Google Is Hiring An Program Manager, Search Engine Optimization

Google is Hiring An Program Manager, Search Engine Optimization, based on a recent job posting on the Google Careers portal.

The Google job listing is for a “Program Manager, Search Engine Optimization.” The description of the job makes it clear that this is about Online marketing:

As a Program Manager for Technical SEO, you will work with cross-functional teams across Marketing, Sales, Product Development, Engineering and more to help drive organic traffic and business growth. You will take part in website development and optimization, help shape blog and social strategy, improve website code hygiene and define web architecture for international websites.

The Technical SEO manager will be required to work with many different departments within Google including marketing, sales, product development and engineering. "You will take part in website development and optimization, help shape blog and social strategy, improve website code hygiene and define web architecture for international websites," the job description reads.

The responsibilities include:

1. Architect, design, develop and maintain innovative, engaging and informative sites for a worldwide audience. 
2. Maintain and develop the web code to ensure quality, content and readability by search engines. 
3. Keep pace with SEO, search engine and internet marketing industry trends and developments and report changes as needed. 
4. Advise, collaborate with, and synthesize feedback from Marketing, Product and Engineering partners to push for technical SEO best practices.

The qualifications include:

1. BA/BS degree in Computer Science, Engineering or equivalent practical experience. 
2. 4 years of experience developing websites and applications with SQL, HTML5, and XML. 
3. 2 years of SEO experience. 
4. Experience with Google App Engine, Google Custom Search, Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics and experience creating and maintaining project schedules using project management systems. 
5. Experience working with back-end SEO elements such as .htaccess, robots.txt, metadata and site speed optimization to optimize website performance. 
6. Experience in quantifying marketing impact and SEO performance and strong understanding of technical SEO (sitemaps, crawl budget, canonicalization, etc.). 
7. Knowledge of one or more of the following: Java, C/C++, or Python. 
8. Excellent problem solving and analytical skills with the ability to dig extensively into metrics and analytics.

For many working at Google is a dream job, and for those search engine optimisation experts who have always fancied a look behind the curtain, this could prove the ideal opportunity to get right to the root of the science of search. Well, that’s probably a given if Google needs help ranking itself in its own search engine.

Fundamentals of Responsive Web Design

Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and an intelligent use of CSS media queries.

Websites need to work across multiple devices, screen sizes, and browsing contexts. Web designs need to be responsive to these variables, providing an optimal viewing experience for each scenario.

This article covers Fundamentals of Responsive Web Design like screen density, fluid grids, and responsive images, as well as actual design strategies that guide you from website mock-up to testing.

Rule of Thumb:

Configure the Viewport: 

A viewport controls how a webpage is displayed on a mobile device. Without a viewport, mobile devices will render the page at a typical desktop screen width, scaled to fit the screen. Setting a viewport gives control over the page's width and scaling on different devices.

Pages optimized to display well on mobile devices should include a meta viewport in the head of the document specifying width=device-width, initial-scale=1.

Designing for multiple screen:

Designing web sites to fit multiple resolution screen size is a very important web design principle.

Most browsers in mobile devices scale down webpages to make them fit the viewport. Since we want to rearrange stuff with CSS3 media queries instead ,we prevent this by using a simple meta tag that tells the browser to use the device width without any scaling. This is the meta tag that goes in the <head>.

You can use Modernizr to add support for CSS3 in older browsers, and at the same time get HTML5 support and other stuff such as feature detection with media queries and conditional resource loading. Or – to only add support for media queries – you can include this script in the <head>.

Media Queries for Standard Devices:

A major component of responsive design is creating the right experience for the right device. With a gazillion different devices on the market, this can be a tall task. We've rounded up media queries that can be used to target designs for many standard and popular devices that is certainly worth a read.

If you're looking for a comprehensive list of media queries, this repository is a good resource.

Use fluid grids:

Grids provide structure to your website, while using relative units can provide fluidity to that structure. Fluid grids are defined using a maximum width for the design; whereas the grid contained therein, is defined using relative widths and/or heights, instead of pixels. This allows the widths and heights to adjust accordingly in relation to the parent container. In other words, as the size of the screen your website is being viewed on gets smaller or larger, your site will adjust accordingly.

Build Responsive forms:

Don’t hide forms on smaller devices anymore. Making a responsive form is essential to meeting mobile user expectations.

Optimizing site performance:

Website visitors expect the same type of experience on their mobile device as they do on their computers.

