For professionals who have been in the field of SEO for a while now, reading has been central to their survival. Hours are spent perusing through blogs, forums, guidelines, search engine patents, etc... While all of this has certainly enhanced the knowledge of people on various aspects, seldom has it helped much in coming to a consensus on how to rank higher in search engines like Google. 

For a newbie in the world of SEO, the entire process may seem convoluted and a bit daunting. That's why we create an "SEO blueprint" or a framework on which those new to SEO may be able to build their research and work. For those venturing into SEO for the first time, this guide by CinchLocal.com assumes you know a few basics. If not, then you might want to read Beginners Guide to SEO or the Learn SEO Section. 

Before you actually get into the details of this blueprint, there are a few things you will need to understand about it:

• There are numerous ways to rank a website online – right from tweeting links to get the print media to write about you. This blueprint focuses on a single aspect.
• The blueprint has to be understood as a framework and not a means by which you will get detailed explanations. You will understand the basics of ranking a website, and based on this, you will be able to create your own campaign.
• Never hesitate listening to the advice given out by experienced SEOs. Their processes are honed by years of experience and are worth understanding.

This blueprint is ideally for those of you who have a basic understanding of SEO and how it works. There are 25 concepts of SEO that we will go through in this document. These concepts may be broadly classified into 5 categories:

1. Keyword Research
2. Website Content
3. Website Architecture
4. On-Page Optimization
5. Link Building

Keyword Research
Avoid common keyword research mistakes: As with most things, there are two ways of doing things – the smart way or the hard way. The smart way is often the easiest way too. Take a look at some of the common mistakes newcomers to SEO commit:

• Going with keywords that are too broad
• Selecting keywords that have excessive competition
• Keywords that do not drive traffic
• Attempting to rank just one keyword at a time 

This last point is by far the most common of mistakes and it is also when SEO efforts become difficult. A simpler approach would be to rank anywhere from 100 or 1000 or their multiples of long tail keywords in a single piece of content. The idea is to select a keyword theme and use it instead of promoting a single keyword.

Narrow down on a keyword theme: Get a keyword theme to implement across the entire structure of your content. This way, rather than focusing on just one keyword, you have the idea reiterated in multiple ways, and the result can be great. In order to narrow down on a theme, you will need to know about your client base, the kind of traffic they can generate for you and the possibility of conversion. Once you know this, you will be able to get specific on what will act as a trigger to initiate a response from them. Your keyword theme will stem for this. 

Take for example the topic of baseball – getting a ranking for Major League Baseball may be difficult. But working ff of Chicago Cub v/s Philadelphia Phillies 1992 and the like will give you a better ranking. Narrow down on your topic in general, and then work on finding specific keyword qualifiers.

Understanding keyword qualifiers: Qualifiers is a reference to those words that add a level of specificity to a keyword. These may be of different kinds such as:

• Time and date
• Price or quality
• Intention
• Location

You will have to work on finding every possible qualifier that works with your keyword and which will resonate with your audience. There are free keyword tools such as Wordstream, Keyword Spy and SpyFu among others that you will find online that you may work with. 

Finding the ones that work on Google: After this effort of finding qualifiers and adding them to your keyword theme, the next step is to introduce it into Google’s Adwords Keywords Planner. This will narrow it down to approximately 15 to 20. These phrases will not be so competitive, yet carry the possibility of ranking. Google’s keyword planner does offer the ability of running 100s of phrases at one go, but you get better variety if you limit your search to 5 to 10 at a given time. Always opt for exact search types to get the best keyword phrases that do not have too much competition. 
One tip you must keep in mind at this point is to view the competition column with caution. Because it will often show you figures for paid search items and not those obtained from an organic search. 

