ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS
Questions You Want To Know
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
How SEO works?
You might think of a search engine as a website you visit to type (or speak) a question into a box and Google, Yahoo!, Bing, or whatever search engine you’re using magically replies with a long list of links to webpages that could potentially answer your question.
That’s true. But have you ever stopped to consider what’s behind those magical lists of links?
Here’s how it works: Google (or any search engine you’re using) has a crawler that goes out and gathers information about all the content they can find on the Internet. The crawlers bring all those 1s and 0s back to the search engine to build an index. That index is then fed through an algorithm that tries to match all that data with your query.
What does SEO stand for?
To understand the true meaning of SEO, let’s break that definition down and look at the parts:
- Quality of traffic. You can attract all the visitors in the world, but if they’re coming to your site because Google tells them you’re a resource for Apple computers when really you’re a farmer selling apples, that is not quality traffic. Instead you want to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in products that you offer.
- Quantity of traffic. Once you have the right people clicking through from those search engine results pages (SERPs), more traffic is better.
- Organic results. Ads make up a significant portion of many SERPs. Organic traffic is any traffic that you don’t have to pay for.
Which is better, SEO or PPC?
The main difference between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) is that traffic coming from SEO (organic) is free while traffic generated from PPC is not free (as the name implies you have to pay a cost per click).
This is also the reason why you may sometimes see the terms organic search engine listings and paid search engine listings (or Paid Search Advertising – PSA).
Both SEO and PPC are part of Search Engine Optimization which is one of the tools you can use as part of your overall Internet Marketing campaign.
Where do I start my SEO strategy?
Here are three types of SEO that an SEO strategist can focus on:
- On-page SEO: This SEO focuses on the content that’s “on the page,” and how to optimize that content to help boost the website’s ranking for specific keywords.
- Off-page SEO: This SEO focuses on the links that are directing to the website from elsewhere on the internet. The number of “backlinks,” and the publishers carrying those links, that link to your website help you build trust in the eyes of a search engine. This causes your website to rank higher as a result.
- Technical SEO: This SEO focuses on a website’s architecture, examining the backend of that website to see how each webpage is “technically” set up. Google cares as much about the code of a website as it does its content, making this speciality quite important to a website’s search engine ranking.
Bear in mind that not every business can optimize their website for search the same way, and therefore not every SEO will have the same optimization process. It’s an SEO’s job to examine his or her industry, find out what’s important to their audience, and develop an SEO strategy that puts the right content in front of that audience.
How do I conduct keyword research?
Back in the day, life was easier for SEO professionals.
We used Google Keyword Planner to look up popular keywords and create dedicated pages around each keyword (despite them being essentially the same search query).
At the time, this kind of tactic worked. But then Google took away keyword-level data in September 13.
Today things are considerably different.
Last year, Ahrefs studied 3 million random search queries and found that a #1 ranking page will also rank for nearly 1,000 relevant keywords in the top 10 search results.
This finding shows that there’s no fixed limit on the number of keywords a page can rank for.
Search Volumes Are Misleading
Search volume is not a good indicator for search traffic.
You can have a high search volume for a keyword, but this doesn’t necessarily mean you get a high number of clicks.
For instance, the query [Donald Trump age] has a search volume of 51,000 monthly searches in the U.S. But the reality is that there are only 7,200 clicks that happen on the search results page each month.
This means that for this query only ~14 percent of searches get clicked. This is because the SERPs for this query has an Answer Box and there is no point for the searcher in clicking anything else.
Search Volume/Traffic vs. Search Intent
When identifying which keywords to target, you’ll often face this common conflict: Search Volume/Traffic vs. Search Intent.Search Intent almost always wins.
So when researching and choosing keywords to create content around, you need to ask yourself this question:
What is the searcher looking for and can I fulfill that intent?
Search Intent Categories
There are four main categories for almost any search query with clear intent:
- Informational: How tos, Whats (i.e., how to make slime)
- Navigational: Branded Queries (i.e., facebook, BOA login)
- Commercial investigation: Specific Attributes, “vs”, “best” (i.e., brown shoes for men size 11)
- Transactional: Buy, Download, etc.
To identify search intent, it’s best to learn from Google.
For instance, searching for the following queries will often produce the following types of results:
In general, the best way to compete for a keyword is to check the content type of the top ranking pages and follow suit.
Word of caution: search intent isn’t always this clear.
There are volatile SERPs which, in general, may not require as many links. However, retaining rankings on these kinds of SERPs is unpredictable.
On the other hand, there are also stable SERPs that will likely require more quality links than the competition and where retaining position is often more predictable.
Which SEO techniques are popular?
Search engine optimization is a thing that must be embraced by all website owners who would like for their sites to rank higher on search engines. To obtain higher rankings and to boost traffic, it is imperative to employ the best SEO strategies.
