Fiver Skill Test Answers

RSS and Atom feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an XML-based format used for publishing news or articles
in a machine-readable form. An RSS or Atom file is also called a feed. A program that can be
used to read such feeds is called a feed reader or aggregator, hence the title of the
application, Akregator.

Akregator automatically extracts new items from the feed and displays them in a human-friendly
form to the user. The user can therefore save time with regularly-visited websites, as they need
no longer manually check whether there are new pieces of information available.

RSS is available in different versions which are not compatible with each other (this situation
caused by competing companies): RSS 0.9, RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0. Atom is also an XML-based
feed language which has been redesigned to fit the needs of webloggers and news sites. Atom
attempts to replace RSS feeds and remove the uncertainty with incompatibilities in the
different RSS versions.

7 Reasons Why An HTML Sitemap Is Still A Must-Have

Whether or not you need an HTML sitemap is cause for debate in SEO circles. Here are 7
reasons you still need to have one.

The debate about the utility of HTML sitemaps and their efficacy with regards to SEO rages on.

But as far as I’m concerned, they are useful for users and there is no good reason not to have one.
If there is additional SEO value, that’s even better.

A sitemap guides your website visitors to where they want to go. It’s where they turn if they
haven’t found what they are looking for in your dropdown menus or on-site search.
Beyond helping your visitors navigate your website (which should be the primary focus of any
marketing effort) there are lots of other great reasons to use a sitemap. We’ll explore those
below.

First, it’s important to understand that there are two types of sitemaps that websites use:

XML sitemaps.

HTML sitemaps.

What Are XML Sitemaps?

XML sitemaps help search engines and spiders discover the pages on your website.

These sitemaps give search engines a website’s URLs and offer data a complete map of all pages
on a site. This helps search engines prioritize pages that they will crawl.

There is information within the sitemap that shows page change frequency on one URL versus
others on that website, but it is unlikely that this has any effect on rankings.

An XML sitemap is very useful for large websites that might otherwise take a long time for a
spider to crawl through the site and can help search engines just simply know what pages exist.
Without this sitemap, they would not be able to build the full menu of available pages until they
completed a crawl of the whole site.

Every site has a specific amount of crawl budget allocated to their site, so no search engine will
simply crawl every URL the first time it encounters it.

An XML sitemap is a good way for a search engine to build its queue of the pages it wants to
serve.

What Are HTML Sitemaps?

HTML sitemaps ostensibly serve website visitors. The sitemaps include every page on the
website – from the main pages to lower-level pages and can be thought of as a well-organized
table of content.

An HTML sitemap is just a clickable list of pages on a website. In its rawest form, it can be an
unordered list of every page on a site – but don’t do that.
This is a great opportunity to create some order out of chaos, so it’s worth making the effort.

Why You Should Leverage HTML Sitemaps

While you may already use an XML sitemap – and some insist that an HTML sitemap is no
longer necessary – here are seven reasons to add (or keep) an updated HTML sitemap.

1. Organize Large Websites

Your website will grow in size.

You may add an ecommerce store with several departments or you may expand your product
portfolio. Or, more likely, the site just grows as new ideas become a part of the company.

However, this can lead to confusion for visitors who are then confused about where to go or what
you have to offer.

The HTML sitemap works in a similar way to a department store or shopping mall map.

The sitemap is a great way for the person maintaining the sitemap to take stock of every page
and make sure it has its rightful home somewhere on the site.

This is the directory for users that can’t find the pages they are looking for elsewhere on the site
and, as a last resort, this should help them get there. I find myself looking for sitemaps when I
am otherwise confused as to where to go on a website.

2. Serve As A Project Manager & Architect

Think of the HTML sitemap as an architectural blueprint for your website.

The sitemap becomes a project management tool. It oversees the structure and connections
between pages and subpages.

It’s also a forcing function to make sure that you have a clean hierarchy and taxonomy for the
site. Every page that is created has to find a home.

A good sitemap is like a well-organized daily schedule.

As any busy person knows, there’s a big difference between an agenda that has every meeting
popped on at random or those that are themed and organized around time blocks.

In either case, an agenda is still an agenda but an organized one is far more useful for everyone.

3. Highlight The Website’s Purpose

As a content-based document, the HTML sitemap serves as a way to further define your
website’s specific value.

Enhance this benefit by using SEO to identify the most unique and relevant keywords to include
on the sitemap.

Anchor text is a great way of creating keyword relevancy for a page and for pages without many
cross-links, a sitemap is an easy alternative to use choice anchor text. While there is no
guarantee that the anchor text is valued by search engines, it nonetheless does not hurt to try.

4. Speed The Work Of Search Engine Crawlers

You want to help those search engines out in any way you can and take control where you can.
The assistance includes finding your content and moving it up in the crawl queue.

While an XML sitemap is just a laundry list of links, HTML links are actually the way search
crawlers prefer to discover the web.

The HTML sitemap helps call attention to that content by putting the spotlight on your website’s
most important pages. You can also submit the text version of your sitemap to Google.

5. Increase Search Engine Visibility

With some websites, Google and other search engines may not go through the work of indexing
every webpage.

For example, if you have a link on one of your webpages, then search bots may choose to follow
that link.
The bots want to verify that the link makes sense. Yet, in doing so, the bots may never return to
continue indexing the remaining pages.

The HTML sitemap can direct these bots to get the entire picture of your site and consider all the
pages. In turn, this can facilitate the bots’ job and they may stay longer to follow the page
navigation laid out for them.

Not only does a taxonomy and hierarchy help users find themselves, but it’s incredibly important
for search crawlers, too. The sitemap can help the crawlers understand the website’s taxonomy.

There is no limit to how big a sitemap can be and LinkedIn even has a sitemap that has links to
all of their millions of user pages.

What is anchor text

Anchor text — or link text — is the visible, clickable text of a link. It usually appears in a
different color than the surrounding text and is often underlined. Good link text tells the reader
what to expect if they click on the link. Getting your anchor text right increases the chance of
someone clicking on your link, and helps search engines by giving them context.

What does an anchor text look like?

Anchor text describes the article being linked to and entices visitors to click. Even search engines
understand that the linked article is relevant because the URL and the link text correlate. So, for
example, if you were to link to this article, you might use the link/anchor text like this: What is
anchor text? So you link to other articles in a way that looks natural to the reader.

What does anchor text look like in HTML? The first piece of code is the URL, while the second
part describes the link – and this is the anchor text. Like this:

The anchor text or link text is the piece of content describing the link

Why are link texts important for SEO?

Links are important for SEO: you need to add internal links, for example, to make your site
structure clear to search engines. The text of the link helps search engines make sense of your
(internal) links; it gives them more context. When you link to other content, Google uses the link
text as an indicator of the topic of the linked page. If the link text matches your keyphrase,
Google will not be able to tell which article is the most relevant for that topic and should rank for
that keyphrase. So yes, anchor text is a ranking factor for Google.

Besides adding context to links for search engines, link text is also important to your users. The
anchor text clarifies the value of a link and tells them where it leads them. So, using the focus
keyphrase in the link text can be confusing for both search engines and your users. That’s why
you should actively avoid competing links.

Different kinds of link text

Anchor text is relevant for both your internal links and your incoming external links. External
sites can link to your content in various ways.

 Branded links: A link with your brand name as an anchor, like Yoast.
 The URL itself: Just your site’s URL without a text, like https://yoast.com. Not that
helpful in most instances.
 Site name: written as Yoast.com.
 Article or page title: Exact matching the page title, like What is anchor text?.
 Exact keywords: Your focus keyword/keyphrase as anchor text
 Partially matching keywords: Using variants of your focus keyword to make a readable
link.
 Related keywords: Not a direct match, but a keyword or keyphrase that is closely related
to the main one.
 Generic links: Try to avoid these ‘Click here’ and ‘Read more’ links. Tell people what a
link is about. Otherwise, they’re guessing.

Link focus keyphrase check in Yoast SEO

The Yoast SEO plugins for WordPress and Shopify come with a link focus keyphrase check,
which can help you improve your link text. This check warns you when it detects competing
links in your text. A link is considered a competing link when its anchor text contains the focus
keyphrase that you want your page to rank for. So, the link focus keyphrase check assesses the
links on a page and their anchor text and notifies you if you have competing links. If you
have Yoast SEO Premium or Yoast SEO for Shopify, the check will also look for
the synonyms of your keyphrase.

Let’s consider an example. Say you have written an article about potato chips, so your focus
keyphrase is ‘potato chips.’ If you then use a link with the anchor text ‘potato chips’ in that same
post, that link is considered a competing link.

When Yoast SEO detects a competing link, it displays a warning message in the SEO analysis
results.

How to improve your anchor link texts

So, what do you do if Yoast SEO warns you that you have competing links in your text? Follow
the tips below to improve your link texts!

1. Create a natural flow

Writing, in general, should have a natural flow. The same is true for link texts. When adding
links, make sure they fit well with the rest of the text. Look at it like this. If you are struggling to
squeeze in a link in a sentence, the link probably doesn’t belong there. It’s better to put it
somewhere else, and avoid making your texts unnatural and difficult to read. So, while links are
important for SEO, you should make sure that they don’t get in the way of the message you want
to convey.

2. Match the link text with the content you’re linking to

A good practice for writing link texts is matching the text of the link with the content of the page
you are linking to. When a reader sees the linked text, they should immediately know what to
expect if they click on it. Take a look at the text in the image below.
The links in this example blend in seamlessly with the rest of the text. Moreover, you know
precisely what to expect if you click on a link. For example, the link text “content analysis in the
Yoast SEO plugin” clearly leads to a post explaining the Yoast SEO content analysis features.
How about the link text “meta description.” The sentence the link belongs to is about optimizing
your text. So, you would expect that the link leads to a post about optimizing meta descriptions.
And that’s what it does.

3. Don’t trick your readers

In the example above, the link texts are used responsibly. That is very important. You should not
try to trick your readers with links. For instance, if your link text says “potato chips,” it would be
bad practice to have that link take the reader to a car dealership page.

4. Make clear the link text is clickable

Lastly, make it evident to the reader that the link text is clickable. You can do that by using a
different color for the link, underline it, or both.

