Preface

I was compelled to write SEO Warrior for many reasons. Every day, thousands of sites are born in the hopes of making it big. Most of them will fail before achieving their goals. Many site owners create their sites blindly, without conducting proper research. Many site owners do not even know what search engine optimization (SEO) is and what its benefits are. Although this approach might work for some sites, it is hardly the case for popular and successful sites. The goal of SEO Warrior is to make you, the website owner, successful!

The topic of SEO is one of my passions. SEO—when considered right from the start—will give you an edge as well as an improved return on your investment. Although nobody can guarantee your site’s rankings, if you do the things I discuss in this book you will greatly increase your site’s chances of doing well in Google. If you follow the same approach, you should also do well in all of the other major search engines.

Everything happens for a reason. In 2001, I was hired as a consultant to work at Tucows.com, which was (and still is) one of the top-tier domain name registrars. It was one of the first to be accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). During my stay at Tucows.com, I had the opportunity to work on the popular OpenSRS domain reseller software, which proved to be the catalyst of what was to come.

Not long after finishing my contract at Tucows.com, I was inspired to create my very own international web hosting company, with offices in North America and Europe. During this time I became interested in search engines and search engine algorithms. This experience provided me the opportunity to work on several hundred sites over the past several years.

I did many things during this time, from managing the business to providing different services including web hosting, web design, SEO, and search engine marketing (SEM). I worked on many different types of sites, including blogs, community sites, news portal sites, small business sites, and big corporate sites. This book represents the knowledge and experience I gained in working on many different websites over the past 15 years of my career.

Who This Book Is For

I wrote SEO Warrior with a diverse audience in mind. This book is aimed at webmasters, web owners, IT professionals, savvy marketers, and anyone interested in the topic of SEO. I cover many tools and concepts, all of which can help bring your site to the next level. This book is different from other SEO books in its breadth and depth of coverage.

Getting to the top of search engine results often requires multiple factors to work in your favor. SEO is not a one-time thing. If you are thinking of creating a new site, read this book before making your move. If you already have a site, you may want to do the same or just skip to your particular area of interest. Accordingly, you can read SEO Warrior from cover to cover or use it as a reference. I recommend going with the first approach and then coming back to the book as you see fit.

How This Book Is Organized

SEO Warrior takes a holistic approach when it comes to SEO. The book comprises 18 chapters. Here is a rundown of what you’ll find in each:

Chapter 1, The Big Picture

Examines the various parts of the SEO landscape, including SEO benefits and challenges. It also stresses the importance of formalizing the entire SEO process in a way that will help you track your SEO progress.

Chapter 2, Search Engine Primer

Provides an overview of the search engine landscape. It covers the most important search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and Bing) while observing some of the lesser-known alternatives. It also examines search engine algorithms, including Google PageRank, as well as search engine bots.

Chapter 3, Website Essentials

Examines domain name and hosting options, custom software design, and third-party software, along with website usability and web accessibility. This chapter provides the most fundamental building blocks for creating your online presence as well as the underlying infrastructure in an SEO sense.

Chapter 4, Internal Ranking Factors, and Chapter 5, External Ranking Factors

Cover the various SEO factors that influence a site’s rankings. Instead of just stating what those factors are, I actually prove them. The proof comes in the form of a Perl script that is available in Appendix A as well as on the book’s companion website, http://www.seowarrior.net.

Chapter 6, Web Stats Monitoring

Examines different web stats monitoring tools, including the most popular ones used by shared hosting providers. It also examines the NCSA Common log format in detail. Understanding what goes into web logs is important for you to gauge your website traffic, no matter what tool you use.

Chapter 7, Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics

Goes into detail regarding these two platforms. Both tools are helpful in SEO. The bottom line is that you will need to use several tools to ensure proper tracking and monitoring.

Chapter 8, Search Engine Traps

Examines the kinds of scenarios that will prevent your site from being crawled. It examines each scenario in detail, with many code examples.

Chapter 9, Robots Exclusion Protocol

Discusses Robots Exclusion Protocol in detail. Coverage includes robots.txt and its associated directives, HTML meta directives, the .htaccess access control method, and the HTTP Header X-Robot-Tag(s). This chapter provides a solid foundation in terms of ensuring proper crawling and indexing of your site.