Working on ranking your chosen keywords: With a basic keyword set in hand, your next step will be to see how well your phrases will actually rank when used. There are two ways of ranking out the competition:

• Using automated tools – this determines the difficulty of ranking a particular phrase usually on a scale of 100. 60 to 70+ is considered competitive and anything in the 30 to 40 range may be low to generally difficult. One such is Keyword Difficulty tool
• Observing SERPs trends – here you may run a non-personal search with your keyword phrases and observe the following:

          o How well optimized for the keywords are the first few results of the search
          o Where is the keyword? Title tag, URL or on the page
          o What is the page and domain authority for that particular URL
          o How authoritative are the first few results
          o What is the anchor test for links
          o What quality resource will you be able to provide for this keyword

Being able to break through the top 5 search results for your keyword phrase will be considered a successive campaign. Using long tail keyword will improve your chances of ranking. This is where we step into the other aspects of SEO management.

Website Content
Content, if not handled the right way, will simply become a collection of words that is mass produced and will not provide any value at all. 

How to make content and not spam: You could choose to write dozens of articles on a topic and hope that they will be ranked on Google. Instead, what you must do is begin writing with a view on how to create content that offers much value for the reader. It is difficult to produce something that has value, but when you succeed in doing so, you become a valuable resource to webmasters online. With the value you provide, you will find rankings and algorithms working in your favor and links building up on their own. More importantly, you will have loyalty and readers who will come back for more. Value addition can take on several forms such as:

• Being utilitarian
• Encouraging an emotional response
• Bringing about a point of view, for good or bad
• Including a perceived value

It is not necessary to have all these qualities included in your content, but emphasizing on at least one of them would be great. 

Creating a structure for your content: The aim of this blueprint is to give you at least one means of building links, and that is where structure of your content will factor in. There are many ways in which you can present your content so that it adds value to your theme:

• Through an infographic
• Video
• The latest online tools
• A series of interviews
• With slide deck
• Creating a how-to guide
• Using the Q & A format
• Initiating a blog or a webinar

In some cases, you may even consider combining them all together. It is important that you find multiple ways in which to deliver your content. It is not necessary that everything you put online goes viral. However, what is essential is that at least one part of your content becomes so highly authoritative that it will drive traffic to the other parts of your site.

Pay attention to your title: You need to spend a good amount of time writing out the title of your piece. For those of us new to the world of SEO, coming up with a title that is catchy, conveys a message and encourages the reading of an entire piece is not always easy to come up with. Write out as many titles as you can and then after a day or so of leaving it alone, come back and choose one out of them. 

Length or depth of matter: Never look at just the word count. How deep your content is also matters in helping you get a good rank online. In-depth content brings with it a level of uniqueness and also an assurance that it is probably not duplication. You will also be able to get deep into your content, rather than make vague suggestions. When you have good quality long content, it increases the perception that there are more links involved and there are better rankings. 

• To be able to get your content ranked, it needs to have a minimum uniqueness threshold. While a few sentences are what is generally advocated, going with a few hundred words is like an assurance.
• The deeper you go with your content, the more long tail options you will be able to uncover for your content. When your content answers commonly asked questions in a good manner, search queries will come your way and the traffic will increase.
• Your content will also fair well when search engine bots crawl your sight and find that it is a reliable source of information.
• There are several studies that show there is a direct relation between the kind of rankings you enjoy and the number of words you have in a document. Longer quality content will ensure that you have more links coming in and creating relationships

How to add depth to your content: If word count is not a priority, then how will you be able to work on quality and depth? This is a natural question that arises. There is a lot of information that is written on how Google defines quality. While a large part of it is speculation, a lot of it is actually what Google follows to separate good content from bad. Here are some questions that you may ask about your content. These came from Google soon after their first Panda update:

• How trustworthy is the information in the article?
• Does the author qualify as an expert or enthusiast with good knowledge or does he or she seem shallow?
• How good are the grammar, spelling and accuracy of facts presented?
• How original is the content?
• Does it offer multiple viewpoints to a subject?
• Is the information provided insightful and does it go beyond the obvious?
• Is it a page that would be worth recommending or bookmarking?
• Is this the kind of article you would expect to see in a publication of repute?
• Does the final product show care to detail?

Fitting into Google’s Models: Though Google’s bots are far from being able to perceive information like we can, it is slowly getting there. Algorithms are so intricate these days that they are designed to pick sentences, paragraphs, blocks as well as content and analyze them for an understanding on keywords, topic and expertise presented. So how do you know whether your content makes the cut for Google? 