5. Bonus tip: put your entire keyphrase in quotes

Let’s say you are writing an article with the long-tail focus keyphrase ‘learning how to knit.’ If
you use any of those words from the focus keyphrase in a link text, you may get feedback from
Yoast SEO advising you to change it. To avoid getting a red bullet for the focus keyphrase in
link check, you can put the entire keyphrase in quotes, so the analysis only matches the entire
phrase, instead of the individual words.
Want to learn more about how to improve your anchor texts and SEO copywriting? We have
several SEO courses that can help you with that, such as courses on all-around SEO, site
structure and SEO copywriting. Get access to these courses with Yoast SEO Premium, which
also gives you access to extra features in the Yoast SEO plugin.

Internal links and anchor texts

We all know that internal links are essential. Yoast SEO for WordPress has a built-in internal
link tool that makes it a lot easier to find related content to link to on your site. Whenever you
add a relevant link to your article, you also need to think about the anchor text. By thinking
carefully about how and why you link these articles to improve your internal linking structure
you can help both users and search engines navigate your site easier.

To make the most of internal links try to only add links that add real value to users. Write great
anchor text for them, so readers know this link has been carefully selected to help them find out
more. Don’t link for the sake of it. Make it relevant and useful. And of course, don’t spam!

This is anchor text

Anchor text helps both users and search engines decide whether a link is worth visiting. Some
people try to game this system, but don’t fall into this trap. These days, Google is pretty good at
spotting links that are unnatural and even harmful. So, keep it natural and relevant, and you’ll be
good to go!

6. Enable Page Links In A Natural Way To Drive Visitors

Not every page will connect through a link located in a header or footer.

The HTML sitemap can step in and find these ideal connections that address how visitors may
look for things.

In this way, the HTML sitemap can reflect a visitor’s journey and guide them from research to
purchase. In doing so, this benefit of HTML sitemaps can raise the organic search visibility of
these linked pages.
In this instance, the sitemap is the fallback that ensures that there is never a page on a site that
is orphaned.

I have seen huge gains in the traffic of sites that had issues with deeper pages not receiving many
internal links.

7. Identify The Areas Where Site Navigation Could Improve

Once your website grows and you develop more pages, there may be duplicate data, which can
be problematic for a search engine.

But after mapping everything out, you’ll be able to use the sitemap to find the duplication and
remove it.

As an aside, this only works if there is an owner of the sitemap that is looking at the sitemap on a
semi-regular basis.

Also, when you apply analytics or heat map tools, it may conclude that more visitors are using
the HTML sitemap than using navigation.

This is a clear signal that you need to reassess why this is happening if the current navigation is
missing the mark.

It’s important to determine how you can change the site architecture to make it easier for visitors
to find what they need.

For all these benefits, you’ll want to maintain an HTML sitemap. These benefits save resources
(time and money).

They also deliver an effective way to guide your website visitors to what they need and help
close those sales.

Getting Started

If you don’t have an HTML sitemap but do use a platform like WordPress, I recommend one of
the many sitemap plug-ins. The plug-ins automate much of the sitemap development and
management process.

For larger sites, it might take running a web crawl like:

Screaming Frog or SiteBulb on desktop.

OnCrawl or DeepCrawl in the cloud.

The output of this web crawl should then serve as the basis for organizing all of a site’s pages
around themes.

After developing the HTML sitemap, don’t forget to put a link on your website that is easy to
find.

You can either put the link at the top, as part of a sidebar, or in a footer menu that continues to be
accessible as visitors move from page to page.

However you look at it, an HTML sitemap is an easy way to get huge benefits without a lot of
effort.

Case sensitivity in search engines

Case sensitivity is the term used to describe the ability to discriminate between uppercase and
lowercase characters. Characters and letters can be deemed case-sensitive or case-insensitive
through computer programming. Where case sensitivity applies, uppercase and lowercase
characters are treated as different from each other and are not interchangeable. On the other
hand, if a program or application is case-insensitive, whether a string of characters is uppercase
or lowercase is irrelevant. In this situation, a user would be able to proceed with an online search
or login procedure regardless of the type of case used.

The following examples help further clarify case sensitivity:

Example of case sensitivity:

A case-sensitive password (such as AsDfG) must be entered exactly as is for authentication

purposes. Typing “asdfg” would return an invalid password message.

Example of case-insensitivity:

Typing an email address (such as [email protected]) for newsletter sign up. The email address
may be entered as is or as [email protected], as it will be validated in both cases.
In the case of passwords, a case-sensitive login process allows users to create more complex
credentials by combining uppercase and lowercase letters, therefore reinforcing security.

Importance of case sensitivity for SEO

Generally speaking, case sensitivity is no ranking factor with search engines, since both
keywords and Google’s search are case-insensitive. However, consistency in letter case
(especially where URLs are concerned) is considered a best practice. This can help
prevent duplicate content, because the Googlebot indexes lower- and uppercase URLs as
different pages which could result in split ranking signals and could affect overall performance
on search result pages.

Case sensitivity and search engines

Queries performed in search engines are typically case-insensitive, although there are exceptions,
as explained below. For instance, searching for “marketing courses in London” would yield the
same results as typing “marketing courses in london”.

Boolean searches are the exception to this, as they are case-sensitive. Boolean operators (i.e.
AND / OR) must be entered in uppercase for the search engine to interpret these words as
operators instead of standard words.

Case sensitivity and domains / URLs

For the most part, domains are case-insensitive, the exception being some domains that contain
language-specific characters.

However, URLs that link to directories or sub-pages are usually case-sensitive, depending on
how a server has been configured. For example, entering www.example.com/PAGE1.HTM in
the address bar instead of www.example.com/page1.htm would return a 404 error if the file
name is page1.

In summary: Case Sensitivity FAQs

What does it mean if something is case-sensitive?

Case sensitivity means that a system recognizes the difference between uppercase and lowercase
letters.
What is the difference between case sensitive and case insensitive?

Case sensitive means that it matters if characters are in lower or uppercase, while case insensitive
applications do not care about that.

Are search engines case sensitive?

No, search engines do not distinguish between queries in lower and uppercase. One exception are
Boolean operators.

Are URLs case sensitive?

Some parts of the URL can be case sensitive, depending on a web server’s settings.

What Is HTTP?

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) transfers data from a web server to your browser so that it
can access and load websites.

What Is HTTPS?

HTTPS is the acronym for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. Like HTTP, its main purpose is
to transfer data from a server to your browser, so you can load websites.

However, HTTPS uses an encrypted connection to communicate between the server and the
browser. A SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate protects the transferred data from being stolen
as it’s exchanged.

HTTPS was created in 1994 but wasn’t widely used as the standard until 2019. Its popularity is
mostly due to Google recommending that sites switch to HTTPS in 2014.

What Is the Difference Between HTTP and HTTPS?

Thanks to its encrypted connection, HTTPS is more secure than HTTP.

Site security is important even if you don’t have an ecommerce site or a website that handles
sensitive data. A secure site protects your customers from getting their data stolen and protects
your website from security breaches that cost time and money to fix.

Other benefits include:

 1. Users trust HTTPS:

Extra security encourages users to trust your brand and website. They’ll feel more comfortable
sharing sensitive data with you or making purchases on your website.

2. Boost to SEO Ranking:

Since HTTPS makes the web safer and better for users, Google was a big advocate for the
switch from HTTP to HTTPS back in 2014. They also confirmed that websites using HTTPS
had the potential to rank higher than those using HTTP.

3. Opportunity for AMP Pages:

Only sites with HTTPS can use the AMP (accelerated mobile page) framework. AMPs are
mobile-only pages or websites that load quickly, making them more mobile-friendly.

How to Switch from HTTP to HTTPS

You’ll be glad to know that switching to HTTPS is a relatively straightforward process:

1. Purchase an SSL certificate: Plenty of web hosting companies (like GoDaddy or

Namecheap) sell SSL certificates. However, if you wish to purchase your certificate from
a third-party vendor, ensure that you research thoroughly before making your purchase.
2. Install your SSL certificate via your web hosting: Each web hosting service will have
different instructions on how to install your SSL certificate.
3. Update any internal links from HTTP to HTTPS: Not all links will transfer over neatly. If
you notice any links that still point to the HTTP version of your web page, update them
directly in the code.
4. Set any redirect from HTTP to HTTPS: You can also set up manual redirects to ensure
that browser point to the HTTPS version of your webpage.

HTTP status codes and what they mean for SEO

HTTP status codes, like 404, 301, and 500, might not mean much to a regular visitor, but they
are incredibly important for SEO. Not only that, search engine spiders, like Googlebot, use these
to determine the health of a site. These status codes offer a way of seeing what happens between
the browser and the server. Several of these codes indicate an error, for instance, that the
requested content can’t be found, while others simply suggest a successful delivery of the
requested material. In this article, we’re taking a closer look at the most important HTTP header
codes and what they mean for SEO.

What are HTTP status codes, and why do you see them?

An HTTP status code is a three-digit message the server sends when a request made by a
browser can or cannot be fulfilled. According to the official W3C specs, there are dozens of
status codes, many of which you’re unlikely to come across. If you need a handy overview of
status codes, including their code references, you can find one on HTTPstatuses.com.

To fully understand these codes, you must know how a browser gets a web page. Every website
visit starts by typing in the URL of a site or entering a search term in a search engine. The
browser requests the site’s IP address for the associated web page. The server responds with a
status code embedded in the HTTP header, telling the browser the result of the request. When
everything is fine, an HTTP 200 header code is sent back to the browser in conjunction with the
website’s content.

However, it is also possible that there’s something wrong with the requested content or server. It
could be that the page is not found, which gives back a 404 error page, or there might be a
temporary, technical issue with the server, resulting in a 500 Internal Server Error. These HTTP
status codes are an important tool for evaluating the health of the site and its server. If a site
regularly sends improper HTTP header codes to a search engine indexing its contents, it might
cause problems that will hurt its rankings.

Here’s part of the HTTP header for a web page, with a 200 OK message:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2023 06:44:24 GMT

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive

Cache-Control: public, max-age=604800, s-maxage=604800, stale-while-

revalidate=120, stale-if-error=14400

Different ranges

There are five ranges of HTTP status codes, defining different aspects of the transaction process
between the client and the server. Below you’ll find the five ranges and their main goal:

 1xx – Informational
 2xx – Success
 3xx – Redirection
 4xx – Client error
 5xx – Server error

If you ever try to brew coffee in a teapot, your teapot will probably send you the status
message 418: I’m a teapot.

