As you search through content on a webpage for SEO, it's essential to understand that Google's algorithm favors content that is both informative and engaging.
The average user spends about 15 seconds on a webpage before deciding whether to stay or leave, which is why it's crucial to grab their attention quickly.
Content that is well-structured and easy to read is more likely to keep users engaged.
Google's algorithm rewards websites with high-quality, relevant content, which is why it's essential to create content that addresses the needs of your target audience.
SEO Fundamentals
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a set of optimization strategies for sites, blogs, and pages on the web, which aim to improve your position in organic search engine results. Every second, millions of searches are being processed by search engines, mainly Google.
Users trust search engines so much that the first three organic links receive approximately 30% of all click-throughs. Only 0.78% of users access a link on the second page of the results.
To increase your visibility and clicks, you need to prove to Google that you have the best answer to what users are looking for. This involves not just having great content, but offering usability, communicating marketplace authority, and helping Google read your pages.
What Is
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a set of optimization strategies for sites, blogs, and pages on the web, which aim to improve your position in organic search engine results. Millions of searches are being processed by search engines every second, mainly Google.
The first three organic links receive approximately 30% of all click-throughs. This means that having a strong SEO strategy can significantly increase your online presence.
Only 0.78% of users access a link on the second page of the results. This highlights the importance of aiming for the first position on the SERP.
To achieve this, you need to prove to Google that you have the best answer and deserve to show up in the first position on the SERP. This involves not just having great content, but offering usability, communicating marketplace authority, and helping Google read your pages.
Here are some key statistics about search engine usage:
- The first three organic links receive approximately 30% of all click-throughs.
- Only 0.78% of users access a link on the second page of the results.
Why is SEO Important?
SEO is crucial for businesses to increase their online visibility and drive more traffic to their website. In fact, 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search engine results, making it essential to rank high in search engine rankings.
Having a well-optimized website can boost your credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of potential customers. According to a study, 75% of users consider a website's credibility to be directly related to its ranking in search engine results.
By optimizing your website for search engines, you can also improve your conversion rates and increase sales. For example, a website with a high search engine ranking is 50% more likely to generate leads and sales than a website with a low ranking.
A good SEO strategy can also help you target specific keywords and phrases that your ideal customers are searching for. By incorporating relevant keywords into your website's content, you can increase your chances of appearing in search engine results pages (SERPs) for those keywords.
Having a strong online presence is essential for businesses to stay competitive in today's digital landscape. In fact, 85% of customers research a business online before making a purchase.
On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization is a crucial aspect of SEO that can greatly improve your website's visibility and ranking. Optimizing the technical elements of your website is fundamental for SEO success. You want to make it easy for search engines to discover and access all of your content, including text, images, and videos.
Key technical elements include URL structure, navigation, and internal linking. User experience is also critical, with search engines stressing the importance of pages that load quickly and provide a good page experience. Elements such as Core Web Vitals, mobile-friendliness, and HTTPS all matter in technical SEO.
Structured data, also known as schema, can help search engines better understand your content and enhance your appearance in search results. Web hosting services, CMS, and site security also play a role in SEO.
To optimize your content for people, you should cover relevant topics with which you have experience or expertise, include keywords people would use to find the content, and make sure it's unique, well-written, and up to date. For search engines, key content elements to optimize for include title tags, meta description, header tags (H1-H6), image alt text, and open graph metadata.
Here's a list of key on-page optimization elements:
- Content
- Title and meta description
- Heading tag
- Images
- URLs
- Rich snippets
Google evaluates these factors to understand what information the pages offer and how to index them correctly. The search engine also analyzes if the page offers a good user experience with relevant information.
A good title tag is fundamental for Googlebot to grasp the key theme of the page, and also for users. It should feature your keyword, but also incentivize your user to access your page. Meta descriptions are also important, serving as a way to encourage users to access the page. They should be concise but descriptive, and include your target keyword for better optimization.
The meta title and meta description attached to your content ultimately determine how it will appear to searchers on a SERP. Make sure they are accurate, concise, and descriptive, and include your target keyword for even better optimization.
Link Building
Link building is a crucial aspect of SEO, and it's not just about getting as many links as possible. You can employ various link-building techniques to strengthen your authority, such as using high-quality backlinks that come from sites with domain and page authority.
To identify high-quality backlinks, look for sites that Google trusts and are connected to your sector. These links should be from a variety of domains, natural in context, and use anchor text correctly.
Here are the main characteristics of high-quality backlinks:
- Are from sites with domain and page authority.
- Are from sites that Google trusts.
- Come from a variety of domains.
- Are natural in the context of the page.
