Author : Bharati Ahuja

After the PageRank became an important aspect of the Google Algorithm having a direct correlation to the ranking factors, there were many people who resorted to only link building as their main activity giving rise to a link building industry itself.

Well, at the very outset I would say that yes inbound links are important and yes there should be a meticulous effort put in to get natural inbound links and not all people focusing on link building are spammers.

But building links is like building a reputation and gaining the recognition for it . For building a reputation and popularity one needs to put in a lot of effort and links are earned as a part of the web journey of the site and I believe the only links that have value are the links that you have earned . The way you build your reputation in real life similarly you build the quality footprints on the web to gain the recognition by way of relevant inbound links. No amount of link exchanges and adding your website to umpteen directories and portals is going to bring any nutritive link juice to your PageRank .

After the Panda update we see many people claiming themselves to be content writers and offering content writing services. I am saying this as the no. of emails that I used to receive for link requests which were nothing but requests for spammy link exchanges are now decreasing and the no. of emails from companies introducing themselves as content writers is on the rise.

Again I would like to specify like all link building is not spam,  all the content writers also do not fall in the spam category . There are some very good companies offering quality content writing as per each website’s niche content and focus . But, the real challenge again here is to separate the grain from the chaff.

There are a few questions to which we should gain meaningful answers before we start investing in content marketing or adding more and more content to our site.

Q1) Why do we need more quality content ?

Google mentioned on its blogpost when they first announced (Feb. 24 2011) the Panda Update 1.0 that

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

So, yes quality content is important , but if you read in between the lines , it is not the quantity but the quality of content that is important from the user perspective. So it is not necessary to convert your site into a plethora of articles which will just add words to your site but instead give valuable information about the products and services that you offer so that the user gets the relevant info to take a decision or gets the answer to the question that he is finding and the content on your site serves the purpose of his search which made him click on the landing page of your website.

Q2) What is quality content?

As stated on one of our previous blogposts : http://www.webpro.in/understanding-and-adapting-to-the-google-panda-update-a-simple-systematic-straight-forward-approach/

What Is Quality Content?

Point-wise And In A Precise Manner The Content Reflects High standards Of Quality If the content is :
1. Trust worthy

2. Written by an expert

3. Not duplicated with other variations on the same site

4. The site can be trusted for credit card payments

5. Does not have spelling and style errors

6. The topic is in sync with what the readers want to read about

7. Is original

8. Adds value to the topic

9. Checked for quality standards to provide good UX

10. Unbiased and give both sides of the story

11. Hosted on Domain Authority

12. Is not mass produced

13. Is edited well

14. Trust worthiness related to important matters like health

15. Reflects brand authority

16. Is complete and offers an overall view about the topic

17. Stating facts or discussing the topic with insights

18. Is it worth sharing

19. Having a lot of Ads. Loses the true essence of information and knowledge

20. Is the content worth being printed

21. Is it long enough to be informative

22. Is attention given to detail

23. Is published with good UX

There is more about quality content on the following 2 links:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html
http://www.webpro.in/the-quality-content-site-guidelines-and-parameters-by-google/

Q3) Can borrowed content or content written just for the sake of adding words to your site work in your favour?
If we read in between the lines of the above stated extract again then we can see Google clearly mentions that :

“…..At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

Hence Google wants to give preference and promote authority sites i.e sites which give overall information about the industry trends, offer analysis on the relevant subject of the site, etc.

All this content can only be written by a thought leader of that industry not by people who just spin out content for the sake of filling pages. Hence identifying the right person or the right company for content writing and then selecting and deciding what content and info should be published on your site is a specialized job in itself which I think should be handed over to a very responsible person of your company as this content reflects the opinion and views of your company related to that topic as this kind of correlation establishes you as a thought leader and will help the website positively.

But, what is important to note is that building links , having your site updated with quality content and establishing yourself as an individualistic thought leader are all inter-connected and correlated.