Most important HTTP status codes for SEO

As we’ve said, the list of codes is long, but a few are especially important for SEOs and anyone
working on their own site. We’ll do a quick rundown of these below:

200: OK / Success

This is how it probably should be; a client asks the server for content and the server replies with
a 200 success message and the content the client needs. The server and the client are happy —
and the visitor, of course. All messages in 2xx mean some sort of success.

301: Moved Permanently

A 301 HTTP header is used when the requested URL is permanently moved to a new location.
As you are working on your site, you will often use this, because you regularly need to make a
301 redirect to direct an old URL to a new one. If you don’t, users will see a 404 error page if
they try to open the old URL and that’s not something you want. Using a 301 will make sure that
the link value of the old URL transfers to the new URL.
Read more: How to create a 301 redirect in WordPress »

302: Found

A 302 means that the target destination has been found, but it lives in a different location.
However, it is a rather ambiguous status code because it doesn’t tell if this is a temporary
situation. Use a 302 redirect only if you want to temporarily redirect a URL to a different source
and are sure you will use the same URL again.

Since you tell search engines that the URL will be used again, none of the link value is
transferred to the new URL, so you shouldn’t use a 302 when moving your domain or making
big changes to your site structure, for instance. Also, when you leave 302 redirects in place for a
long time, search engines can treat these 302 redirects as 301 redirects.

304: Not Modified

A 304 redirect is a type of HTTP response code that indicates that the requested resource has not
been modified since the last time it was accessed by the client. It means that the server does not
need to send the resource again but instead tells the client to use a cached version. The 304
response code is a way to save crawl budget for large websites. This is because Google’s crawler
won’t recrawl unchanged pages and can instead focus on crawling new and updated pages.

307: Temporary Redirect

The 307 code replaces the 302 in HTTP1.1 and could be seen as the only ‘true’ redirect. You can
use a 307 redirect if you need to temporarily redirect a URL to a new one while keeping the
original request method intact. A 307 looks a lot like a 302, except that it tells specifically that
the URL has a temporary new location. The request can change over time, so the client has to
keep using the original URL when making new requests.

403: Forbidden

A 403 tells the browser that the requested content is forbidden for the user. If they don’t have the
correct login credentials, this content stays forbidden for that user.

404: Not Found

As one of the most visible status codes, the 404 HTTP header code is also one of the most
important. When a server returns a 404 error, you know the content has not been found and is
probably deleted. Try not to bother visitors with these messages, so fix these errors when you
can. Use a redirect to send visitors from the old URL to a new article or page with related
content.

Monitor these 404 messages in Google Search Console and keep them to the lowest amount
possible. A lot of 404 errors might be seen by Google as a sign of bad maintenance. Which in
return might influence your overall rankings. If your page is broken and should be gone from
your site, a 410 sends a clearer signal to Google.

Keep reading: 404 error pages: check and fix »

410: Gone

The result from a 410 status code is the same as a 404 since the content has not been found.
However, with a 410, you tell search engines that you deleted the requested content. Thus, it’s
much more specific than a 404. In a way, you order search engines to remove the URL from the
index. Before permanently deleting something from your site, ask yourself if there is an
equivalent of the page somewhere. If so, make a redirect. If not, maybe you shouldn’t delete it
and just improve it.

Read on: How to properly delete a page from your site (404 or 410?) »

451: Unavailable for Legal Reasons

The 451 HTTP status code shows that the requested content was deleted for legal reasons. If you
received a takedown request or a judge ordered you to take specific content offline, you should
use this code to tell search engines what happened to the page.

Keep on reading: HTTP 451: Content unavailable for legal reasons »

500: Internal Server Error

A 500 error is a generic message saying the server encountered an unexpected condition. This
prevented it from fulfilling the request without determining what caused it. These errors could
come from anywhere. Maybe your web host is doing something funny, or a script on your site is
malfunctioning. Check your server’s logs to see where things go wrong.

503: Service Unavailable

A 503 HTTP status code is a server-side error that indicates that the server is temporarily unable
to handle the request. This could be due to overloading, maintenance, or other issues on the
server. A 503 status code can affect SEO if it lasts long, as it may signal to search engines that
the site is unreliable or unavailable. To avoid negative SEO impacts, a 503 status code should be
used only for short-term situations and provide crawlers with a clear message about when the site
will return online. You can use the Retry-After value to ask crawlers to try again after a certain
amount of time.

Read more: 503: Handling site maintenance correctly for SEO »

Working with HTTP status codes

HTTP status codes are a big part of the lives of SEOs and that of search engine spiders. You’ll
encounter them daily, and it’s key to understanding what the different status codes mean. For
instance, if you delete a page from your site, you must know the difference between serving a
301 and a 410. They serve different goals and, therefore, have different results.

To understand the kinds of status codes your site generates, you should log into your Google
Search Console. In the Indexing section, you’ll find the crawl errors Googlebot found over a
certain time. These crawl errors must be fixed before your site can be indexed correctly.

Go
ogle Search Console lists errors it found on
Is bold text effect to the SEO performance ?

Recently, Google's John Mueller confirmed that bolding important pieces of text in your content
can help your SEO performance, as it allows Google to better understand your content.

What is Google indexing?

Google’s search index is essentially its entire inventory of websites that it draws from to provide
search results to users. While it may feel as though Google is immense enough to take you to any
site on the Internet, that’s not true. Only indexed sites can appear in search results.

Of course, new sites can always be added to the index, and that’s precisely what Google indexing
is — the process of adding a website to Google’s index. Indexing happens when Google’s web
crawlers, also called spiders — crawl websites on the Internet.

Why is Google indexing important?

If you want to reach users through Google, indexing is a critical process for your business. If
Google doesn’t index your website, not only will it not rank high, but it also won’t appear in
search results at all — not on page one or page 1000. One of the best ways for your audience to
find you is by searching for terms related to what you sell. If you sell lawnmowers in Topeka,
you want to appear in searches for “Topeka lawnmowers.” But without first getting your site
indexed by Google, you can’t appear in any searches, which means you’ll receive very little site
traffic. Google indexing is the first step to boosting site traffic, revenue, and conversions for your
business.

How does Google indexing work?

The process of appearing in Google search results takes place in three stages — crawling,
indexing, and ranking.
Read on for a brief explanation of each one!

Part 1: Crawling

The first interaction Google has with your website is when it crawls it. A Google crawler might
discover your site in numerous ways — maybe it follows a link from another site, or maybe you
submit your sitemap to Google directly. In any event, once a Google crawler finds your site, it
will crawl it, which essentially means it scans the entire website to discover what’s on it.

It reads the text, assesses the layout, and does its best to read images and videos.

Part 2: Indexing

Once Google’s crawled your site, the next step is indexing. This is critical — if your site doesn’t
meet the right requirements, Google won’t index it, and the site won’t have any shot at ranking.
Several things could cause Google not to index a site.

Here are a few of the factors that affect how Google indexes:

 Noindex: If a site uses a “noindex” tag in its HTML, it tells Google not to index that site.
 Content: Google won’t index a page with content that appears to have no value to users.
 Duplicate content: Pages consisting entirely of duplicate content are less likely to be
indexed.
 Sitemaps: Creating and submitting a sitemap allows you to notify Google of your
website, making it more likely to crawl it.
 Canonicalization: When there are multiple versions of a page and you mark one of them
as non-canonical — i.e., not the “real” version — Google won’t index that version.

If nothing sends up any red flags for Google, the crawler will use the information it found on
your site to determine what it’s about and will then add it to its search index.

Part 3: Ranking

The third and final step in the process is ranking. This is where your site finally has a chance to
start appearing in relevant search results and generating traffic. Whenever someone searches
Google for something, Google sweeps through its search index to find the most relevant pages
for that query.
If your site is among them, Google will rank it in the results. Of course, optimizing to get higher
rankings and make it to page one is a process in and of itself. But once your site is indexed,
you’ve made it to the point where you can begin that optimization.

What is link building?

Link building is all about getting other websites to link to pages on your own site. In SEO, these
links are called backlinks.

Here are some of the most popular link building strategies:

 Content marketing
 Email outreach
 Broken link building
 Unlinked brand mentions
 PR

Why Is Link Building Important?

The more high-quality backlinks a page has, the higher it can rank. Backlinks are one of
Google’s most important ranking factors.

Google and other major search engines consider backlinks as “votes of confidence” for the
website getting the links.

Each vote suggests your content is valuable, credible, and useful.

So, if you want your pages to rank high in the Google search results, you will almost certainly
need to do some backlink building.

How to Build Links

Most link building tactics and strategies fall into one of the three following buckets.

1. Ask for Links

Asking for links is when you actively contact a website and ask them to link to yours.

You can ask them to link to:

 Blog posts
 In-depth guides
 Ebooks
 Visual assets (like infographics)
 Case studies
 Original research and data
 And so forth.

2. Add Links

Adding links refers to going to another website and manually adding your link there.

For example, you can manually add links to:

 Social media profiles

 Business directories
 Forums, communities, and Q&A sites (like Quora)
 Blog comments
 User profile pages

And so on.

Note: Manually adding SEO links is one of the easiest and possibly least effective ways to build
links.

These types of links often come from low-quality sources. The kind that Google doesn’t want to
give too much weight to.

Why?

Because you create them. And you’re practically endorsing yourself.

Which isn’t what Google is looking for when figuring out which websites deserve to rank best.
And since these links aren’t editorially given (links you don’t ask for), they carry less weight
than other types of links.

While these links won’t actively help you, they also won’t hurt you.

Your best bet is to earn your links.

3. Earn Links

When you earn links, other websites link to yours without you asking them to.

And the best way to earn links is by creating high-quality content people want to link to.

Links happen naturally when someone wants to link to something as a resource or helpful further
reading.

Here are a few different types of content people tend to link to:

 Visual assets (infographics, charts, diagrams, etc.)

 Original research and data (industry studies, surveys, proprietary research, etc.)
 Online tools and calculators
 In-depth guides and tutorials

And others.

