by feiyi

How knowledgeable are you about search engine optimization? Rand wants to know.

Since hes often disappointed with the level of knowledge of practicing SEOs, Rand decided to post 10 questions you should know before offering paid seo services. You should definitely know nearly all of these if you plan to charge for optimization, though these 10 questions are certainly not the end all and be all of seo. Rand promised to post his answers sometime in the next day or two, but here are mine.
The Questions
1. What four search engines comprise 90%+ of all general (non site-specific) web search traffic?
2. Explain the concept - the long tail of search.
3. Name the three most important elements in the head section of an HTML document that are employed by search engines.
4. How do search engines treat content inside an IFrame?
5. What resource and query can you use to determine which pages link to any page on SEOmoz.org and contain the words monkey and turnip?
6. What action does Google threaten against websites that sell links without the use of nofollow?
7. What is the difference between local link popularity and global link popularity?
8. Why is Alexa an inaccurate way to estimate the traffic to a given website?
9. Name four types of queries for which Google provides instant answers or onebox results ahead of the standard web results.
10. Describe why a flat site architecture is typically more advantageous for search engine rankings than a deep site architecture.
My Answers

Nothing like putting myself to the test. Hopefully my answers will measure up to Rands answers, but well have to wait a day or two to know.

1. What four search engines comprise 90%+ of all general (non site-specific) web search traffic?

Cool, a simple question to start
* Google
* Yahoo!
* MSN (Live Search)
* Ask
2. Explain the concept - the long tail of search.

The long tail of search refers to the idea that most queries are either unique or searched infrequently. Restated the most common searches make up a small percentage of the overall queries typed each month. The long tail impacts search marketing in that long tail phrases will have less competition and are thus comparatively easier to rank for and that long tail phrases tend to be more targeted in nature.

Since I wrote a post about the long tail of search way back when Ill direct you there for more information and a nifty image.

3. Name the three most important elements in the head section of an HTML document that are employed by search engines.

How about four things. I hope Im not overlooking something obvious here.
* Title tag - easily the most important words youll add to a page
* Meta description - perhaps some minor ranking benefit, but mainly important for improving click through when it appears as the snippet below your link in search results
* Meta robots - for those times when you dont want a page to be indexed or the links on that page to be followed
* The absence of css and javascript - These should be moved to external files
4. How do search engines treat content inside an IFrame?

Content in an iframe will get indexed, but on the URL where that content sits. Its not seen as part of the page that contains the iframe. This is one of the reasons frames in general may not be a good idea.

5. What resource and query can you use to determine which pages link to any page on SEOmoz.org and contain the words monkey and turnip?

Yahoo! and the search would be:

monkey turnip linkdomain:www.seomoz.org

At google you cant combine the link: operator with other advanced operators. This should theoretically work at MSN, but doesnt. It works at Ask, but there are not as many results as at Yahoo!

6. What action does Google threaten against websites that sell links without the use of nofollow?

At best the links will simply be ignored, but more likely the site will lose trust and the ability to pass or flow PageRank and anchor text. Adding nofollow would mean only that link would lose the ability to pass PageRank. So if Google decides you are selling links without the nofollow they may decide to assume that all your links are doing the same. Losing that ability would likely affect both internal and external links. I suppose in some cases Google could decide to penalize a site, but I think there would need to be something else going on.

The issue over paid links and Googles reaction isnt popular with many SEOs. Ive had mixed opinions on the matter, though I suspect it would bother me more if I were more involved with link buying and selling.

7. What is the difference between local link popularity and global link popularity?

Local link popularity is link popularity from topical communities (sites/pages that are topically related to yours). Global link popularity is the total link popularity including links from both topically related and non-related sites/pages.

8. Why is Alexa an inaccurate way to estimate the traffic to a given website?

Alexa sampling is not random. It skews heavily toward webmaster and seo related sites since those sites will attract traffic from from the types of people more likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed. Because the sampling is far from random the traffic estimates are usually inaccurate. Accuracy probably improves for more popular sites, but I wouldnt trust any of the numbers.

You can make use of Alexa data by discovering trends in the reported traffic for a given site or by comparing sites in the same industry. Still the numbers should not be trusted and even the comparisons may not be accurate.

9. Name four types of queries for which Google provides instant answers or onebox results ahead of the standard web results.
* News
* Weather
* Local
* Movies
Heres a nice list I found for what triggers OneBox results if you want to see more.

10. Describe why a flat site architecture is typically more advantageous for search engine rankings than a deep site architecture.

A flat site architecture is more easily crawled enabling more pages of a site to be indexed sooner. A flat architecture also reduces click distance (the number of clicks it takes to get to a page from the home page) and the lower the click distance the more importance is given to a page.
* Ranking Search Results by File Type and by Click Distance
* Click Distance Matters
* SEO and Click Distance
11. BONUS (Answer this one and Ill be very impressed): Name twelve unique metrics search engines are suspected to consider when weighting links and how each affects rankings positively or negatively.
1. Authority of the linking site - The greater the authority of the linking site the better the link.
2. Topical relationship between the sites - The more topically related the sites the better the link.
3. Topical relationship between the pages - The more topically related the pages the better the link.
4. Anchor text of the link - Pages will rank better for the anchor text used to link to them unless the same anchor text is used in too large a percentage of links to the page.
5. One way link or reciprocal - Reciprocal links call into question the reason for the links. One way links are generally preferred, but its ok to trade links within reason.
6. Text surrounding the link - similar as anchor text, but probably less important than the actual anchor text.
7. Age of the link - The longer the link has been in place the more weight it gets.
8. Age of the linking page - The older the linking page the better, though this may have more to do with the age of the link itself.
9. Rate of links acquired - Too many links to a page or site too fast could set off warning flags.
10. Number links on the linking page - The less external links on the page the better.
11. Location of link on the page - In context links are best.
12. PageRank of the link page - Lets face it, its in there. PR does seem to affect how deeply and frequently a site gets crawled. It also seems to go into the determination of a page being in the main index or the supplemental index. PR is of course a Google only metric, but the other engines have their own version.
Im not entirely certain if all of the above come into play and some are given much more weight than others. The situation is also different at different search engines. Google for example places the most emphasis on trust and authority than any of the engines. Search engines will likely look at more when determining what is and isnt a quality link.