If you share your knowledge via blogposts on your site or write guest posts and share it on social media which has a potential of being shared further it helps you in gaining quality natural links and also in the bargain gives you an identity of being an authority on the topic if it is appreciated by your readers.

If we analyze this further if you have quality content then your site has the potential of getting natural inbound links and the social media platform is the dais on which this display of quality content is possible in the form of links to your site which has the potential of further increasing the inbound links and also establish your authority and reputation on the web.

Q4) How to come up with quality content regularly?
Now, adding quality content regularly can be a challenging task but if you have a strategy then it can be simplified to a certain extent.

· Share knowledge about the topics related to your products and services.

· Write about the industry trends.

· Offer your opinion and analysis about the latest industry trends.

· Display the information graphically if possible with relevant statistics.

· Explain the graphs and statistic reports via a video.

· Publish interviews with authority people of your industry.

· Write about the developments in your company which you would like to share.

· Invite guest posts for your site.

· Be ahead of the rest in sharing news about your industry

· Carry out surveys

· Research on some topic or trend in your industry and share the content

After a proper analysis of the above points one can easily plan a content strategy which will surely be a win-win-win from the user , the search engine and the social media perspective as they all are correlated to each other.

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Recently as per my observation and experience, I think more and more people are understanding the true meaning of optimizing a site for search engines and are preparing themselves to accept the fact that SEO is a long term proposition and an ongoing process .

The search engines will constantly upgrade and improve their algorithms and keep shifting the priorities of the ranking factors for maintaining the quality of search results. Hence keeping an eye on the shifting priorities and the algo updates is a constant R & D effort which has to be put in unconditionally by every SEO.

The correlation and the causation aspect is being discussed and talked about a lot in the SEO blogosphere and conferences but, before we start correlating these two terms with the SEO world let us understand a few definitions:

What is Correlation:

Correlation is a statistical measurement of the relationship between two variables. Possible correlations range from +1 to –1. A zero correlation indicates that there is no relationship between the variables. A correlation of –1 indicates a perfect negative correlation, meaning that as one variable goes up, the other goes down. A correlation of +1 indicates a perfect positive correlation, meaning that both variables move in the same direction together.

What is Coeffecient of Corelation and A Rank Corelation:

A coefficient is a multiplicative factor in some term of an expression (or of a series) it is a measure of the strength of the linear relationship between two variables that is defined in terms of the (sample) covariance of the variables divided by their (sample) standard deviations. An increasing rank correlation coefficient implies increasing agreement between rankings. The coefficient is inside the interval [−1, 1] and assumes the value:

• −1 if the disagreement between the two rankings is perfect; one ranking is the reverse of the other.
• 0 if the rankings are completely independent.
• 1 if the agreement between the two rankings is perfect; the two rankings are the same.

In statistics, a rank correlation is the relationship between different rankings of the same set of items. A rank correlation coefficient measures the degree of similarity between two rankings, and can be used to assess its significance. A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either 'ranked higher than', 'ranked lower than' or 'ranked equal to' the second

What is Causation:

It is the act or fact of causing; the production of an effect by a cause . Basically the relationship of cause and effect, the act or process of causing, the act or agency which produces an effect.

Let us come back to the SEO world and try to correlate the importance of the above mentioned definitions for SEO.

The actual task of SEO is very difficult to define.

It is a whole package of :

•  on-page optimization
•  off-page optimization
•  working on good quality inbound links
•  creating a potential for the site so that it starts getting natural links over a period of time
•  brand building
•  helping the site to become more social media friendly and Social Media ready so that the site gets the links and the social acceptance with a quality buzz around it and
•  last but not the least the regular monitoring and measuring of the analytics to ensure that everything is being geared in the right direction and there is constant improvement in the SEO metrics.

This regular monitoring is the stage where actually an SEO gets the idea about what is working for the site and what is going against it as every site is different and has different objectives to achieve. This monitoring also helps you analyze and study data from the R&D perspective as this regular monitoring of the relevant data gives you an idea about the correlations between what changes you made on the site and what results or effects were visible in the data set. Google analytics can give you a good idea about these correlations with the help of the custom reports feature.

