SEO is a method that helps your pages rank highly on Google and other search engines. While links, referrals, and paid ads are all good for driving traffic, optimizing for organic traffic is cost-effective and has a prolonged effect.
The best way to understand SEO is to think about what search engines like Google want to give their customers. When you enter a specific term into a search engine, Google wants to spit back relevant, accurate web pages. In short, they want you to return to their service. And to do that, they want to be as helpful as possible.
Therefore, they have come up with a system for crawling and indexing pages. However, they privately guard the algorithms involved to stop people from gaming the system. As a result, much of what we do know about SEO was found by trial and error.
While the Google algorithms are essential, good SEO is also conscious of inputs, i.e., the humans that are searching for things. If you want to drive traffic to your site, you need to think about the audience that is inputting terms and how your website can connect with them via the indexing machine, like Google.
In the past, this was far easier. A few keywords or phrases were enough to rank highly. However, over the years, Google has started to prioritize other things like page speed, accessibility, mobile-friendliness, and more.
SEO is important because people use search engines to find things. If you're a business, SEO helps customers find your services. Additionally, web traffic can provide your website with a vital benefit: a stream of motivated and interested customers.
Think about it this way. If you are selling computers, you could put out an ad in a newspaper with good circulation. People will see your ad, and some of them might even be interested. But if you optimize your website, the people who will find your company are those who are actively searching for a new computer.
Of course, there are more benefits to SEO than just the type of customer you can attract. Paid advertising and social media are two other notable marketing channels, but organic search makes up the most considerable amount of web traffic.
For example, organic search engine results take up more screen space when people search. Additionally, it gets more clicks than paid search. It's interesting to note that less than 3% of people in the US click on paid search engine ads.
Another reason people love SEO is that it can pay off indefinitely. If you write a good piece of helpful content, it can continue to drive traffic to your site for years. However, paid ads need to be funded continuously to have the same effect.
SEO is about achieving a higher page ranking and visibility. Here are the three big pluses of SEO.
1) More Web Traffic
When users search for a term, they usually click on the first few results. Additionally, the first page gets a lot of clicks. However, outside that, it becomes far less likely that your page will get attention.
2) Consistent Organic Traffic
Ads, social media, and email marketing can all increase web traffic. But it usually comes in the form of a spike. SEO content can produce a consistent flow of traffic.
3) SEO Can Be Cost-Effective
Creating content to drive traffic is more cost-effective than other methods like paid advertisement. While producing content is not free, it can be one-off payments that keep delivering ROI over the course of a few years.
While lots of information about SEO you find online talks about hacks, tips, and exploits, Google is very particular about what info it ranks. It constantly updates its rules and algorithms, so the best advice is to give it what it wants: great, helpful content for your visitors.
Best Practices:
Bad Practices to Avoid:
Now that we've covered what not to do, let's look at what search engines want.
Here are some of the factors that help Google decide which pages to respond to search queries.
Google's search engine algorithms are very complex. On a basic level, they are looking for pages that give high-quality, helpful, and relevant content in response to users' queries.
Google indexes content relevance by crawling website content and using its algorithm to evaluate its relevance to the inputted search terms. One of the most significant factors involved in this is keywords, which we will explain in depth below.
Content quality is determined by several means. One of the more meaningful measures Google uses is backlinks. These are links that go to your site from other websites. Of course, the quality of backlinks is essential too. Links from a few trusted sources carry far more weight than links from unknown blogs or sites.
Google uses hundreds of different factors to rank websites. Some of the other essential factors are:
Google measures users' behavior when they click on links. For example, if a user quickly leaves a site, this is seen as a signal that they haven't found the information they were searching for. Additionally, they also monitor links that users don't click on. Again, this is seen as a sign that the content is not relevant to their search.
As mentioned earlier, how quick your pages load and how optimized for mobile phones they are.
Finally, unique or original content is essential. Google tends to punish low-value or duplicate content.
