WHY HAVE WE WRITTEN THIS GUIDE?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the most important disciplines in digital marketing and is crucial for your online success.
Design and content are important parts of a good digital marketing strategy, but SEO is the fuel that actually transports your content to the customer.
It doesn't matter how much time you spend writing the perfect blog post or designing the best website in the world if no one can find it. This is where SEO comes in. We maintain that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is simply another word for 'competitive advantage'.
However, the subject matter is technically complex. With this guide for beginners, we provide website owners with an "understandable" introduction to the topic of SEO.
WHO IS THIS GUIDE FOR?
This guide is for business owners, entrepreneurs, marketers, bloggers and anyone who wants to increase their presence in the online world through their website. It is designed for small and medium-sized businesses. Whether you are an SEO beginner or not, if you are selling your product or service online, or just advertising online and trying to increase your website traffic, then this guide is for you.
WHAT EXACTLY IS SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and refers to the art of increasing organic traffic to your website by ranking higher in the results of a search engine query.
Search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing see it as their main task to find the best results for their customers. They do not simply search mindlessly for the search terms entered, but use strict algorithms to define what they consider to be relevant for the searcher on the basis of these search terms. And display the websites that correspond to these algorithms at the top of the page.
To begin with, your goal should be to achieve a search engine ranking at least in the top 5.
HOW DOES THIS GUIDE HELP YOU?
After reading this guide, you will have a better understanding of SEO and its role in driving traffic to your website. We will also present some statistics, facts and benefits of SEO compared to other measures.
We then guide you through the SEO process and thus to more traffic.
1: THE IMPORTANCE OF SEO & HOW DOES IT WORK?
1.1: What is the importance of SEO?
Today's market is highly competitive. This well-known truism is even more true online than in the real world.
Millions of users search online for answers and solutions to questions and problems. SEO makes your website part of the answer. It brings customers to your doorstep, and if you've done it right, even to the lobby.
Here are the most important reasons why search engine optimization is essential if you want to be successful online:
- (This is quite obvious, but also the most important aspect and benefit of SEO):
If your content reflects the customer's questions to the point, this means more traffic to your website and usually more sales. - People trust Google. When your name appears at the top of a search query, your website appears trustworthy to your potential customer. It's much easier to convince a customer that your product or service is good if they already trust you.
- Most people click on at most the first five links that appear in a search query. Given this fact, it makes sense to be in those top five results, don't you think?
- If your competitor sells the same goods or services online, but your website is SEO-optimized and therefore appears at the top of a search query ... who will get more customers and more offers?
- Cost-effective: SEO is one of the best long-term solutions for more traffic. Unlike PPC (pay per click), where you pay to get to the top of a search query, there is hardly any cost with SEO (compared to the return on investment).
SEO offers many advantages. The best thing about it is that it is a long-term strategy. Websites that get to the top usually stay there for a long time.
1.2: How does SEO work?
To understand how SEO works, we first need to understand how search engines work in general:
As mentioned earlier, it is the search engine's job to ensure that users get the best results for what they are looking for. They show these results to their customers as a ranking of the websites they consider to be the most relevant.
To obtain the information required for this, search engine robots ('spiders' or 'crawlers') go from website to website to search for data. We call this 'crawling'.
Once a crawler is on your website and reads the data you provide, it analyzes it to determine how relevant your website is for the search term in question. To determine what is relevant or not, crawlers follow a complex and top-secret algorithm. Google is extremely good at this, and the results are usually extremely accurate.
Although most of Google's ranking factors are kept more secret than NATO's launch codes, we do know some of them. Google also publishes a lot of information on how to achieve a good search engine ranking according to Google's webmaster guidelines.
When we optimize a site, we look at these factors and try to follow them as closely as possible without compromising the user experience. After all, we don't build websites for robots, but for humans.
If everything is done correctly, both visitors to the website, humans and crawlers, will be satisfied. That's what SEO is all about.
Now, let's look at some of the most important todo`s.
2: SEO - STEP-BY-STEP
2.1: Keyword research or: 'The search for search terms'
Keywords are all words or phrases that describe what your topic is about. They are terms that the searcher has entered to get answers to their questions.
