This document discusses the history and evolution of search engine optimization (SEO) from 1991 to the present. It describes how SEO techniques have changed over time from early keyword stuffing approaches to a modern focus on quality content, user experience signals like dwell time, and structured data. The document also provides an overview of the top factors that search engines like Google consider in ranking websites, including on-page elements, backlinks, and user interaction metrics. Finally, it introduces several tools that can be used to audit a website's SEO performance and benchmark it against competitors.

1. Secrets of Search Engine Rankings
by
David Carollo

2. Me
• 10+ years of experience with brands (from
startups to MNCs) and agencies in Europe and
Asia.
• Appointed as one of the Italian Digital
Champions in 2015
• Founder of weBranding Digital Marketing
Boutique, a multi-channel digital marketing and
communication agency located in Milan.
• Author of “Societing, Multicanalità e Startup
Innovative: il caso ITSME” (2016), and many
articles on Web 2.0, Social Media and Digital
Marketing
• Senior Digital Marketing & Influencer Manager
for A DrBrand Pte Ltd
• Board of Directors (Marketing) for the Italian
Association of Singapore.

3. SEO (by Wikipedia)
• Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of
increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by
increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to
users of a web search engine.
• SEO refers to the improvement of unpaid results (known as
"natural" or "organic" results) and excludes direct traffic/
visitors and the purchase of paid placement.
• SEO may target different kinds of searches, including
image search, video search, academic search, news
search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

4. What are Keyword Rankings
• Keyword ranking positions are simple to understand. Basically, what
rankings measure is where your site shows up on the search page for
any given keyword.
• Say you have a website for your coffee shop, and you want people to
be able to find your website when they look for coffee shops in your
area. The good news is, you see your website at #4 on the Google
results page when you search for “coffee shops Kochi” – yay! But
when you search “restaurants Kochi” or “cafes Kerala”, you don’t see
your site on the results page until you click into the 5th “O” in
“Gooooooogle.”
• This means that your site is ranking #4 on Google for the term “coffee
shops Kochi”, and, because each search results page includes 10
search results, it is ranking 50-something for “cafes Kerala.”

5. History of Search Engines

7. Evolution of SEO from 1991
to 2000 – Keyword Era
• In 1991, the first website was
launched by Tim Berners – Lee.
• As the high number of websites
launched daily on web, web
directories like excite came into
existence to store the data in an
organized way.
• Directories helped people to find
niche related websites and soon
search Yahoo, Altavista and Google
were launched in 1994, 1995 and
1997 respectively to change the
scenario of how to keep and utilize
the data of websites.

8. Evolution of SEO from 1991
to 2000 – Keyword Era
• As search engines gain popularity
and started providing results on
search queries.
• A new technique came into
existence named Search Engine
Optimization or simply SEO. Some
intellects first started their research
on how the search engine works.
• And then curated the techniques
that will help a website to rank high
on the net.

9. Evolution of SEO from 1991
to 2000 – Keyword Era
• The first techniques that
attracted these intellects were
keyword stuffing and excessive
tagging.
• You cannot call these
techniques as black hat until
this era. But soon a few people
started spamming the web
world with these techniques
and then the new era came on
the web.

10. Evolution of SEO: 2001 to
2010 – Backlink Era
• Now, in this era, spams were
detected by search engine
giants. The concept of relevancy
was renewed. A new and
improvised set guideline for
indexing were introduced.
• Features like Google’s Universal
Search started to offer more
engaging content in search
results. Search can be filtered as
per user interest like news,
images, videos and other. A large
portion of users was impressed
and engaged with the new
harmonized search result.

11. Evolution of SEO: 2001 to
2010 – Backlink Era
• But spamming as usual again
a part of this era too. Keyword
stuffing and excessive
tagging were lowered, but not
ended.
• A new technique came into
existence “backlinks”. SEO
practitioners started spammy
link building technique. No
matter where but they want
links. This again became a
serious issue to think about.

12. Evolution of SEO: 2011 to
2017 – Content Era
• The new era of search arrived with a
slogan “Only Quality Content is King”.
After this Google took spamming very
strictly and started penalizing
websites. Straight and strict guidelines
were set. A new announcement in-
house was to earn ranking only on the
user relevant content.
• The only goal of search engines now
is to provide user-relevant and
engaging results. A new technique of
niche related guest blogging started.
People started blogging on relevant
platforms to get a quality backlink for
their website.