Chapter 10, Sitemaps

Highlights the benefits of Sitemaps. Google and others encourage site owners to create Sitemaps to help them index their sites. The chapter explores the creation of several different Sitemap types, including plain-text URL listings, HTML, XML, RSS/Atom, video, and mobile Sitemaps.

Chapter 11, Keyword Research

Covers one of the most important activities in SEO: keyword research. The chapter discusses ways to find keywords, a basic strategy and process, and timing and trending factors. It also covers several tools and how you can use them to find keywords.

Chapter 12, Link Building

Goes over the different link-building strategies you should use. Link building is one of the most important activities in SEO. The chapter discusses the topics of link bait, social bookmarking, and many others.

Chapter 13, Competitor Research and Analysis

Examines ways to find, analyze, and track your competitors. It also provides details on many of the tools you can use to perform these tasks properly and efficiently.

Chapter 14, Content Considerations

Covers many details related to website content. It discusses different concepts, including how to become a resource, short-term content, and long-term content. It also covers content duplication and content verticals.

Chapter 15, Social Networking Phenomenon

Discusses the importance of social networking and social media, and how to leverage the different social platforms and communities including Facebook, Twitter, and Digg. It also covers social media strategy and methods for automating social media interactions. You will create a Twitter scheduler application that you can use as part of your Twitter strategy. The chapter also covers the concept of real-time search.

Chapter 16, Search Engine Marketing

Teaches ways to complement and improve your SEO efforts by utilizing SEM methods. Specifically, the chapter covers how to use Google AdWords to forecast SEO results, and it provides an overview of two of the most important Google platforms: Google AdWords and Google AdSense.

Chapter 17, Search Engine Spam

Discusses things you should stay away from to ensure that the search engines do not penalize your site for spam propagation.

Chapter 18, Industry Buzz

Covers three of the most talked about SEO topics as of this writing: Bing, SearchWiki, and the nofollow link attribute. The chapter also discusses the Keyword Dashboard tool, which can help you compare search results in Bing, Google, and Yahoo!.

Tools come and go, but some of the most basic SEO tips will always be applicable. Most of the significant programming scripts mentioned in the book appear in their entirety in Appendix A. Even if you do not have any technical knowledge, you should still benefit from reading this book.

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

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Constant width italic

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Note

This icon signifies a tip, suggestion, or general note.

Warning

This icon indicates a warning or caution.

Using Code Examples

This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, you may use the code in this book in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.

We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “SEO Warrior by John I. Jerkovic. Copyright 2010 John I. Jerkovic, 978-0-596-15707-4.”

If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given here, feel free to contact us at .

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Acknowledgments

SEO Warrior represents roughly two years of work. I would like to thank many people who have assisted me in many ways during this time. First, I would like to thank my wife, Adriana. Without her, this book would not exist. She took care of our three little children (Drazen, Fernando, and Angelina) while providing me with her timeless love and support.

I will always remember my aunt, Blanka Jerkovic, who passed away April 4, 2009 (while I was writing this book). She is one of the people who have made a profound mark on my life in many ways. I am forever grateful to her. I would also like to remember Jasen Drnasin, my fallen friend and real-life warrior, who was one of the most phenomenal people I have ever known.

Furthermore, I would like to thank all of my extended family, including my mother, father, and Jana Lubina. There are also many friends and colleagues (they know who they are) to whom I would like to extend my humble gratitude and a big Thank You for all of their support.

I am also grateful to O’Reilly Media for giving me the opportunity to write this book. I want to take this opportunity to thank the editor, Mike Loukides, for all of his help and support over the past 12 months. I also want to thank the entire O’Reilly production team for their assistance in bringing this book into your hands. This includes Audrey Doyle, copyeditor; Rachel Monaghan, senior production editor; Sarah Schneider, production editor; Lucie Haskins, indexer; Rob Romano, illustrator; Jacque Quann, editorial assistant; and Laurel Ackerman, marketing director.

Furthermore, I would like to thank Soren Ryherd of the Working Planet Marketing Group for taking the time to review the book. I am grateful for your time and all of your comments. I am also grateful to Matt Cutts (of Google.com) for reading SEO Warrior while providing many great comments.

Most importantly, I want to thank each and every reader of SEO Warrior for buying the book in either the electronic or printed version.

Everything good in life requires sacrifice, patience, and hard work. May this book bring you one step closer to all of your online aspirations.

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