I run a home furnishing industry portal, not do SEO research. When I started building a website, I had never heard of SEO at all, but in more than four years of website operation, I have heard too much about the rights and wrongs of SEO. Today I will talk about some of my understanding of SEO based on my own experience. If anything is wrong, you are welcome to correct me. Communication is important.
Some people say that SEO is magical, and its effect is infinitely magnified; some people say that SEO is a thing of the past (I often see people write that it is a thing of the past, although the meaning is clear, but it seems particularly awkward. Tomorrow: refers to after the Double Ninth Festival), as if now It is no longer good for anything; some people say that SEO is an attitude, which makes people feel like they are in the clouds.
The home decoration website run by the author has been ranking very well in almost all search engines such as Baidu. Many friends have asked me how it is done. I said, I don’t know either. Friends may think that I am too stingy and unwilling to tell him the techniques in between. Actually, I am telling the truth. I really don’t know why it ranks so well. If I have to find a reason, I would conclude that the website has been in development for a long time, updates faster than others, and has more links. Content is king and links are king. Who has to understand these truths? To be honest, I am not good at content and external links, so I think these reasons are difficult to hold.
1. Let’s talk about the content first. Everyone knows that original content is the best. The author is not talented and cannot write original articles in this industry, so he has to be pseudo-original. In fact, we are not good at pseudo-original creation. I once heard someone say that if more than 80% of the content of other people's articles is the same, search engines will consider it plagiarized and will not include it. Recently, I saw on the Internet that if more than 70% of the content is similar, Google will not include it, and will not include it. Ranking. The articles on our website all come from the Internet. Some articles have been reprocessed and slightly modified. Most articles just change the title, and sometimes they are even lazy and not changed at all. But one thing is that the articles we are looking for are all related to the website and have been read carefully by ourselves, so that they appear to be of practical value to real users.
Let’s talk about the speed and quantity of updates. Some people say that it needs to be updated regularly. How long is the period? Some people say that it needs to be updated every day. I also wish I could update it every day, but I can't. There are two reasons. First, there are many new articles on the Internet on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but there are few other times, so it is difficult to find them; second, there are holidays on weekends and holidays (you need to know more about one piece when making a website), so the articles on our website It usually only updates in two or three days. We are now building a national industry website. Although there are a large number of updates every day outside of holidays, it would be good to update a certain sub-site every week. As for the number of updates, we have no specific standards. If we find good articles, we will update them more. If there are no articles, we will not update them. On average, a home improvement website in a provincial capital city can update five or six articles a week. Some people may think it is lacking. I have observed the websites of several of my competitors and our website still has the latest and most industry information. Websites that make money are rarely shared, so we need to observe them carefully.
2. Let’s talk about external links. Of course, the more quantity and the higher the quality, the better, but it is very difficult in actual operation. In the past, the main criterion for changing external links was the PR value. However, the PR value has not been significantly updated since early April last year. Although there were two small adjustments in the middle, the PR value of most websites has not changed much. Google tells us not to pay too much attention to PR, but many people still stare at PR, so PR value is still an important criterion for link replacement. But when the PR of our website is not high, it is difficult to switch to a link with a higher PR than ours. Someone on the Internet recently said that if two websites with the same weight exchange links, the effects will cancel each other out. I disagree, but my website has also encountered an embarrassing problem recently when changing links. Even if some websites have a higher PR than ours and offer to exchange with us, we cannot agree. It would be a pity to refuse. The reason is that we have many criteria for changing links, especially the homepage. In addition to PR value, Alexa ranking, website relevance, quantity and quality of the other party's external links, web page snapshots, number of included, update speed, design quality, plus some Other indicators are comprehensively considered. Although the PR value of some websites is higher than ours, other indicators are far from our requirements.
As I write this, some people may think that our standards for changing links are too strict. The friendly links on our homepage are indeed a bit strict. I wonder if the friendly links on the homepage of a large website are not strict. The homepage is a rare resource for a website, so it must be cherished. The same goes for replacing friendly links. It is better to have less than to overuse it. Of course, for websites with low weight, it is very difficult to replace high-quality links, so we should lower our posture appropriately. Attitude as a person is very important, and the same goes for building a website. If you communicate with others sincerely and proactively, you can also get many good links. If it is a new site, it is also a good choice to exchange the inner pages and sub-sites of other websites first.
