Google's Matt Cutts' tips on SEO

Google software engineer Matt Cutts has summed up a site review session he did at the recent PubCon in Las Vegas.
In reviewing a few sites, he gives some insight into what site mistakes a webmaster should avoid, and gives some tips on improving a site’s search engine visibility.
Duplicate contentSome of the people whose sites were reviewed had a number of different domains, and the overlapping content and pages from the various sites can cause problems:

“We discussed the difficulty of adding value to feeds when you’re running lots of sites. One thing to do is to find ways to incorporate user feedback (forums, reviews, etc.).”
“The wrong thing to do is to try to add a few extra sentences or to scramble a few words or bullet points trying to avoid duplicate content detection. If I can spot duplicate content in a minute with a search, Google has time to do more in-depth duplicate detection in its index.”

Organising contentOne of the sites Matt looked at contained hundreds of articles going back to 1996, and included a very messy sitemap page listing all the articles.

“So how should a webmaster make a sitemap on their site when they have hundreds of articles? My advice would be to break the sitemap up on your pages. Instead of hundreds of links all on one page, you could organize your articles chronologically (each year could be a page), alphabetically, or by topic.”

Having mulitple domains Some of the site’s owners had many different domains registered:

“My quick take is that if you’re running 50 or 100 domains yourself, you’re fundamentally different than the chiropractor with his one site: with that many domains, each domain doesn’t always get as much loving attention, and that can really show."
"Ask yourself how many domains you have, and if it’s so many that lots of domains end up a bit cookie-cutter-like.”

Reciprocal links
Matt spotted a few instances of sites swapping reciprocal links as a quick method of increase link popularity.

“When I saw that in the backlinks, I tried to communicate that 1) it was immediately obvious to me, and therefore our algorithms can do a pretty good job of spotting excessive reciprocal links, and 2) in the instances that I looked at, the reciprocal links weren’t doing any good."
"I urged folks to spend more time looking for ways to make a compelling site that attract viral buzz or word of mouth. Compelling sites that are well-marketed attract editorially chosen links, which tend to help a site more.”

Working words: How to write for SEO

I often fill these pages with rants about what not to do when writing copy for search engine optimisation (SEO) and for a web audience.
However, it struck me recently that I have not spent much time exploring best practice in SEO copywriting and how to ensure your content is as fit for purpose as possible.
I am going to remedy that today. Please comment if you have any questions or additions.
Spiders
Spiders are the crawlers sent out by search engines such as Google to trawl through the web, recording details and information about the pages they visit.
What they find determines how well you rank for the words and terms within your site. So, what can you do to help?
1) Choose your keywords and phrases and stay conscious of them to ensure they appear whenever naturally possible within the website's text.
2) Spiders pay more attention to bold and italic words, so when you use such formatting, try to make sure it is a keyword or phrase.
3) They read left to right, so place your keywords as early as possible in the text.
4) Spiders consider headlines and sub headings to be particularly important, so make sure they are as relevant as possible and, if natural and readable, contain your keywords.
Humans
I am often amazed at how many people forget the real purpose of SEO. The motive is not to get to the top of the search engine results pages, not really. That is like saying the purpose of cooking is to heat meat, rather than eat it.
The idea is to gain greater visibility and traffic. That means all content on a page must be interesting to people. People, not search engines.
So, make your copy fun, interesting, relevant, grammatical. Everything a real person looks for when browsing the web. Also, try these tips:
1) Alliteration is good. Humans like alliterative phrasing and looking out for such opportunities allows the writer to concentrate on creating elegant copy rather than just functional words.
2) Use short sentences. The online reader is lazy. To help them read the page more easily, keep sentences short and try to limit paragraphs to just two or three lines.
3) Keep a sense of humour. Unless your pages cover genocide throughout history, there will be opportunities to make the odd joke. Seize these. The more personality you have on your site, the better.
4) Call to action. Your copy does not just exist for the reader to read, you are trying to secure business. While your content should not be one endless pitch, do not be afraid to include a call to action somewhere in it.
Linking out
There is a lot of confusion out there over links. Most people are happy with the basics: inbound links good, farmed links bad and so on, but some people worry that linking out from your content could devalue your site.
I believe there are three important points here.
1) If you are a human reading a website, outbound links to sources provide credibility and relevant further information. That makes you happy and gives you a positive impression of the page.
2) Should a search engine spider be looking at your content, outbound links to relevant pages are no problem, it will only get suspicious if you are linking out all the time and to irrelevant places.
This will devalue your site's importance to the search engines and, of course, too many links can make you look very suspicious.
3) If you want to link to a new pages, make sure a new window opens up. The last thing you want to be doing is directing people away from your site.
Linking in
Inbound links are brilliant; the more the better, particularly if you can receive them from high authority pages.
However, the main way to secure these links is to create impressive content that real people will want to link to.
This means good copywriting can result in good SEO. Rubbish and repetitive content may be cheaper or easier but it will not provide the long-term benefits you need.
Quality is everything
If you can't write, don't. If you can, then make sure you take the time to really hone your copy and make it as good as it can be.
Each time a company commits words to its pages, it is presenting itself to a potentially huge audience.
This might be the page that scores hugely in Digg or Sphinn and carries your firm's name around the world. Or, it might be that just one person sees it but he or she carries enormous buying power.
Make your words impress the search engines and the online community. Make your words work.

