Understanding Search Types for SEO

Understanding Search Types for SEO

Everyone uses search engines for everything now. Finding a local business. Researching a holiday destination. Figuring out how to fix something in the house. And it’s tempting to think of all ‘search’ as the same.

But it’s not quite that simple, and for those businesses that truly understand search, their search engine optimisation (SEO) can get a huge boost.

So, what are the main types of search and why should you care?

Classifying Search

Search classification is useful because it allows businesses to tailor their content to meet the needs of different types of searcher. This specialisation and specificity is beneficial because it allows more precise targeting of users based on what they are putting into a search bar.

Being clear and specific is also helpful. For example, if you’re trekking through the wilderness in North America and someone sees an something rustling in the bushes, then knowing that it has four legs and fur is sort of helpful because it tells you it’s an animal. But the specific detail ‘it’s over 2 metres tall’ is where the real value is because it’s this information that tells you that the animal is likely a bear, not a small household cat. More detail is always better.

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Understanding the ‘Plumbing’ of SEO – How it Works

Understanding the ‘Plumbing’ of SEO – How it Works

There are a lot of things in the world that we don’t fully understand, but that need to work so that our lives can go on. Things like Wi-Fi and the reliable supply of water and electricity are just a few examples of goods and services that only a small percentage of people fully understand, but that we all rely on.

The same concept applies to SEO: only a few people fully understand it, but millions of businesses rely on good search engine optimisation to get better ranking on results pages. That better ranking can drive new browsers, that then turn into paying customers. And from there, revenue and profit can flow.

To help break down the walls, we’ve come up with a ‘SEO Basics’ post so that you can better understand the concepts that make SEO work.

Web Crawling

The first thing that all search engines must do is ‘crawl’ the internet, and all the websites and pages in it.

This is sort of like an explorer from the 1600’s setting out on a ship to map parts of the world that had not been explored yet. But instead of using ships on the ocean, search engines send out web crawlers to find content. Content that these crawlers find can range from entire web pages to single images. It can also include uploads to web pages such as documents and videos.

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Understanding the Language of SEO

Understanding the Language of SEO

Have you ever been to a doctor or spoken to a tradesperson who just talks in jargon? That habit can lead to poor communication, as well as leaving you feeling like you don’t understand what the expert is saying or what they are advising.

It’s the same in search engine optimisation. As a fairly new industry, the terms are not used in common language yet. And because SEO is highly specialised, it has developed it’s own array of terms, phrases and shorthand that its own experts understand.

But SEO isn’t just for experts. Businesses of all kinds rely on SEO to ensure that their services are placed well on Google search results. And even for businesses that want to get some professional help with their SEO for their website(s) it helps to know the terms so you can ask informed questions when you interview people or companies for the role.

We’ve collected some of the terms you should know right here and made the explanations simple and easy to grasp so you can get up to speed quickly.

‘Google My Business’ Listing – possibly one of the most important and cost effective things any business can do (if they haven’t already). This listing is free to all local businesses and allows businesses to be found more easily in search, to add their location, be found on Google Maps and add their opening hours and contact information so that when a customer searches for them by name, that information appears in the search results.

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SEO Results

Latest Tactics To Boost Your SEO Results

By its very nature SEO is a constantly evolving field, with both the search engines and website owners continually looking for ways to improve. Whether that is the quality of search engine results on the part of Google and others, or with webmasters using the latest techniques and tools, according to SEO Perth Search Engine Optimisation is undoubtedly something that you must constantly keep up to date with.

If you wish to have any advantage in terms of website’s SEO, there are a few techniques which you should start, or if you have already started using them, should consider increasing your focus on. Whilst these are not exactly brand new, they are certainly having an ever-greater influence when it comes to how the search engines rank websites.

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Top SEO Risks

Top 5 SEO risks you should avoid

Developing a strong SEO strategy can be difficult, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience or a strong digital marketing background. However, there are some things that you should always do, and some things that you should avoid at all costs.

There are quite a few SEO mistakes that are a lot more common than they should be, and you should do everything in your power to avoid them. However, if you’re like many other people, you might not even know that you’re making mistakes.

With this in mind, I’ve put together this list of the top 5 SEO risks that you should never take:

  1. Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is essentially the process of creating low-quality content that’s filled with keywords in a way that’s unnatural and reads poorly. In the past, keyword stuffing was common, but Google has cracked down on it in recent years.

You might get away with keyword stuffing for a while, but you will be caught and penalized eventually. Don’t ever fall into the trap of creating poor quality content that’s unnaturally full of keywords. Instead, focus on adding well-written, informative content with keywords naturally placed throughout.

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On-Page SEO

What does Site Based SEO Involve?

Your site based SEO or on-page strategy is the foundation for your Internet marketing success. Your strategy should follow a strict methodology.

It should incorporate web page optimisation to give your users and the search engines a clear picture of what is on offer at your website – your product and/or service.

It also encompasses web page design, file structures, keyword phrases and coding that is clear and free of complex structure.

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SEO Jargon

Some Of The More Colorful Terms From SEO Jargon

In perusing SEO literature (by gumbo, there’s a lot of you pecking away out there!), we like to stop and ponder a meme, phrase, or bit of jargon we encounter within the context of the SEO world. Search Engine Optimization has actually started to gain a culture now, and this is going to be the part where everybody looks back on “the golden age” fondly in 20 years.

  • astroturfing – Pretending to be a regular member of the audience while secretly being paid to push an agenda for a commercial or political group. Astroturf (TM) is fake, plastic grass, and regular people supporting a group is a “grassroots” movement.
  • bread crumbs – The little trail of links in a horizontal navigation setup, so uses can find their way back to the home page.
  • cloaking – Showing one version of content to search engines, and a different version to visitors. Instant black death when Google finds out!
  • Google bowling – An attempt to lower a website’s ranking by linking to it from dirty sites. May be an SEO urban legend.

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Penguin Update

Will Google’s Reign Of Terror Over SEOs Ever End?

Once upon a time, Google and SEO were at a relative truce. Then Google began swatting at black-hat SEO tactics. Then gray-hat SEO tactics. And now, it just hauls off and clobbers everybody, damn your hat color. The latest news on the Penguin update is just par for the course. It’s just getting to where if you’ve ever made page one ever in your life, Google now hates you.

We’re wondering how long it will be until paranoid conspiracy theories develop in the SEO rank and file. Well, of course, that’s “more than the usual conspiracy theories”. Yet we don’t see demand for the old-school black-hat SEO diminishing in the slightest – the more Google punishes some behaviours, the more people stubbornly cling to them. It’s like a battle of wills between a domineering mother and a rebellious teenager.