- Use anchor text correctly.
- Are in a prominent position on the page.
- Are from sites connected to your sector.
You can also use link-building tools like Majestic, Ahrefs, Moz Link Explorer, and SEMrush to analyze your backlinks and identify opportunities for improvement. These tools offer a complete analysis of your page's backlinks profile and can help you determine the quality of your anchor text.
Include Quality Links
Including quality links is a great way to keep your content informative and on-topic. You can add links to additional content that can be helpful, such as internal links to other on-site content that answers further questions a reader may have.
Use outbound links to third-party authority sites to confirm the validity of statistics or facts you may have included. This is a simple yet effective way to add value to your content and show your readers that you've done your research.
To take it to the next level, consider leveraging your strategy with tools like Google Search Console to request Google reject backlinks from untrustworthy sites. This will help you identify and remove any low-quality links that may be harming your site's authority.
Here are some key characteristics of high-quality backlinks to look for:
- Are from sites with domain and page authority.
- Are from sites that Google trusts.
- Come from a variety of domains.
- Are natural in the context of the page.
- Use anchor text correctly.
- Are in a prominent position on the page (at the start of the piece, for example).
- Are from sites connected to your sector.
By incorporating these high-quality links into your content, you'll be well on your way to building a strong link profile and establishing your authority in your industry.
NoFollow Links
By default, all links are "dofollow" which tells bots to crawl the link and share authority from one page to the next.
This means that if you link to a page, you're essentially giving it a vote of confidence and telling Google to crawl it too.
However, not all links are created equal, and you should use nofollow links when linking to pages outside of your control, like content on other sites.
If you can't trust the content, add a nofollow or similar annotation to the link to avoid search engines associating your site with the site you're linking to.
This is especially important for user-generated content, like forum posts or comments, where you don't want your site to be blindly associated with the sites users are linking to.
In fact, it's a good idea to have your CMS automatically add a nofollow annotation to user-generated links to avoid potential negative consequences in your rankings in Google Search.
Nofollow links may not spread authority directly to other pages, but they can still generate traffic and develop brand awareness.
Technical Optimization
Technical optimization is crucial for SEO success. It all starts with creating a website that can be crawled and indexed by search engines, making it easy for them to discover and access all of the content on your pages.
Gary Illyes, Google's trends analyst, emphasizes the importance of making your site crawlable. You want to ensure that search engines can easily access all your content, including text, images, and videos. Key technical elements include URL structure, navigation, and internal linking.
A good page experience is also essential, with search engines stressing the importance of pages that load quickly and provide a user-friendly experience. This includes elements such as Core Web Vitals, mobile-friendliness, and usability.
Here are some technical optimization elements to keep in mind:
- URL structure
- Navigation
- Internal linking
- Core Web Vitals
- Mobile-friendliness
- Usability
- HTTPS
- Structured data (a.k.a., schema)
- Web hosting services
- Content management system (CMS)
- Site security
Page Speed
Page speed is a key factor in Google's ranking algorithm. Google openly discussed that speed is a key ranking factor for desktop search in 2010 and mobile search in 2018.
A fast page speed is essential to get a good ranking, but it won't lift you above the competition. A slow page speed, on the other hand, will lower your ranking.
Google provides a free testing tool called PageSpeed Insights to help you diagnose and improve your page speed. This tool offers a speed diagnosis report with tips on how to improve the load time through image and code optimizations.
People have become accustomed to not having to wait for information, and Google's quality of search experience depends on the agility of information.
Mobile-First Index
Mobile-First Index is a game-changer for online presence. Google prioritizes results from sites that offer a strong mobile experience due to more traffic from mobile devices.
Since 2015, mobile-friendly has been a ranking factor for search on mobile devices, prompting many sites to adopt responsive layouts. This shift in focus has significantly impacted how we approach website design.
Google announced in 2016 that it would consider mobile versions of pages first when ranking, marking the launch of the Mobile-First Index. This means that if your website isn't optimized for mobile, it's likely to fall behind in search rankings.
If you haven't yet optimized your website for mobile devices, it's essential to focus on improving usability and the experience of your content on users' mobile devices.
Robots.txt
You can use robots.txt to prevent bots from accessing sensitive data, such as your admin login page.
It's essential to remember that robots.txt is a document located in your site's root folder, which lets Google know which pages to ignore.
If your pages aren't appearing in search engine results, it may be because they've been added to the list by accident, so double-check your robots.txt.
By using robots.txt, you can also prevent bots from accessing scripts and stylesheets that aren't important.
This can help keep your site's performance and security in check.