There are two types of keywords: keywords and long-tail keywords. The former describe general terms; usually one word, while the latter describe a more specific combination of terms.
You want your website to respond to the right keywords to attract the right visitors. By researching what your customer might type into the search box, you can predict which keywords will get you found.
When selling fur coats, you don't want to rank high for "leather gloves". This will only confuse the visitor, increase your bounce rate and decrease your ranking.
The bounce rate is the term we use when a visitor opens your website and then immediately leaves. It is an important factor in the Google ranking system.
Knowing the keywords and understanding what your customer will type is a good way to understand what your customer needs and wants.
What you should do to find the right keywords:
- Create a list of all related terms for the product you are selling.
- Identify your keywords from this list and create your ranking list.
- Ask yourself whether they are relevant to the content of your website.
- Enter keywords relating to your product in the search field of your search engine and view the suggested results.
- Use keyword tools to find the right keywords. We'll talk about this in more detail later.
- Research which keywords are used to find your competitors.
Once you have found the right keywords, make sure that they are in a natural way into the content of the website. The keywords should ...
- in the URL
- in the title of your web pages
- in the meta tags and anchor texts and even ...
- on the images 'Alt texts (alternative text if a browser does not display images)
... be incorporated.
Make sure that your keywords and slight variations on them appear several times in your texts.
2.2: Create high-quality content
Do not underestimate the importance of high-quality content. Crawlers recognize mere heaps of text quite quickly and sort them out. If you make mistakes here, your efforts to achieve a good search engine ranking are doomed to failure.
Good content is important because it significantly improves the ranking of your site. (If they are done right).
You can find more information on how to create good content in our article:
6 tips for creating good content.
Providing your customers with useful information lowers your bounce rate by simply making it interesting to read on. Providing valuable information about your product ultimately turns visitors into customers. And - what was the end goal of your website again?
To optimize the content of your website and improve the overall SEO, consider the following points:
- Think about what your visitor is looking for, what questions they are asking. It will make keyword integration much easier and more natural.
- Keyword research and optimization.
Avoid forcing the keywords into the text. Remember, you are writing for users and not for search engines. Make sure that the keywords can be found in the body of the text, in the title and in the descriptions. - Structure your content.
Your website should be logically structured. Users must be able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Your content gives you the opportunity to guide them and offer them links to your other pages. - Share and promote your content.
The influence of social media is immense. Use it to your advantage. After you have published something on your website, make sure that you publish it on various social media platforms such as facebook, instagram, linkedIn or Xing. This increases the click rate and therefore your search engine ranking.
2.3: Add a good meta description
The meta description is an approx. 150 character long text (more precisely: a so-called 'tag') in HTML. It provides information about the page that the user sees in the search query.
If the description is done correctly, it will in turn increase your click-through rate and thus your search engine ranking.
When creating your meta description, you should consider the following:
- Length:
The meta description can be as long as you like, but Google usually only shows the first 300 characters. You should stay even lower, at around 130-150, if you want your description to be displayed in full on a mobile device. - Key words:
Make sure that the keywords you have added to your content are also included in the meta description. - Avoid duplicates. Make sure that each page has its own meta tag.
- Although the meta description has no influence on the direct ranking according to Google, it offers a good opportunity to describe the content of the page and thus be interesting for the reader.
2.4: Optimize the title tag
Like the meta description, the title tag is a text in HTML that can be seen in the user's search query. It is important for SEO and sharing on social media. Pay attention to the following elements when writing your title tag:
- Length:
In order for the complete title to be displayed, it should be approx. 60 characters long. Longer title tags are only displayed incompletely and can reduce the click rate. - Do not fill the title tag with keywords.
Google will penalize you if you 'spam' in your title tag. Title tags such as: "Cheap Coats, Coats for Sale, Sale on Coats, CheapCoat.com", annoy the user and are not recommended. - Just like with the meta tag: make sure that each page has a unique title.
- Pay attention to the format. It should look something like this: "Keyword, keyword variation - brand name"
Title tags are the first information your users see when they find your website in a query. They are important because they tell the search engine what your website is about. Social networks like Facebook also display your title tag when you share.
2.5: Make sure you have an SEO-friendly URL
The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the web address of your website. A good URL structure makes it easier for crawlers to index your website.