13. Evolution of SEO: 2011 to
2017 – Content Era
• Great value content, user
intended resources increases
possibility for higher ranking.
• A new era of regular Google
updates began. Penguin, Panda,
Hummingbird was introduced to
remove spam from the web.
Currently, according to sources,
Google use to update its search
algorithm 600 times a year. 600
time means around 50 minor
updates a month.

14. Evolution of SEO: 2017 to
2019 – User Experience era
• User experience signals were HUGE these
last few years. And we can expect them to
be even more important in 2020.
• In fact, Google previously announced that
RankBrain was their third most important
ranking factor ever: “In the few months it
has been deployed, RankBrain has
become the third-most important signal
contributing to the result of a search
query.”
• RankBrain is a machine learning system
that helps Google sort their search results.
That might sound complicated, but it isn’t.
RankBrain simply measures how users
interact with the search results...and ranks
them accordingly.

15. Google RankBrain

16. Google RankBrain

17. Google RankBrain

18. Google RankBrain

19. Google RankBrain

20. Google RankBrain
Basically, RankBrain focuses on
two things:
• How long someone spends on
your page (Dwell Time)
• The percentage of people that
click on your result (Click Through
Rate)
But, of course, the ranking of our
website is not based ONLY on this
So, how?

21. The approach to Modern
SEO?

22. Google Ranking’s Factors
(200+)
• Domain Factors
• Page Level Factors
• Site Level Factors
• Backlink Factors
• User Interaction Factors
• Brand Signals
• On-site webspam Factors
• Off-page webspam Factors

23. Domain Factors
• Domain Age
• Keyword appears in top level domain
• Keyword as first word in domain
• Keyword in subdomain name
• Domain registration Length
• Domain History
• Exact Match Domain
• Country TLD extension
• …

24. Domain Age

25. Domain Age

26. Domain registration length

27. Page-Level Factors
• Keyword in Title Tag or Description Tag
• Title Tag starts with Keyword
• Keyword appears in H1, H2 or H3 tag
• Content Length
• Keyword Density
• Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords
• Page loading speed
• Image optimisation
• Content updates
• Multimedia

28. Page-Level Factors
• Keyword prominence
• Outbound link Quality
• Outbound link theme
• Number of Outbound Links
• Number of Internal links pointing to page
• Broken Links
• URL Length
• Keyword in URL
• Bullets and Numbered Lists
• User Friendly Layout
• Page Age
• …

29. Tag Title and Tag
Description

30. Keywords in Title Tag

31. URL Lenght

32. Image Optimization
Preparing images for use in your article
• Choose the right file name
• Choose the right format
• Scale for image SEO
• Use responsive images
• Reduce file size
Adding the image to your article
• Captions
• alt text and title text
• Add image structured data
• OpenGraph and Twitter Cards
• Alignment

33. Keyword in H1, H2, H3

34. Keyword in H1, H2, H3

35. Content Length

36. User Friendly Layout

37. Multimedia

38. Too Many Outbound Links

39. Site-Level Factors
• Mobile Optimized
• Site Architecture
• Presence of Sitemap
• Content Provides Value & Unique Insights
• SSL Certificate / HTTPS
• Site Updates
• Number of Pages
• Site uptime
• Duplicate Meta Tags/Descriptions
• Terms of Service and Privacy Pages
• Breadcrumb Navigation
• Site Usability
• User Reviews / Site Reputation
• Use of Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools
• …

40. SSL / HTTPS

41. Breadcrumb Navigation

42. Duplicate meta tags/
descriptions

43. Backlink Factors
• Linking Domain Age
• Authority of Linking Domain
• Links for .edu or .gov domains
• Alt Tag (for Image links)
• Links from Competitors
• Follow/No Follow links
• Words around the link
• Country TLD of Referring Domain
• Link location on Page
• schema.org usage
• …

44. Number of Referring domains

45. Link location in content

46. schema.org usage

47. Words around the link

48. User Interaction
• Rank Brain
• Bounce Rate
• Dwell Time (Time on Site)
• Pogosticking
• Direct Traffic
• Repeat Traffic
• Bookmarks
• Organic Click Through Rate for a Keyword
• Number of comments
• …

49. Brand Signals
• Branded Searches
• Brand + Keyword Searches
• Site Has Facebook Page and Likes
• Site has Twitter Profile with Followers
• Official Linkedin Company Page
• Known Authorship
• Legitimacy of Social Media Accounts
• Brand Mentions on Top Stories
• Unlinked Brand Mentions
• …

50. On-site webspam Factors
• Site Over-Optimisation
• Links to Bad Neighbourhoods
• Redirects
• Popups or “Distracting Ads”
• Doorway Pages
• Ads Above the Fold
• Affiliate Sites
• Excess PageRank Sculpting
• IP Address Flagged as Spam
• …