You can find more search engine ranking factors at SEOmoz. There are a few more about links that I didnt mention above, but I didnt want to look until I had my list.

Those are my answers and hopefully they pass the Rand test. Rands answers should be available in a day or two and Ill update this post with a link to them and a comparison to see how well my answers stand up.

How do you think I did? Did I miss anything or do you have more to add?

Update: Rand posted his answers and it looks like I did quite well with mine. I guess Im ok to charge for seo services after all. Danny Sullivan sent Rand a few more questions, which Rand lists at the bottom of the post. They look a little more challenging and if I get a moment Ill give it a go at answering them.

Apparently the questions were well received, though Lisa Barone wondered are we setting the bar too low for SEOs? Lisa may be right as these 10 questions arent all that hard.

If you want more challenging questions Mozzer Scott is now working on advanced test that will be available in a few weeks. I think it will be an interesting way to gauge your seo knowledge and I wonder if this may be the beginning of an SEOmoz seo certificate in the wings. How about it Rand, any thoughts on SEOmoz certification?

here is some suggestions from google, Remember to follow it!

1, Give visitors the information they’re looking for
Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site. In creating a helpful, information-rich site, write pages that clearly and accurately describe your topic. Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include those words on your site.

2, Make sure that other sites link to yours
Links help our crawlers find your site and can give your site greater visibility in our search results. When returning results for a search, Google combines PageRank (our view of a page’s importance) with sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google counts the number of votes a page receives as part of its PageRank assessment, interpreting a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

Keep in mind that our algorithms can distinguish natural links from unnatural links. Natural links to your site develop as part of the dynamic nature of the web when other sites find your content valuable and think it would be helpful for their visitors. Unnatural links to your site are placed there specifically to make your site look more popular to search engines. Some of these types of links (such as link schemes and doorway pages) are covered in our webmaster guidelines.

Only natural links are useful for the indexing and ranking of your site.

3,  Make your site easily accessible
Build your site with a logical link structure. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

Use a text browser, such as Lynx, to examine your site. Most spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Macromedia Flash keep you from seeing your entire site in a text browser, then spiders may have trouble crawling it.

Consider creating static copies of dynamic pages. Although the Google index includes dynamic pages, they comprise a small portion of our index. If you suspect that your dynamically generated pages (such as URLs containing question marks) are causing problems for our crawler, you might create static copies of these pages. If you create static copies, don’t forget to add your dynamic pages to your robots.txt file to prevent us from treating them as duplicates.

4, Things to Avoid

Don’t fill your page with lists of keywords, attempt to “cloak” pages, or put up “crawler only” pages. If your site contains pages, links, or text that you don’t intend visitors to see, Google considers those links and pages deceptive and may ignore your site.

Don’t feel obligated to purchase a search engine optimization service. Some companies claim to “guarantee” high ranking for your site in Google’s search results. While legitimate consulting firms can improve your site’s flow and content, others employ deceptive tactics in an attempt to fool search engines. Be careful; if your domain is affiliated with one of these deceptive services, it could be banned from our index.

Don’t use images to display important names, content, or links. Our crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in graphics. Use ALT attributes if the main content and keywords on your page can’t be formatted in regular HTML.

Don’t create multiple copies of a page under different URLs. Many sites offer text-only or printer-friendly versions of pages that contain the same content as the corresponding graphic-rich pages. To ensure that your preferred page is included in our search results, you’ll need to block duplicates from our spiders using a robots.txt file. For information about using a robots.txt file, please visit our information on blocking Googlebot.

Here is “bloggingads” say:

Well, we are serious. We are looking for bloggers to post one-time ads on their blog sites for money. Blogging Ads is an easy way for you to earn money by doing nothing more than you already do - post to your blog. We pay through Paypal. You must have a Paypal account to be paid.

This will be the easiest way ever to make money blogging. We will supply the advertisers, the text and the money, all you have to do is post the ad on your blog. If you want to write the post yourself, you can. We reserve the right to approve the blog posting, but we are also appreciative of the effort and staying true to your blog. Fill out the form below to get started today!

Note: Your blog must be in cached in Google’s database. If your blog has no PageRank and a high Alexa ranking, it will probably not be approved. Check to see if your blog is cached by typing this in Google: cache:http://sitename.com/ (insert your blog address for “sitename.com”). If your search did not find any documents your blog is not cached.

How to get Your Blog Cached by Google?

Below we have some suggestions on getting your blog cached.

Registering your domain on the Internet is no longer enough. It can’t hurt to do it once and here is the place to do it. You can submit it to Google by completing the Add URL Form at www.google.com/addurl.html.

After you do this it is critical to acquire links to your blog. Submit your blog to directories and submit meaningful posts on other blogs and add a link to your blog. After that, when Google’s robots or spiders crawl the web, they should find your site within a month. It is wise to submit your blog to quality directories.

You can also visit http://www.avivadirectory.com/strongest-directories/ and look for all the free submission directories.

You can read more about Google’s suggestions for getting your blog cached.