An SEO-optimized URL should meet the following criteria:
- Easy to read
Accessibility is always important for SEO, so the easier it is for people to read, the better. The URL is also displayed on the search query so that it is included in the user experience. - Keywords in URL
Keywords in the URL also help users and the search engine to determine whether the content on the website is relevant to the search or not. URLs are normally sent without an anchor text. The included keyword helps the user to recognize what to expect when opening the page. - Brevity is the spice of life
In general, shorter URLs are better. Don't overdo it, just make sure your URL is no more than 100 characters long. - Assign URL to the title
It is not necessary to achieve a perfect match, but at least part of the title should be in the URL.
2.6: Optimize the speed of the website
The speed of your website is one of the most important factors for a good search engine ranking.
And - it makes sense for the crawlers and for the users. Slower loading means a longer wait for the website to load, definitely a negative ranking factor. It also has a direct negative impact on the user experience and is one of the main factors that increases the bounce rate.
What you should do to optimize the speed of your website
- File compression
There are many file compression tools that you can use to increase the speed of your website. GZIP is one of them. It compresses your files that are larger than 150 KB. This will make your web pages load faster. - Reduce or eliminate redirects
Every time your website is redirected, this means waiting time for your visitors. Avoid unnecessary redirects on your site. - Optimize all images
Compressing images is a prerequisite for increasing the loading speed of the website. Use jpeg as the file format and your images should not be saved larger than they are actually displayed. - Make sure your hosting offer is right
Look for a premium hosting platform. For example kinsta.com. The speed that is lost with your hosting service can no longer be made up. - Plug-ins
Only use absolutely necessary plug-ins, as these can slow down your website. If in doubt, do without a function in favor of speed.
2.7: Responsive design
More and more people are accessing the internet via mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. A website that is designed to be easy to use on any device is a prerequisite in 2018 and has a direct and significant impact on your search engine rankings.
Google prefers websites that are optimized for mobile devices!
Where can you start?
- Design (template) for mobile use
This should be your main concern when selecting and using a page template. - Speed up your pages
Responsive design is another reason to optimize the speed of your website, as mobile users are usually in a hurry. - Consider the situations in which your users are surfing on their smartphones. Perhaps they are standing in line at a bank or on the bus. Therefore, make sure that the website is accessible with one hand and easy to use.
- Avoid Flash
Although Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash is already quite rare these days, it should no longer be used on your website. Not only does it slow down your website... in the main, it's an outdated technology that search engines can't read.
2.8: Share and Promote
Social media channels have a positive influence on your SEO results.
- More traffic and longer time spent on your website
- Improved domain authority of your site and increased brand awareness
- Improved local SEO results
Another important advantage of social media is the distribution and sharing of your content. Social media is the best way to make your content known to the public even after you have published it on your website.
2.9: Link Building.
Link building is still one of the most important disciplines in SEO.
Google has stated that backlinks are one of the three most important ranking factors.
Link building is the process of sharing links between pages and other websites to create a link to your own. There are two types of links: Internal links and external links. Internal links connect pages within your own website, while external links point to websites outside your domain.
Internal links
They are particularly important for navigation. Crawlers use them to navigate through your site and thus index it as completely as possible. As valuable as the content on your website may be, if you do not link properly, it may not be indexed and therefore not included in the search results.
Another important aspect of internal links is that they help your site visitors to move more easily between your pages. They increase the accessibility of information, reduce the bounce rate and improve the overall user experience and ultimately your ranking.
External links
...or backlinks are one of the key factors in achieving good rankings. Because they are so difficult to manipulate, they are valuable proof of good, relevant and user-friendly content. External links are hard to come by, so this part of SEO takes a lot of effort.
The positive effect for a wide range of external links is great. Nevertheless, there are many variables that influence the result:
- How popular is the page you are linking to?
- The number of links pointing to this page?
- The ownership relationship between the link source and the linked page?
- How trustworthy is the page you are linking to or that is linking to you?
- How relevant is the content of the pages that link to the page you are linking to?
This is where it gets a little trickier. Although linking from your site to external sites has a positive effect on your SEO, inbound links from other sites to your content are even more important.
Anchor texts
Anchor texts are another important factor for link building.
