All About SEO: July 2014

Tuesday, 29 July 2014

Odesk SEO Test Questions & Answers 2014

1. Some words, when followed by a colon, have special meanings to yahoo. What is performed by the link:Operator?

A. it shows all the outbound links from the url
b. It shows how many pages of the site yahoo is pointing to
c It shows all the pages that point to that url
d. It show url’s with broken links

Ans: C. It shows all the pages that point to that url

2. Which blackhat Seo techniques are characterized by a method to deceive search engine, by detecting the search engine bot and “feeding” it with a different HTML code than the HTML actually served to users?

a. Coaling
b. Foisting
c. Slighting
d. Cloaking

Ans: d. Cloaking

3. Why is it bad idea from SEO perspective to host free articles and write ups that are very common on the internet?

a. Because they will not lead to fresh traffic
b. Because you could be penalize by search engine for using duplicate contents
c. Because you will not get the benefits of proper keyword targeting
d. because people could turn up claiming copyright infringement

Ans: b. because you could be penalize by search engine for using duplicate contents

4. What will happen if you type the word ‘Certification-Networking’ in the Google search box?

a. Google will find the web pages about “certification” and also containing the word “networking”
b. Google will find ALL the web pages containing the word “Certification” and “Networking”
c. Google will find ALL the web pages in which the words “Certification” and “Networking” appear together.
d. Google will find the web pages about Certification that do not contain the word Networking

Ans: c. Google will find ALL the web pages in which the words “Certification” and “Networking” appear together.

5. Which of the following factors does Google take into account while accessing whether or not a website is an authority website?

a. The frequency with which the contents of the website are updated
b. the number of web pages containing relevant information on the main theme of the website
c. The number of in-bound natural links related to the website’s theme (or keywords)
d. None of the above

Ans: c. the number of in-bound natural links related to the website’s theme (or keywords)

6. What is keyword density?

a. The number of times the keyword is used / (divided by) the total word count on page – (minus) the total words in HTML on the page
b. The number of times the keyword is used x (multiply by) the total word count on page.
c. The number of times the keyword is used in the page description
d. The number of times the keyword is used in the page title
e. The number of times the keyword is used / (divided by) the total word count on the page.

Ans: e. The number of times the keyword is used / (divided by) the total word count on the page.

7. Which of the following statement about FFA pages are true?

a. They are greatly beneficial to SEO
b. They are also called Link Farms
c. They are Paid Listings
d. They contain numerous inbound links

Ans: d. they contain numerous inbound links

8. What is the illegal act of copying of a page by unauthorized parties in order to filter off traffic to another site called?

a. Traffic jacking
b. Visitors jacking
c. View Jacking
d. Page Jacking

Ans: d. Page Jacking

9. What is the most likely time period required for getting a Google page ranking?

a. 1 week
b. 3 weeks
c. 1 month
d. More than 3 months

Ans: d. More than 3 months

10. Which of the following can be termed as a good keyword selection and placement strategies?

a. Targeting synonyms of the main keyword, A & D
b. Targeting the highest searched keywords only
c. Copying competitor keywords
d. Optimizing 5 or more keywords per page (check)

Ans: a. targeting synonyms of the main keyword, A & D

11. Google displays up to ———————— characters of a web pages title tag

a.56
b.60

c.66
d.80

Ans: C. 66

12. Which of the following fact about Alexa are correct?

a. Alexa provides free data on relative website visitor’s traffic
b. Alexa and Quancast provide information on visitors household income
c. Alexa is based towards US based traffic
d. Quantcast only track people who have installed the quantcast toolbar

Ans: a. Alexa provides free data on relative website visitor’s traffic

13. What is the name of the search engine technology due to which a query for the word “actor” will also show search result for related word such as actress, acting or act?

a. Spreading
b. Dilating
c.RSD (real time synonyms detection)
d. Stemming
e. Branching

Ans: d. Stemming

14. Do search engine such as Google detect unnatural linking patterns by checking the class C IP address of the page where the link to the website originates

a. Yes
b. No

Ans: a. yes

15. Which of the following conditions will Google treat favorably from the “Relevancy” perspective?

a. The website offering product and services to the visitor’s country
b. A website that provides free content for related keywords
c. Hidden keywords on the homepage matching search term
d .Image alt tag on the homepage matching search term