So now, not only do you have to think about how a website performs in various computer web browsers, you also have to think about optimizing a website for the many types of mobile devices. This is where responsive web design comes into play. Responsive web design (RWD) involves creating a site that adjusts depending on what type of device is doing the viewing. The text can be scaled down, to offer only the main text and images.

It’s important to note, though, that just because a site has responsive web design and looks good on a certain device, it does not necessarily mean that it will load faster. And just because it loads faster on a mobile device, does not mean a visitor or customer will stay on it longer.

Ways to Optimize Your Website

• Get a dedicated server
• Use a CDN
• Compress images and text

Creating flexible HTML Layout:

I've been thinking a lot about screen resolution lately and how the use of fluid width websites is the best way to accommodate all visitors screen resolutions. The alternative, static width websites, have to make a choice. You can optimize for 800px width, the lowest common denominator, and give up the use of several hundred pixels of width for users with larger screens. Or, you can optimize for 1024px and just make your 800px visitors horizontal scroll. Anything wider than 1024px is too much for static width sites, in my opinion.

I think the best possible scenario is to make a fluid width site that accomodates everyone. Here is what I think would be the "Perfect" fluid width layout:

• Works in all major browsers 
• Shrinks to 780px This accommodates users with 800x600 resolution, with no horizontal scroll! 
• Grows to 1260px This accommodates users with 1280x768 resolution and everything in between. 
• This accommodates 90%+ of all internet users. You could easily make this layout grow larger, but be mindful of how line-length affects readability. Nobody wants to read a line of text 1980px long. 
• Sidebars are of "equal height" to the main content 
• Page content is centered for users with even higher resolutions.

Testing responsive design:

There are plenty of responsive design testing tools in the internet, you can try Google's mobile-friendly design testing tool.

On Page SEO Checklist: 17 Ways to Optimize Your Page

If you’re just getting the hang of all the things that go into an optimized webpage, there’s no doubt the list can be overwhelming.

What is on-page SEO?

On-Page SEO refers to the process of making your pages appeal to both search engines and human. It reviews and improves both the public face of your website and the behind the scenes coding and technical set-up that only search engines see.

on-page SEO is the foundation on which your website must be constructed for better search engine ranking.

In this article, I’ll show you an On-Page SEO Checklist and This checklist can help you improve organic traffic, drive leads and improve your position in search engine results?

1. Title Tag

Ensure each page has a unique and descriptive title. A title is the most important on-page SEO element and usually target keywords present in title type helps return relevant pages on search engines.

Advice: Title Tag Should be 55-65 characters including spaces.

2. Description Tag

The description tag should include the most important keywords within 156 characters including spaces.

The description tag is important for your site visitors as they are the summary of the page content that they see on search results. The keywords in meta description used to help websites rank in the earlier days, but not much anymore because of manipulation of this element for SEO, in the past.

Advice: Ensure each page has a unique description.

3. Heading Tags

Unlike title and description, The heading tag is visible on the web page to the human visitors. It is also important from search engine point of view as search engine bots acquire the information about the page from the heading tag, especially h1 tag.

H1 tags are meant for the Headline and therefore, your Title should be wrapped around this tag. However don’t over optimize your page by adding keywords to sub-headings which are H2, H3, and H4.

The purpose of H tags is to tell Google how the content is structured for readability. E.g. Our title describes the topic of this post, followed by sub-headings which further explains and goes into detail about On-Page SEO.

Advice: Place your targeted keyword in the h1 tag.

4. Write High Quality Content

The page content is what makes it worthy of a search engine organic result position. It is what the user came to see and is thus extremely important to the search engines. As such, it is important to create good content. And All the on-page optimization in the world won’t help you if no one finds your content useful.

The content of a page must contain keywords chosen for a particular page. These could be targeted keywords or long tail keywords or synonyms. Just make sure the keyword density is not too high, which means use them only when they make sense to the human reader.

5. SEO-Friendly URLs

Keep the URLs clean and fill them with keywords or words that aptly describe the content. The URLs say a lot about a site’s architecture and often is considered important for SEO as well as usability.

URL structure is important because it helps the search engines to understand relative importance and adds a helpful relevancy metric to the given page. It is also helpful from an anchor text perspective because people are more likely to link with the relevant word or phrase if the keywords are included in the URL.

6. Optimize Images

When you see a picture of a baby crying, you instantly recognize what’s going on in the picture.

The problem is, this instant recognition isn’t possible for search engine spiders at this time. Instead, you must help the spiders understand each of your images with HTML alternative text attribute called alt tags.

What is image alt text?

The short answer is, it’s the text that the search engine uses to understand images.

