Digital Marketing, Chapter 4

The choice of target search phrases should be based on four factors:

(1) relevance of search intent, (2) traffic, (3) competition, and (4) current ranking.

The list below details a number of factors that affect whether a search engine assesses a web page to be high or low quality.

-Original Content -Short Load Times -Fresh Content -Meta Description and Snippets -Quantity Content -Low Bounce Rate from Landing Page -Quality Content

A ranking of 1 indicates that it is the top organic search result, while a ranking of 34 indicates it is the fourth result on the fourth page. Many in the SEO industry would classify a ranking of 34, and any ranking above ___, as not ranking.

10

Google accomplishes search engine requests nearly ____ billion times per day.

8.5

local pack

A pack of typically three local business listings that appear for local-intent searches such as "oil change near me."

The paid-for ads on a SERP are labeled as an ___ and appear at the top and bottom of a typical SERP. Alternatively, Google Shopping ads are labeled as '_____' and appear at the top of the SERP or on the right.

Ad; Sponsored

Image Alt Text and File Name. Search engines cannot "see" images, so unless they are properly labeled, the search engine does not know what the content of an image on a page is. _____ is a label or tag that indicates the content of the image.

Alternative text (alt text)

Any company with a local presence should immediately register and verify its business with Google's _______, Doing so ensures that Google knows of the company's validity, and also enables Knowledge Graph results to show up for searches on the company's name.

My Business

NAP is an acronym for

Name, Address, and Phone number. NAP consistency is crucial for local search results.

The _____ Update Google Panda, named after a key engineer on the team that generated the update, was probably the most significant single update in Google's algorithm change history. Google ran several studies and focus groups with users to determine which characteristics make a web page appealing. After collecting data from users on their liking for thousands of web pages, it ran machine learning algorithms to generalize these characteristics. It then incorporated these scores into the algorithm and gave poor rankings to websites that had characteristics of unappealing websites. The Panda update was significant not just for the changes it implemented but because it marked a significant shift in Google's ranking determinants. Rather than trust in the patterns of links across the internet as reliable signals of a website's quality, Google began assessing the quality of a web page based on other factors.

Panda

The _____ Update The Pigeon update was Google's first major overhaul of its local rankings. It did two major things. First, it improved estimation of the searcher's location so results could be more accurately tailored to the searcher's location. Proximity to the searcher remains one of the most important determinants of local search rankings. Second, it incorporated more traditional quality signals (reviews, links, website formatting) in the local search results.

Pigeon

______ is not an algorithm update but an input into Google's rankings. Just like backlinks and word usage are inputs that determine a web page's ranking for a search, RankBrain is an input that helps determine a web page's ranking. The interesting and important property of RankBrain is that it is produced by artificial intelligence. This means that RankBrain changes and evolves on its own, continually improving search results without receiving new instructions from the Google Algorithm team.

RankBrain

_______ is the most important consideration in choosing target search phrases. The overall proportion of searchers with "commercial intent" is usually lower with more generic keywords.

Relevance of search intent

ABC local pack

Searches for gas stations and searches on branded terms like Starbucks

For security reasons, Google began using https (HTTP indicates no _____, while HTTPS indicates a secure communication connection) as a minor ranking signal in 2014, and the importance of this ranking signal has increased over time. In January 2017, Google began marking sites as "non-secure" if they failed to use the HTTPS protocol when transferring sensitive data.

TLS security

Dirty Sitemaps. An ______ provides a technical map of a website to the search engine crawlers, which helps them index the site properly. If this sitemap contains broken links or other errors, these errors serve as an indication that the website is improperly managed (bad) or not trustworthy (worse).

XML sitemap

alternative text (alt text):

a label or tag that communicates information to web browsers for the visually impaired or to browsers that have images deactivated

Alternative text (alt text)

a label or tag that indicates the content of the image

backlink:

a link from an external source that points viewers to that web page. In other words, a link on any other website that links back to your website.

Meta Description and Snippets. The meta description of a web page is______. It is included in the < HEAD > content of the page, like the Title Tag, and it is not displayed to visitors. However, search engines show the meta description to searchers along with the web page's title tag, so a well-written meta description can help increase traffic by generating a high click-through rate.

a short (160 characters) description of the web page content

fat head:

a term with high search volume

The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to ______. The most reliable way to accomplish this goal is to help the search engine accomplish its own goal. That is, to be a top search result, a website should be a good search result and provide high-quality content relevant to that search query so the searcher will be happy he or she clicked on that website.

be a result of many different search queries and even better, to be the top result on many different searches.

Anchor Text.

clickable text that provides a hyperlink

Off-site SEO (also called off-page SEO)

deals with the creation and dissemination of content on a website to build quality backlinks to the site.

On-site SEO (also called on-page SEO)

deals with the formatting of content on the website to maximize its chances of ranking for all desired searches.

Traffic. Keyword relevance has to be balanced with keyword search ______. There is no benefit to ranking for a search phrase that no one searches.

demand

Optimized images

help search engines understand the content focus of the page, but also help the images rank well by themselves within image search, which can drive additional traffic.