To find more content ideas, look at your competitors’ backlink profiles.

What Makes a Good Backlink?

Knowing what makes a good (or bad) link is important.

Because then you can focus on building links that will improve your Google rankings.

Here’s how to identify links that are actually worth building:

1. Authority

“Authority” is an SEO concept that refers to the overall quality of a website or a webpage. The
higher the score, the more weight its backlinks may have.

So, a link from a high-authority website is often more valuable. Which means it can help your
page rank higher.
For example, a link from The Wall Street Journal will likely have a much bigger impact than a
link from an unknown blogger.

Note: You don't need to neglect all link opportunities from low-authority websites. They
probably won't have a big impact, but they also won't be detrimental to your SEO success.

2. Relevance

When it comes to links, the site’s relevance also matters. A lot.

There’s evidence for that on Google’s “how search works” page:

“Beyond looking at keywords, our systems also analyze if content is relevant to a query in other
ways…one of several factors that we use to help determine this is understanding if other
prominent websites link or refer to the content.”

Which means:

Strive to get links from websites that are relevant to yours. Instead of pursuing every link
opportunity that pops up.

Let’s say you run a website about SEO consulting.

And you get a link from an authoritative site about yoga.

That’s great! But it may not impact your rankings.

It would be much better if you received a link from an authoritative site about SEO, consulting,
or marketing.

The more relevant, the better for your SEO.

3. Placement

A link’s position on a page is important. A good backlink appears within the main body of a
webpage.

In fact, Google has a patent that talks specifically about link placement.
It looks at different probabilities involving the likelihood that a reader might click on a link
depending on where it is located.

The higher the probability (usually higher up on the page), the more authority that link carries.

Meaning:

Links in sidebars and footers and low in a page’s content may not be worth as much as those
higher in the page’s body.

For example, look at this link embedded in a piece of content:

It’s much easier to find and more likely to get clicked on than this link buried in a page’s footer:

4. Anchor Text

Anchor text is the clickable text that appears in a hyperlink.

Like this:

Anchor text is important because both search engines and readers use it to determine what a
linked page is about.

So, the more relevant and descriptive the anchor text, the better.

For example, the above anchor text, “how to store coffee,” tells Google that the page that follows
is about how to store coffee.

While generic anchor text like “its website” gives little context and isn’t helpful.

Simply put:

Good backlinks also have anchor text that is descriptive and relevant.

5. Nofollow vs. Follow

“Nofollow” is a link attribute that tells search engines not to follow the outbound link.

They’re typically used when site owners want to link to another website but don’t want to imply
any type of endorsement.
The nofollow tag is used in your page’s source code. And it looks like this:

rel="nofollow"

And here’s a link with the “nofollow” attribute:

<a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">Anchor Text</a>

Note: Google says nofollow links, in general, don’t pass authority. But they can still provide
brand recognition and referral traffic.

Follow links, on the other hand, are regular links without attributes. And can imply endorsement
and pass along ranking credit.

Here’s a follow link with no attribute:

<a href="https://example.com">Anchor Text</a>

In addition to nofollow, there are two additional attributes site owners can use:

 rel="sponsored" to identify links that were created as part of ads, sponsorships, or other
agreements
 rel="ugc" to identify links within user-generated content, like comments and forum posts

All link attributes are treated as hints about how Google should interpret links.

Best Backlink Building Strategies

There are many strategies for building links. But here are some of the most effective ones.

Outreach

Outreach for link building is when you reach out to others and ask for a backlink.

It’s important because people can’t link to your content without discovering it. Even the best
assets need to be promoted to attract links.

Examine Competitor Backlinks

This strategy is about adopting and replicating the same link building strategies as your
competitors.
Reverse engineering your competitors’ backlink strategies can tell you:

Which types of content tend to earn the most backlinks

Who is linking to leaders in your niche

Reclaim Lost Backlinks

Just as you can gain links, you can lose them. It happens all the time.

You can lose a backlink for several reasons:

 The link gets removed from the linking page

 The linking page ceases to exist
 The linking page gets redirected

Backlink Gap Analysis

A backlink gap analysis reveals websites linking to your competitors but not to you.

It’s a great tactic because if they’re happy linking to your competitors, they’ll likely be happy to
link to you, too.

This is especially true if you create even better content than your competitors.

What Does Pagejacking Mean?

Pagejacking is the process of illegally copying legitimate website content (usually, in the form of
source code) to another website designed to replicate the original website. To accomplish
pagejacking, a fraudulent pagejacker copies a favorite Web page from a reputable site, including
its actual HTML code.

A pagejacker’s intention is to illegally direct traffic from the original site to cloned Web pages.
Pagejackers rely on search engines to index bogus site content to enable search result ranking
and display with the original site.
This can define as (Traffic Jacking, Hi Jacking, and Black Jacking). But the proper way of
defining this is used by the term “page Jacking”.

What Are Paid Links?

Paid links are links that you pay other websites to place on your site. These can come in many
different forms, including advertising, sponsored links, and paid product placement.

How Do Paid Links Improve SEO?

There’s a lot of debate over whether or not paid links actually improve your SEO.

What Google promotes, and becomes a more and more general consensus is that paid links won’t
improve your organic search rankings, because Google “gets better” at ignoring them.

However every SEO who works in a high margin industry pays for links. That’s simply because
nobody links to such businesses, for free. Everyone is aware of the fact that for example Casinos
make a lot of money from their players, and so have very large marketing budgets.

This has always been the case, and hasn’t changed since early 2000s when Google became the
dominant, link-based search engine. Often high margin industries have organic SEO and paid
links as the only way to do on-line marketing, because their industry is banned from advertising
on Facebook, Linkedin or other channels.

The Risks of Paid Links in SEO

Like any other tactic in your SEO strategy, the risks of paid links should be weighed against the
benefits. On one hand, paid links can be an incredibly effective way to boost your SEO. Your
link profile will be filled with links from trusted websites, increasing your overall authority and
trust.

Paid links are also generally just more visible than natural links. They often use criteria
like money anchor texts in their links.

Link Detox specialized in trying to detect such manipulative links, just like Google tries.
Paid links are not without their risks. It’s important to understand the process of purchasing links
and the various links types available.

Buying from publicly known paid link lists as above, gets your rankings in danger real quick.

What is (SERP) means?

(SERP) - Search Engine Results Page

What is cloaking in SEO?

Cloaking in SEO is a method used to serve users content or information that is different from
what is presented to search engine crawlers (i.e. spiders or bots) to improve a website’s search
engine rankings for certain keywords.

What are the different types of cloaking and how is it done?

 User-Agent Cloaking
 IP based cloaking
 JavaScript cloaking
 HTTP_REFERER cloaking
 HTTP Accept-language header cloaking

1. User-Agent Cloaking:

A user-agent is a program (a software agent) that operates on behalf of a user. Example, a web
browser acts as user-agent that fetches website information on an operating system. When you
key in a query, the browser sends a code to the server that will distinguish/identify the user-
agent. If the user-agent is identified to be a crawler, cloaked content is served.

2. IP-based cloaking:

Every user accessing a website has an IP address based on their location and internet service. In
this, the users are redirected to the desired page through a page with good SERP ranking and
high traffic volume. For this, you can use the reverse DNS records (available in the cPanel of
your hosting company) to identify the IP address and set up .htaccess to redirect them. This is the
most preferred method of cloaking.

3. JavaScript cloaking:

This happens when users with JavaScript-enabled browsers are served one version of the content
while users who have JavaScript disabled (like search engines) are served another version of a
website.

4. HTTP_REFERER cloaking:

In this method, the HTTP_REFERER header of the requester is checked and based on that, a
cloaked or uncloaked version of the website is served.

5. HTTP Accept-language header cloaking:

This technique checks the HTTP Accept-Language header of the user and based on the match
result, a specific version of the website is presented. In simple terms, if the HTTP Accept-
Language header is of a search engine, then a cloaked version of the website is served.

What are the common ways to implement cloaking in SEO?

Let us now understand how to put cloaking into action with a few easy pointers:

Invisible or Hidden text

This can be done by adding text in the same colour as that of the background so that it is not
visible to the human eye.

Flash-based Websites
We know Flash is not recommended as per SEO guidelines. But some websites cannot avoid it.
So rather than remaking the entire website in plain HTML, they create content-rich webpages
and provide them to search engine crawlers and the flash pages to visitors.

HTML Rich Websites

A good SEO technique requires having a “TEXT to HTML ratio” that is as high as possible. In
other words, the web page should have more text (content) as compared to your HTML tags. But
if someone is writing short articles or posts, your text to HTML ratio will be very low. To avoid
re-designing their website in such scenarios, people choose cloaking to meet SEO guidelines.

Replacement of Java Scripts

Here, one can use JavaScript to show content to a non-JavaScript enabled user that matches the
textual information within a Flash or other multimedia element.

Does ‘White Hat Cloaking’ exist?

A Frequently asked question is – is there anything called White Hat Cloaking?

Matt Cutts has said:

“White hat cloaking is a contradiction in terms of Google. We’ve never had to make an
exception for “white hat” cloaking. If someone tells you that — that’s dangerous.”

He further mentioned that if any site includes a code that differentiates the Googlebot on the
basis of the user agent or IP address, Google considers it as cloaking and may take action against
the site.

This answers our question that there is no such thing as ‘White Hat Cloaking’ in Google’s
webmaster guidelines. So, do not be deceived if someone tells you to try white-hat Cloaking.

What is Google’s penalty for cloaking?

The search engine keeps updating their algorithm frequently and if you use cloaking, they will
sooner or later find it out and may permanently ban your website from being indexed. In fact,
Google “blacklisted” a German car manufacturer, BMW, for breaking its guidelines in February
2006.

Should cloaking be done in SEO?

In the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry, cloaking is considered to be a black hat
technique that violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

If you ask us whether you should do cloaking to trick crawlers and rank high, our answer will be
NO, search engines don’t like to be tricked. Plus, your website is crawled multiple times using
different IP addresses and their complex and strict algorithm will detect cloaking on your website
if you use it.

Make sure to keep in mind the methods we have mentioned in this post to know what is
considered as cloaking by Google and what is not. Do let us know your thoughts by adding
comments below.

