EDITS.WS

Author: Willemien Hallebeek

  • What is link building?

    Link building is an essential aspect of SEO. It helps search engines to find and rank your pages. You can write the perfect post, but if search engines can’t follow at least one link to it, it will most likely wait forever in vain for visitors to admire its outstanding content. For Google to find your post, it needs links from other websites. The more links, the better. But, beware, the quality of links does matter! Not every link is as valuable as others. Even worse: some links could negatively affect your site. Here, we’ll explain how link building works. We’ll also guide you to more in-depth articles if you want to learn how to do it well.

    Before we dive in, if you want to learn more about link building strategies and other essential SEO skills, you should check out our All-around SEO training! It doesn’t just tell you about SEO: it makes sure you know how to put these skills into actual practice!!

    Simply put, a link, or a hyperlink, is a connection between two pages on the internet. With a link, you can refer people to a page, post, image, or another online object. Links exist for people in the first place: with a link, you can easily “travel” from one web location to another.

    But links serve search engines too – search engine robots follow links to discover pages on the internet. This is called crawling. For a robot to find your website, you’ll need at least one link to it from another website that was crawled already. Making sure you get that first link is one of the things you need to do when you launch a brand new website.

    In the coding language HTML, a hyperlink looks like this:

    <a href=”https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/”>Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress</a>

    The first part contains the URL you’re linking to. In this case, it’s the URL of the Yoast SEO plugin page (https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/). The second part (Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress) shows the clickable text that you’d see on the page. We call this piece of text the ‘anchor text’.

    Internal and external links

    There are two kinds of links that matter for SEO: internal links and external links.

    Internal links are links on your website connecting your various pages together.

    External links, otherwise known as incoming links, are links that other people place on their websites to refer their users to your pages (or the other way around). People working in the SEO industry describe these external links as ‘backlinks’. If other websites link to your pages, you’re getting backlinks from them. On the other hand, you’re giving them backlinks if you link from your pages to theirs.

    Internal linking isn’t the same thing as link building. In this post about link building, we’re only looking at the process of getting other websites to link to your pages. Also known as getting ‘backlinks’ from other websites.

    Anchor text

    The anchor text serves two purposes: it should describe what the linked page is about and entice people to click. A link with a well-crafted anchor text has two advantages:

    • more people click on it, leading to more direct traffic, and
    • it will help search engines understand what your page is about, possibly leading to more traffic from search engines.

    Of course, you can’t control the anchor text used when others link to your site. But you can use anchor text to improve your own internal links.

    Link building refers to the marketing efforts to get links from other websites to your website. It’s seen as one of the most powerful tools to achieve higher rankings in search engines. Google’s Andrey Lipattsev even confirmed in a Q&A session that backlink is an important ranking factor.

    This makes sense when you think about it. If a page gets a lot of high-quality backlinks, it should/must be a good page. Therefore, search engines will consider it a popular or meaningful page, and they’ll rank it higher.

    It’s good to realize that not all backlinks are equal in value. Next to that, since getting links from external websites is a strong ranking factor, it creates an issue for the SEO industry. That is: websites would try shady link building techniques to get more backlinks.

    Links aren’t all equal. Some links are way more valuable than others. For instance, a link from an authoritative website, preferably topically related to yours, is worth more than a random link from a small website nobody knows.

    Let’s say, if you have a restaurant, you’d rather get a link from a restaurant review (on topic) on The Guardian website (high authority), than a link from your aunt’s horseback-riding school website. This makes choosing sites you’d love to get links from easier. But at the same time, it makes it a lot harder to get those coveted high-quality links.

    Shady techniques

    Because link building isn’t easy, lots of shady link building methods emerged in the past. People tried to game the system, for instance, by buying links from link farms. That’s why link building has got a somewhat nasty reputation.

    Consequently, Google intervened with serious penalties as a result. If a page gets lots of backlinks from websites with a questionable reputation, it can completely disappear from the search results. So you’re better off avoiding these risky link building tricks. If you play it fair and smart though, you can gain a lot from link building.

    Now we get to the million-dollar question: what should you do to get those valuable links?

    We believe in a holistic link building approach. You’ll have to create a website that people want to link to. It sounds so simple: Create high-quality, funny, original, or exceptional content people want to share. But how do you do this?

    First and foremost, find out who your audience is. Who are you trying to reach with your content? Then, think about what kind of content they need. What information are they looking for and what kind of questions do they ask? Which words do they use? And, what kind of websites do they visit?

    If you can answer these questions, it will be easier to create content that fits your audience’s needs (for instance, by using the principles of content design). Also, when you’ve created that page with valuable content for your audience, and you know which websites they visit, you’ll have a starting point for your link building activities. That is: you can start reaching out to those website owners.

    That’s what link building is, in a nutshell. It’s about reaching out to other parties and sharing your article with those that might be interested in sharing it too. That’s why it’s key to target the right niche. This help to decrease the number of people you’ll have to contact and increases your chances of actually getting a link.

    People will only link from their website to yours if it’s in their audience’s (or their own) interest. Convincing them to link will only happen if your product or content really is exceptional. Offering to let them try or use your product (if you have one) for free might help convince them. And always make sure to contact them personally, as this will lead to better results. Read all about this process in our step by step guide to link building.

    Have you got the basics about link building and want to take it a step further? Then we’d advise you to read this article with advanced link building tips by Kris Jones. You’ll learn which tools you can use to find out which sites already link to you and what you can do to get more of those. Find out everything about broken link building, reclamation link building, the so-called skyscraper technique, and more.

    Pssst… if reaching out really isn’t your thing, you can always start with some “internal link building”: fix your internal linking structure! But ideally, you should work on both internal linking and link building to improve your site’s SEO.

    The post What is link building? appeared first on Yoast.