7. Content Length

Page content length gives search engines ample text to crawl and plenty of keywords and context clues to help them understand what the article is about. For your written posts, 1,500+ words should be the minimum.

Advice: Improve content to match/better content on competitor websites.

8. Internal Linking

Internal Linking help show search engines the validity or relevancy of your content. The same goes for linking internally to other pages on your website. For instance, if you've written about a topic that's mentioned in your blog post on another blog post, ebook, or web page, you should link to that page. That will not only help retain visitors on your website, but also demonstrate the other relevant and authoritative pages to search engines. It

• helps readers find what they’re looking for 
• helps your audience get to know, like, and trust you 
• helps search engines crawl every page on your site 
• helps search engines create an accurate sitemap

9. Site Map:

Every site must have a sitemap. However, even if sites don’t have one, they get indexed by search engines. The presence of a sitemap makes it a tad easier to find and index pages, for the search engines.

Every site should have an HTML sitemap, and every page should link to that sitemap, probably in the footer for your website user.

10. Text Navigation:

Verify there is text navigation, not JavaScript or Flash navigation that spiders can’t see. Make sure you at least have text navigation on the bottom of the page if there aren’t any spiderable navigation links in the top nav.

11. Robots.txt:

It’s important this file exists, even if it’s empty. The Robots.txt file tells the search engine spiders what not to index. Also make sure the file doesn’t accidentally exclude important files, directories or the entire site (this has been known to happen!).

Advice: If you have your robots.txt file, Check it with Google Webmaster Tool Robots.txt Tester. The robots.txt Tester tool shows you whether your robots.txt file blocks Google web crawlers from specific URLs on your site.

12. Loading Speed:

Google has stated on the record that page loading speed is an important SEO ranking signal. You can boost your site speed by using a CDN, compressing images, and switching to faster hosting.

Make sure it doesn’t take more than 4 seconds for your page to load: MunchWeb found that 75% of users wouldn’t re-visit a site that took longer than 4 seconds to load.

Advice: Check Google PageSpeed Insights or use tools like Gmetrix.com to analyze and improve a website’s performance.

13. Use of MultiMedia:

Visuals are a great addition to any Page. The use of multimedia enhances the search engine positioning of a site and add visuals. Engaging images, videos and diagrams can reduce bounce rate and increase time on site: two critical user interaction ranking factors.

14. Use Social Sharing:

You need social media share and like icons on your webpage, especially if you generate content at regular intervals in the form of blogs or press releases.

Although, Social signals not play a direct role in ranking your site. But social shares generate more eyeballs on your content. And the more eyeballs you get, the more likely someone is to link. So don’t be shy about placing social sharing buttons prominently on your site.

Learn How To Manage Your Social Media.

15. Outbound Links:

Outbound links have a small role to play on search ranking and they are totally under your control. This is an easy, white hat SEO strategy to get more traffic. Outbound links to related pages is a relevancy signal that helps Google figure out your page’s topic. It also shows Google that your page is a hub of quality info.

16. Fix Mobile Usability Issues:

Google is invested in providing users a great mobile experience. See how your site is performing on mobile devices with the Mobile Usability Report, located within Search Traffic section of Google Webmaster Tools. This report lets you know if your touch elements are too close, if your content is sized to the viewport, your flash usage, font size and more.

If you want to check your website mobile usability issue , you can use Google’s mobile friendly test tool.

Advice: Learn How to Fix Common Mobile Content and Usability Issues.

17. Use Structured Data Markup:

Giving search engines as much information as possible about your site and the information it offers can only enhance your performance, so it’s become key for pages that want to outrank their competition to use structured data markup (also known as rich snippets) to enhance their search engine listings.

Structured data can have a multitude of benefits, ranging from improved CTR in the SERPs to better SEO performance overall. Here’s what you need to know about adding structured data markup to your site.

Tools for Adding Structured Data:

• Schema Creator by Raven – http://schema-creator.org/ 
• Schema Generator by 51 Blocks – http://www.51blocks.com/tools/schema-generator/
• microDATAgenerator by 630 Marketing – http://www.microdatagenerator.com/

What is your On Page SEO Strategy? Let us know in comments how much time and expertise you provide to on page SEO of your site.

How To Write SEO Friendly Blog Post

I think that your post should focus on what matters to your audience, not search engines. That said, there is no harm in optimizing it for search engines to help it get discovered. In fact, SEO is a great way to get your blog discovered by relevant people without spending your budget.

In this post, I would like to give you some tips on writing blog posts that are both very readable as well as SEO-friendly.