1. What is cloaking?

Cloaking is a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the server offers
different content and context to the search engines compared to what the users see. The search
engine and users are both deceived into believing what the content on the Web page is about.

2. What is cloaking in SEO, with example?

Cloaking in SEO is used to boost the search engine result page (SERP) rankings of pages by
misleading the crawlers into thinking that the content on a page is about a certain topic, which it
isn’t. Some examples of this are:

 Displaying or revealing keywords only to crawlers and not to users because crawlers can
help get a higher page rank
 Providing different forms of media to the users while only offering an HTML text to
search engines

3. Is cloaking real?
Cloaking is very real. Some websites use this technique to generate traffic on their website at the
expense of user experience. If a user is looking for something and clicks a link believing they
will get information relevant to their search query, and the link does not offer any related
information, it comes off as click baiting. Websites should avoid using this technique.

What Is Robots.txt?

Robots.txt is a text file with instructions for search engine robots that tells them which pages
they should and shouldn't crawl.

These instructions are specified by “allowing” or “disallowing” the behavior of certain (or all)
bots.

This is what a robots.txt file looks like:

Why Is Robots.txt Important?

A robots.txt file helps manage web crawler activities so they don’t overwork your website or
index pages not meant for public view.

Here are a few reasons why you’d want to use a robots.txt file:

1. Optimize Crawl Budget

“Crawl budget” is the number of pages Google will crawl on your site at any time. The number
can vary based on your site’s size, health, and backlinks.

Crawl budget is important because if your number of pages exceeds your site’s crawl budget,
you’re going to have pages on your site that aren’t indexed.

And pages that don’t get indexed aren’t going to rank for anything.

By blocking unnecessary pages with robots.txt, Googlebot (Google’s web crawler) can spend
more of your crawl budget on pages that matter.

2. Block Duplicate & Non-Public Pages

You don’t need to allow search engines to crawl every page on your site because not all of them
need to rank.

Examples include staging sites, internal search results pages, duplicate pages, or login pages.

WordPress, for example, automatically disallows /wp-admin/ for all crawlers.

These pages need to exist, but you don’t need them to be indexed and found in search engines. A
perfect case where you’d use robots.txt to block these pages from crawlers and bots.

3. Hide Resources

Sometimes you’ll want Google to exclude resources like PDFs, videos, and images from search
results.

Maybe you want to keep those resources private or have Google focus on more important
content.

In that case, using robots.txt is the best way to prevent them from being indexed.
How Does a Robots.txt File Work?

Robots.txt files tell search engine bots which URLs they can crawl and, more importantly, which
ones they can’t.

Search engines have two main jobs:

1. Crawling the web to discover content

2. Indexing content so it can be shown to searchers looking for information

As they crawl, search engine bots discover and follow links. This process takes them from site A
to site B to site C across billions of links and websites.

Upon arriving on any site, the first thing a bot will do is look for a robots.txt file.

If it finds one, it will read the file before doing anything else.

If you recall, a robots.txt file looks like this:

The syntax is very straightforward.

You assign rules to bots by stating their user-agent (the search engine bot) followed by directives
(the rules).

You can also use the asterisk (*) wildcard to assign directives to every user-agent. Meaning the
rule applies to all bots, rather than a specific one.
How to Find a Robots.txt File

The robots.txt file is hosted on your server, just like any other file on your website.

You can see the robots.txt file for any given website by typing the full URL for the homepage
and then adding /robots.txt, like

The User-Agent Directive

The first line of every block of directives is the “user-agent,” which identifies the crawler it
addresses.

So, if you want to tell Googlebot not to crawl your WordPress admin page, for example, your
directive will start with:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /wp-admin/

Keep in mind that most search engines have multiple crawlers. They use different crawlers for
their normal index, images, videos, etc.

Search engines always choose the most specific block of directives they can find.

Let’s say you have three sets of directives: one for *, one for Googlebot, and one for Googlebot-
Image.

If the Googlebot-News user agent crawls your site, it’ll follow the Googlebot directives.

On the other hand, the Googlebot-Image user agent will follow the more specific Googlebot-
Image directives.

The Disallow Directive

The second line in any block of directives is the “Disallow” line.

You can have multiple disallow directives that specify which parts of your site the crawler can’t
access.

An empty “Disallow” line means you’re not disallowing anything—so a crawler can access all
sections of your site.

For example, if you wanted to allow all search engines to crawl your entire site, your block
would look like this:

User-agent: *
Allow: /

On the flip side, if you wanted to block all search engines from crawling your site, your block
would look like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Directives like “Allow” and “Disallow” aren’t case-sensitive, so it’s up to you to capitalize them
or not.

However, the values within each directive are.

For example, /photo/ is not the same as /Photo/.

Still, you will often find “Allow” and “Disallow” directives capitalized because it makes the file
easier for humans to read.

Noindex Directive

The robots.txt file tells a bot what it can or can’t crawl, but it can’t tell a search engine which
URLs not to index and show in search results.

The page will still show up in search results, but the bot won’t know what’s on it, so your page
will look like this:

How to Create a Robots.txt File

If you don’t already have a robots.txt file, creating one is easy.

You can use a robots.txt generator tool, or you can create one yourself.

Here’s how to create a robots.txt file in just four steps:

1. Create a file and name it robots.txt

2. Add rules to the robots.txt file
3. Upload the robots.txt file to your site
4. Test the robots.txt file

What is a meta description?

A meta description is an HTML element that provides a brief summary of a web page. A page’s
meta description tag is displayed as part of the search snippet in a search engine results page
(SERP) and is meant to give the user an idea of the content that exists within the page and how it
relates to their search query.

Most CMSs will allow you to edit this markup and change your meta description either directly
within the code or via the meta description field within the page’s metadata settings.

SERP example

The meta description appears as part of the SERP snippet, just below the page’s breadcrumb path
and clickable title tag.

Optimal meta description length

Meta descriptions can technically be any length, but Google generally truncates snippets to
~155-160 characters. It's best to keep meta descriptions long enough that they're sufficiently
descriptive, so we recommend descriptions between 50 and 160 characters. Keep in mind that the
"optimal" length will vary depending on the situation, and your primary goal should be to
provide value and drive clicks.

Why are meta descriptions important for SEO?

Do meta descriptions affect search rankings?

Yes and no. Google announced in September of 2009 that neither meta descriptions nor meta
keywords factor into Google's ranking algorithms for web search.

The meta description can, however, impact a page's click-through rate (CTR) in Google SERPs,
which can positively impact a page's ability to rank. These short paragraphs are the webmaster's
opportunity to "advertise" content to searchers, and the searcher’s chance to decide whether the
content is likely to be relevant to their query and contain the information they're seeking.

Because meta descriptions have an indirect impact on search rankings and especially because
they can significantly impact user behavior, it's important to put some effort into writing them.

Meta descriptions in social shares

Social sharing sites like Facebook commonly use a page's meta description tag as the description
that appears when the page is shared on the site. Without the meta description tag, social sharing
sites may just use the first text they can find. Depending on what that first text is, this might not
create a good user experience for people encountering your content via social sharing.

How do I write a good meta description?

Include compelling ad copy in your description

The meta description tag serves the function of advertising copy. It draws readers to a website
from the SERP, and thus is a very visible and important part of search marketing. A page's meta
description should intelligently employ the page’s target keywords, in a natural, non-spammy
way that compels the user to click through to the page. Google and other search engines often
bold keywords from the user’s query in the description display, which draws the eye of the
searcher. Try to match your descriptions to valuable search terms as closely as possible without
over-optimizing them.

Avoid duplicating meta descriptions

As with title tags, each page’s meta description should be directly relevant to the page it
describes and unique from the descriptions for other pages.

One way to combat duplicate meta descriptions is to implement a dynamic and programmatic
way to create unique meta descriptions for automated pages. If you have the resources, though,
there's no substitute for an original description written specifically for each page.

Avoid double quotation marks in descriptions

When double quotation marks ("...") are used within meta description HTML markup, Google
recognizes them as signals to truncate the description from that point and will automatically cut
off the rest of the text from the SERP snippet. To prevent this from happening, your best bet is to
remove all non-alphanumeric characters from meta descriptions. If quotation marks are
important in your meta description, you can use the HTML entity rather than double quotes to
prevent truncation.

Why won't Google use my meta description?

Search engines frequently overrule pages’ meta descriptions, displaying different text within the
SERP snippet from what is declared within the page’s HTML. It’s hard to predict exactly when
this will happen, but it often occurs when Google doesn't think the existing meta description
adequately answers a user's query and instead uses a bit of text from the same page that it
believes is a more accurate or compelling response to the search.

This can be frustrating, especially when you’ve spent time carefully crafting unique descriptions
for each page, but that frustration can be avoided in some cases by leaving the page’s description
entirely up to the search engine. Although conventional logic would hold that it's universally
wiser to write a good meta description rather than let Google scrape the page and display their
own, this isn't always the case. When deciding whether to specify a meta description, ask
yourself how many valuable search terms the page is targeting.

If the page targets between one and three heavily searched terms or phrases, we recommend
writing your own meta description to attract users performing search queries that include those
terms. If the page targets long-tail traffic (three or more keyword phrases), it may be wiser to let
the search engines populate a meta description themselves. The reason is simple: When search
engines pull together a meta description, they always display the keywords and surrounding
phrases that the user has searched for as closely as they can. If a webmaster writes a meta
description into the page's code, what they choose to write can actually detract from the
relevance the engines interpret naturally, depending on the query.

SEO Spider Tool

The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a website crawler that helps you improve onsite SEO by
auditing for common SEO issues. Download & crawl 500 URLs for free, or buy a licence to
remove the limit & access advanced features.

https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

What is keyword density?

Keyword density is a metric that tells us how frequently a keyword is used within a piece of
content in relation to the overall word count.

It’s usually expressed as a percentage. To calculate it, divide the number of keywords on the
page by the total number of words on the page, then multiply that number by 100.

For example, if you use your target keyword 10 times in a 1000-word blog post, you’ll have a
keyword density of 1%. If you use it 20 times, you’ll have a keyword density of 2%.
Is keyword density important for SEO?

Keyword density isn’t important for SEO, as it’s no longer thought to be a ranking factor. This is
because modern search engine algorithms are smart enough to understand what a page is about
and how well it matches search intent in other ways.