Google says there is a combination of more than 200 ranking factors which determine the rankings of the search results and the priorities keep on changing hence if you make some changes on-page and off-page and you see a direct effect on the results you can know what factors are being given preference to by Google. In other words you can correlate the SEO changes and modifications made by you to the changes you see in the results as per the SEO metrics.

For example:

1) If you make the changes in the title tags of some of the pages and you see that page being ranked higher than before and the Google Analytics shows that page as the landing page for the keywords it was targeted and shows an increase in the no. of new visits and shows the source as search engines then you can be sure that there is a causation and this improvement can be correlated to the title tag changes made and one can conclude that this correlation is positive.

2) If you add a canonical tag and the those pages get deindexed and you lose the rankings then you know that this causation is due to the negative correlation between the two variables i.e the canonical tag and the loss of rankings .

The above two are very simple examples but if there are atleast 200 ranking factors then there are atleast 200 variables which can be assessed over a period of time for the various causations in the SEO metrics you want to measure.

When we say that the constant monitoring of the site is one of the major SEO deliverables, we mean that this correlation analysis of various factors on the causation of results is the main focus.

Data in itself does not have any value unless it is analyzed and understood so that corrective actions can be taken, otherwise it is like a car without a driver. You can use the car efficiently only if you have a good driver. Similarly you can make use of the Google Analytics data if you have a good analyst who can correlate between the metrics and understand the effect on the result oriented metrics.

Some points to ponder on this concept of correlation and causation are:

• Almost all SEO is correlative rather than causative.
• Moreover , a correlation need not be causative.
• You need a sizable chunk of data over a period of time (atleast 4-6 months) in order to establish any connect between the correlation and causation to come to any conclusion.
• This correlation analysis requires a lot of time, effort and an eye for detail by an expert
• Jumping to quick conclusions will just cause more confusion

Always keep a list of SEO changes made on the site date-wise and preferably also write down the anticipated changes on the concerned metrics as expected by you and then study the effects on the concerned metrics over a period of time (atleast for 4 months) before you come to a conclusion.

When we say SEO is an ongoing process this is one of the major SEO tasks which need to be undertaken regularly by every SEO for every site as every site is different and needs to be analyzed and studied as per what metrics matter the most for that site.

SEO is becoming more and more specialized and the whole SEO task needs to be conducted by various experts to get the most out of every SEO campaign. Ideally if a SEO company needs to take more no. of SEO projects and do justice to the SEO campaign then the SEO team should comprise of experts in the following fields:

• Keyword Research
• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO
• Natural Link Building Engineers
• Social Media Strategists
• Analytics
• Research and Development Analysts whose job is to keep an eye on what changes are being reported by Google on their various blogs and other authority sites
• Coordinators who can convey the SEO process and progress to the clients keeping the training aspect in mind so that every meeting with the client enriches the client with the SEO relevant knowledge in a very simple way so that he is convinced to renew the contract year after year.

An SEO campaign conducted by such a team will surely ensure a quality SEO campaign but will surely cost more too. SEO is very simple and can be done using the DIY method but to ensure a long term success and for future proofing your site from the unexpected algoquakes by Google hiring experts is the best option as every job in itself is a specialized job which demands the relevant knowledge in that niche field.

Matt Cutts in this video explains how Google interprets the underscores and dashes in the URLs.

I was under the impression that there is not such thing like an underscore in the English language and the dash being a hyphen would separate the words and take each word separately , but there is more to it.

Dashes are preferred over an underscore in the URL as a dash does separate out each term and each term gets indexed separately but an underscore joins the terms and indexes it as one term.

If you already have a site which has used an underscore in URLs you need not bother to change all the URLs as it is not very much a ranking factor. But incase you are developing a new site then opting for dashes in the URL is the correct option.