Ans: b. a website that provides free content for related keywords

16. Which of the following website design guideline has been recommended by Google?

a. Having a clear hierarchy and text links
b. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link
c. If the sitemap is larger than 100 or so links, you should break the sitemap into separate pages
d. Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100)
e. Use less than 30 images or graphics per page

Ans: a. Having a clear hierarchy and text links

17. What is the main reason for the effectiveness of optimizing a web page towards a long tails keyword search? Recheck

a. There are more long tail searches than shorter keyword queries
b. Search engine often pass on long tail searches to lesser or new website
c. Search engine do not pass on long tail search traffic to website that rank high for shorter keyword searches (check)
d. There are fewer website that have targeted such keyword’s

Ans: B & D

18 Which of the following statement is correct with regards to the images within a web page?

a. Images cannot be spidered by the search engine (check)
b. Important keywords related to the image should be placed in the ALT text
c. Images should always be kept close to the top of a web page
d. Image maps should be used while including the images

Ans: b. important keywords related to the image should be placed in the ALT text

19. What does the 302 server Response Code signify?

a. It signifies conflict, too many people wanting the same file at the same time
b. The page has been permanently removed
c. The method you are using to access the file is not allowed
d. The page has temporarily moved
e. What you requested is just too big to process

Ans: d. the page has temporarily moved

20. State whether the following statement is true or false. A sitemap provide a list of natural links to user accessible pages on a website

a. True
b. False

Ans: b. False

21. State whether true or false.

The Yahoo Directory listing is a free service for commercial site?

a. True

b. False

Ans: a. True

22. Which of the following can be termed as a good keyword selection and placement strategies?
Ans: A & D

a. Targeting synonyms of the main keyword
d. Optimizing 5 or more keywords per page

23. Are RSS/Atom feeds returned in Google search results?
ans: No

24. All major search engines are case sensitive
ans: False

25. Cloaking is a controversial SEO technique. What does it involve
ans: Offering a different set of web pages to the search engines

26. Which of the following statements is correct with regard to the description meta tag?
ans: Google uses the meta description to generate the search engine results pages.

27. Which of the following statements about the search engine optimization techniques are correct?
ans: websites with deep linking are looked at the favorably by search engines

28. Which of the following factors have an impact on the Google page rank
ans: the subject matter of the site providing the inbound link to a page of a website.

29. Which of the following is an ethical SEO Techniques?
ans: Non of the above.

30. What is Anchor text
ans: it is the visible text that is hyper linked to another page

Thursday, 24 July 2014

The Top 7 SEO Trends Dominating 2014

Now that we’re reaching the midway point of 2014, I thought it would be helpful to take a look at where we’re at, particularly in terms of SEO.

Google has been busy over the past year, and traditional SEO strategies, tasks and roles have changed considerably.

Let’s take a look at what we’re seeing thus far in 2014.

1. Google Authorship is rising in importance

More business owners are realizing the importance of Google Authorship and are taking Author Rank more seriously; as they should, particularly since Google has confirmed they do use a form of Author Rank – at least in terms of ranking in-depth articles.

The end of 2013 saw Google reducing authorship snippets by 15% in an effort to increase click through to only the highest quality content. This has meant an overall reduction in the total number of search results being accompanied by authorship info, and increased competition among authors.

We’re also seeing a tiered system in terms of what’s displayed next to search results: some search results are displayed with full authorship details, while others are displayed with only a byline.

Factors that continue to determine whether authorship snippets are included (or what tier is used) include the reputation and trustworthiness of authors, as well as the website on which the content is published.

There has been speculation that those who don’t establish some degree of authority via Author rank will become irrelevant (i.e. their content will no longer rank). While we’re not there yet, it’s a strong reminder for writers and marketers to get Authorship set up now before we do reach that point.

2. Brands are realizing the necessity of social media, as it plays a major role in website traffic referrals and content dissemination

So far in 2014, social media seems to be a major factor in terms of referral traffic and content dissemination.

According to recent research released by Shareaholic, Facebook continues to lead the pack in terms of social media referral traffic. In March 2013, Facebook drove 21.25% of all traffic sites receive. Pinterest came in 2^nd at just over 7% of all traffic, although its share of traffic has grown by 48% since December. Twitter continues to trail behind with a 1% share of all website traffic.

With many sites struggling to earn even mediocre rankings in the search engines, brands are increasingly seeing social media as a quicker way to get their content in front of their target market, and to increase website traffic.