Google has pretty much confirmed this. It’s tried to dissuade SEOs from getting hung up on
keyword density many times over the years:

“I would love it if people could stop obsessing about keyword density. … There’s not a hard and
fast rule.” – Matt Cutts

“Keyword density, in general, is something I wouldn’t focus on. Make sure your content is
written in a natural way.” – John Mueller

Best practices for keyword density

Although keyword density is no longer a ranking factor, we still recommend sticking to the
following best practices when creating content.

1. Never aim for specific keyword density

There’s no such thing as an optimal keyword density, and we don’t recommend aiming for one.
It isn’t going to help you to rank. In fact, it’s more likely to have the opposite effect.

This is because Google sees artificially adding keywords to a page—a practice known as
“keyword stuffing”—as an attempt to manipulate the algorithm at the expense of user
experience. And as we know, Google’s all about the user experience.

In fact, keyword stuffing goes directly against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines:

“Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm
your site’s ranking.”

This is a black-hat SEO tactic, which is no longer a viable option.

So what should you do instead?

The answer’s simple: forget about keyword density and write naturally.
Of course, you should mention your keywords in the text. But usually, you don’t need to put in
any specific effort to do so because this happens naturally as you write.

2. Focus on topic coverage instead

Google may not look at keyword density anymore, but it does look at topic coverage. Instead of
adding your target keyword over and over again, focus on covering the topic as fully as possible.
That means including subtopics that searchers likely expect to see.

To find ideas for subtopics, take your cue from what’s already ranking. Search for your target
keyword on Google, open up a few of the top-ranking pages, scan each page, and look for
common subheadings.

For example, most of the top-ranking pages for the keyword “link building” have a subheading
along the lines of “What is link building?”:

How should I check keyword density?

You can check the keyword density of your content by using an online keyword density checker.
There are plenty of free tools for this. Just Google “keyword density checker,” and you’ll find a
bunch of them.

However, as keyword density doesn’t really matter, there’s usually no need to do this. The only
real reason for checking keyword density is if you’re working with freelance writers and want to
ensure they haven’t been keyword stuffing.

How to calculate keyword density?

You can use the formula below to calculate keyword density manually:

[number of keywords] / [total number of words] x 100

However, it’s quicker to paste your content into one of the many free online keyword density
checkers instead.

What Is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing a website for search engines, but it can also include
activities meant to improve user experience.

Common tasks associated with technical SEO include the following:

 Submitting your sitemap to Google

 Creating an SEO-friendly site structure
 Improving your website’s speed
 Making your website mobile-friendly
 Finding and fixing duplicate content issues
 Much more

Why Is Technical SEO Important?

Technical SEO can greatly impact a website’s performance on Google.

If pages on your site are not accessible to search engines, they won’t appear or rank in search
results—no matter how valuable your content is.

This results in a loss of traffic to your website and potential revenue to your business.

Plus, the page speed and mobile-friendliness of a website are Google-confirmed ranking factors.

If your pages load slowly, users may get annoyed and leave your site. User behaviors like this
may signal that your site doesn’t create a positive user experience. As a result, Google may not
rank your site well.

Understanding Crawling

The first step in optimizing your site for technical SEO is making sure search engines can
effectively crawl it.

Crawling is an essential component of how search engines work.

Crawling happens when search engines follow links on pages they already know about to find
pages they haven’t seen before.

For example, every time we publish new blog posts, we add them to our blog archive page.
So the next time a search engine like Google crawls our blog page, it sees the recently added
links to new blog posts.

And that’s one of the ways Google discovers our new blog posts.

If you want your pages to show up in search results, you first need to ensure that they are
accessible to search engines.

There are a few ways to do this:

Create SEO-Friendly Site Architecture

Site architecture, also called site structure, is the way pages are linked together within your site.

An effective site structure organizes pages in a way that helps crawlers find your website content
quickly and easily.

So when structuring your site, ensure all the pages are just a few clicks away from your
homepage.

Like so:

In the site structure above, all the pages are organized in a logical hierarchy.
The homepage links to category pages. And then, category pages link to individual subpages on
the site.

This structure also reduces the number of orphan pages.

Orphan pages are pages with no internal links pointing to them, making it difficult (or sometimes
impossible) for crawlers and users to find those pages.

Submit Your Sitemap to Google

Using a sitemap can help Google find your webpages.

A sitemap is typically an XML file containing a list of important pages on your site. It lets search
engines know which pages you have and where to find them.

Which is especially important if your site contains a lot of pages. Or if they’re not well-linked
together.

Your sitemap is usually located at one of these two URLs:

 yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
 yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml

Once you locate your sitemap, submit it to Google via GSC (Google Search Console).

Understanding Indexing

Once search engines crawl your pages, they then try to analyze and understand the content of
those pages.

And then the search engine stores those pieces of content in its search index—a huge database
containing billions of webpages.

The pages of your site must be indexed by search engines to appear in search results.

The simplest way to check if your pages are indexed is to perform a “site:” search.
For example, if you want to check the index status of semrush.com, you’ll
type site:www.semrush.com into Google’s search box.

This tells you how many pages from the site Google has indexed.

Noindex Tag

The “noindex” tag is an HTML snippet that keeps your pages out of Google’s index.

It’s placed within the <head> section of your webpage and looks like this:

Ideally, you would want all your important pages to get indexed. So use the “noindex” tag only
when you want to exclude certain pages from indexing.

These could be:

 “Thank you” pages

 PPC landing pages

Canonicalization

When Google finds similar content on multiple pages on your site, it sometimes doesn’t know
which of the pages to index and show in search results.

That’s when canonical tags come in handy.

The canonical tag (rel="canonical") identifies a link as the original version, which tells Google
which page it should index and rank.

The tag is nested within the <head> of a duplicate page and looks like this:

Technical SEO Best Practices

Creating an SEO-friendly site structure and submitting your sitemap to Google should get your
pages crawled and indexed.

But if you want your website to be fully optimized for technical SEO, consider these additional
best practices.

1. Use HTTPS

HTTPS is a secure version of HTTP.

It helps protect sensitive user information like passwords and credit card details from being
compromised.

And it’s been a ranking signal since 2014.

You can check whether your site uses HTTPS by simply visiting it.

2. Make Sure Only One Version of Your Website Is Accessible to Users and Crawlers

Users and crawlers should only be able to access one of these two versions of your site:

 https://yourwebsite.com
 https://www.yourwebsite.com

Having both versions accessible creates duplicate content issues.

And reduces the effectiveness of your backlink profile—some websites may link to the “www”
version, while others link to the “non-www” version.

This can negatively affect your performance in Google.

So only use one version of your website. And redirect the other version to your main website.

3. Improve Your Page Speed

Page speed is a ranking factor both on mobile and desktop.

So make sure your site loads as fast as possible.

You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to check your website’s current speed.
It gives you a performance score from 0 to 100. The higher the number, the better.

Here’re few ideas for improving your website speed:

 Compress your images – Images are usually the biggest files on a webpage. Compressing
them with image optimization tools like Shortpixel will reduce their file size so they take
as little time to load as possible.
 Use CDN (content distribution network) – CDN stores copies of your webpages on
servers around the globe. It then connects visitors to the nearest server, so there’s less
distance for the requested files to travel.
 Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files – Minification removes unnecessary characters
and whitespace from code to reduce file sizes. Which improves page load time.

4. Ensure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly

Google uses mobile-first indexing. This means that it looks at mobile versions of webpages to
index and rank content.

So make sure your website is compatible on mobile devices.

To check if that’s the case for your site, head over to the “Mobile Usability” report in Google
Search Console.

5. Implement Structured Data

Structured data helps Google better understand the content of a page.

And by adding the right structured data markup code, your pages can win rich snippets.

Rich snippets are more appealing search results with additional information appearing under the
title and description.

6. Find & Fix Duplicate Content Issues

Duplicate content is when you have exact- or near-duplicate content on multiple pages on your
site.

For example, this page from Buffer appears at two different URLs:

1. https://buffer.com/resources/social-media-manager-checklist/
2. https://buffer.com/library/social-media-manager-checklist/

Google doesn’t penalize sites for having duplicate content.

But duplicate content can cause other issues, such as:

 Undesirable URLs ranking in search results

 Backlink dilution
 Wasted crawl budget

7. Find & Fix Broken Pages

Having broken pages on your website negatively affects user experience.

And if those pages have backlinks, they go wasted because they point to dead resources.

To find broken pages on your site, crawl your site using Semrush’s Site Audit. Then go to the
“Issues” tab. And search for “4xx.”

To fix broken pages, you have two options:

1. Reinstate pages that were accidentally deleted

2. Redirect older posts with backlinks to other relevant pages on your site

After fixing your broken pages, you need to remove or update any internal links that point to
your newly deleted or redirected pages.

To do that, go back to the “Issues” tab. And search for “internal links.” The tool will show you if
you have broken internal links.

8. Optimize for Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are speed metrics that Google uses to measure user experience.

These metrics include:

 Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – Calculates the time a webpage takes to load its largest
element for a user
 First Input Delay (FID) – Measures the time it takes to react to a user's first interaction
with a webpage.
 Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – Measures the shifts in layouts of various elements
present on a webpage

To ensure your website is optimized for Core Web Vitals, you need to aim for the following
scores:

 LCP –2.5 sec or lower

 FID – 100 ms or lower
 CLS – 0.1 or lower

You can check your website’s performance for Core Web Vitals metrics in Google Search
Console.

To do this, visit the Core Web Vitals report in your Search Console.

9. Use Hreflang for Content in Multiple Languages

If your site has content in multiple languages, you need to use hreflang tags.

Hreflang is an HTML attribute used for specifying a webpage's language and geographical
targeting.

It helps Google serve the language- and country-specific versions of your pages to users.

For example, we have multiple versions of our homepage in different languages. This is our
homepage in English:
10. Stay On Top of Technical SEO Issues

Technical SEO isn't a one-off thing. New problems will likely pop up over time.

That’s why regularly monitoring your technical SEO health and fixing issues as they arise is
important.

You can do this using Semrush’s Site Audit tool. It monitors over 140 technical SEO issues for
your site.

