Once the website is crawled, the indexing takes place. Imagine the index as a gigantic library full of websites from all over the world. It usually takes some time for a website to be indexed.
Furthermore, every time it’s changed, crawler scans it again. Keep in mind that until the updates on the website are indexed, they won’t be visible in search engines.
Results are critical for both developers and users. Once the internet user submits a search query, the search engine digs into the index and pulls out matching results. It’s a process of checking the query against billions of websites based on various algorithms.
Most of these factors are proven, but some are just speculations or even myths. On top of that, some are more important than others.
The main point of SEO is to be friendly both to users and search engines. If you invest all your money and time into perfect technical SEO, it’s fine. But if the user interaction is poor, your positions can suffer. And that’s how you start wasting money.
They represent an intent to search for a particular brand or website. People tend to type “youtube” or “google” into search engines rather than using browser’s history or bookmarks.
These are submitted when users are searching for information. They aren’t looking for a particular website, yet for an answer or guidance on how to do something. For example, “How to bake pizza”.
This type is an intention to make a transaction. It usually comes with a product name (Nike Airmax) or category (sneakers). Additionally, it can be written with “Where to buy …”, “… price” or in a similar manner.
Of course, ranking first is important, but these days, you have to take into consideration the so-called “zero position”.
Let’s take a look at the results for “How to bake potatoes” search query. The first result is a Google featured snippet with all or the most important information, so you don’t need to check the other results.
It’s because the SERP features have bigger visual appeal and they often provide enough information so the Google Search users don’t have to click on other results at all or they click only on the featured results.
Search engine algorithms have come a long way and become more sophisticated from the times when content, titles and descriptions stuffed with keywords were enough to achieve high rankings in search results.
Don’t forget that SEO is about targeting real people, not only search engines.
Meta tags
Meta tags are a part of the HTML code. They describe website’s content. The most important are meta titles and meta descriptions.
Meta titles and descriptions packed with keywords don’t directly influence your rankings BUT they remain a strong psychological factor affecting the CTR and overall user engagement. Therefore, they are still very important for SEO.
There are many tools and plugins (e.g. Yoast for WordPress) analyzing your content in terms of focus keyword usage in meta title, meta description, headings, overall keyword density, alt image attributes and others.
Technical on-page SEO checklist
We can classify technical SEO as a part of the on-page SEO that deals with more technical stuff. It usually requires at least some development skills or a web developer.
These are the most important technical SEO factors you should focus on:
1. Search Console
Connecting your site to the Google Search Console (former Webmaster tools) is one of the SEO basics. It helps you to monitor and maintain your site’s presence and performance in Google Search.
The Search Console helps you analyze your keyword rankings, CTRs, possible Google penalties and many other useful data for technical SEO.
Other features include content mobile usability, choosing what you want to be indexed and what not, site errors, structured data errors and links.
Quick tips:
*Every property (website) needs to be verified to use Search console features.
*Connect Search Console with Google Analytics.
*How to verify your property (website) in the Search Console
2. Website speed
Website speed is one of the ranking factors so you should always aim to improve it. It’s known that 50% of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less. If it doesn’t load in 3 seconds, they will leave.
Quick tips:
*Test the speed in PageSpeed Insights.
*Optimize images, enable GZIP compression, HTML compression, JS and CSS minification and try to *decrease server response time.
*Quality web hosting plays a big role in the website speed, so make sure to select a trustworthy provider.
*Testing site speed of your website
3. Mobile optimization
Mobile optimization is a must. The world is shifting from desktop to mobile. In fact, running a website that is not mobile-optimized will negatively influence your rankings.
Google started rolling out the mobile-first indexing in March 2018. The mobile-first indexing means that Google will use the mobile version of your website for indexing and ranking.
Quick tips:
*Test the responsivity of your website in the Mobile-Friendly Test.
*Monitor your keyword rankings in mobile search results.
*Make sure the mobile version of your website works like a charm.
4. Sitemap
A sitemap helps search engines to crawl your content. It’s a file where all website sections are listed. It’s good to have one when you run a large website with a complicated structure or when you use rich media content.
Quick tips:
*Not all websites need a sitemap.
*There are more types of sitemaps than just the XML sitemap.
*The Sitemap shouldn’t contain more than 50,000 URLs and cannot exceed 50 MB.
*Place the sitemap in the root directory of the website:
https://example.com/sitemap.xml
5. Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a file that tells crawlers which website sections you don’t want them to be accessed. It’s located in https://example.com/robots.txt and it’s public.
Quick tips:
*Don’t use robots.txt to hide content from search engines.
*Crawlers or malware robots should not be able to violate robots.txt
*Further technical SEO hacks:
There are many SEO hacks that will boost your website performance. First, start with the analysis of the current state. It will help you find the opportunities.
How to perform an on-page SEO audit in 15 minutes
SEOSiteCheckup is a great tool for on-page SEO analysis. You can analyze one URL per day and download a PDF report without registering.
Set up Google Tag Manager for advanced tag management, so you don’t need any assistance from web developers.
HTTPS vs. HTTP: Back in 2014, Google announced they will boost rankings of HTTPS/SSL websites. Today, we know that it’s a lightweight ranking factor influencing a small percentage of search queries.
However, security is a strong psychological factor. Google Chrome, for example, labels a website that is not encrypted with SSL as “not secure”, which influences the user engagement.
URL/IP canonicalization: IP canonicalization is important when a website is indexed under both its IP address and domain name.
URL canonicalization means that:
https://example.com and https://www.example.com/ should resolve to the same URL
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Content & SEO
Are content & SEO two independent terms or one ideal couple? A lot of marketers used to think that they are separate players. Let’s find out how you can benefit from their synergy.
Your content creation strategy must be part of a broader SEO strategy.
Some people still believe, that:
*SEO is for search engines
*Content is for human beings
They’re wrong! Content & SEO overlap. You simply have to create unique content and optimize it for search engines and people at the same time.
What content should I create?
This is the first and most important question. The answer (at least in theory) is simple: “Be unique”. Creating original, thought-provoking and engaging content is a great start. Content and SEO must go hand in hand from the beginning. You can choose from various content types:
Blogs
Blogs are very popular, especially in the last years. A good blog is a great source of user engagement not only for bloggers but also for e-commerce websites, SaaS businesses or professional service providers.
Blogging is also a way how to earn money by doing what you love (travel bloggers, marketing bloggers, etc.). Unique blogs with in-depth articles, guides and how-tos can make you a respected influencer in the industry.
Quick tips:
*Stand out from the crowd, be original
*Conduct your own research and use unique data
*It’s not about length, it’s about quality and added value for readers
*Be consistent to create a strong personal brand
*Cooperate with companies and influencers
You can be really creative with the types of content you publish on your blog. Here are the most common ones (based on a survey by GrowthBadger):
Product pages
Quality product pages should be the top priority of every online business. They are often used as landing pages for PPC campaigns, including the AdWords remarketing or paid social media.
Top lists
Another popular form of written content. There are thousands of top lists out there so think wisely about the topic.
Writing lists is an opportunity to include downloadable items to collect leads, to earn valuable comments and to create a buzz thanks to social shares and backlinks.
Quick tips:
*The headline says everything about the post
*Stress extraordinary facts
*Keep the structure simple
*Use proven data sources
*Ask the readers to suggest other items to your list in the comments
Interviews
Getting unique information and opinions from an industry guru is excellent! It helps to build credibility, traffic, social shares and backlinks.
What’s more, interviewees with large audience generate high traffic for free if they share the interview. You can write, record a video or a podcast.
Quick tips:
*Try to interview a thought leader (famous person in the industry)
*Set a clear structure of the interview
*Questions should flow naturally
*Allow some space for the interviewee, readers are curious about their thoughts
What’s the ideal blog post length?
A few years ago, long posts stuffed with keywords ranked on the top positions easily. Somehow, it got to the point, where it looks like there are hundreds of almost identical articles with the same keywords. ecial tricks that can’t be found on your website or when compared to competitors
A few years ago, long posts stuffed with keywords ranked on the top positions easily. Somehow, it got to the point, where it looks like there are hundreds of almost identical articles with the same keywords.
Creating content for the sake of content doesn’t work anymore.
If you write an article, you need to keep reader’s attention. It starts with the title, first paragraph, content type and most importantly the overall content structure. Use <title>, <h1, h2, h3, …> and other HTML tags correctly.
When it comes to time, posts with a 7-minute reading time are ideal according to Medium. When it comes to SEO, there are many studies. Most of them prove that longer posts rank slightly better.
What about duplicate content in my other articles or website sections?
Sooner or later, we all get to the point where we need to repeat a few words we have written somewhere else on our website.
If there’s too much duplicate content across your website, you can use 301 redirects or rel=”canonical” link element. You can find out more on Google Search Console help pages.
Keep calm if you don’t plan to copy lines of text. Google algorithm differentiates whether you do it on purpose or as a natural part of your new content.
Just in case you think of copying someone else’s content, you can stop reading this SEO guide. It’s plagiarism and i am strongly against it. The risks, not to mention the costs, of being a copycat are excessive. Google will penalize and skip your website from the search results.
A popular tool to detect the plagiarism is Copyscape. All you need to do is to enter the URL of the post.
Creating great content starts with proper research. Think of the topic, do keyword research, ask your friends, conduct polls on Facebook or anywhere else.
Once you choose the topic, scan the market and carefully read all top ranking websites. Don’t copy them, try to create your own unique content and optimize it perfectly.
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Keyword research
Keyword research is one of the basic SEO tasks. In you will learn how to find your niche and how to find profitable keywords you can rank for.
Creating content without keyword research doesn’t pay off. The content without proper optimization won’t rank and the website traffic will be low. You simply have to know what keywords to target to generate enough quality traffic.
Where to find keywords?
There are various ways to find keywords.
Your first task is to come up with the seed keywords – phrases you’ll use as the stepping stone to finding more keyword ideas. If you run a fashion blog, simple phrases such as “fashion jerks”, “fashion machines” will work great.
The classic ways to look for keywords:
Google suggestions
Google offers many keyword suggestions directly in the SERP. Features such as Google Autocomplete, People Also Ask or Related Searches can be a great source of keyword ideas.
With the autocomplete feature, you just need to write your seed keyword into the Google search and the suggestions will appear automatically.
Keyword tools
There are n number of free keyword tools that can give you thousands of keyword ideas based on a single seed keyword. One of the most popular ones is Google Keyword Planner although it’s main focus is keyword research for PPC ads.
Of course, free tools are very limited in their features. They offer many keyword suggestions, but what to do with 500 keyword ideas?
The professional paid keyword tools offer other useful SEO metrics and insights to evaluate the keywords and pick the best ones. Besides, they save you a lot of time a give you a competitive advantage.
You may think: Do I need a paid keyword tool? My rule of thumb is: If you make money from your website in any way, then a quality keyword tool is a great investment that will pay off sooner or later.
Some of the most popular platforms to find keyword ideas:
*YouTube
*Reddit
*Quora
*Wikipedia
*Forums
Keyword metrics
These days you have to work with more metrics, consider the Google RankBrain algorithm and the actual SERP you plan to rank in.
Google RankBrain
RankBrain is a component of Google’s algorithm based on artificial intelligence. It helps Google to understand the intent behind the search query and deliver the most relevant results thanks to the machine-learning system.
Relevant keywords with high search volumes and low keyword difficulty – an ideal combination of the three most important factors of keyword research.
Unfortunately, it is not always that easy and you need to look for a balance between these factors.
*Long tail keywords vs. search volumes
Start by looking for the long tail or middle tail keywords.
Long tail keywords have lower search volumes but there are thousands that represent the opportunity for you.
Visitors who find you via long tail keywords will engage with your content a lot more and their conversion rates are higher. It’s because the query is specific enough to find relevant results. And you want to be at the top of these relevant results.
The biggest con of long tail keywords is their search volume. Sometimes, it may be as low as 100 searches per month.
Keyword difficulty
Once you find keywords you want to rank for, you’ll need to evaluate how hard it will be. The keyword difficulty is a very useful metric that will help you with it.
The value is usually indicated on a scale from 0 to 100. The higher the score is, the harder it is to rank on the 1st SERP for the keyword.
There are many keyword research tools on the market calculating the keyword difficulty.
What is the Keyword SEO Difficulty?
Search intent
SERP analysis is a very important part of keyword research. It helps you to find out whether:
*You are able to compete with websites in the 1st SERP
What is SERP analysis and how does it boost keyword research?
By looking at the SERP you can identify what’s the intention behind the search query. When you are searching for a “cooking recipe”, you probably don’t want to buy a pizza.
Always keep this in mind so you won’t end up optimizing for wrong keywords.
There are 4 different search intent types:
*Navigational – search for a specific website
*Informational – search for general information
*Transactional – user wants to buy something online
*Commercial – user does the research before purchase
LSI keywords.
LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are keywords that are semantically related to the main seed keyword.
LSI keywords change all the time based on the current trend.
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Link building
In this, we will discuss link building – one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. Let’s learn how you can build a quality link profile.
Link building is a process of getting links from other websites. From the technical definition, backlinks are hypertext links that serve as navigation among websites.
Why is link building important?
Search engines use links to explore new websites and to set the overall ranking of a website in SERP.
This means that a website’s link profile is one of the most important ranking factors.
When Google introduced PageRank in the 1990s, the number of backlinks was used as an important metric of the overall ranking. The more links you had, the better was your ranking.
As this could easily be misused, several Google algorithm updates focused on penalization of shady link building techniques.
Types of backlinks
Do-follow backlinks pass the authority of the linking page to the linked page. This authority is also often called the “link juice”.
No-follow backlinks don’t score any points to the linked website. They don’t pass the authority because of the rel=”nofollow” HTML tag that tells crawlers not to count it.
No-follow links have no value from the SEO point of view.
Quality aspects of backlinks
*Domain Authority
*Page Authority
Relevancy
Links referring to a website have to be relevant to its content. A backlink from a food e-shop will be useless for you if you write a blog about fashion.
Link placement
Links placed in the main articles or sections are better than links in footers and sidebars. Single links tend to be more valuable than sitewide links.
Sitewide links appear on all pages of a website. They are usually in the footer, header, sidebar or blogrolls.
They can generate a lot of traffic. Don’t get scared by them but make sure to use only natural links and keep in mind that their SEO potential may be a bit lower when compared to single links.
Link building strategies
It’s not easy to acquire a high-quality backlink. The techniques that were the simplest , do not work anymore, so the SEOs spend a lot of time trying different approaches.
Let’s take a look at what works the best these days:
Guest posting
Guest posting is probably the most popular link building technique. The equation is simple: You write a post and publish it on another website. The website will get free content and you’ll get a free backlink.
Competitors’ backlinks
A time-consuming but still quite effective strategy is to find what works for the others. Check the websites that link to your competitors, create better content.
The easiest way to find your competitors’ backlinks is to use a backlink tool such as LinkMiner. All you need to do is to enter the domain of your competitor and the tools will show you the backlinks they have.
You can do the same with the specific URL of your competitor. All you need to do is to find the top-ranking pages for your focus keyword and analyze their backlinks.
Once you find your competitors’ backlinks, it’s time to analyze the best opportunities.
You should consider:
*Link relevance – Is the link relevant to your content?
*Link strength – What is the authority of the linking page?
*Chance to replicate the backlink – Will I be able to get the same backlink
other popular link building techniques:
Social backlinks: Share your content on social media, promote it on Facebook, comment relevant posts and create connections.
Broken link building: Find websites with inactive links and give them your content to link to instead
PR articles written by professionals and published on news portals will give you high-quality backlinks.
Penalties
Google Penguin algorithm update from April 2012 started to detect and penalize for bad, spammy links.
Nobody wants to receive one of these
However, if you have spammy or low-quality backlinks you did not create, don’t panic! Google understands that not all bad backlinks were created on purpose and usually, the worst-case scenario is that it will just ignore these backlinks.
Best practices
**Do link building regularly, it’s not a one-time effort
*Acquire a few high-quality links rather than many low-quality links
*Do natural anchor text distribution based on the tips we listed in the “Anchor text” section
*Avoid backlinks from spammy websites and networks
HOPE YOU GUYS ENJOYED THIS GUIDE?
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