However, you have to realize that modern SEO techniques focus on not only search engines but also the overall user experience. Furthermore, Google keeps updating its algorithm, and the tactics that you used five years ago will not be effective today.
A proper approach is necessary. And this article will list ten modern SEO techniques that are guaranteed to work for you.
1. Optimize your site to be mobile-friendly
If you would like to experience the best SEO outcomes, then you must ensure that your site is mobile-friendly. Why? When Google updated its algorithm in 2016, mobile-first indexing.
They did this after realizing that most searches are done using mobiles. After all, this is not the 1980’s where mobile phone users were limited. Today, billions of people across the globe now have mobile devices.
Therefore, you have to optimize your site to mobile friendly to get higher SEO rankings.
2. Focus on local SEO optimization
Another modern SEO technique that has proven to work effectively is focusing on local SEO. In recent times, ‘near me’ searches have increased because users are always looking for products or services that are near their geographical location.
You don’t have to be selling something online to try out local SEO. The main aim here is for users to find your business. The users can easily find your business when you include your contact details and directions on your website.
If yours is purely online business, you also have to optimize your site for local searches. And this has proven to be a very effective SEO strategy.
3. Improve the user experience
If you want your site to get more traffic and also obtain higher search engine rankings, you have to ensure that it is user-friendly. When your site provides visitors with the experience they were hoping for or better; the visitors tend to spend more time on your site, which could improve your search engine rankings. Google identifies the time a user has spent on your site.
If the user takes a long time, Google will want to provide him with the most relevant results. However, you must know that for a user to spend a lot of time on your site; you have to post relevant and high-quality content.
4. Maximize on social media
If there is an SEO technique that could help to boost your rankings, it is social media marketing. If you could take a look at the trends and statistics of social media usage over the last decade, you will notice that the number of users keeps increasing every year.
What does this mean? Your online business also needs to have a social media presence because it promotes brand awareness, plus it helps you interact with your target audience easily.
Additionally, social media profiles appear on search engines, and if your posts are engaging enough, your rankings will undoubtedly improve.
5. Do not ignore YouTube SEO
Did you know that YouTube is considered a search engine and that it is the second most popular search engine after Google? If you didn’t know, now you do. When you search for a particular topic or product on Google, you might have noticed that a YouTube video related to the topic appears on the first page.
Recommended: We can improve your blog post with Youtube video
YouTube has billions of searches every month, and if you attempt YouTube SEO, your site might end up ranking at the top of search engines. Moreover, it could help improve your traffic with the number of views.
You, however, have to ensure that your YouTube videos are very SEO friendly.
6. Rely on the available SEO tools
If you are a digital marketer, you ought to have realized the importance of SEO Tools and frameworks by now. They help you have a clear grasp of your website’s performance, plus they let you analyze, fix errors, and even generate site reports.
Numerous tools perform different functions to help boost your SEO rankings. You should use them accordingly, but you have to know that there are free and paid tools. They are an efficient way to manage and optimize your website.
7. Link building
Link building is a quality SEO process that is not expected to fade anytime soon. Why? Search engines consider backlinks as a ranking factor, and if your site has a lot of quality backlinks, it will most likely rank higher.
It is up to you to implement the best link building strategy so that your website is free from toxic backlinks that could see you get penalized. It is most advisable to source your links from authoritative sites.
8. Ensure to use LSI keywords
If you want Google bots and users to find your site easily, it is imperative for you to use LSI (Long Semantic Indexing) keywords. They are words that help search engines to determine the relevance of your content, and what it relates to.
For instance, if you are writing about Apple MacBook, you have to use words that will enable Google to identify that you are talking about the company and not the fruit. The most effective way to achieve this is by using LSI keywords.
9. Focus on Metadata
Metadata is a crucial part of SEO, and it includes Meta descriptions and title tags. You have to ensure that every content you post contains them. Meta descriptions have to be unique, and each should describe what a specific page is about.
If you duplicate them, your site will hardly get recognized. On the other hand, title tags need to be captivating, and they should contain a keyword to inform the users what your page is all about. They also need to be unique with every page.
10. Write content that has at least 1800 words
Websites that have more keywords will most likely rank higher on search engines compared to those that post about 300-words content.
Long posts are prioritized because Google considers them to provide in-depth information on a particular topic. Moreover, it is more engaging than short content, which increases the chances of people sharing it.
Conclusion
SEO techniques are not as hard as some people presume them to be. However, you cannot achieve SEO success if you don’t implement your strategies right. You might consider trying out the tactics mentioned above if you want to boost your SEO rankings.
If you want to tracks your site progress and performance, you can work with a professional agency conversioncreation.com.