3. “Content marketing” is beginning to replace the term “SEO”

Most experts would agree that it’s no longer enough to simply have an SEO strategy. In fact, I’ve noticed the term ‘content marketing’ starting to become used synonymously with ‘SEO’. While the two should certainly be differentiated on many levels, many argue that content marketing is the ‘new SEO’.

Business owners and marketers should continue to focus on creating high-quality content guided by solid keyword research based on SEO competition and keyword research, with a focus on topical and long-tail targeting. But the days of picking a handful of keywords and putting all efforts toward becoming ranked #1 for those keywords are over. Competition is simply too high in all industries now; there’s always going to be at least one other brand doing it better and spending a higher budget than you.

A solid content marketing strategy aims to build your exposure for many long-tail keywords while also building brand awareness, authority, credibility, social media awareness, and conversion rates. It’s a “cast the net” approach rather than a “throw the spear” approach.

However, any content marketing strategy should employ SEO best practices at its foundation; meaning following important on-page SEO elements that are still relevant and useful in 2014, and will remain useful through 2015 and beyond. A technical knowledge of SEO coupled with a corresponding strategic content marketing plan is the online marketer’s new secret weapon.

4. Guest blogging has been redefined

Guest blogging was probably the biggest buzzword throughout 2013. SEO professionals and online marketers preached the value of this tactic for building links, brand authority, credibility, and myriad other benefits. For many marketers, that was all turned upside down when, in his January webmaster video and blog post, Matt Cutts made the startling and controversial pronouncement: “Stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done.”

In response to misinterpretations of his statement, however, he scaled his announcement back by differentiating ‘good’ guest blogging from bad. In short, ‘bad’ guest blogging means doing so solely as a means of getting links; ‘good’ guest blogging means contributing excellent content to build your audience and reputation.

He writes: “There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they’ll continue into the future.”

Guest blogging will continue to remain an excellent strategy for building your audience, your brand and your personal thought leadership plan. And yes, those inbound links will still count. However, spammy, low-quality guest blogging is a thing of the past, and smart marketers will focus instead on using guest blogging for the many other benefits it provides.

5. SEO is becoming more expensive as it becomes more difficult to get inbound links and create link-worthy content

Pre-Panda, producing content that would rank highly was relatively easy. Slap up some keyword-rich content, get a few keyword-rich links to it, and you were good to go.

But as ranking well becomes more difficult, marketers and business owners are realizing the need to increase their investment in content creation and link building in order to rank in the search engines.

Roles like Content Manager, Director of Content, and Content Marketing Officer (CMO) are becoming increasingly main stream, as is the outsourcing of content creation and link building.

According to recent research by Kapost, 54.1% of marketers are prioritizing content marketing team hiring above any other sub-discipline.

This hefty investment in content creation and SEO is meaning brands have to carefully re-evaluate the types of content they’re producing, and actively track whether that content is helping them achieve their goals.

6. In-house SEOs are becoming coordinators for actual fulfillment work

With the increased volume of tasks and the wider range of skills needed for content creation and SEO, in-houses SEO professionals are increasingly being called on to coordinate the fulfillment of work, based on their technical knowledge, rather than completing it themselves.

While in the past, SEOs would typically write and optimize content and build relationships with other site owners for link building purposes, these roles are now being outsourced to agencies who have built existing relationships with high-quality publishers and blogs. SEO professionals themselves are becoming project managers, coordinating responsibilities, assigning them, and assessing and repairing on-site optimization problems.

An in-house SEO in 2014 is far more likely to be found making decisions, finding contractors and overseeing content strategies and link building, rather than doing it themselves.

7. As competition for online visibility rises across all industries, the demand for SEO services is increasing

With the vast majority of businesses now actively using content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy (some research puts this number as high as 94% for B2B small businesses), the competition for search engine rankings is fiercer than ever.

And because of this increase in competition, SEOs – both in-house and agencies – are being called on to get all this expensive content ranking well in search engines.

Despite the obvious rise in the popularity of content marketing, the 2014 Moz Industry Survey shows that a greater number of marketing professionals are being tasked with SEO (78%) than are responsible for content marketing (49%).

So to those who say that SEO is dead, I would say ‘not by a long shot’. The tasks and roles associated with SEO may have changed and SEO may be steadily integrating with content marketing, but I don’t see SEO going anywhere anytime soon.

We’ve seen many changes this year when it comes to SEO, but one thing is certain: despite the changes, businesses continue to experience its value in terms of building their reputation, increasing their visibility and getting traffic to their site.

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