For example, if we audit Petco’s website in Semrush, we find three redirect chains and loops.

Redirect chains and loops are bad for SEO because they contribute to negative user experience.

And you’re unlikely to spot them by chance.

So this issue would have likely gone unnoticed without a crawl-based audit.

Regularly running these technical SEO audits gives you action items to improve your SEO.

FFA Pages – FREE FOR ALL LINKS

FFA is the abbreviation for Free for All links which are basically webpages that allows anyone to
submit his/her website's URL in their website for absolutely free of cost. The site acts as a home
to thousands and thousands of FFA pages.

FFA is a spam technique for attracting more traffic to one's website. Originally the concept was
invented as a search engine optimization technique with good intentions in mind. However, over
the decades the scenario changed as the FFA links lost its novelty and lots of auto submitters
emerged in the internet. The personals who practiced the art of auto submissions posted links of
their websites in several FFA sites at once, removing the need for you to visit each page yourself.
This drastically reduced the quality of FFA sites and hence the chance of anyone actually
clicking on your site.

Reasons for avoiding FFA pages:

There are several reasons why one webmaster shouldn't use these FFA pages for advertising their
websites. Here are few of them.

1. Primarily FFA pages have lost its value.

It has become a useless source of traffic derivation. Only a minority of web users makes use of
FFA pages to find websites. Most surfers these days prefer to use search engines or directories.
Originally there were many search engines available in the internet. However, ever since
technology advanced and use of crawlers, spiders and bots came into the picture, there are only 4
popular search engines which has the ability to cover almost every website in the internet. These
popular search engines are Google. Yahoo, MSN and Bing respectively. Moreover, FFA pages
are webpages of long lists of unorganized URL's which make it all the more difficult for viewers
to search through and find the particular website they are seeking for. The task is virtually
impossible and viewer needs to have humongous amounts of patience to find the site he is
looking for. It makes the task of searching more difficult and complicated annoying viewers
eventually.

2. Registration is a very important procedure when it comes to FFA pages.

You need to register yourself as a member with your e-mail address to post your website's URL
free of cost. The owners of the FFA pages then tends to send tremendous loads of spam mails to
your e-mail id from then onwards which annoys the registered members and all the more puts
them through lot of complications. As an expert I have come across FFA owners selling
member's ids to spammers as well. These spammers floods member's inbox with spam mails and
thus before you register yourself with FFA pages for your website's benefits, think twice and be
ready to receive thousands of spam mails from spammers as well.

3. Search engines are pretty aware of these FFA pages.

As of now, these FFA pages are of no value to them as search engines are more than sufficient
enough for finding websites. Moreover, if a website uses these FFA pages for link building
concept which plays a significant role when it comes to ranking a website, it is considered as an
unethical optimization strategy which manipulates search engines for a better ranking.
Eventually if your website is found to be indulging in such unethical optimizing strategies, your
website will be banned which is the last thing any website owner would want. The FFA pages
also require a reciprocal link from your site before allowing you to paste your website's URL in
theirs. Google considers FFA pages to be link farms which play a significant role in unethical
manipulation techniques for website's benefits in search engine's result sets. FFA pages are
collection of indiscriminate, often unrelated links to other webpages. It is commonly used for
artificially boosting link popularity and thus is considered to be spam by major search engines.

What is Auto-Generated Content?

Automatically generated content (or “auto-generated” content) is content that’s automatically

generated using a program or code. It is primarily used to manipulate Google’s search results and
is considered black-hat SEO.

Google lists several examples of auto-generated content:

 Text that makes no sense to the reader but which may contain search keywords.
 Text translated by an automated tool without human review or curation before
publishing.
 Text generated through automated processes, such as Markov chains.
 Text generated using automated synonymizing or obfuscation techniques.
 Text generated from scraping Atom/RSS feeds or search results.
 Stitching or combining content from different web pages without adding sufficient value.

Auto-generated content violates Google’s quality guidelines and can therefore lead to a manual
action for your website.

Is auto-generated content important for SEO?

Some auto-generated content does a convincing job of appearing to be written by a human, at

least on the surface. But upon closer inspection, auto-generated content can expose itself through
jumbled and incoherent language, replacing words with synonyms, and simply scraping search
results to rank for certain keywords.

While automatically generating content can work to gain search rankings in the short term, it’s
not a sustainable strategy. That’s because Google prioritizes content that provides value and a
positive user experience; if users visit your website, see robot-written content, and immediately
bounce, your rankings will reflect that. And especially for competitive niches where high-quality
content is expected from users, auto-generated content is very unlikely to provide even short-
term results.

Google’s algorithm is constantly improving. Auto-generated content is on their radar, so it’s best
not to risk a manual action that could get your website hidden or even banned.

What Is TF-IDF and How to Use It: Advanced On-Page Optimization

TF-IDF stands for term frequency-inverse document frequency. It’s a text analysis technique that
Google uses as a ranking factor — it signifies how important a word or phrase is to a document
in a corpus (i.e. a blog on the internet). When used for SEO-purposes, it helps you look beyond
keywords and into relevant content that can reach your audience.

It does this by doing two different things very well.

First, it tells you how often a word appears in a document — this is the “term frequency” portion
of TF-IDF. Then, it tells you how important that term is, and it does this with “inverse term
frequency,” which weighs down the words that appear frequently (such as “the” or “a”) and
scales up the more unique words. This adjusts for the fact that some words appear more often
than others and contribute little relevance.

Google's algorithm has dramatically evolved over the years. In 2013, the Google Hummingbird
update transformed Google's ability to provide the most relevant results by interpreting the
searcher's intent rather than relying on a specific keyword.

For searchers, this meant Google turned into a knowledge assistant, helping to close knowledge
gaps that would have made it difficult for the searcher to find a relevant search result. For
example, Google was now able to recognize the intent of a query for "president of Canada" and
return information on Canada's prime minister.

For SEO's this meant no longer trying to account for every synonym or keyword variation and
stuffing them onto a page. It also sparked a call (once again) for focusing on creating high-
quality, relevant content. While creating quality content is the goal, understanding how Google
identifies quality content is crucial to staying competitive as Google's SERPs continue to evolve.
Tying together synonyms and similar phrases were the beginning of a smarter Google algorithm,
but now Google can tie together related concepts to understand which content provides the
greatest breadth and calculate how often those concepts appear on a page to identify which piece
provides the most significant depth.

What is TF-IDF?

TF-IDF stands for frequency-inverse document frequency and is a way of determining the
quality of a piece of content based on an established expectation of what an in-depth piece of
content contains.

In a previous article about TF-IDF, A.J. Ghergich tells us "The overall goal of TF-IDF is to
statistically measure how important a word is in a collection of documents".

For example, if you are a small business owner wanting to learn how to use SEO to drive more
traffic to your website, there are several topics that a complete SEO guide would cover
including:

 Keyword Research
 Meta Data
 Site Audit
 Crawl-ability
 Google Bots

Other topics that would also be relevant but would likely appear less frequently than those on the
list above include:

 SEO Tools
 SEMrush
 Core Update
 Panda Update
 H1 Tag
When evaluating a piece of content, the Google algorithm would calculate how often each of the
above terms appears on all of the content currently associated with " SEO guide" in comparison
to all of the other terms. This data is then used as a baseline "score" that any one piece of content
can be scored against. TF-IDF can help you determine what keywords you are missing.

When to Use TF-IDF Analysis

SEO's and content creators can use TF-IDF to identify content gaps in their current content based
on the content currently ranking in the top 10 search results. It can also be used when creating
new content so that content ranks higher, faster. However, marketers also have limited time, so
which content pieces should you focus on first to get the most benefit?

1. High Potential Content Stuck on the 2nd Page

Start by identifying content that has been live on your site for a while but is struggling to break
the first page. If that content has already been optimized for technical SEO considerations and
has some authority going to it, it likely would benefit from further content optimization.

2. Content Slowly Losing Traffic (and Rankings) Over the Past Year

Whenever I see a site that has slowly dropped from the top of the first page to the bottom of the
first page, it's typically due to increasing competition or Google's algorithm changing which
content is most relevant to that SERP. A quick way to check this is to pull up a screenshot of the
SERP from a year ago using a tool like SpyFu and comparing it to the current SERP. In either
case, revisiting your content to ensure that it still relevant and the most relevant helps you
recover and maintain those rankings.

3. Product Pages Struggling to Rank

While it is more common for top-of-funnel content to benefit from TF-IDF, if your product
pages are struggling to rank for your money terms, critical content is likely missing from that
page.

How to Complete TF-IDF Analysis

Collecting the data necessary for TF-IDF is relatively easy. I start by pulling the top 10 results
for my target keyword and putting them in Screaming Frog to get an average word count.

This number helps me determine whether I'm going to need to add large sections of content to
my page or if I am covering too much of the wrong subject. I then run the analysis with a TF-
IDF tool.

There are several available including Ryte and Link Assistant. Ryte (offers free accounts)
compares a live URL to the top 10 results and provides a text editor that provides optimization
recommendations as you are creating new content.

Ryte provides you with a list of the most important keywords and scores your website based on
that list.

How to Optimize TF-IDF with the User in Mind

The tricky part comes next. How do you take this list of terms and add them to your content, so
the content is more useful to the user?

1. Edit the List

Start by using common sense to narrow down your list. In the analysis above, SquareSpace
shows up as a relevant keyword. Competitors who use their brand name frequently throughout
their site show up in these analyses.

Unless Google is looking for a product or vendor comparison, mentioning competitors will
typically not help your content to be more relevant.

2. Identify Missing Subjects

Many SEO's see a list of TF-IDF terms and immediately go back to their keyword density days.
While adding variations of a keyword to copy can still be valuable, the goal of TF-IDF isn't
merely to stuff each word into the copy somewhere a couple of times.

Instead, TF-IDF should help you identify missing subjects that should be in your
document, which could be as small as providing sizing on a product page or as big as adding a
paragraph or two to a blog post that makes the piece more comprehensive. Reviewing how
competitors are using your missing terms helps you identify the best way to go about optimizing
your content.

Start by pulling up the top 10 pages for your target keyword and search for the TF-IDF term
within the competitors' content. Identify patterns of content that your competitors have that you
don't. Ryte also identifies which page uses the TF-IDF term the most, so you can click directly to
that competitor's page.