Optimize your Post Title: 

Use Google Keywords Planner to learn what people are searching for online. If there are many people who are searching for the phrase that is included in your title, and the competition for that phrase is low - you have a better chance to rank higher and have many people click into your content.

Optimize your Post Description:

Post Descriptions play a major role in search engine ranking, and description act as sales copy for your blog post. The Description has to be a short text which indicates the main topic of the page. If the meta description contains the search term people use, the exact text will be shown by Google underneath your URL in the search results.

Research long tail keywords:

Find 1-2 long tail keywords and use them a few times inside your content, preferably in the title and the first 100-200 words. Don't force it! Only use the keywords if they naturally fit the test you're writing.

Use SEO Plugin:

Use an SEO plugin, like Yoast for Wordpress, to optimize your content.

The most popular blog SEO tool for WordPress is the WordPress SEO by Yoast. Yoast has a wide variety of SEO tools for blog articles and website pages. The image shows one of the Yoast tabs for a recent blog article. The plugin analyzes the blog article for 18 different SEO factors and rates it while providing a “street light” style ranking of Red – Yellow – Green based on the articles ranking on each SEO factor.

Create Engaging Content:

Make sure your content is engaging - the longer people will spend with your content and the lower your bounce rate will be, the higher search engines are likely to rank your page.

Use and Optimize images:

Your blog posts shouldn't only contain text, you should also have images that help explain your content. But search engines don't just look for images. Rather, they look for images with alt text.

You can figure out an image's alt text by placing your cursor over an image. A small box will pop up that describes your image and, therefore, helps search engines interpret the meaning of the image. As you can see below, the alt text is "related-search." Think of alt text as an interpreter for search engines. Search engines cannot interpret what an image means without the text to explain it.

You can also use Infographics, videos, and slides which might give your reader excellent visual supplements.

Post Length:

Post Length gives search engines ample text to crawl and plenty of keywords and context clues to help them understand what the article is about. For your written posts, 1,500 words should be the minimum.

Keyword Diversity:

Use different text every time you post a link to your content. Google doesn't like duplicates, so make sure that on every forum or article you include a link to your content from, you will use the different text.

Link internally when possible:

Internal links to your content help show search engines the validity or relevancy of your content. The same goes for linking internally to other pages on your website. For instance, if you've written about a topic that's mentioned in your blog post on another blog post, ebook, or web page, you should link to that page. That will not only help retain visitors on your web site, but also demonstrate the other relevant and authoritative pages to search engines.

Internal Linking

• helps readers find what they’re looking for 
• helps your audience get to know, like, and trust you 
• helps search engines crawl every page on your site 
• helps search engines create an accurate sitemap

To find more Internal Linking, you can read more about Internal links and It's importance in SEO?

Link to External Helpful Resources:

Linking out to authoritative, trustworthy websites like Wikipedia, known thought leaders in the field, or any domain ending in .edu or .gov creates a better user experience and shows search engines you truly want to help searchers. They’ll reward you with higher rankings and more traffic.

Use Categories and Tags:

One of the best things about blogs is how organized and interconnected they can be. Taking advantage of that with categories and tags helps both readers and search engines. A few rules of thumb to keep in mind:

• Use keywords for categories and tags where possible. This strengthens the keywords in each post and builds keyword-rich tag and category pages. 
• You should have no more than 12 to 24 categories total. 
• Each post should be in 3 categories or less. 
• Tags should not be the same as categories because it confuses search engines. 
• The sweet spot for tagging blog posts appears to be 5 to 10 tags per post, but you can have as many tags total as you want.

Post Regularly:

Adding actual and functional information to your website will give the search engine the idea that your website is alive. If it’s not an active website, the search engine will crawl it less often and it might become less appealing to the search engine to include the page in the search results.

What other blog writing tips have improved your SEO? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
Read How to promote your blog posts?

Beginner's Guide: Common Mistakes in Content Marketing

There are many mistakes that marketers make with content marketing. They too often equate clicks and traffic and downloads as buying signals, which they can be. But they can also turn into nothing if you haven't attracted your ideal customer with the right motivations.

In my experience, here are the critical mistakes that content marketers makes:

No Content Marketing Strategy:

Content marketing only works if it fulfills actual business goals, whether that’s more customers, a larger email list, or more search engine traffic. What are your business goals for your marketing, and specifically, your content marketing? What’s your strategy to achieve those goals? Is your content marketing following suit?

Not Using an Editorial Calendar:

Do you take a few moments to Google how to come up with topics and wonder just how people keep their ideas together? They make an editorial calendar! Once a person as come up with topics, they can implement them into a calendar for the month, half of the year or the whole year. This can help keep a campaign on track, and make sure you are getting some awesome success from your content.

