.

You can view these best practices in detail at the link I've provided in your

study materials.

But I'd like to take a moment to go over the main points in this lesson.

The first best practice is to make sure you provide high quality content,

especially on your home page.

From a user experience point of view, this helps users immediately understand

what your website is about and how it can meet their needs.

From an SEO point of view,

your homepage is the page which earns the most authority on your website and

this is one of the main pages that will end up ranking in search.

It's important to provide information to users, but it's equally important that

search engines understand what your site is about and rank it appropriately.

The content on your homepage can help do this.

Obtaining links from other sites is another important best practice.

We will discuss link building in more detail.

But basically each link to your site earns you authority, so

the more high quality links you have the more authority your site earns.

This can help your site rank better in search results.

Next, it is important to ensure your site is accessible to both users and

search engines.

Some websites are coded in a fashion where users can see the content but

search engines cannot.

This is known as cloaking, and can result in penalties.

Your website needs to be valuable from both a user's perspective and

a search engine perspective.

But the user experience comes first.

Last but not least, it's important to have a clear hierarchy.

If your website is structured in a way that makes finding inner pages difficult,

or it's difficult to understand the theme in various section of your website,

this will result in a poor user experience.

In addition to providing a poor user experience,

it will also make it more difficult for robots to crawl and analyze the site.

Remember these best practices are only best practices Google has released to

the public, they keep the details of their algorithms pretty secret.

This is to prevent gaming search results, which could result in a lot of irrelevant

organic results and a loss in their user base.

Through testing and

monitoring changes, SEOs have been able to figure out more specific ranking factors.

Keep in mind that the information Google has provided to us

is really just the tip of the iceberg.

There are many additional factors that lurk just beneath the surface.

More information on these factors have been obtained through conferences, blogs,

forums and groups that search engine representatives participate in.

But most of that experience comes from

SEOs continually testing their hypothesis and monitoring changes.

The SEO community is great at working together to uncover ranking factors,

changes that may have occurred, and helping out others in the industry.

It's important to read blogs, news, and stay up to date on changes.

Analyzing patents Google has filed also provides us with

insights into how the algorithms work

as well as what changes we may see over the next few years.

Patents are often filled with legal language and

they can be difficult to understand.

There's one SEO in the industry in particular named Bill Slawski

that is great at reviewing patents and presenting his interpretation

of how the information discussed in that patent has affected or may affect SEO.

I would urge you to read his blog which is called SEO by the sea and

look at his post on patents in particular.

These can be very enlightening and entertaining reads.

Through analysis of search engine algorithms,

the SEO industry has uncovered many different ranking factors.

These are divided into three key areas.

On-page factors are factors within a specific page of your site.

Off-site factors, such as incoming links and brand mentions and domain or

site level factors, which are signals that can effect your site as a whole.

This also gets into technical SEO.

Throughout this course we will discuss each of these areas in more detail, but

I wanted to provide you with a quick glimpse of important ranking factors

that SEOs have uncovered over the years.

While Google continuously updates their algorithm there are occasional major

algorithm changes that shake up the SEO industry quite a bit.

These changes often have a big impact on individual sites,

as well as entire industries.

Because these major changes have all been named,

we can easily identify what a specific ranking factor may date to or

what issues with the site might be attributed to a specific update.

By attributing potential SEO issues with a specific update

we can better understand what issues are impacting a websites ability to rank,

and make appropriate recommendations from improving that site.

While there have been many major updates in the past, I'll be discussing some of

the major updates that we still frequently refer to today.

These updates play a large roll in the current SEO landscape.

Stay tuned for the next lesson,

where we will discuss each of these algorithm changes in more detail.

By now, you should have a clear understanding

of the importance of search engine algorithms as well as how Google uses

these algorithms to improve their search results.

Understanding how Google uses these algorithms provides SEOs with

information on how we can better optimize our sites and rank higher in search.

Next, we will discuss specific algorithms in detail.

That completes the video portion of this lesson.

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