Keywords are words and terms that people use to make internet searches. Of course, knowing this information is just the start. It's not enough to use the keyword "cars" and expect people to show up at your dealership. However, it is the first step of any good SEO strategy.
There are three significant factors to consider when you are searching for keywords to use.
#1. Search Volume
Search volume is the number of people, usually monthly, that search for a specific term. A high search volume means a significant audience. On the other hand, a low search volume means you have a small or niche audience, at best.
#2. Relevance
You can look at keyword relevance in several ways. Firstly, you need to consider that the keywords you target are actually what your users are looking for. For example, a strawberry flavor drink targeting the keyword “strawberries” will likely attract people looking for the fruit. This situation can end up hurting your SEO.
Secondly, how you phrase your target keywords is significant too. Developing an understanding of your buyer persona and the words and terms they use is essential.
#3. Competition
Another key thing to consider is keyword competition. A keyword can have a large volume of monthly searches, but it will be challenging to stand out if several companies are already targeting these words.
SEO aside, all businesses need to understand who their prospects are. So this can be a great exercise in defining who your potential customers are and what they are searching for.
A good strategy for keyword research is to answer the following questions:
What are your prospects interested in?
What are their pain points?
How do they talk about their interests? What language do they use? Do they have specific terms for their interests?
What other tools are they using? These could be competitors' tools or tools that are related to your product or service.
Once you have these questions answered, you'll have a good starting point for keywords to target. From there, you can use Google's Keyword Search tool or other free and paid alternatives to find other related phrases.
Many of these keyword tools will also demonstrate how crowded the market is. While they are rare, some phrases have a low competition-to-volume ratio. Additionally, you can also explore the keywords that your competitors are targeting too.
While content is important for your marketing efforts, it's not the only thing you'll need to think about.
Roughly, SEO can be split into a few different categories.
On-page SEO contains a few different elements that you'll need to be aware of. Some are more important than others. However, if you get them all right, you'll have a page that gives you the best chance of ranking well.
Here are the ten most important on-page SEO elements.
E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. The critical thing to note here is that E-A-T is reviewed by actual humans and not bots.
Let's put these terms in context through the lens that Google uses to rank pages.
Expertise: Expertise judges individual pages, not the website at large. While Google is secretive about the exact criteria, it seems that the author's qualifications or reputation are evaluated as the main factor.
Authoritativeness: This element is judged on a) the website's reputation b) the content's authoritativeness.
Trustworthiness: This element looks at a mix of the author, the content, and the website.
While Title Tags won't make or break your page, they are helpful for the user and the search engine to understand what your page is about.
Title tags are the blue headline that you click on the search engine results page (SERP).
Featuring your main keyword on the title page is considered good practice.
Meta description is the block of text that appears under your title page in the SERP. Typically, it should give users an idea of what the page is about. Pages with a meta description get more clicks and prevent users from clicking through on non-relevant pages.
Breaking up your content with various H1, H2, H3, H4, etc., tags help readers and search engines understand your pages. Additionally, heading tags are a great place to put secondary keywords.
The URL, i.e., the web address, is also an excellent place to put your keyword/s.
Additionally, it's worth using your URL to keep things clear for both users and search engines. So, if you're an online fish retailer and one page is about salmon, a good, clear URL would be something like:
www.fishshop.com/oceanfish/salmon
As mentioned above, keywords are the words and phrases that should connect with your user's search terms.
Media, like pictures, movies, infographics, etc., all help deliver a better user experience. As a result, they also help with SEO. However, search engines can't truly interpret pictures. So use alt tags to help search engines understand pictures so you can take advantage of image search.
Another critical consideration to make is for users with impaired vision. If a photo is integral to your content, alt tags can offer these users a way to understand your content still. Google awards this type of consideration.
Internal linking is an easy way to get some quick SEO results. This tip refers to hyperlinks that go from one website page to another. Basically, by linking up your pages, search engines can understand how your content relates to each other.
We'll dive into this further in a later section when we talk about pillar content and how it can drive your content strategy.