Duplicate Content Issue:

Duplicate content is a trap many beginners fall into because it is just so easy! You write up some great content, feel that it is perfect, and wham-bam, you have all you need, right? Unfortunately, no. You cannot have duplicate content if you want to rank on search engine. That is one of the biggest no-no’s, yet one of the easiest traps to fall into. Train your brain to say, “Danger, Will Robinson” when you even consider using duplicate content.

Not Using Keyword Research: 

Content marketing and search engine optimization complement each other; each technique should inform the other. Don’t get too far ahead in your content planning (or even write a headline) without pulling out your favorite keyword research tool. Confirm that what you want to create is something people actually want.

This is easier than you’d think. There’s a terrific free plugin to make your keyword research a snap: Try the free version of Inbound Writer. It includes a competitiveness measurement, too, so you can make the most of long-tail keywords.

Know about Your Audience:

You Don’t Know Who Your Audience is or are Writing for One Type of Person. Another mistake beginners make is not knowing who their audience is or only writing for one specific type of person. You need to do audience research to learn about who your clientele and readers will be. In addition, you need to make sure you write to a broader type of person to get the most reach. You will quickly lose readers if you aren’t writing for everyone as best as possible. Don’t worry, this blog will show a few ways to write for a broader audience!

Not Publishing Enough Content:

Another major pitfall for beginners is when it comes to content creation. Sometimes people will create a website and have some decent content, but they don’t publish or create enough. This makes their website stale and can drive people away. On the other side, oversaturation of created content can chase people away just as quickly because it comes across as spam and not genuine. Try to find the perfect middle spot for your business and website.

Not Deliver The Right Mix of Content:

This is a massive mistake that many beginners make. Why are multiple content formats important? Because we all will consume content in different ways when we get on a website or social channel. Some people enjoy infographics whereas others prefer in-depth articles. Others prefer memes and many enjoy seeing photos with their social media posts. Videos, podcasts, photos, blogs, and other formats are vital because they will reach different types of people and broaden your reach.

Copy Editing:

An area many beginners need help in is editing their content. Some people simply write and post without reading it. However, you might be one who goes over your copy over and over to catch mistakes. This is great, but the chances are very high that you will miss something in your proofreading. This is why having a copy editor is vital to all businesses. They can catch the small typos you look over and they are simply another set of professional eyes that can look over your piece to make sure it is the best it possibly can be.

Website Navigation:

Website Navigation is a major part of proper website design and is even important to SEO. However, another major pitfall for the newbie content marketer is not making a website easy to navigate. Create a web page that your clients can easily navigate by following a few simple steps and listening to client feedback. This will help improve the traffic to your site and could be what starts making you some incredible revenue. Know, How to Fix Common Mobile Content and Usability Issues.

Not Using Meta Tags or Writing Them Poorly:

Another mistake that can really hurt your content is not using your meta tags by leaving them blank or using them poorly. When you write these tags, it will help improve your ranking and make it a link people want to click on. Use those tags and use them well!

No Call to Action:

This is yet another way to make sure you execute your strategy. What do you want people to do after they’ve viewed your content? Buy something? Sign up for something? Share something? Decide what you want them to do, and then make it as easy as possible for them to do it.

Not Measuring Your Analytics with Google Analytics:

Analytics are a vital part of content marketing because they can show you want content is successful and what is failing at bringing people in or converting them to leads. A great way to measure your analytics is using Google Analytics, which can help you find out just how well you are ranking. It will also show you the basics that will help you improve your content. Read How To Automate Your Google Analytics Reporting.

Not Using Social Media or Using it Incorrectly:

Many businesses can get themselves set up and follow some basic guidelines for SEO and successful content. However, many of them don’t utilize a great way to get their content out there and bring in new people through social media. It is important to all businesses, brands, and individuals because it can act as a form of networking and will help bring in great clicks for your business. Make sure, when you are using social media, that you follow some basic hacks to get the most out of it! Tips to Manage Your Social Media Efforts.

Not Promoting your Content Enough:

You can’t just build it and expect them to come… even if you invite them via email and Twitter and Facebook. Aim to spend at least (at the very least) a third as much time and money promoting your content as your spent creating it. Read More About How to promote your blog posts?

Avoid these mistakes and you will be ahead of the game. Read a lot, re-read your older stuff, rewrite, ask why, look for assumptions, question, question, question. Good luck! The world seriously could use some better content marketing.