Answer the questions above for starters –holiday season recipes as a keyword phrase will need to include words like roast, grill, Christmas, turkey, stuffing and pudding in order to move up the ranking ladder. The kind of words you use will matter. 

Research has shown that using specific words for a particular topic directly work on getting higher rankings. There are standalone tools available to analyze the kind of words that should be used for a topic. 

Topic modelling: Now, all of the above would make more sense if you had access to one of the computers Google uses to analyze content. Since you don’t, there are other means of structuring content and coming up with a topic. One of the simplest ways of doing so is with the keyword themes that you made at the beginning of this blueprint. Using these keyword phrases to come up with topics will ensure a good amount of relevancy to your topic.

Great design is key: While content is definitely important, great design is also just as important. Make a provision in your budget for a good website designer. Some of the benefits of good design are:

• A lower bounce rate
• Increased number of page views
• More time spent on site
• More link-ins
• A means of gaining trust 

Website Architecture 
An important aspect of this SEO blueprint is the architecture of your site, and getting this right means that you make not just one page, but several pages of your site rank well. Here are some aspects you will need to look into:

Create a hub: There are only a handful of sites that are successful with only a single page of content. The way Google works is that it examines the content you have as well as its relevancy based on links coming in and out of it. What will get you a good ranking is multiple hubs each of which look at a range of topics in-depth.

Cross link your hubs: Ensure that each of your hubs has links going into other hubs as well as coming out of them. You can anchor these links of keywords that overlap. Often this is done to provide additional insight into a particular topic. It also helps to give your hubs more attention from search engines. 

Create a central hub: All of the multiple hubs are best connected to a single central hub from which all others originate. You could look at it as your home page, which then branches out into multiple other pages. 

On-Page Optimization
This is the next section of your blueprint and one which is quite extensive once you get into it. Take a look at the various aspects you need to pay attention to.

Getting the basics right: There are reams of information about on-page optimization available. It is best to go through some well-known sources of information. Once you have read through the basics though, here are a few more tactics that you should be well aware of:

Internal linking:While we have suggested earlier on that it is important to interlink the content on your hubs, there are a few things you need to keep in mind regarding them.

1. Having a link out of inside unique content will give more value than navigational links.
2. Include your links higher in the page than lower down.
3. Links within HTML text carry more weight than image links.

When creating your links, always make them prominent and eye-catching. 

Create links naturally: Don’t think too hard about your anchor text. It should be worked into the natural flow of content and should not be too contrived. When you go easy on the flow of language, you naturally have diverse anchor text and this enhances the quality of your content. This especially holds good when you are linking internally. 

When working on your anchor text, don’t create text to fit keywords, instead work your anchor text around the content for a more natural flow. 

Tips for good anchor text:

• Do not use generic terms like page or read article or click here for more.
• Only use anchors that are related to the content or has some relation to the page that you are linking to.
• Never use a page URL as anchor text despite it being a common practice. The only time this works is if you are specifically promoting a site on that URL.

Creating Title tags: Writing a good title tag is directly responsible for getting you high on-page ranking. But Google is also strict when it comes to over-optimization of tags and has been recently cracking down on content that is irresponsibly keyword heavy. Two things to avoid would be:

1. Using templates or what are known as boiler plates where you simply tack on your business phrase to a tag.
2. Keyword stuffing: While going with keyword repetition just twice in a 500 word article was once considered responsible, today it would be safer to stick to including it just once.

Do not over-optimize: Whether you are dealing with titles, URLs or links, do not over-optimize. Today, getting a good ranking is all about writing for humans and not for computers. Google is structured in such a way that it easily recognizes over-optimization and instantly demotes your site.

