SEO a to Z

Speaker 1 0:02

Hello and welcome to . Seo is not that hard . I'm your host , ed Dawson , the founder of keywordspeopleusecom , the place to find and organize the questions people ask online . I'm an SEO developer , affiliate marketer and entrepreneur . I've been building and monetizing websites for over 20 years and I've bought and sold a few along the way . I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge , hints and tips I've built up over the years .

Speaker 1 0:26

Hello , welcome back to SEO is not that hard , and we're on to part 14 of our SEO A to Z . Today we're going to go from link profile to LSI keywords . So last week we ended on link juice , which is a bit of a contentious term for some people , and LSI keywords is another one . So don't judge me just by having that in the title . We've got to talk about all the all of the keywords , all the items on the SEO A to Z , even the ones that people seem contentious . So anyway , let's get started with link profile . So link profile is another term for backlink profile , which we talked about back in probably part one , no part two of the seo . It said a link profile is just all the accumulated backlinks and links pointing to a web page or a website is known as the link profile . So if people are analyzing , um , all the links that a website or web page has , they'll talk . They'll talk about the link profile that page or site has . So , yeah , it's just a term for a collection of all the links pointing to a resource or a set of resources .

Speaker 1 1:30

Next , we've got link selling . So link selling is the practice of placing outbound followed links on your site to third-party sites in return for payment . So the payment doesn't have to be in cash , but it can also be in kind , such as free products or services . And sometimes websites are created solely for the purpose of selling links . So these are things called private blog networks quite often . Yeah , so someone will set up a website and purely for the purpose of selling links to other people . Often they are , you know , by old domains that have got a previous backlit profile . Go back to Blink profiles we just talked about . They've got their own backlit profile from when they had a previous website on them and then that website's done and gone . People will buy those domain names when they expire and create a new website on them solely for the purpose of selling links to other people .

Speaker 1 2:22

Now , link selling done like this with the purpose of selling links to other people . Now , link selling done like this with the purpose of manipulating search rankings , google consider this to be spam and therefore against their terms of service . So you know , link selling can be considered a black hat technique . So if google decide that you are selling links from your website , then they are going to penalize your website . You know they might penalize you just by removing you from the links altogether , by rankings you might have .

Speaker 1 2:46

I mean people who've created sites just for the sole purpose of selling links like this . When those sites gets burned , they don't care , they're just creating you on start selling links again . If you are a genuine site with a genuine purpose you've created a website for for a genuine purpose . That's , um , something that someone say comes along and says to you hey , can I buy a link on your website , and you go oh yeah , I'll sell you a link . And someone else comes oh yeah , I'll sell you a link and you start doing it on the side . You risk burning a genuine site which has another real purpose . So that's why I think you should be very careful for choosing to sell links on a site that you own for another purpose because , yeah , you just don't want to get your site burnt down if you sell links , but if you want to , your choice . But just appreciate those risks .

Speaker 1 3:35

Next up we've got link spam . So link spam is the use of links to try to manipulate Google search rankings . So what Google would define as a spam link is not universally agreed on , but Google may see any link as link spam if it was placed with the aim of increasing rankings . Link spam might also include any mass use of any service or website that allows users to generate and place their own links , such as directories , forums , blog comments , whether paid or not . So this sort of goes in with link selling , link buying , all these things . If you are , if you are manipulating links in a way to try and manipulate uh rankings , then google can consider this as link spam . Um , but I say yeah , the most um sort of traditional ones are things like blog comments spam , forum spam , directory spam , just creating links anywhere you can , especially if it's automated . Uh yeah , link spam bad as far as google is concerned . So lots of people used it back in the day , including myself . We got penalized for it , so don't do any more . Make your own choices .

Speaker 1 4:36

Next we've got llm , or large language model . So a large language model , or an llm , is a system that's trained on a large language model , or an LLM is a system that's trained on a large collection of data , usually crawled from the web or other open sources such as free books . Llms are parts of AI systems that can take and understand human input requests and then return a generated response based on repeatedly predicting the next word to respond with . Now , the output from LLM can look very impressive at first glance . However , at the time that we're recording this , they still have the tendency to elucidate facts , so any ai response needs to be fact checked . So , like um , an obvious llm that most people have heard of will be chat gpt . That's the most famous large language model at the moment . There are others like google , gemini , um , so I'm sure you're if you've been hiding under a rock , you will know what an llm is .

Speaker 1 5:28

Now . Obviously , the use of llms for creating content for your website looks appealing to start with , but just be really , really careful if you do this . Google's clearly not very happy with the idea of having their index filled with um lots of automatically generated content , especially with the fact that the moment there are drawbacks in terms of the limitations that these elements have in terms of hallucinating facts . We've seen loads of examples of those , so just be careful if you're using them . And we're LLM , large language model . That's what stands for .

Speaker 1 6:00

Next , we've got local business schema . So Local business schema is a structured data schema for local businesses that Google can understand and incorporate into the search results page . So this is where you put this information on your website , following the schema markup protocol for local business schema , and Google can machine read that . It can understand what you're telling it and it can then help incorporate that into its search results page . So if you've got a local business , it's worth investigating this and get it on your site so that Google can get the facts right about you .

Speaker 1 6:33

Next , we've got local map pack . So the local map pack sometimes this is just abbreviated to the local pack is a search feature that can trigger when Google determines that your intent is to find local businesses or locations , and the map pack includes relevant local business listings , such as restaurants if you're searching for restaurants in an area and a map with the location pins dropped . So you're obviously um . You'll have seen this come up many times when you , if you use google , you want to make sure if you are a local business with a local area that you get included in the local map pack . You want to do things like looking into the Google business profile to get all those details in , and we just spoke about the local business schema . That's another ideal way of getting you in these local map packs if you are a relevant business for these kind of queries .

