Last week, we featured an infographic about off-page SEO. It showed that while classic on-page SEO techniques (like keeping content relevant and crawlable with titles, tags and other meta descriptions) are necessary to rank well in organic search, it is just as important to improve search engine rankings with quality backlinks, and increasing instances of co-occurrences and co-citations.
This week, we’re staying on topic with another detailed guide to SEO. This time, SEO Optimizers are helping us understand something called search operators.
What are search operators?
Search operators are used to refine searches. In effect, these operators make searching the Internet more precise by asking the search engine to only display certain information. With search operators, you can ask the search engine to return results from a specific site, or any site that has a specific keyword in a URL, or in anchor text on a link, or in the title of the page.
But search operators are also useful in a business setting, as this infographic sets out to explain. It begins as a lesson in how to be a more advanced Google Search user, but it also shows how companies can do in-depth research into their web presence, as well as their competition’s. Search operators are a great way to save time for research when looking for industry experts, and they also can be used to locate potential partners for link building opportunities like guest posting on industry specific websites. As we noted in last week’s Ecommerce Eye Candy, link building is crucial to improving off-page SEO.
Just remember that the way to improve your ranking on the search engine results page (SERP) is to share quality content, not just engage in link schemes. The difference is that the former helps you become a more authoritative site and improves your search engine ranking, while the latter marks you as a black hat operative and draws the ire and condemnation of Google.
What is your strategy for off-site SEO?
Tell us in the comment section!