Boosting Rankings with URL Structure
Optimizing your URL structure is crucial for SEO success. It all starts with creating a website that can be crawled and indexed by search engines, as Gary Illyes from Google's trends analyst once put it, "MAKE THAT DAMN SITE CRAWLABLE."
A descriptive URL is much easier to understand, not only for bots but also for users. It should include keywords and mirror the page title instead of meaningless URLs consisting of random characters or gibberish.
Avoiding numbers in URLs is also a good idea, as they can easily change during content refreshes, leading to broken links and redirect problems. Shorter URLs are simpler and more accessible, both to human readers and Google's crawl bots.
Here are some common URL mistakes to avoid:
- Avoid meaningless URLs: URLs consisting of random characters or gibberish don’t help with SEO.
- Avoid numbers in URLs: Numbers can easily change during content refreshes, which means that the URLs will also need to change.
- Avoid big URLs: Shorter URLs are simpler and more accessible, both to human readers and Google’s crawl bots.
- Avoid invalid characters: Including invalid characters (like capital letters, symbols, or spaces) in your URL can render your entire URL invalid.
- Be careful with subdirectories: Too many subdirectories can overcomplicate your URLs and potentially cause sitewide issues.
On the other hand, a good URL structure should be easy to interpret, short and friendly, contain the keyword, match the title, and avoid articles, linking verbs, and other complements. Some examples of good URLs include "sitename/blog/digital-marketing/" and "sitename/storytelling/".
Content Creation
Creating high-quality content is essential for search engine optimization (SEO). To achieve this, make sure your content is organized and easy to skim using headings like H1, H2, and H3.
Content should cover relevant topics with which you have experience or expertise, and include keywords people would use to find the content. This will help you create unique and original content that is well-written and free of errors.
To optimize your content for search engines, pay attention to key elements like title tags, meta description, header tags (H1-H6), image alt text, and open graph metadata. This will help your content match user search intent and improve its visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Optimize Your Content
Use headings to organize your content and make it easy to skim for both readers and search engines. H1, H2, and H3 headings are very helpful in this regard.
To help with SEO, make sure your title and subheadings are clear and unambiguous. Include keywords and key phrases in your headings where possible to help your content match user search intent.
Conducting effective keyword research can provide insights into current marketing trends and help you center your content on relevant topics and keywords your audience is looking for.
Optimizing content for people involves making sure it covers relevant topics, includes keywords people would use to find the content, is unique or original, well-written, and up to date.
For search engines, some key content elements to optimize for are title tags, meta description, header tags (H1-H6), image alt text, and open graph metadata.
To understand a user's intention, use Google itself to analyze the highest-ranking results for a specific keyword. This will help you identify how to approach the subject and what else you can add to it.
The use of keywords throughout your writing is important for Google to index the page with the terms you want correctly. However, don't just repeat one word the whole time - Google understands how humans use language and aren't looking for exact keyword matches.
To place keywords in the most valuable locations, use the title, heading tags, URL, and the first paragraph of your content. This will help Google understand the topic of your page and improve its chances of a higher position.
Here are some key content elements to optimize for search engines:
- Title tags
- Meta description
- Header tags (H1-H6)
- Image alt text
- Open graph metadata
Remember, quality is the number one priority for SEO. Your content needs to be accurate, clear, current, relevant, trustworthy, and address the user's intention to generate engagement and increase the likelihood of receiving backlinks.
HubSpot Marketing Software
HubSpot Marketing Software is a powerful tool that can help you measure the performance of all your marketing campaigns in one place. With built-in analytics, reports, and dashboards, you can get a clear picture of what's working and what's not.
You can use HubSpot's free Traffic Analytics Tool to drill down into your website's traffic sources and identify the keywords people use to arrive at your site. This will help you understand your audience better and inform your editorial calendar and strategy.
For instance, you can use the Search Insights Report Template to bucket your keywords into topic clusters, analyze MSV, and identify relevant search terms. This will help you create content that resonates with your audience.
To get started, you can download the Search Insights Report Template, which is designed to help you analyze your traffic and create a strategy that works.
Here are some key features of HubSpot Marketing Software:
- Marketing Analytics
- Dashboard Software
- Website KPIs
- And More!
Choosing a Website Theme
When selecting a website theme, it's essential to prioritize low-hanging fruit, just like in keyword research. This means focusing on the most accessible and achievable options first.
To refine your theme selection, check the monthly search volume (MSV) for the keywords you've chosen and factor in SERP features as you choose your theme. This will help you identify the most promising options.
You should aim to create a mix of head terms and long-tail keywords in each bucket, just as you would with keywords. This ensures your content is well-rounded and appeals to a variety of searchers.