Local SEO and Keyword Strategies

Speaker 1 7:25

Next , we've got local SEO . Now . Local SEO this is the SEO where it's a strategy around about getting the most visibility possible in local search features in Google , such as a local map pack , which I spoke about , when your business has a physical location it serves or serves from . So it's like a niche area of SEO and some people specialize just purely in local SEO and making sure that people appear for those local searches if they are local type businesses . So it's likely just like a niche area , like a subset of SEO . So if you see people talk about local SEO , they're just talking about specific SEO tactics and strategies for local businesses .

Speaker 1 8:06

Next we have Log File Analyzer . So a Log File Analyzer is a software tool that allows you to upload your raw server log files from your web server and gain insights , such as how often search engines and other bots are interacting with your site , how to find broken links and redirect chains . So , if you're not aware , basically the servers that serve your websites , they log every single interaction they get from any kind of service that's requesting pages or resources from that web server . So this will actually record interactions from things that won't show up in many analytics packages . Most analytics packages will really only concentrate on real users using them , whereas you'll find there's all sorts of other services that come along and will try and read from your website , including Google , googlebot , bingbot , bots from other search engines , bots from SEO tools , bots from all sorts of places that come along , and you can find information in that log file that you can't find in analytics , especially things like redirect chains .

Speaker 1 9:12

Now , a redirect chain is where , if you redirect a page from an old page to a new page , you might then redirect that new page to another page and you end up with redirects following redirects , following redirects , and after so many redirects , google will say we're not following this anymore . I think it might be seven , it's either three or seven . I should have checked this before I recorded . But after a certain number , google will say we're not following this anymore and you don't want long redirect trains because it slows people down and eventually Google won't pass link equity through it . So a log file analyzer will help you spot things like that . It'll help you find broken links , where , if a website's linking into your website and to a page that no longer exists , you might not know that that's happening , whereas a log file analyzer software will be able to see that being flagged by the web server software in its logs . So useful things there , especially if you've got a big old site .

Speaker 1 10:03

Next up , we've got long tail . Now the long tail is a term that describes keyword phrases that are low volume . Now these are attractive to build content for as they tend to be low competition . So they give you a good chance to start ranking new content , especially for new sites . Now they're called long tail because if you look at a graph of keywords to search volume , it shows a very long tail of keywords with low search volume . Somewhere in the region of 80% of all search queries can be considered long tail . So the vast majority of people's searches are in the long tail . So there's a lot that you can do there , especially if you're a new site .

Speaker 1 10:40

Targeting the long tail is a really good tactic because there's so much less competition there . You start targeting head terms like credit cards , where you know there's lots of search volume . On the term credit card , you've got a lot of competition because the site's been ranking there for a long time huge sites , lots of link equity , lots of authority . It's going to be really hard to rank for the term credit card . But if you go into the long tail and do something very specific around credit cards for art students studying in a particular university , then you you know you've got much more chance of ranking on that . Okay , you're going to get less traffic , but you're going to start ranking and you need to start ranking to start building your website up . So the long tail is where to start for most people .

Speaker 1 11:25

Okay , and finally we get to the contentious one lsi keywords . So lsi stands for latent semantic indexing , which , if we look at the history of it , this was a patent that was filed by Bell Laboratories , which expired in 2008 . It was created this was filed in the 1980s , before sort of the World Wide Web , the internet as we know it by Bell Laboratories , and it was all about how words are semantically related to each other . So , for example , chilies and India are semantically related to the word curry , because chilies are in curry . India is where the sort of the country most associated with curries .

Speaker 1 12:05

Now , google have always said they don't use latent semantic indexing , and that's probably true because it was under patent till 2008 . So if they'd used latent semantic indexing , as described in the patent , then they would have been violating that patent . That's not to say they don't use the concept of semantics , which they do . So the concept of semantics is that , you know , content is not just keyword phrase specific , but it covers a topic with natural language and topical relevance . So this means that Google can work with synonyms rather than relying on exact keyword matches when choosing which pages to rank for a query . So the long and the short of it is , if you hear someone talk about LSI keywords , they're probably really talking about semantic keywords and semantic SEO , which is valid , but they're just using a term that that kind of got picked up several years ago from a patent that Google doesn't actually use . But Google does use similar concepts , especially since hummingbird came out in 2013 . But we'll talk more about semantic keywords and semantic seo when we get to the s's in the a to z . So that's it for today .

Speaker 1 13:17

Um , hope you found it useful . If there's any l's that you think we're missing from um this episode , or if there's any terms from any other episodes , do get in touch . We'll get them added . We'll do a clear up episode at the end with all the ones we've missed and , yeah , look forward to see you next time . Before I go , I just want to let you know that if you'd like a personal demo of our tools at keywords people use that , you can book a free , no obligation , one-on-one video call with me where I'll show you how we can help you level up your content by finding and answering the questions your audience actually have . You can also ask me any SEO questions you have . You just need to go to keywordspeopleusecom slash demo where you can pick a time and date that suits you for us to catch up . Once again , that's keywordspeopleusecom slash demo and you can also find that link in the show notes of today's episode . Hope to chat with you soon .

Speaker 1 14:08

Thanks for being a listener . I really appreciate it . Please subscribe and share . It really helps . Seo is not that hard . It's brought to you by KeywordsPeopleUsecom , the place to find and organize the questions people ask online . See why thousands of people use us every day . Try it today for free at KeywordsPeopleUsecom To get an instant hit of more SEO tips . Then find the link to download a free copy of my 101 quick SEO tips in the show notes of today's episode . If you want to get in touch , have any questions , I'd love to hear from you . I'm at channel5 on Twitter . You can email me at podcast at keywords people use dot com . Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard .