Advanced On Page SEO Techniques + Tools

[Rysk100]

I read Bill Slawski's work on patents etc but i'm looking for advice/input on actionable advanced on-page / content SEO

I write 'advanced' solely as a means to distinguish this SEO, from SEO that lays the foundations of a page/site i.e. meta tags, basic technical SEO - I'm referring to concepts such as TF*IDF, Word Vectors etc

Which specific concepts do we think Google is using?
In which context are they being used?
How can we practically apply them (beyond writing 'awesome content' or checking the structure of SERP results?
Are there any specific advanced on-page tools (I looked at Ryte for TF*IDF)

[martinibuster]

Strunk and White's The Elements of Style.
Read it.
Understand it.
Internalize it.

Best way to understand how to create focused search friendly writing.

American poet Dorothy Parker once proclaimed:
If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style.

The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style [en.wikipedia.org]

Good luck!
;)

Roger Montti

[justpassing]

:)

[Rysk100]

Not exactly what I was looking for but thanks anyway

[martinibuster]

Poorly focused and sloppily organized content is losing SERP positions with every Google update.

That's why you see so many top ten lists in Google. They are more focused than the competition.

While it may appear that my suggestion is snarky, it's not. Reading that book is one of the single most important thing a person can do to help their rankings.

With few exceptions, no amount of links or tools can save you from a lack of focused content.

[topr8]

>>Are there any specific advanced on-page tools

although many people are in the business of selling or promoting tools for various things, my own view is that it has been impossible to reverse engineer a search engine since the alta vista days ... therefore all tools are based on hypothesis not fact.

i'd never heard of the book martinibuster mentioned, however i bought it and read it through in the bath a couple of nights ago ... it was an interesting read, i'd second that it is certainly worth the price.

[Shepherd]

however i bought it and read it

Got the book last week. Good book to have on the shelf. You're quite the influencer MB ;)

[broccoli]

I believe they calculate keyword density and there is a sharp drop off if you are too much higher than the serp average.

Search for Link Assistant WebSite Auditor

There is a free option, it will analyse your TF*IDF and compare it to others in the serp.

There are other tools too, I don’t know much about them yet.

Some people say latent semantic indexing is also a thing but I haven’t seen objective evidence of it.

The most useful SEO material I’ve found is on YouTube. Look past the slick guru guys for the home made livestream types.

[martinibuster]

I believe they calculate keyword density and there is a sharp drop off if you are too much higher than the serp average.

That does not make sense. :)

You are saying that Google calculates a keyword density based on the SERPs? What came first, the keyword density percentage or the SERPs?

Do you understand the problem with your statement? :)

I don't believe Google is using keyword density. Google IS analyzing content for meaning. And that analysis very likely may result in SERPs that leave a certain footprint that gives the appearance of keyword density.

The key in my opinion, even in demonstrations of software that appears to crack the algo, is focusing on answering the question, with focus.

[iamlost]

If you build a site around what tools recommend you are at least 5 to 10 years behind and also constrained by the tools limitations. On top of that you are producing cookie cutter output the same as the rest of the lemmings also slavishly following the tools.

I agree with martinibuster's recommendation, not so much for the specific book, although I've also recommended it since forever, but for the implied wisdom of acquiring knowledge and capability that frees one from needing the typical 'SEO' tool sets at all; or at least sufficient for targeted knowledgeable/competent use.

IMO tool driven SEO (as opposed to analytics/data driven) primarily/only benefits the tool producers. So many webdevs are such loverly marks.

[broccoli]

I should be more exact with my language: they use term frequency - inverse document frequency.

[iamlost]

The standard disclaimer in these types of conversations is that no one has more than the vaguest clue what makes up a SE's algo inputs and absolutely no idea of their weightings or connections. Algo chasing is so last decade. And it was mostly a failure even then.


TF-IDF (term frequency–inverse document frequency) have been been factors in information retrieveal since the 50's and 70's respectively. In varying forms it has been an 'SEO' tool for just about as long as there have been such critters.
Is it a valuable tool?
Yes, no, maybe.

Yes:
As a webdev check of content relevance against requirements (ya, right!) or as a component of a summarisation algo.

No:
See my prior post on the value (or lack thereof) of SEO tools. Once upon a time it had a brief shelf life in the algo chasers arsenal; as currently (and as for past many years) touted, no.

Maybe:
Depending upon your requirements and purpose, knowledge and experience.