The importance of structured data: Including information that is short and simple on every webpage is essential. Though it does not really have a proven track record for improving ranking, it does show a good potential for the future. Especially in verticals like recipe sharing, they are quite important. There is no hard and fast rule about what should be included in structured data, but some musts are:

• Open Graph tags on Facebook
• Twitter cards
• Authorship
• The Publisher
• Relevant business information
• Any reviews
• Related events

Link Building
The last part of this blueprint is related to building links, and this is essentially the last 10% of your strategy. The first 90% is all about creating the best type of content. Keep in mind that there are multiple ways of building links – free and paid. As you work in the field of SEO, you will be exposed to each one of them. Link building is an on-going task. With time and patience, you will learn the ropes and will soon elevate yourself to the next level.

Negative SEO has been the focus of debate. It revolves around competitors and even shady SEO firms using bad SEO to apply penalties to other websites through the use of bad links, such as the kind you'd get from having a compromised site linking back to your own.

This topic of debate has become even more apparent ever since Google Penguin came into play. Websites have been knocked clear off the same results that they used to rank first or second for.

The good news is that there's a two useful tools that you can use to keep your website free from the ill effects of unnatural links: CognitiveSEO and the Google Disavow Tool.

Let's explore how these two invaluable tools by exploring the problems Google Penguin brought in detail and then elaborating on a generalized Penguin recovery strategy.

Penguin Recovery: The Negative Effects of Google Penguin

A handful of websites faired better after the Penguin update was implemented compared to the countless websites that saw everything from complete drops off Google to slow, gradual drops to ranks past page 100. 

There are a total of 5 Penguin updates . . .

1. Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 - first Google web spam algorithm update dubbed "Penguin" which impacted 3.1% of all english search queries.
2. Friday, May 25th, 2012 - Penguin 1.1 rolled out it's first data update.
3. Friday, Oct 5th, 2012 - Google released a minor update to Penguin impacting only: 0.3% of all queries.
4. Wed, May 22nd, 2013 - Google dubbed this update "Penguin 2.0" with moderate impact.
5. Friday, Oct 4th, 2013 - Penguin 2.1 overall was a moderate update. However, many webmasters reported their sites being hit pretty hard.
6. Friday, Oct 17th, 2014 - Penguin 3.0 

Understandably, many of these websites saw their traffic from Google for their primary keywords dry up like a puddle in the desert shortly after the Penguin updates mentioned above.

While this isn't anything new with Google updates, it does represent something troubling when you take into account that these webmasters had tried everything legitimate that Google had suggested that they do for SEO purposes.

That means they tried . . .

• Removing any links that they could remove on their own.
• Contacting webmasters of sites to help remove suspicious links
• Creating new authoritative links that were anything but black hat
• Creating new content that was focused on pleasing users rather than search engines
• Lowering the optimization on some content that could be otherwise considered “over-optimized” by SEO
• Focusing on social media, which includes Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and even Pinterest
• Correcting every miniscule error and warning reported by Google Webmaster Tools
• Improving any variety of positive SEO-related factors, including using hyphens instead of underscores in image names

You can likely see where this is going. It seemed that no matter what these webmasters did, nothing worked. Their rankings continued to decrease and in some cases until their websites were pulled from Google entirely.

Doubts About the Google Disavow Tool

The major thing that was hurting webmasters after the Penguin update concerned malicious and unnatural links. It's what made it nearly impossible for websites to recover their previous rankings.

To remedy this, Google released the Google Disavow Tool. Its aim is to allow for webmasters to have a last resort measure for links that they couldn't have removed otherwise.

The problem is that the Google Disavow Tool comes with a very scary warning. If you use it incorrectly or fail to try every other avenue to remove links to your website, then Google may penalize your website manually.

This is where CognitiveSEO comes in. It enables you to spot unnatural links with a fair degree of certainty.

Detecting Unnatural Links

CognitiveSEO allows you to import links that you export from tools like the Google Webmaster Tool. You can then run the link analysis feature to see the links that are both helping and hurting your site.

CognitiveSEO classifies links into one of three categories: “OK Links”, “Suspect Links” and “Unnatural Links”. While it's not perfect, most webmasters will agree with a majority of the results CognitiveSEO gives them after analysis.

You can then export the analyzed links from CognitiveSEO into a plain text file.