51. Off-site webspam Factors
• Links From Articles and Press Releases
• Unnatural Influx of Links
• Links From Unrelated Websites
• Links from the Same Class C IP
• Selling Links
• …

52. To Summarize
• Mobile usability
• Dwell time
• Organic click-through-rate
• Content quality
• On-page SEO
• Referring domains
• Domain authority
• Total number of backlinks

53. 26 Most Important Google Ranking
Factors for 1500+ experts

54. SEO Needs by MOZ

55. SEO in 2020?
• Mobile and Voice Search
• Semantic Search, Intent Optimization and Content
Diversification
• Structured Data

56. Mobile and Voice Search

57. Mobile and Voice Search
The biggest change to SEO next year is going to be
the growth of voice search. Consider these statistics:
• 31% of smartphone users worldwide use voice
technology at least once a week
• 50% of all online searches will be voice-based by
2020
• 55% of U.S. households will have a smart speaker
by 2022

58. Mobile and Voice Search

60. Semantic Search and Intent Optimization
Google moved away from exact-matching keyword
optimization years ago, yet our industry is somewhat slow to
keep up.
These days, Google doesn’t use the actual string of words
that are being typed in the search box. Instead, it looks at
the query context and analyzes the possible search intent to
deliver results.
You can see this all around the SERPs and even in Google
Suggest results. With knowledge graph, quick answers, and
interactive and visual results, Google is building an ultimate
resource that can give comprehensive answers to any query.

63. Structured Data
Structured Data helps search engines better
understand your content.
Adding structured data to your news, blog, and
sports article page can enhance your appearance
in Google Search results.
Enhanced features can include placement in the
Top stories carousel, host carousel, Visual stories,
and rich result features such as headline text and
larger-than-thumbnail images.

64. Structured Data

65. Structured Data

66. Structured Data
This year has been huge for semantic data, with Google
updating their initial guidelines and adding support for new
types of structured data, including FAQPage, fact-check,
and more. It is clear that Google is very interested in
extracting more data from your pages and giving publishers
more exposure in exchange.
The Ahrefs study has established that featured snippets can
steal over 30% of the click-through rates from the top result.
So for the keywords that perform for you well, you might
actually be able to get ahead, secure the snippet for you
and benefit from it.

67. Structured Data

68. SEO in 2020?
We need to stop focusing on organic listings and
start optimizing for all the other search elements,
including videos, images and “quick-answer”
sections (“People Also Ask” and featured
snippets).
We need to take each individual search result page
as a whole to achieve brand visibility there.

69. SEO Audit
A successful SEO audit can be broken down into 4
core areas:
• Technical
• On-Page
• Off-Page
• Competitor Analysis

70. A 15-Step SEO Audit Checklist
for 2019 To Boost Your Rankings
• Determine how SEO fits into your overall marketing strategy
• Crawl your website
• Find indexing errors & technical problems
• Remove low-quality content
• Using Robots.txt and Robots Meta Tags to resolve technical issues
• Identify speed & mobile page issues
• Find structured data errors
• Test your meta descriptions

71. A 15-Step SEO Audit Checklist
for 2019 To Boost Your Rankings
• Analyze your organic traffic
• Learn from your competition
• Improve your content & on-page SEO
• Optimizing your internal links for rank boosts
• Optimizing your crawl budget with your site structure
• Improving your backlink strategy
• Tracking your results

72. And now…
…how to know how good is the SEO of my
website?

73. Tools
Google has launched a tool that
measures many aspects of a
website, including how well it
follows SEO best practices.
Web.dev is designed to help
developers and site owners
apply modern web capabilities
by providing analysis and
recommendations.
Google says this tool is the
culmination of 10+ years
learning about user needs.

74. web.dev

75. web.dev

76. web.dev

77. Readability

78. Readability

79. Tools

80. Screaming Frog

81. Screaming Frog

82. Tools

83. Google Trends

84. Google Trends

85. Tools

86. Google Keyword Planner

87. Tools

88. LSIGraph

89. Tools

90. Moz

91. Moz

92. Tools
Google Search
Console tools and
reports help you
measure your site's
Search traffic and
performance, fix
issues and make
your site shine in
Google Search
results

93. Google Search Console

94. Tools

95. jpeg.io

96. Tools

97. SEMrush

98. SEMrush

99. Before the end
Some suggestions…

100. Thank you for your attention!
David Carollo
+65 9775 5756
david.carollo@italianassociation.com