  • 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.

    Table of contents

    2011 – Panda

    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.

    Read on: Near me searches: Is that a Possum near me? »

    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.

    Keep on reading: Google’s Medic update »

    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.

    Read more: Google BERT: A better understanding of complex queries »

    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.

    Keep reading: Page experience: a new Google ranking factor »

    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.

    Read on: Google’s MUM understands what you need: 1000x more powerful than BERT »

    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.

    Keep on reading: Google to launch Helpful Content Update to diversify search results »

    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 more: 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.

    An infographic showing a timeline of Google's algorithm updates

    The post A brief history of Google’s algorithm updates appeared first on Yoast.

  • Holistic SEO: Improve every aspect of your website

    At Yoast, we try to combat the notion that SEO is just a trick. While tricks might get you ranked quickly, they usually don’t work in the long run, and they might even backfire. Permanently ranking well in Google demands an extensive SEO strategy focused on every aspect of your website; the technical stuff, the user experience, the content on your website, and the security of your website all need to be in order. So, to keep ranking well in Google, you should develop a holistic approach to SEO. Let us explain what that is, here.

    What is holistic SEO?

    Holistic SEO (search engine optimization) refers to improving all important aspects of a website to make it rank higher in search engines. The ultimate goal is to make a website that fulfills its users’ needs on all levels. Not only by providing the right information at the right time but also by being easy and safe to use. To reach this goal, website owners should, at least, work on the following aspects of their site:

    We’ll also include resources to help you learn SEO and optimize various parts of your website at the end of this post. Do check them out!

    Why a holistic SEO approach?

    Google’s mission is to build the perfect search engine that helps people find what they are looking for, whether that’s the answer to “Where is Wijchen?”, a recipe for apple pie, or the best toaster. That’s why making your website and your marketing strategy fit this goal is the way to go.

    Let’s use an analogy to explain the holistic approach to SEO. Think of working on your site’s SEO as similar to taking a ship to a ship-building competition, where the judges are Google and other search engines. Similar to a website, a ship is big and has lots of moving parts that need to be managed. Your design is the ship’s exterior, your content is the interior and services, and your technical setup is the engine. The goal here is to appeal to the judges so they rate you highly and recommend you to people.

    This competition is packed, so to get a good ranking, you not only need a great-looking ship and a fast and reliable engine but also a good interior and high-quality onboard services. If you have a great-looking ship on the outside (an eye-catching design) but the interior (content) is lacking, people are less likely to want to be on that ship. On the other hand, if you have an amazing interior and onboard services, but your ship is slow and your engine is prone to issues (technical setup), people will look for other alternatives.

    As you can imagine, the judges (search engines) would give high ranking and recommend ships (websites) that meet and exceed the standards mentioned above. Their mission and reputation depend on giving good recommendations, so they take this very seriously. That’s why using “tricks” to make it seem like you’ve improved your ship won’t work, because you haven’t actually improved it.

    By working on improving every part of the ship, over time, your ship will become better across the board. At the same time, you’re not the only ship trying to be better, others are doing the same. In a competition so fierce and packed, every small gain and improvement will add up to be significant. With that, you may get a higher ranking in the competition and become a recommendation.

    SEO tricks are of the past, holistic SEO is the way forward

    Back in the early days of SEO, people could get away with doing tricks. They used to stuff keywords and internal links on pages, wrote thin and irrelevant content, or scraped content from other sites and ranked with that content. These are things of the past. Since then, Google and other search engines have been improving their algorithms by the day. No longer do they fall for such tricks (for the most part).

    While Google has changed its algorithm numerous times, most of our advice has remained the same ever since we started. This advice is simple (which doesn’t mean it’s easy though!): you have to ensure your site is exceptionally good. Having a website with high-quality content, offering a great user experience and up-to-date security will not instantly improve your ranking. In the long run, though, it will definitely have a positive effect on your SEO!

    In addition, great websites tend to get more backlinks from other websites and will also receive more social media attention. Remember the analogy about the ship earlier? This is similar to getting recommendations from other ships (websites) in and outside of that competition, which is a strong signal to search engines that your website is amazing.

    On top of that, people behave differently on a website that they like, compared to a website they don’t understand. Google uses these kinds of user signals to find out how people experience your site. Awesome websites will also result in higher conversions. If your audience likes and understands your website, the chance of them buying your products or returning to your website is, of course, much higher.

    Read more: Everyday website optimization: 6 tasks for your daily SEO routine »

    SEO takes time

    Understanding that SEO takes time to bear fruit is a key point in the holistic SEO approach. You only have so much time and resources to work on improving your site. So, you need to identify what you want to improve, come up with a plan of attack, execute your planning, and see the results of those changes after some time. Sometimes you make big changes, other times you make smaller ones that don’t feel so important. But over time, they will add up, which gradually turns your site into a better one.

    In addition, whenever you implement a change or improvement, it takes some time for Google to notice that change as it comes around and crawls your pages. Then, Google needs to take these changes into account in its complex ranking algorithm. So don’t worry too much if you don’t see the results that you expect after a few weeks or even months. Just remember that it takes time, and keep on working on improving every aspect of your website to the best of your capability!

    Learn SEO, the holistic way

    Sure, you say, but where to start? We understand you might feel overwhelmed by this advice. Fortunately, there are many ways to improve your knowledge about the above-mentioned topics.

    For starters, we offer a free SEO for beginners course, a great starting point to learn how SEO works. If you really want to put this knowledge into practice, consider trying our All-around SEO training, you’ll get lots of hands-on tips to start improving many aspects of your own site.

    Go Premium and get access to all of our SEO courses

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    Just want to read? These beginner guides are great starting points! If you’re a bit more knowledgeable and are looking for resources to optimize various aspects of your website, we recommend checking these articles out:

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