To see how competitors are ranking for these keywords, check their website themes and analyze their content strategy. This will give you valuable insights into what works and what doesn't.
Here are some key points to consider when choosing a website theme:
Video Snippets
Video snippets are short videos that Google displays at the top of a search engine results page (SERP) in place of text-based featured snippets. This can be a game-changer for your website's visibility.
To increase your chances of winning a video snippet placement, post your video on both YouTube and your website and make sure you're tagged in the targeted keywords people are searching for.
It's essential to have a mix of head terms and long-tail keywords to build a well-balanced keyword strategy. Head terms are generally shorter and more generic, while long-tail keywords are longer and more specific.
Here's a quick example to illustrate the difference: "how to write a great blog post" is a long-tail keyword, while "blogging" is a head term. Long-tail keywords tend to be less competitive and easier to rank for, but they also tend to attract more qualified searchers.
In fact, expert Kalepp recommends targeting long-tail keywords because the competition is often lower, and it allows you to develop a niche and rank more easily.
Tools and Resources
Searching through content on a webpage for SEO can be a daunting task, but having the right tools and resources can make all the difference. SEMrush is one of the most comprehensive SEO companies out there, offering a free Keyword Magic Tool that's a game-changer for keyword research.
You can type in your keyword, get a list of similar keywords, and sort based on how specific you need your results to be. Google Ads keyword planner is another free tool that helps you check search volume and cost per click.
Keyword tools are essential for planning an SEO strategy, and there are both paid and free options available. Free tools like Keyword Tool and Ubersuggest help create lists of keyword ideas, while Google Search Console shows you which words are already used to direct traffic to sites and opportunities.
Google Trends helps determine search trends by theme, giving you valuable insights into what people are searching for. Paid tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz Keyword Explorer offer more advanced features, suggesting terms based on volume, clicks, difficulty to rank, and other data.
Here are some popular keyword tools:
- Google Ads keyword planner
- Keyword Tool and Ubersuggest
- Google Search Console
- Google Trends
- SEMrush (starting at US$99.95/month)
- Ahrefs (starting at US$99/month)
- Moz Keyword Explorer (starting at US$99/month)
KeywordTool.io is another tool that delivers on its promise, providing a list of keyword ideas based on your search query. With a paid plan, you can take full advantage of the platform and get a sense of the key on-page SEO factors.
Google Algorithm and Ranking
Google's algorithm is the combination of operations that define how links are classified on the organic search results page, creating a hierarchy of pages to provide results in the most relevant order for each user.
Thousands of updates occur every year, but several stand out for their impact on the SEO market. Google's algorithm has undergone many updates, including Panda (2011), which penalized pages with low-quality content, and Penguin (2012), which penalized sites with low-quality backlinks.
Here are some of the key updates to Google's algorithm in recent years:
- Panda (2011): penalized pages with low-quality content that made use of bad practices, including excessive keywords and link farms.
- Penguin (2012): penalized sites with low-quality backlinks and began to value those receiving contextualized links from high-quality and authoritative sites.
- Hummingbird (2013): improved results classification by focusing on the exact match between the keyword and the search intention.
- Mobilegeddon (2015): mobile-friendly became a ranking factor.
- RankBrain (2015): added artificial intelligence and machine learning to the algorithm to better understand users' search intentions.
- Mobile-First Index: began to consider mobile pages as the main version for ranking.
- BERT (2019): incorporated an artificial intelligence system specialized in natural language processing to understand how humans search.
- Page Experience Update (2021): Added three new ranking factors connected to overall page experience – first input delay, largest contentful paint, and cumulative layout shift.
- May 2022 Core Algorithm Update (2022): Updated and revamped major aspects of Google's core algorithm and ranking factors for the first time since November 2021.
- September 2022 Core Algorithm and Content Update (2022): The second broad core update of 2022 – implementing more major changes to Google's ranking system, rewarding sites that produce helpful content, and underscoring the importance of reviews.
Google's algorithm involves more than 200 ranking factors, which determine the position on SERPs.
Google's Algorithm
Google's algorithm is the backbone of how search engines rank websites. It's a combination of operations that defines how links are classified on the organic search results page, creating a hierarchy of pages to provide results in the most relevant order for each user.
Thousands of updates occur every year, but several stand out for their impact on the SEO market. Google's algorithm is continuously updated to become more and more relevant.
The algorithm adopts a series of criteria to achieve this, including penalizing pages with low-quality content that made use of bad practices, such as excessive keywords and link farms. This was first done with the Panda update in 2011.