Upon making a manual review of your findings, you can then submit that file using the Google Disavow Tool with a high degree of certainty that your URLs are actually unnatural.

The Results of Penguin Recovery

After going through this process, some webmasters saw that their websites were indexed and ranking once again. Properly optimized websites saw a proper Penguin recovery by regaining their first page rankings of the same keywords that they had once lost.

The most fortunate part of this process is that it wasn't just a simple fluctuation. These websites came back and stayed at those high ranks they once had. 

Putting It All Together

While there were many factors influencing how the websites mentioned in this post ranked, it's a good bet that it was the unnatural links pulling these websites down in the SERPs. 

Is CognitiveSEO required for you to repeat this same process? The answer is that it's not. You can sit there an manually check every URL reported by the Webmaster Tool on your own before submitting a list of URLs to the Disavow Tool.

The part where CognitiveSEO is useful concerns the amount of time it can save you. When you have hundreds and thousands of URLs pointing back to your website, it becomes a considerable task to check them all by hand.

Add this in with the fact that Penguin recovery is stressful enough and you can see why it's a tool worth recommending.

For the record, Cognitive isn't paying me to write this. I just felt that you'd appreciate knowing one way to help you fix one of the biggest algorithmic penalties to hit websites during the Penguin updates without having to spend days or weeks sifting through all the links pointing to your website.

If all of this sounds too painstaking or time consuming for you, CinchLocal.com has proven to be a trusted leader in search engine optimization. By purchasing one our affordable SEO packages we will check all your back links  and you can be confident that your exposure in Google can be taken to the next level.

In the constant battle for traffic online, keywords play a major role. If a website includes enough targeted keywords on its pages, there is a high chance that the site will rise in the search rankings. A lack of targeted keywords can sink a site fast. Businesses are aware that keywords are connected to getting traffic. However, many do not know the importance of having a long tail SEO strategy. Long tail SEO keywords can greatly increase traffic and profits.

What Are Long Tail Keywords?

When people go online they will type in certain keyword phrases that lead them to a listing of websites. Broad search keywords are terms that are commonly used by a vast number of people. While broad keywords bring in some traffic, these are extremely hard to rank for and cannot be depended on to attract any amount of visitors.

In the constant battle for traffic online, keywords play a major role. If a website includes enough targeted keywords on its pages, there is a high chance that the site will rise in the search rankings. A lack of targeted keywords can sink a site fast. Businesses are aware that keywords are connected to getting traffic. However, many do not know the importance of having a long tail SEO strategy. Long tail SEO keywords can greatly increase your traffic and profits.

Long tail keywords are great for attracting search engine traffic. The main reason is because they have less competition. Searches that include your company name are easily going to bypass your competitors, if you are smart enough to include these phrases:

• [Your company name] alternatives
• [Your company name] competitors
• [Your company name] complaints
• [Your company name] coupons
• [Your company name] discounts
• [Your company name] reviews

Importance of Keyword Research

Finding the best long tail keywords to use requires a bit of research. Specific keyword search tools are often used to dig up as many long tail keyword suggestions as possible. A fast and easy way to see what people are searching for is to check out the "Google Search Suggest" data that appears as you start typing.  There are usually a multitude of variations for all sorts of keyword phrases. These should be collected and analyzed for competitive advantage and they come in pretty handy when you use them for your pay-per-click campaigns; helps creates a positive ROI.

Developing a Long Tail Keyword Strategy

A savvy online marketing plan needs to include long tail SEO strategy. Incorporating long tail SEO involves considering various angles to attract online prospects. Specific landing pages or content hubs can be built around terms that are already popular or answer important consumer questions. A business can also attract more visitors by creating special reports, coupons, videos and special offers.

Optimizing Content Leads to Better Conversions

Adding specific long tail SEO keyword phrases to site pages is a great way to convert prospects into buyers. Research will determine which phrases to use and how many to include on a page. Optimization works especially well for product terms. The site may also attract attention with common phrases that include reviews, discounts, names of competitors and alternative phrasing.