Mobile search accounts for more than half of all web traffic. As a result, Google actually ranks websites based on mobile rather than the desktop experience.
Some tips to achieve a mobile-friendly site are:
Although it's number 10 on the list, page speed is one of the most critical factors in determining SEO.
Page speed can affect SEO in a few different ways. For example, 1 in 4 searchers will bounce from a page if it takes more than 4 seconds to load. This situation can be catastrophic for your ranking, and Google will interpret your page as being unhelpful because it wants to deliver results quickly.
There are a few things that you can do to ensure good page speed. Firstly, find and research web hosting services that have good server speed. For example, this can be to do with the placement of data centers near your market.
Secondly, make sure your images aren’t too high resolution. You can compress them with a variety of free software.
Finally, while complex themes and plugins look great, they can affect page loading speed. More straightforward stripped-back sites can still be elegant and professional-looking.
Off-page SEO is the next part that should get your attention. Basically, it refers to the activities you or others do away from your site. Some examples of this are guest blogs on other sites that link back to yours. Or link building and other off-site promotions.
In essence, off-page SEO is about establishing authority and trust in your website via other pages' websites.
Backlinks work because they give Google an indication that you are providing good quality content. If you have frequently cited content, this will boost your perceived authority on your subject matter.
Of course, it's not just the number of links that are important, but the quality of them. So, if high-reputation sites (like national broadcasters) are linking to your site, that will carry more weight than a link from an obscure blog.
There are three different types of backlinks.
#1. Natural Links
Natural links are links that occur without the direction of the web owners. For example, a blogger might recommend your product or services and share a link on their page.
#2. Manually Built Links
Manually built links are built at the direction of the web owner. These can be links from social media influencers or even your customer base.
#.3 Self-Made Links
Self-made links are things like posts on a forum that link back to your site. Additionally, they can also be a blog comment signature containing your URL, a press release with a hyperlink, or even the process of adding your site to an online directory.
Some of these tactics are not approved by Google and can result in penalties. So be careful.
The final piece of the puzzle is technical SEO. This form of SEO refers to your efforts to ensure Google can crawl and index your site. Basically, it's about making things easier for Google to search and index.
Site structure refers to the architecture of your site. In short, this means how your pages link to each other. You want Google to be able to crawl 100% of your pages. To achieve this, most people prefer what is known as a flat structure.
Site structure is especially important for web pages that have a lot of information. Making these pages organized and linking to each other is the best way to make your site easily navigational. For example, seek to minimize the number of clicks from your main page to any of your content. One to two clicks at most.
Additionally, ensure that each page always has an internal link directing to it.
#2. URL Structure
URL structure should be logical. Again, this mainly pertains to bigger websites, but having categories in your website helps to keep them easy to navigate.
For example:
www.examplesite/products/computers/
www.examplesite/blog/
#3. Crawling and Indexing
You want Google to crawl and index your whole site. So make it easy by finding and addressing any issues.The first thing to do is use the “Coverage Report” in Google Search Console. This tool will let you know if there are any pages that Google can’t fully index or render.
Other pieces of software that can help with crawling and indexing are:
Screaming Frog: This application crawls and audits your site, highlighting SEO issues.
Ahrefs Audit Tool: This audit tool helps you understand your technical SEO health, page loading speed, and HTML tags.
#4. XML Sitemaps
As evidenced by this article, Gary Illyes from Google confirmed that XML sitemaps are the second most crucial factor for search engines to find URLs.
#5. Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is another area that can hurt your SEO. While this can occur because of bad site architecture, it also applies to unoriginal or plagiarized content. So make sure to use good quality, original content.
Now that you're familiar with the terms, concepts, and elements of SEO, let's look at a way to tie it all together. Lots of people create great content that actually performs poorly. To avoid that scenario, you need a good strategy.
SEO is constantly changing and evolving. Luckily, there are several ways to keep up and catch up.
Search engines are frequently changing the way they evaluate and rank content. These updates can happen several times a year and can quickly unravel whatever content strategy you've employed.
While keywords are still essential to ranking, there is some disagreement about this metric as a way to drive views. Ranking can change depending on a few factors, like how and where you are searching from.
For example, searches are affected by location because Google will try to adjust results for particular areas. Again, this is principally so it can deliver more accurate results.
Another big change over the last few years is snippets. These features allow key search content to be shown on the SERP without requiring the user to click through to your page. Snippets are highly coveted and competitive. Additionally, they can drive a lot of traffic.
Google has also been employing neural language processing (NLP) over recent years. This practice means that they are trying to examine the intent behind the search rather that just the words. Old keyword tactics aren't guaranteed to work in this new world.
Finally, how people search is also changing and evolving. In the past, people searched in sentences like "barber new york near me," but thanks to the rise of voice search, people use more complete terms like "help me find a barber in Bushwick," and so on.
To meet this demand, Google began to interpret search terms based on how people speak. These changes have naturally affected the way keywords are connected with searches.
So while keywords are still part of a good strategy, they need to be rounded out with terms that fit how people speak.
Changes in search habits and Google's algorithms mean that SEO is harder in 2021. To win organic traffic in this competitive marketplace, you need a sound strategy.
One of the best ways to achieve success is by using pillar content. This process involves adjusting your thinking about SEO as driven by keywords and instead thinking about it in terms of topic clusters.
Traditionally, marketing teams would use individual pages. However, content that is organized in clusters can attract a wide amount of search traffic because it's linked together in a way that both Google and your audience find relevant.
How you decide to organize your content will depend on your industry or niche. However, one example of how to take advantage of topic clusters is through using pillar content.
Pillar content is a web page that acts as the center of your content. It will be keyword optimized to attract an overarching topic. However, it will contain hyperlinks to several related subjects. Instead of trying to fit lots of related terms into your post, you can use the pillar page as a jumping-off point. From there, users can drill down into more specialist or in-depth content.
Topic clusters sound challenging to implement. However, they are reasonably straightforward. The idea behind this strategy is to provide an ample amount of coverage across a topic.
The other benefit of using this method is that it provides a clear architecture for your information. This helps customers and search engines find information more easily.
So, for example, your website might be about DIY in a more general sense. Then you can make separate pillar pages for areas like painting, repairs, plumbing, plastering, and so on.
Then each pillar will be linked to content that contains long-tailed keywords. So the painting section will have various articles that are linked internally to other articles and link back to the pillar. This method helps you capture far more different search terms while keeping the content relevant.
Additionally, because the information is structured in this way, the linked pages can cover information in more depth. If the customer wants to dig deeper, the links are there.
Even one well-organized, high-performing pillar page can help the search rankings for the other connected cluster topics. Once you get the visitors to your site, in theory, they’ll click through to the other links.
Organizing web pages into the cluster means internal linking is easier and more efficient. Additionally, it boosts your rankings, and most importantly, provides a far superior user experience.
Building a good information architecture is essential if you want to get organic traffic in broad topic areas. You can still drill down and focus on the niches within the area, but the pillar post ties it all together. This strategy helps ensure that you don't have too many pages competing against each other for keywords.
Now that you know how you can organize pillar content let's look at some of the characteristics of this SEO method.
Great pillar content works to tie together about 10-20 pieces of content on a particular topic. It should contain high-level information on that topic, with links to other pages that allow your audience to expand their knowledge on other subjects.
Half of all search queries are four or more words long, and voice search is becoming more influential. So optimize your pillar page for this type of search by using a question and answer format.
Pillar content should be easy to skim and find information. Often, this content will be quite long (2000+). Help users find what they want quickly by including a table of contents and headers.
Make pillar content easy to navigate.
SEO is a complex umbrella term for several distinct ways to improve site ranking. To achieve consistent and lasting SEO success, you need to pay attention to many factors. Great, helpful, and unique web content is the cornerstone of any strategy. However, you need to find ways for your user to access it. So make sure to take care of the technical aspects, like page speed, mobile-friendliness, and clever site architecture like pillar content.