Tips on optimising your blog for SEO and readers

Jennifer Slegg at Search Engine Land has some useful tips on optimising your blog, for the benefit of both your readers and the search engines.
Jennifer presents some tips for increasing your visibility on search engines, others, including tips on fonts and descriptive titles, to make your blog more accessible and easy to read.
Here is a small selection of tips:
Make sure you have RSS available:

“Many hosted blogging solutions don’t have RSS automatically available, so you will need to add it. And when you do add it, ensure you have those RSS links in an obvious spot. Place all those handy subscribe links in your sidebar, which is exactly where people will look for them.”

Post regularly:

”The more frequently you post, the more likely Googlebot and other bots will stop by on a more regular basis. Google loves updated fresh sites, so it make sense to feed the bot what it wants.”

Watch out for Trackback & Comment Spam:

”You don’t want Google or Yahoo to find masses of spammy links on your site. Use one of the many tools on the market for your blog platform to manage both comment and trackback spam.”

Be Aware of Your Anchor Text:

”When you link to someone’s blog entry, or even a previous blog entry on your own site, make sure you link well. This means instead of linking to someone’s blog entry with the anchor text “click here”, you link to them using anchor text related to the blog entry.”

Tips on internal linking strategy

Internal linking is an important and often overlooked element of SEO and, unlike external links, the site owner has complete control over this, so it's crucial to make the most of it.
Scott Allen of Search Engine Guide has written a useful article on internal linking strategies. Here are a couple of his tips, alongside some from our SEO Best Practice Guide...
Link within your content
Scott advises webmasters to go through their site's content and work out where it would make sense to link to other pages which you want to rank better.
Make sure that the anchor text matches the keywords and phrases that you want the pages to rank well for. Scott also advises that these target keywords should appear on the destination page, as this will make the linking more effective.
Link from stronger pages
Some webpages may be more popular in the search rankings and receive more links than the rest of your website. You can strengthen these weaker pages by including some contextual links to them from the stronger pages.
Some additional tips from E-consultancy's SEO Guide...
Links from footers
This approach can also help with usability, as it is effectively a mini site map on every page. It also allows you to include some lengthy to be included.
For example, E-consultancy ranks well in Google for keyphrases such as 'web project management' and 'online surveys & research', both of which are included in the footer.
Sitemaps
Spending time on an effective sitemap is not only effective for SEO, but also has usability benefits.

• Always have a sitemap with text links, not images.
  
  
• Make sure your anchor text reflects user behaviour and keyphrase analysis, so include not just product names, but also the most popular keywords for that page.