3. Adapt Format if Necessary

Changing the design and layout of a website takes time and resources that aren't always available
or necessarily worth it for every SEO update. However, if you have experimented with several
similar pages and found that changing the overall content is useful, updating the design to match
creates a much better user experience and helps you optimize additional content in the future.

When to update your design:

 Page structure doesn't allow for new content sections.

 Page was originally built for the wrong search intent and/or audience.
 Content has become too bulky for the current sections.
 Page template doesn't include design components that effectively break up the text.
 The page is too long and needs more interactive components to be effective.

Once you have identified a page that needs to be updated, remember the following best practices:

 Except for e-commerce sites and image or template galleries, the content you're adding to
the page should be information the searcher is actively looking for, so make it easy and
compelling to read. In the case of product descriptions, a section at the bottom of the page
with small text is universally understood as (ignore this section) text.
 Remember your hierarchy. Keep your value proposition and messaging up top and add
supplemental content below.
 As you add more content to a page, add additional CTAs throughout.
 For extensive, in-depth content, add sticky menus and interactive elements to keep the
reader engaged.
 Keep the content scannable with subheadings, bold text, bullet points, and imagery.
A TF-IDF Example

Does this stuff work and how will I know if it does? Great questions!

Last year, Lucidpress created this brand management software page to promote its new
enterprise features. While the page was optimized, crawl-able, and relevant, it was struggling to
rank months later. We used Ryte to pull a TF-IDF analysis:

A brief history of Google’s algorithm updates

These days, the way we do SEO is somewhat different from how things were done ca. 10 years
ago. There’s one important reason for that: search engines have been continuously improving
their algorithms to give searchers the best possible results. Over the last decade, Google, as the
leading search engine, introduced several major updates, and each of them has had a major
impact on best practices for SEO. Here’s a — by no means exhaustive — list of Google’s
important algorithm updates so far, as well as some of their implications for search and SEO.

2011 – Google Panda Update

Obviously, Google was around long before 2011. We’re starting with the Panda update because
it was the first major update in the ‘modern SEO’ era. Google’s Panda update tried to deal with
websites that were purely created to rank in the search engines. It mostly focused on on-page
factors. In other words, it determined whether a website genuinely offered information about the
search term visitors used.

Two types of sites were hit especially hard by the Panda update:

1. Affiliate sites (sites which mainly exist to link to other pages).

2. Sites with very thin content.

Google periodically re-ran the Panda algorithm after its first release, and included it in the core
algorithm in 2016. The Panda update has permanently affected how we do SEO, as site owners
could no longer get away with building a site full of low-quality pages.

2012 – Venice
Google’s algorithm update Venice was a noteworthy update, as it showed that Google
understood that searchers are sometimes looking for results that are local to them. After Venice,
Google’s search results included pages based on the location you set, or your IP address.

2012 – Penguin

Google’s Penguin update looked at the links websites got from other sites. It analyzed whether
backlinks to a site were genuine, or if they’d been bought to trick the search engines. In the past,
lots of people paid for links as a shortcut to boosting their rankings. Google’s Penguin update
tried to discourage buying, exchanging or otherwise artificially creating links. If it found
artificial links, Google assigned a negative value to the site concerned, rather than the positive
link value it would have previously received. The Penguin update ran several times since it first
appeared and Google added it to the core algorithm in 2016.

As you can imagine, it mostly hit websites with a lot of artificial links hard. They disappeared
from the search results, as the low-quality links suddenly had a negative, rather than positive
impact on their rankings. Penguin has permanently changed link building: it no longer suffices to
get low-effort, paid backlinks. Instead, you have to work on building a successful link building
strategy to get relevant links from valued sources.

2012 – Pirate

The Pirate update combatted the illegal spreading of copyrighted content. It considered (many)
DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown requests for a website as a negative
ranking factor for the first time.

2013 – Hummingbird

The Hummingbird update saw Google lay down the groundwork for voice-search, which was
(and still is) becoming more and more important as more devices (Google Home, Alexa) use it.
Hummingbird pays more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole search phrase
is taken into account, rather than just particular words. Why? To understand a user’s query better
and to be able to give them the answer, instead of just a list of results.

The impact of the Hummingbird update wasn’t immediately clear, as it wasn’t directly intended
to punish bad practice. In the end, it mostly enforced the view that SEO copy should be readable,
use natural language, and shouldn’t be over-optimized for the same few words, but use
synonyms instead.

2014 – Pigeon

Another bird-related Google update followed in 2014 with Google Pigeon, which focused on
local SEO. The Pigeon update affected both the results pages and Google Maps. It led to more
accurate localization, giving preference to results near the user’s location. It also aimed to make
local results more relevant and higher quality, taking organic ranking factors into account.

2014 – HTTPS/SSL

To underline the importance of security, Google decided to give a small ranking boost to sites
that correctly implemented HTTPS to make the connection between website and user secure. At
the time, HTTPS was introduced as a lightweight ranking signal. But Google had already hinted
at the possibility of making encryption more important, once webmasters had had the time to
implement it.

2015 – Mobile Update

The SEO industry dubbed this Google update ‘Mobilegeddon’ as they thought it would totally
shake up the search results. By 2015 more than 50% of Google’s search queries were already
coming from mobile devices, which probably led to this update. The Mobile Update gave
mobile-friendly sites a ranking advantage in Google’s mobile search results. In spite of its
dramatic nickname, the mobile update didn’t instantly mess up most people’s rankings.
Nevertheless, it was an important shift that heralded the ever-increasing importance of mobile.

2015 – RankBrain

RankBrain is a state-of-the-art Google algorithm, employing machine learning to handle queries.

It can make guesses about words it doesn’t know, to find words with similar meanings and then
offer relevant results. The RankBrain algorithm analyzed past searches, determining the best
result, in order to improve.
Its release marks another big step for Google to better decipher the meaning behind searches, and
serve the best-matching results. In March 2016, Google revealed that RankBrain was one of the
three most important of its ranking signals. Unlike other ranking factors, you can’t really
optimize for RankBrain in the traditional sense, other than by writing quality content.
Nevertheless, its impact on the results pages is undeniable.

2016 – Possum

In September 2016 it was time for another local update. Google’s algorithm update Possum
update applied several changes to Google’s local ranking filter to further improve local search.
After Possum, local results became more varied, depending more on the physical location of the
searcher and the phrasing of the query. Some businesses, not doing well in organic search, found
it easier to rank locally after this update. This indicated that this update made local search more
independent of the organic results.

2018 – (Mobile) Speed Update

Acknowledging users’ need for fast delivery of information, Google implemented this update
that made page speed a ranking factor for mobile searches, as was already the case for desktop
searches. The update mostly affected sites with a particularly slow mobile version.

2018 – Medic

This broad core algorithm update caused quite a stir for those affected, leading to some shifts in
ranking. While a relatively high number of medical sites were hit with lower rankings, the update
wasn’t solely aimed at them and it’s unclear what its exact purpose was. It may have been an
attempt to better match results to searchers’ intent, or perhaps it aimed to protect users’
wellbeing from (what Google decided was) disreputable information.

2019 – BERT

Google’s BERT update was announced as the “biggest change of the last five years”, one that
would “impact one in ten searches.”

It’s a machine learning algorithm, a neural network-based technique for natural language
processing (NLP). The name BERT is short for: Bidirectional Encoder Representations from
Transformers.
BERT can figure out the full context of a word by looking at the words that come before and
after it. In other words, it uses the context and relations of all the words in a sentence, rather than
one-by-one in order. This means: a big improvement in interpreting a search query and the intent
behind it.

2021 – Page Experience Update

With a gradual rollout through 2021, the Page Experience update introduces a new ranking
signal which includes “metrics that measure real-world user experience for loading performance,
interactivity, and visual stability.”

Page experience isn’t entirely new as a ranking signal. In this update, existing page experience
signals will be combined with Core Web Vitals, a real-life measurement of key user experience
factors. In general, the Page Experience update means that Google will take a more holistic
perspective of on-page user experience into account.

Google states that these new Page Experience factors are still not as important as “having great,
relevant content.” To help you monitor your Core Web Vitals and Page Experience and make
actionable improvements, Google has added dedicated tools in Search Console.

2021 – MUM (Multitask United Model)

Announced by Google at I/O 2021, the MUM update introduces big changes in search.

MUM is short for ‘Multitask United Model’, a name that hints at the power of this new
algorithm: it can handle multiple tasks simultaneously. It can read, understand, and learn in over
75 languages using a variety of sources, including video and audio!

The idea is that MUM will combine information from many sources to deliver multi-layered
answers to complex search queries. It has already been seen in action with COVID-19 vaccine
searches, but that’s still just the beginning. Google’s MUM AI will be slowly introduced over the
coming months and years, so don’t expect to see big changes happening overnight.

2022 – Helpful Content

The helpful content update brought an increased focus on the quality of content appearing in the
search results. It’s all about rewarding ‘people-first’ content — content that really answers users
questions and provides a satisfying experience.

The early impact on search results has been subtle, but Google has made it clear that this isn’t a
one-off. The helpful content update represents an ongoing effort to tidy up the SERPs,
eliminating low-quality results to make way for more diverse voices. This update particularly
affects sites with a lot of low-quality content, which may perform less well in search as a result.

Expectations for future Google algorithm updates

As you can see, Google has become increasingly advanced since the early 2010s. Its early major
updates in the decade focused on battling spammy results and sites trying to cheat the system.
But as time progressed, updates contributed more and more to search results catered to giving
desktop, mobile and local searchers exactly what they’re looking for. Obviously, the page
experience ranking factor will fit in nicely there. While the algorithm was advanced to begin
with, the additions over the years, including machine learning and NLP, make it absolutely state
of the art.

With the ongoing focus on intent, it seems likely that Google Search will continue to focus
its algorithm on perfecting its interpretation of search queries and styling the results pages
accordingly. That seems to be their current focus working towards their mission “to organize the
world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” But whatever direction it
takes, being the best result and working on having an excellent site will always be the way to go!

Read on: Should I follow every change Google makes? »

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the different names and years? Don’t worry! We made a handy
infographic that shows when each Google update happened and briefly describes what the
purpose was.