Anchor Text. A search engine uses the anchor text from backlinks as an objective, third-party description of a web page. The same principle applies to links from one page to another within the same website (also called ______). Internal links should use the linked-to page's target keyword phrase as the anchor text of that link.

internal links

Typically, the _______ should be the first thing in the title tag, followed by the ______, separated by a pipe text (the '|' symbol). Title tags should be kept under 60 characters long (so they will be displayed in full on the SERP).

keyword phrase; brand name

Main Content. Search engines code up every word instance on a web page to determine what the web page is about. Therefore, a website wants to use its target keyword phrase at least once in the main content of the page. Inserting the keyword phrase too often is known as "_______." which is a black-hat SEO tactic and one that is not effective, because search engines can easily guard against this practice.

keyword stuffing

A backlink

link on any other website that links back to your website.

A primary source of information on the quality of a web page is the number of _____ from other websites directed at that web page.

links

Local Search Result Types Google does not always show local search results in the same layout. When someone does a search with local intent, the SERP may show a _____, which is a list of three local businesses that match the search, their location on the map, and review information, and links to their website.

local pack

A small website is more likely to have success targeting _______ with lower competition like gold Rolex watch rather than the fat head keyword watches, which is very competitive.

long tail keyword phrases

Long tail keywords are

multi-word phrases that are extended or more specific versions of a core fat head term.

In keeping with industry practice, search engine optimization is divided into two chapters, one for ______ SEO and another for _____ SEO.

on-site; off-site

Structured Citations. Structured citations refer to ________. For example, a Yelp listing for a company is a structured citation. Consistency in these citations is important, so a company should regularly check for this consistency, and request corrections when it finds inaccurate citations.

references and listings from other websites

The goal of search engines is to provide good results to search queries. A good search result is one that is (1) _____ to the search query and (2) _____ (containing valuable and informative content).

relevant; high quality

Title Tag.

shows up at the top of a browser when one navigates to that page.

The snack local pack

shows up for restaurant and entertainment searches, and omits the website and directions links and instead shows a picture of the restaurant.

fat head keywords

super-popular keywords that get the highest search volume

However, a good website can sometimes fail to achieve the rankings it deserves because of ______ issues. Such problems most typically result from the search engine's crawlers not properly indexing the pages within a website. That is, search engines may not "see" all of the pages within a website.

technical

Contextual interpretation refers to

the ability to interpret the intent and meaning of a search phrase rather than simply finding web pages that use the searched-for words.

Organic search results are

the links on a search engine results page (SERP) that are not paid for.

bounce rate:

the percentage of page viewing sessions that consist of only one page view

Low Bounce Rate from Landing Page. The bounce rate of a page is _______. Google does not access the calculated bounce rate of a page, because (1) not every website uses Google Analytics and (2) webmasters would stop using Google Analytics if doing so damages their search ranking.

the percentage of sessions beginning on that page that consist of only one page view

A ranking refers to

the position the website shows up in the SERP within the organic search results.

While the local pack is the most typical result for a search with local intent, it has three additional variations-_______.

the snack local pack, the ABC local pack, and the sponsored local pack

Black Hat SEO

website formatting practices designed to manipulate the search engine into giving a website good rankings without the site actually providing good value to searchers

black-hat SEO practices:

website formatting practices designed to manipulate the search engine into giving a website good rankings without the site actually providing good value to searchers

The first task in search engine optimization is to format our website so the search engine can accurately assess the topics our website is relevant to. Search engines assess relevance on a continuum. A web page can be assessed as being entirely irrelevant to a search phrase, extremely relevant to a search phrase, or anywhere in between. Search engines assess the topic relevance of a page primarily based on the _____ used in the page.

words

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS):

CLS indicates whether the content shifted when another piece of content loaded later on the page. Usually indicates a less-than-ideal user experience

Insufficient _______. Search engines discover the content on a website by following links to other pages. If any of the pages within a site have no inbound links from other pages on the site, the search engines have no way to find those pages.

Internal Linking

The _____, also found within the Google Search Console site, is another useful feature. It enables webmasters to test whether Google is properly crawling and rendering pages. What follows is a list of common technical issues that may prevent a website from achieving its deserved search engine rankings.

URL Inspection Tool

The 'GPT' in ChatGPT stands for _______. Like BERT (notice the 'T' in both stands for transformer), it is an Al tool. The key letter in ChatGPT is the 'G', which stands for generative. ChatGPT can generate completely novel responses to a query. Google's Bard

Generative Pre-trained Transformer

_____. Within the HTML code of a website, header tags (ch1, and ‹/h1› or ‹h2› and ‹/h2›, etc.) surround the word or phrase that gives a title or label to sections of the web page. (The ‹h1, tag is the largest header; the ‹h2 tag is the second-largest header, etc.) The words inside a header tag receive more weight in the relevance calculation, so the target keyword phrase should be in the header 1.

Header Tags

The ______ Update The Hummingbird update was less an algorithm update and more an algorithm replacement. In essence, Hummingbird was a completely new search algorithm that replaced the old algorithm wholesale. Google reported that the new algorithm is precise and fast (like a hummingbird). The increased precision is partly due to improvements in contextual interpretation.

Hummingbird

sponsored local pack

If there are several local service providers matching a given search query who are also paying to advertise on Google, this shows up