Links from e-newsletters and blogs
Articles in newsletters and blogs are another source of internal links and, as they are often hosted on separate or sub-domains, they may provide additional value.
Include relevant anchor text in the links back to the main site, not just the title of the article.

50 SEO tips for online retailers

SEO for online retailers is the process of improving a website potential in order to gain more organic non-paid traffic from the major search engines. Normally, SEO uplift doesn't happen overnight and it can take a long while to rank well for non brand key terms. 

The rule of thumb is this: the more competition a relative term has, the harder you'll find it to rank for the term. With that said, you've got to start somewhere and there at least 50 ways I can think of to improve your SEO.  
Choose your hosting provider carefully
1. If you're targeting one specific region, say the UK, ensure that the physical IP address is country specific which will improve the likelihood of ranking in the UK
2. Always opt for a fixed IP address even if it costs slightly more
3. Run an IP address search to ensure the IP address hasn't been black listed before. Domain Tools are an excellent source for quick IP address lookup
4. Ensure the server returns accurate response:

• 200 OK The request has succeeded - As an example you should see this server response for your homepage (www.sitename.com)
• 301 Moved Permanently - As an example you should see this server response for your non www version of your homepage (sitename.com)
• 302 Found - Use this server response only if you are redirecting temporary
• 404 Not Found - Always display a correct 404 response so you can get an indication when a page is broken for better user experience

Increase crawl rates because you can never get enough of Google
5. To check when your site was last crawled and indexed, search for site:sitename.com and play with “date range” advanced search options
6. Update the site's content as often as possible. For online retailers, new promotions and offers offer a fantastic opportunity to update their content
7. Ensure pages are loading quickly by analyzing your code, content and images. Web Page Analyzer is an excellent source to analyze a page load time
8. Fix duplicate content issue such as having two versions of your homepage, for example www.sitename.com and www.sitename.com/index.php
9. Add an XML site map and submit it to the major search engines

Ensure image optimisation across the site to enjoy traffic from Google image search
9. Keep images on a folder level rather than a subdomain so sitename.com/images/ is better than images.sitename.com
10. Use a descriptive name for the image, such as the product name
11. Use alt text for all your images and use a descriptive name again for the image alt text name
12. Use caption by placing a small description directly under, on top or on the side of your image
13. When possible save the image as jpg format
14. Use a free tool such as xenu to find images with no alt text

Ensure metadata optimisation to get high level of qualified traffic
15. Ensure that every page has unique metadata in terms of page title and page description
16. Limited page title to 70 characters and page description to 150 characters
17. Don't bother too much about keywords, do something else
18. Optimise each page around one key term
19. Place the most important term first, followed by a soft (non spammy) call to action and brand
20. For product pages, opt for an auto generate metadata solution based on <product title> + <call to action> at <site name>
21. Use AdWords ads to test the best text for better CTR by creating a few ad variation in AdWords which include your key term

Content is truly king
22. Every page should have unique content which reads well for users (and therefore for the search engine spiders as well)
23. Don't repeat the key term more than 3 times so to avoid keyword stuffing
24. Place the key term in the page H1 title, image alt text and once in bold
25. Use "recommended products" to link between similar products to increase their relevancy

Apply essential URL and coding tweaks
26. Use robot.txt to block parts of the site you don't wish the engines to index
27. Offer an HTML site map which is auto updated based on the XML site map
28. For sites running on PHP use an .htaccess file to avoid content duplication
29. Use breadcrumbs navigation across the site for better user experience and SEO
30. From time to time, view your site using a text browser such as SEO Browser to "see" how spiders are likely to find your on page content
31. If your site architecture has more than three levels, restructure it so to m ake the information more accessible to both users and spiders
32. Keep URLs short for better SEO and to create a better viral effect as short URLs are more memorable
33. Include your key term such as a product title in the URL