Gain a Competitive Edge

SEO companies such as CinchLocal.com have known for a long time that long tail keywords provide businesses with a strong competitive edge. Sites can add fresh content that includes additional long tail keywords and build on existing traffic. A site that wisely uses targeted local keywords can become dominant over time for a wide range of buyer phrases. The amount of traffic and profits a site receives largely depends on implementing an aggressive online marketing plan that includes a bold long tail SEO strategy.

Many businesses are discovering how beneficial long tail keywords can be for their bottom line. Partnering with keyword experts like CinchLocal.com may significantly boost both traffic and sales. Success depends on planning and implementing powerful content marketing strategies that bring in a steady stream of potential buyers.

What Are Your Thoughts?

Facebook may get the lion’s share of attention, but Google+ has been flying under the radar as an SEO powerhouse that dominates the search results. While Facebook and Twitter still remain a critical aspect of modern Internet marketing, both of these networks have restricted Google’s access to the bulk of their data, limiting their SEO power.

This is not the case with Google+. For example, if you are a Google+ user and search for your own name, your Google+ posts will dominate the search results, even if you are a regular Facebook or Twitter user. Chances are Google+ will even beat the results of your own personal blog. 

Due to the obvious importance of Goggle+ for SEO, here are some simple ways to harness the SEO power of Google+ and dominate the search results.

Follow Your Profile Links

In addition to allowing you to link to all of your other social media profiles, Google+ also allows you to directly embed followed links into your bio with any anchor text you want. Although theoretically every link has the same value, if you link directly to your profile, share your posts, and engage with more people, you can increase the value of your profile links.

Embed Post Links

Similar to profile links, you can also add followed links to your Google+ posts. In fact, you can add as many as you want. To do this, simply insert the entire URL and it will automatically be formatted as a link. The more a post is linked to, shared, and +1’ed, the more the value of the link will increase. A simple one-sentence post can have a PageRank of three or better and be regularly cached by Google.

Optimize Your Google+ Title Tags

In Google+, the first sentence of every post becomes a part of the title tag, which is tremendously important for rankings and click-through rates. Therefore, you should carefully construct the first sentence with the right keywords and keep potential readers in mind. A post that has a good title and is widely shared can easily rank for the chosen keywords.

Quickly Index New Content

When new content is shared on Google+, Google’s indexing response times are near instantaneous. In the old Internet days, it would take weeks for a website to get indexed. Today, however, it’s now as quick and easy as hitting a +1 button, so you should share new content on Google+ for lightning fast indexation and to exploit Google Plus for SEO domination.

Connect with Influential People

On Google+, there are nearly 20 notification triggers that allow you to connect with influential people in your industry. You can gently introduce yourself to these influencers by doing the following:

• Mention them in a post
• Follow their post comment with a comment of your own
• Add them to a circle
• Tag a photo of theirs 
• Comment on a photo they tagged, and a dozen other quick and easy actions 
• Check Your CircleRank

CircleCount is a terrific new tool. Simply by inserting your Google+ URL, you’ll be able to chart the growth of your following, how viral your posts are, and see how you CircleRank score compares against every other Google+ profile.

Interestingly, Britney Spears has the best CircleRank out of all of the profiles on Google+.

Actually Use Google+ to Harness its Power

Although Google+ has witnessed explosive growth, only 25 percent of people use it at least once a month, and even less use Goggle+ for SEO. All of these tips are useless unless you regularly use Google+. Even though people are beginning to catch on to the power of Google+, there’s still time to jump onboard and reap SEO rewards simply by doing the following for ten minutes each day:

• Share worthy comments with the +1 button
• Comment on interesting or useful posts
• Use hashtags and mentions for more visibility
• Add +1 buttons to your own content
• Add a Google + badge to your blog
• Create an event or start a hangout
• Circle influencers
• Allow others to easily circle you
• Join and Create Communities

If all of this sounds too painstaking or time consuming for you, CinchLocal.com has proven to be a trusted leader in social media marketing and Google Plus for SEO. By utilizing their expert services, your SEO and social media exposure can be taken to the next level.