The anchor text is the clickable part of a text that opens a link, usually blue and underlined. The anchor text is a good way to motivate visitors to your site to click on a link, as it is usually in the context of a related sentence.
For SEO, it is important that the anchor text is relevant to the content of the page you are linking to.
We now continue with some graphics and statistics to help you implement your SEO strategy.
3. GRAPHICS AND STATISTICS
Some information from the Internet illustrates the importance of SEO and helps to clarify the factors already mentioned.
What does the user normally click on when performing a search?
Ignite Visibility has published this really interesting graphic:
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20.5% | 13.32% | 13.14% | 8.98% | 9.21% | 6.73% | 7.61% | 6.92% | 5.52% | 7.95% |
You can see how the search engine placement of a website directly influences the click-through rate. As a result, this influences your conversion rate, because the more customers see your product, the more sales you make. This also shows you how important it is to achieve a good search engine ranking. If you want to investigate these figures in more detail, here is the link to the Ignite Visibility article: GOOGLE CLICK-THROUGH RATES IN 2017 BY RANKING POSITION
Next, let's look at search engine popularity:
| Search Engine | Used by |
|---|---|
| 92.62% | |
| Yahoo! | 3.78% |
| Bing | 3.72% |
| Ask | 0.36% |
| Baidu | 0.35% |
This is according to a survey conducted by 'Stat Counter Global' in 2017. Although we naturally try to cover all search engines, you may well understand why we focus more on Google.
Now some statistics on the importance of SEO:
- According to Internet Live statistics, Google receives 68,000 search queries per second.
- According to HubSpot, 50 % of search queries are four words or longer. That's a good reason to focus on long tail keywords on your website.
- Most Google searches take place on mobile devices - and not on desktops. Make sure you optimize your website for mobile use.
- More than 66 % local business owners emphasize that improving rankings and organic traffic is one of their top marketing priorities. (2017 statistics)
- Iron Paper explains that web search is the main source of traffic to the website. 300 % more traffic to the website than from social media activity.
- According to GoDaddy, web search conversion is ten times higher than social media.
That's certainly enough data to confirm the importance of SEO.
4: AVOID SEO MISTAKES
We've talked about the importance of SEO, and we've outlined a step-by-step guide to achieving a good search engine ranking. Now it's about maintaining the good search engine rankings you've achieved.
Let's take a look at common SEO mistakes that should be avoided:
4.1: Keyword overkill
If you don't provide valuable and well-structured content, your bounce rate will quickly increase. Clearly, when it comes to SEO, there are three important things: 'keywords', 'keywords' and 'keywords'.
But: don't overdo it. Filling your content with keywords until it's complete gibberish is not the way to go. So make sure you're writing for your customers and not for Google.
4.2: Copying content from other websites
"Better well stolen than badly written" was common in the past, but is no longer recommended today. Search engines recognize this immediately and negative rankings are the direct result.
Make sure your content is original, to the point and on-topic.
4.3: Skipping the meta description
Unfortunately, this happens much more often than you would expect.
OK, Google will automatically fill in the meta description if you leave it blank. But your meta description tag is a great, and more importantly free, way to promote what you think your site's strengths are, not what Google does.
Make sure you write a good, clear meta description for each of your articles.
4.4: Random linking
We talked about the importance of high-quality link building. Links should point to a relevant page, internally or externally. They should point to something that is of clear, unambiguous value to the person reading your content.
4.5: The lack of a content booking strategy
You have to think of your content as a TV series. Nobody would want to watch a series if the episodes were broadcast at random times, and there would be different actors and different storylines each time.
Consistency and a strict schedule keep your readership on track.
You need a strategy for republishing content. It doesn't matter if you post once or five times a week, make sure you do it regularly and on a schedule. This way you keep your customers up to date.
4.6: Skipping the analysis part
SEO is at least a medium-term, more likely a long-term matter. Analyze the results of your campaigns regularly, at least every two weeks. This will give you meaningful metrics that you can work with. When you analyze, you can constantly see where you stand, how effective your changes were and what you need to change in order to achieve even better results. Without analysis, you lack this feedback.
4.7: Google allegedly adjusts its algorithm 500 to 600 times a year
These changes are not massive and do not require much adaptation, but every now and then there are some important updates that really shake up the online world.