Apply essential maintenance from time to time
34. Fix all your 404 errors and consider redirecting to a more appropriate page
35. When products are removed from stock or discontinued ensure that a 301 is placed to the main category or to a similar product
36. When linking to another site, consider checking whether you're linking to a bad neighborhood using a free tool such as text link checker
37. If you have multiple domains unify around one domain using a 301 redirect taking into account links pointing to each domain, domain age and the domain name

The Google PageRank issue
38. Don't pay too much attention to Google PR as it won't effect your ranking
39. If you want to control page rank, use a nofollow HTML attribute on pages such as "terms and conditions", "privacy policy" etc

Content is king, so start blogging
40. Place your blog on a directory level so www.sitename.com/blog/ rather than a sub domain blog.sitename.com
41. Blogging at least once a week will help increase your crawl rate
42. Read The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For Your Blog

Get more links, otherwise no one will see you
43. If you're considering directories as part if your link acquisition, focus on quality reviewed directories such as Yahoo and Best of the Web
44. Don't pay for links, you'll get caught at some point
45. Help your customers help you by placing on each page an easy way to share content using a sharing tool such as AddToAny
46. Ask for links take 1 - place a nice soft request in your website sale confirmation email to link back to your site
47. Ask for links take 2 - ask your suppliers and contractors for a link
48. Give blogger prior notice of new products and ask for a review
49. Offer great products at competitive prices and the links will come organically
50. Kick off a social media strategy to encourage discussion (and links) on social networks and other user-powered sites

5 SEO techniques for website images

One of the most overlooked aspects of SEO is images. Most websites have lots of images but few actually apply SEO techniques to them.
Not implementing SEO techniques with your images could mean that you're missing out on valuable traffic from Google Image Search, which is one of Google's most popular properties. Here are 5 SEO tips that can help you capitalize on all of the searches that are being done for images.
Use Descriptive Image Names and Folder Names
If you're using image names like 00103.jpg on your website, you can't expect search engines to easily identify what the image might contain.
Use descriptive image names instead. If your website contains an image of a red iPod Nano, for instance, the image name red-apple-ipod.jpg is better. If you really want to get sophisticated, you can build a folder structure that includes relevant keywords as well (i.e. /products/apple/iPods/red-iPod-nano.jpg).
Unfortunately, a lot of content management systems and ecommerce platforms automatically give uploaded images useless names (and place them into folders with useless names) so you may need to modify your software to achieve better naming and folder structures. But if you have lots of images, doing so may be a worthwhile investment.
Use Descriptive Alt Tags
Another way you can give search engines clues about what's contained in your images is to use descriptive alt tags.
The more descriptive, the better, within reason, of course. You don’t want to be too generic, but at the same time you don’t want your alt tags to contain a Tolstoy novel. For instance, instead of using 'Ford Mustang' as your alt tag, 'This blue 1965 Ford Mustang won best of show' is better.
On my websites, I've noticed that Google Image Search seems to like sentence-form descriptions better and while I won't say that I have enough data to call this observation 100% accurate, it seems logical, as text in sentence-form is likely to contain more descriptive keywords and probably gives search engines a clue that you're not spamming.
On that note, a reminder: do not under any circumstances use keyword stuffing in your alt tags.
Use Descriptive Anchor Text
As with alt text, if you're linking to your images using text, use good anchor text that describes the contents of the image. Most of the time, this probably means that anchor text contains some of the same keywords you've used in the image name and alt text.
Use Larger Images
I've read several reports suggesting that Google Image Search prefers images that are on the larger side. While I have no first-hand evidence of this, it's important to remember that SEO isn't truly effective unless users click on your listings.
Since it does make sense that if someone is searching for an image, he'll probably be more inclined to click on a larger image with higher quality than a smaller image with lower quality, using a larger image seems to be a good approach where available and appropriate.
Focus on the Page
As with all SEO, context is everything. It's not just about naming your image files right, using good alt text, etc. It's about making sure that the pages your images are located on are tasty to search engines too.
When your pages themselves are well-optimized, the implementation of these image SEO tips will be icing on the cake.

25 SEO tips to create trust with the search engines

There's no two ways about this, Google and the other search engines have their favourites. I'm sure you've seen it all before, either working for your client or evaluating your competition. There are a number of sites in every niche, whatever content they publish they rank well whether or not the content is optimised, has any inbound links and without really trying too hard. 

You, on the other hand might have worked hard to rank for that content, have got some great natural links, lots of buzz but you've got little to show for it. What you don't know is that these websites have managed to reach a high trust level with the search engines which helps their content rank highly.
Building trust with the engines takes time (and patience) here are 25 essential SEO tips that will help:
1. Update your whois records and ensure there's a visible record of the person or company which owns the domain, address, telephone number and email address.

2. Although this might raise some eyebrows, I've had better results with top level domains so consider .com, .org, .net etc domain tlds (even if .tel domain does look cool).

3. The domain age is very important to Google, so when starting a new online business consider purchasing an exciting domain rather than registering a new domain. Sedo is a great place to start your search.

4. If the domain has more than 2 words, don't use hyphens in the URL otherwise it might look spammy so www.PremiumBlueWidgets.com is better than www.Premium-Blue-Widgets.com.

5. Google is assuming that if you've started your online business you're here to stay for the long run, therefore whether you're purchasing a new domain or renewing a domain, go for a longer renewal period of 2 plus years.

6. Get a fixed clean IP address and stick with it for the long run.

7. Verify your site with Google Webmaster central to learn about issues on your site which might affect your trust such as spyware infestation.

8. Place your contact details including phone number, address and even pictures of your office clearly on the site.

9. Have a visible privacy policy and terms or conditions when applicable and add them to your site maps.

10. Don't over-optimise your site because it could be an indication of some artificial work going on.

11. Don't repeatedly cross link between other sites you own as it might be a sign of trying to 'game the engines'.

12. Don't update existing content too often as it might be seen as a sign of manipulation.

13. Don't use doorway pages , it frustrates both the users and the engines.

14. Your links should come organically and the acceleration of link popularity should reflect that, so 1000 backlinks to a new site in one day is a bad sign.

15. Backlinks should include unoptimized anchor text as well as optimised text for example the-websol.blogspot.com rather than conversion rate optimisation because that's how most people link naturally.

16. When linking to you, the referring pages should have as little out going links as possible.
    
17. Keep your pages below 100K to ensure they're easily crawled.

18. Use Google's XML site map generator to create a site map and keep it updated whenever you add or remove pages.

19. Analyze your robot.txt file to ensure you're not blocking certain parts to your site. SEO Book has an excellent tool to analyze your robot.txt file.

20. Build on your great content to create natural links and avoid paid links so counting on social bookmark links.

21. Your content should have very low bounce rate as higher bounce rate is an indication of less relevant content.

22. A link from the three major human edited directories dmoz , Yahoo Directory and Best of The Web helps.

23. Limit your dofollow links to 100 (you might get away with 200), though this is very hard to maintain simply because the nature of the web is sharing.

24. For new domains, limit your dofollow links to trusted sites within your industry for the first 6 months.
25. Google likes fresh new content and even rewards using its fresh content algorithm so the more fresh unique content the better.

SEO tips for product pages

The SEO benefits of product pages can often be overlooked, with many just offering basic product details, photos and a brief description.
So how can you make the most of them from a search marketing perspective?
Here are some suggestions...

• Unique product descriptions
  Avoid simply reproducing the manufacturer’s product description as several other sites will probably be using it already. It may be easier but will not help you move up the rankings as search engines will mark it down as duplicate content.
  
  A unique product description should not only help your conversion rate, it should also allow you to attract more search traffic.
  
  In addition, a slightly lengthier product page will enable you to use more of your most important keywords and phrases. This could improve your rankings for a range of terms.
  
  
• Use keywords in URLs
  Many online retailers, especially those with large product ranges, use dynamic databases, which can produce some ugly, lengthy URLs which bear no relation to the product.
  
  Adding related keywords to your product page URLs will help them rank more highly in search engines, as well as making them more understandable.
  
  
• Use customer product reviews
  Customer reviews can not only help persuade shoppers to make purchases, they can also be very useful for SEO.

Why You Should Never Duplicate Your Competitor's SEO Strategies

Engaging in competitive research before and during your SEO, PPC, Social Media, and Link Building campaigns is smart business. As they say, "information is power."
But, too much information can also cause a handicap. It's not too difficult to be so inundated with info. that you get information overload or conflicting advice. That leads to decision paralysis. You don't know the right course of action to take, or you can wind up using good information to make bad judgment calls.
Some time ago, I was working on a client's keyword research and received the following email:

We decided to optimize our website only for keywords that bring up our competitors when searched. So, what I have to do is to take every keyword that is in your research and to run a search on Google to see if our competitors are there. You'll hear back from me early next week.

I have no doubt that if this client's competitor jumped off a bridge, the client would follow. This is a great example of taking information you have and making a bad decision with it.
Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be ranked for the same keywords your competitors are ranked for. But, this cannot be your sole optimization campaign strategy.
Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's Restaurant, once said he wanted to place a Wendy's across the street from every McDonald's in America. A smart strategy. It follows the same basic principles as to why car dealerships all congregate together: Customers looking for one may be swayed when the see more available options.
But, here is what Dave Thomas knew about McDonald's that I guarantee most people don't know about their own competition: McDonald's does a significant amount of research before building a new store in a new location. Thomas realized that McDonald's only enters markets where they are confident their restaurants will thrive. As Dave saw it, what was lucrative for Ronald would also be profitable for Wendy!

How SEO Smart Is Your Competition?

Before you follow your competitor off that cliff, are you sure each of your competitors have performed the right research on all their keywords? Do you know that they know that every keyword they are ranking for is bringing in traffic and conversions? Have they employed research strategies that have gotten them ranking for every possible keyword that will produce profits?
More than likely, the answer is "no" to more than one of those questions. That's not to say that any of your competitor's don't know what they are doing. In fact, they may have a very strong and successful online marketing campaign. But, chances are pretty good they are not doing all things perfectly.
Are there some targeted keywords that they are not ranking for? Do they know all the different ways a potential customer will search for their product or service? Are they investing time into keywords that produce little traffic or no conversions? If you don't know the answers to any of the questions posed above, then this may not be someone you want to blindly follow when it comes to setting the course for your own online marketing efforts.

Is Your Competition Making Mistakes?

From a competitive standpoint, it's always good to know what your competitors are doing, who they are targeting, and what areas they are venturing into. A failure to know this information can lead to developing a poor business marketing strategy. While Dave Thomas wanted to be everywhere his competitor was, he also never stopped identifying locations to put a Wendy's that McDonald's hadn't yet exploited.
We often explore our own client's competitors and see that many do not have a full grasp on what keywords they should be targeting. Part of this is ignorance. Another is the lack of insight from those running the SEO campaigns. Or it could be strictly due to lack of budget invested in SEO. Who knows.
Those that employ a "me too" marketing strategy will undoubtedly find themselves following competitors through the same mistakes, costing themselves valuable time and money. Or, in the case of the client I mentioned above, missing out on entire segments of convertable traffic solely because their competitor isn't ranking for the same phrase.
Think about what can be accomplished (and how much money can be saved) if marketing dollars are placed into a more forward thinking marketing campaign; one that doesn't solely focus on competitors but instead focuses on the audience. After all, it's not your competitors who'll be buying from you, it's your targeted consumer.

How Budget Smart is Your Competition?

But there is one area where it may be important to follow in your competitor's footsteps. That's in the area of breadth and reach of the campaign. I often hear from business owners wanting to outperform their competition in rankings both naturally and paid, but they don't want to invest the money needed to make that happen.
This is where it becomes difficult for us managing the campaigns. An SEO can only do what the budget allows. If your competition is out spending you ten to one, and they have good people managing their campaigns, there is little chance that you'll be able to out perform them, no matter how much you cross your fingers, tap your heels together, or complain to your SEO that you're not doing as well as you had hoped.
Money isn't everything in SEO, but it certainly does open the door to a greater online presence and bolder optimization strategy. A bigger investment can implement broader keyword research, more targeted link building, and a more keyword and search engine friendly site. These things matter in SEO.
That's not to say you have to match your competition dollar for dollar. Working smarter is just as good as working harder. But, unfortunately, it still takes money to make money.
Doing what your competitors do, without ever really understanding why, is a bad SEO strategy. Pay attention to what your competitors are doing, but also know why, and make sure those same goals and objectives match up with your own before following them down ANY path, including one that might require a larger investment into your online marketing campaign.
Ultimately, you want to be able to compete for business for the same keywords, provided they are the right keywords. But you also want to find and exploit areas that your competition hasn't.
If your online marketing campaign is simply a reaction, you'll never be ahead of them. You'll always be playing catch-up. Instead of being the "me too" guy, you can become the industry authority, leaving the others playing catch up and trying to be like you.

Are you policing your domain from spammers?

It was not a pretty sight. I watched the look in his face as he was shown a page from his domain that should not have been there. Precisely how it got there, no one knows, but it was clearly placed on his site by search spammers, out to get an advantage for some of their Web sites. It was a lovely little page about prescription drugs chock full of links to other places. How could that page have gotten there? And what was it there for? Welcome to the seedy little world of black hat SEO. If you don't know if your site is vulnerable, you need to find out, so that you can make sure your own site is properly protected.
So let's first examine why anyone would put such a page on a Web site. That one is simple. The links from that site were highly valuable to spammers. In this case, not only was it a well-known site, but it was a .org site, whose links are even more valuable than .com sites, because they are more likely to be genuine expressions of quality. Except in this case.
How is it that the site owner didn't know the page was there? That one's easy, too. The spammer did not link to the page from anywhere on the real site, so the only way you'd discover it would be if you knew the URL. Or you were checking the server for stray pages.
How can you protect yourself? That question is a bit tougher, but your Webmaster needs to answer it:

• Protect your userIDs. Carelessly leaving default passwords on well-known IDs (such as root) or using easy-to-crack passwords leaves you wide open for a drive-by spammer. Did you know that software programs can try millions of passwords over time to find the one for your site? Don't make it easy for them.
• Keep up with security patches. Your Webmaster ought to be keeping up with exploit notifications for any software installed on your Web server. Always applying the latest security updates makes it much harder for spammers to sneak in through an unguarded spot.
• Monitor suspicious traffic. Your server logs all traffic to your site and you can install programs that search the logs for failed access attempts and other odd patterns. Some people block suspicious IP addresses but I think that the real villains just troop off to a new IP address from their bank. The real reason to monitor traffic is so you'll see that cracker program trying a million passwords and it causes you to be especially vigilant because you know you are under attack.
• Monitor stray pages. You were waiting for this one, right? If you know what pages should be on your site, you can check the server for any that don't belong. Often, greedy spammers put them right in the top-level www directory because the closer to the home page on the site, the more that the link might be worth.

Understand, I used to manage the Webmasters at ibm.com, but I am not a real Webmaster. Real ones know that this was the Bert and Ernie explanation of Web security. If you are using a shared hosting plan, then your Web hosting company probably does this stuff for you, but if you are using dedicated or partial server or cloud server hosting, you might be expected to do it yourself. If you host your own servers, you definitely need someone to protect your site.
But don't overlook one last possibility of how that spammy page got on that poor .org site: the inside job. It's possible that their SEO company did it, but even more likely that their employee did it, perhaps even their Webmaster. Anyone could try to boost up another site, either for personal gain or in exchange for some cash from the spammer.
If you haven't been policing your servers, don't be surprised if someone is squatting on a few pages that you don't even know are there.