Some people spend money to buy friendly links, but I have never done so, so I don’t know how effective they are. Forums, blogs, Weibo, soft articles, etc. can also add external links. Although the effect of these external links is not too high, the more the better. I have tried this before, and it worked before. I could just leave a link on Baidu Tieba, and it can still bring traffic to this day. It’s too difficult now, and many places don’t allow you to leave links.
Some people say that friendly links should be increased continuously at a constant speed, but I think it is impossible. It is not difficult to add one a day. Adding one every day is an impossible task, at least it cannot be completed by me and my team. Look at the most successful websites among peers, they only have a few external links, and that is accumulated over many years. Our standard for changing external links is to change them when we encounter good ones.
3. To do a good job in SEO, I personally think that the website itself is more important than content and external links. I heard many people say that it is easy to build a website but difficult to make money. I personally feel that it is not easy to build a good website. The reason why many people think it is easy to build a website is because there are more and more intelligent website building tools. Many websites are built using CMS, or they spend some money to find a website building company, or even buy the program directly from a hacker. However, The author believes that successful websites are rarely built using CMS, and it is even less likely to be handed over to a website building company. If someone else's program is used, the possibility of success is even slimmer. Our website, from planning, design, programming, to final launch, is all completed by our own team. We will consider SEO, practicality, interactivity, security and execution efficiency in every aspect. Although our development capabilities are limited and some places are not perfect, our website must be unique in the world. A website is like your own child, and you will take better care of it if you give birth to it.
Website construction should comply with W3C standards as much as possible, but it is too difficult to fully comply with W3C standards. Last year, Baidu released the "Search Engine Optimization" guide. I read it carefully and found most of the content before. I think there are not many websites that can fully meet its requirements, at least we can't. Not being able to do it doesn’t mean not doing it, try your best.
If the website itself meets the SEO requirements, then more than half of the SEO work will be completed the day the website goes online. Of course, the website cannot be perfect from the perspective of SEO or usage at the beginning. We will continue to revise and improve it in the future. I found that many large websites often have many functional problems. No one is perfect, let alone a website.
The above says a lot, but in other words, I think the standard of SEO is to be slightly better than your opponents. Observe your competitors carefully, learn from them, and make the content, external links, and website itself a little bit better than your competitors as much as possible, and we will succeed. Opponents are both enemies and friends, and they are a mirror for us as we move forward. The quality of our SEO depends on the level of our opponents' SEO.
Here’s my understanding of some of the most common SEO issues:
1. The impact of website revision and revision on SEO. Try not to revise your website frequently. Frequent revisions are a sign of immaturity. But when you need to revise the version, do it boldly and think more from the user's perspective. Last year, I completely revised a website. The programming language, database, and structure were all changed. No original content was retained, because the domain name was not changed, and the internal page path was not 301 directed. However, the ranking and traffic of the revised website were not affected in any way. Practice has proved that when the website weight is relatively high, the ranking of the website will not drop after the revision, but will rise.
2. The impact of changing the website title on SEO. Some people say that frequently changing titles will affect website rankings. There is no standard for how long it usually takes. If you feel that the previous title is not suitable, you should change it as soon as possible. Even if it has an impact, it will still be restored in the future. Change it early and restore it early. Don't keep changing it back and forth. At the same time, I personally believe that the title should contain the main keywords as much as possible and should not be too long. 29 words is appropriate. If it is exceeded, the search results will not be displayed and it is useless. It doesn’t matter whether you write more keywords or less. The description should be more standardized, preferably within 70 words, which is very helpful for users to judge the content of the website.
3. The impact of paid promotion on SEO. Although Baidu, which makes us "envy, envy and hate", has a lot of manual intervention, Baidu serves too many websites. Most of the time (I am not 100% sure, but I have not encountered it), it will not be because of our promotion or We did not do anything to interfere with our natural ranking, especially after it was exposed by CCTV the year before last.
4. There are many factors for keyword ranking, and there are some phenomena that we cannot explain (old webmaster, you know). I have consulted with the person responsible for this at Baidu, but to no avail. Don't be too obsessed with the ranking of certain keywords, focus on website operation, maybe there will be a bright future.
Finally, share your own feelings:
1. There are no shortcuts to SEO; 2. SEO cannot be done once and for all; 3. SEO is not a panacea. 4. After leaving Baidu, our website is still alive and well, and we are really successful.
Postscript: This is the first time for the author to post an article under the name Plantain. I will often write under the name Plantain in the future. My QQ: 372518441, welcome to communicate. Tell me everything you know, and tell me everything you know.
Thanks to Plantain for your contribution