Inform yourself regularly about the latest Google algorithms and adapt the content of your website accordingly.
This is one of the reasons why we need to optimize our websites for the user in order to stay on top. Users don't change their algorithms - or at least not as much as search engines do. Sure, there are trends and demands, but if your content is good, quality and user-friendly, you don't need to fear any changes to your search engine rankings.
Let's take a look at some of the tools we use to stay on top of optimizing our websites.
5: BEST TOOLS FOR SEO IN 2018
SEO optimization is not a matter of a few months, it is a big concept that needs to be constantly revised. A lot of time often passes with trial and error until you have achieved decent traffic on your site.
The internet is full of SEO tips, guides and articles. Many of them have very little added value, but there are tools and resources that can make your work easier. Let's take a look at some of them:
- MOZ SEO
If you are looking for a step-by-step software, MOZ SEO is the right choice. Although it's not free, it's a good resource if you want to optimize your website yourself. There's also a chat box where pretty much any question will be answered.
learn more - about MOZ SEO - SEMrush
If you have experience with SEO, you've probably heard of SEMrush. It includes both free and premium elements, and it's a very good tool for analyzing your competitors. If you're in a competitive niche, make sure to include it in your toolbox, as it offers more than 20 ways to analyze your competition.
learn more - about SEMrush - seobility
learn more - about seobility - Answer The Public
Have you ever been stuck brainstorming content ideas? Answer The Public is a free tool that gives you suggestions for your content - based on questions about search engines - as well as matching keyword suggestions.
learn more - about Answer the public - SEOptimer
SEOptimer is a tool that scans your website and tells you pretty much to the point what you need to improve to get it right. It's easy to use and therefore particularly suitable for beginners.
learn more - to SEOptimer - KWFinder
This document has often talked about the importance of long-tail keywords. Here's a good resource for that: KWFinder is a tool that helps you find long-tail keywords with low competition. The best thing about it? - It's free!
learn more - to KWFinder
Try it out and use the tool when searching for your next longtail keyword.
- AuthorityLabs
This is a paid tool that helps you analyze your ranking by country or even by your city. It also helps by analyzing your keywords in comparison to your competitors. AuthorityLabs offers a 30-day free trial, but after that, expect to pay pretty high prices.
6. METRICS AND SUCCESS INDICATORS
SEO is a process that takes a long time. Sometimes the results are clear and quickly recognizable, but once a certain base is reached, it becomes more difficult to keep track of measures and their results. Here is a list of key figures and metrics that show how successfully you are working on SEO:
- Backlinks
As your traffic increases, more and more websites will link to your website. Although it's not always a clear indicator of ranking, it clearly helps. Google Search Console helps you track this. - Organic traffic
This is the main task of SEO, so you should always keep an eye on this metric. You can use various tools for this, but Google Analytics is usually sufficient. - Returning visitors
Also a good indicator of the value of your website, this metric represents the number of people returning to your website. You can track these metrics with Agency Analytics.
learn more - about agency analytics - Mobile website views
This gives you an idea of how many people visit your website via mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones. This indicates whether you need to invest more in the mobile-friendly design of your website. - Connection metrics
These are: Bounce rate, time spent on the website and pages per visit. For example, if the bounce rate is high, this may indicate that the loading speed is poor or that the content is not relevant to the search terms.
If your visitors only stay on your pages for a very short time, the content is probably not very useful. The number of pages per visit gives you an idea of your conversion success (i.e. how 'intriguing' or interesting your content is to the visitor). This can also be measured with Google Analytics.
Record these metrics - and be creative. Always ask yourself why. Why has the bounce rate decreased in the last few days, why is organic traffic increasing and so on?
This is our 'beginner's guide' to SEO. A lot of things may still sound a little complicated, but many topics become easier and easier with regular practice.
Pay attention to all of these factors and keep up with the ever-changing trends and changes in Google's algorithms.
We will go into this and many other topics in detail in the next few articles. We will also keep you up to date on changes and innovations in the field of SEO. Sign up for our newsletter to make sure you don't miss a single post.
Simply contact us if you have any questions. In exchange for a coffee, we are happy to give you advice. And you are very welcome to visit our website Digital-now.com and take a look at our services.