Google's algorithm also values contextualized links from high-quality and authoritative sites, as seen with the Penguin update in 2012. This shift in focus led to a significant change in how websites were ranked.
In 2013, the Hummingbird update improved results classification by focusing on the exact match between the keyword and the search intention. This update had a profound impact on how search engines understood user queries.
Google's algorithm has continued to evolve, with updates like Mobilegeddon in 2015, which made mobile-friendly a ranking factor, and RankBrain in 2015, which added artificial intelligence and machine learning to the algorithm to better understand users' search intentions.
Here are some of the key updates to Google's algorithm in recent years:
- Panda (2011): penalized pages with low-quality content
- Penguin (2012): penalized sites with low-quality backlinks
- Hummingbird (2013): improved results classification
- Mobilegeddon (2015): mobile-friendly became a ranking factor
- RankBrain (2015): added artificial intelligence and machine learning
- Mobile-First Index: began to consider mobile pages as the main version for ranking
- BERT (2019): incorporated an artificial intelligence system to understand how humans search
- Page Experience Update (2021): added three new ranking factors connected to overall page experience
- May 2022 Core Algorithm Update (2022): updated and revamped major aspects of Google's core algorithm
- September 2022 Core Algorithm and Content Update (2022): implemented more major changes to Google's ranking system
Ranking Factors
Google's algorithm involves more than 200 ranking factors, which determine the position of a website on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
These factors are categorized into two types: on-page and off-page. Unfortunately, Google doesn't publicly share these factors, but some secrets have been revealed through their statements and market studies.
The exact relationship between these factors is complex, but understanding their impact can help improve your website's ranking.
Google Console
Google Console is a powerful tool that allows you to communicate with Google and gain valuable insights into your website's performance. It offers a range of resources, including the ability to discover if there are any issues with indexing your site.
One of the key benefits of Google Console is that it allows you to monitor the average position of your pages on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). You can also identify the organic click-through-rate of your pages on SERPs, which can help you optimize your content for better results.
Google Console also provides a keyword tool that helps you identify which keywords place your site on SERPs. This can be a game-changer for your SEO strategy, as it allows you to focus on the keywords that are driving traffic to your site.
In addition to keyword insights, Google Console also allows you to identify which sites backlink to yours. This can help you build relationships with other websites and improve your site's authority.
To get the most out of Google Console, it's essential to understand how to use its various tools and features. Fortunately, the interface is user-friendly, making it accessible to anyone, even those without technical expertise.
Here are some of the key features of Google Console:
- Discover if there are any issues on indexing your site.
- Know if your site has been hacked or penalized by Google.
- Monitor the average position of your pages on SERPs.
- Identify the organic click-through-rate of your pages on SERPs.
- Identify which keywords place your site on SERPs.
- Identify which sites backlink to yours.
- Solicit rejection of dubious backlinks to your site from Google.
Factor in SERP Features
SERP feature snippets are a great way to increase your authority on a specific topic. They're excerpted highlights of pages that provide direct results in paragraphs, lists, or tables.
To find out about them, simply look up keywords and see what the first result looks like. This will give you an idea of what kind of SERP feature snippets are available for your chosen keywords.
Featured snippets are a great opportunity to increase your traffic from the SERP, as the excerpts include a link to where they came from. On-page SEO strategies need to be competitive to reach this "zero result" on Google.
SEO Tools and Features
SEO tools are essential for finding the right keywords and understanding the competition. You can start with free tools like Google Ads keyword planner, Keyword Tool, Ubersuggest, Google Search Console, and Google Trends.
Google Ads keyword planner helps you check search volume and cost per click, while Keyword Tool and Ubersuggest create lists of keyword ideas. Google Search Console shows you which words are already used to direct traffic to sites, and Google Trends determines search trends by theme.
Paid tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz Keyword Explorer offer powerful keyword search features, suggesting terms based on volume, clicks, difficulty to rank, and other data. SEMrush, for example, starts at $99.95/month, while Ahrefs and Moz Keyword Explorer start at $99/month.
Some tools, like SEMrush, also offer a free version that allows you to get a sense of the key on-page SEO factors.
Here are some popular SEO tools and their features:
Link building tools, such as Majestic, Ahrefs, Moz Link Explorer, and SEMrush, offer a complete analysis of a page's backlinks profile. They show the number of connections and the quality of the anchor text, and some offer proprietary indicators like Majestic's Trust Flow and Citation Flow or Moz's Domain Authority and Page Authority.
Rank Tracker by SEO PowerSuite is a solid tool for monitoring SERP data and doing keyword research. It allows you to see all the phrases a particular domain ranks for, along with search volumes and keyword difficulty.
Featured Images: pexels.com