SEO Basics
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing a website for Google search with the goal of earning higher web traffic levels and improving the visibility of the site.
Set up GSC and Bing Webmaster tools
Setting up Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) is an important part of any SEO strategy. These tools help you track your website’s progress and performance in search engine results pages (SERPs), which can then inform your SEO decisions.
GSC and BWT also provide valuable data to help you troubleshoot any issues that may arise, such as incorrect indexed pages or errors in your sitemap. Both tools are free to use, and they only require a few minutes to set up.
Here’s a quick guide on how to set up GSC and BWT:
- Create a free account with each service.
- Enter your website’s URL into the appropriate field.
- Follow the instructions provided by each service to verify ownership of your website. This is usually done by adding a HTML file or tag to your website’s code.
- Once you’ve verified ownership, you’ll be able to access your account and start using the various features and tools available.
Set up Google Analytics
If you want to track your SEO progress, Google Analytics is a must-have. It’s free, it’s easy to set up, and it gives you a ton of data about your traffic.
To set up Google Analytics, you’ll need a Google account. If you don’t have one, you can create one here.
Once you have a Google account, go to the Google Analytics home page and click “Sign in to Analytics.”
Enter your Google credentials and click “Sign in.”
On the next page, you’ll be asked to sign up for a new Analytics account. Click “Sign up.”
Install and configure an SEO plugin (wordpress)
If you want your WordPress site to rank higher in search engines, then you need to make sure it’s optimized for SEO. Luckily, there are a number of WordPress plugins that can help with that. In this post, we’ll walk you through how to install and configure an SEO plugin for WordPress.
First, you need to install and activate the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, the plugin will add a new menu item labeled ‘SEO’ to your WordPress admin bar. Clicking on it will take you to the plugin’s main settings page.
Keyword Research
Performing keyword research is a critical first step in any SEO or SEM campaign. It allows you to find out what people are searching for, and how popular those terms are. Keyword research can also help you understand what your competitors are ranking for, and how difficult it will be to outrank them.
Identify your competitors
Keyword research is essential for on page optimization. In order to rank high in SERPS, you need to first identify your main competitors. Use keyword research tools such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner and semrush.com to find out which keywords your competitors are targeting.
Conduct a keyword gap analysis
A keyword gap analysis is the process of assessing which keywords your competition is ranking for that you are not. This is valuable information because it allows you to make informed decisions about which keywords to target in order to close the gap and improve your SERP visibility.
There are a few different methods you can use to conduct a keyword gap analysis, but we recommend using a tool like semrush.com or ahrefs.com. Both of these tools offer free trial periods, so you can sign up and use them for free for a limited time.
Once you have signed up for an account, enter your competitor’s URL into the search bar and click “Dashboard.” Then, click on the “Keyword Gap” tab.
On the next page, you will see a list of all the keywords your competitor is ranking for that you are not. You can use this information to make strategic decisions about which keywords to target in your own SEO campaign in order to close the gap and improve your SERP visibility.
Find your main ‘money’ keywords
Your main keywords should be broad enough to attract a high volume of searches, but specific enough that you can rank well for them. For example, “shoes” is too broad, but “women’s running shoes” is just right.
Try to find keywords that have a high search volume but low competition. You can use a tool like the Google Keyword Planner to help you with this.
Once you’ve found your main keywords, you can start targeting them in your content. Use them in your titles, in your descriptions, and in the body of your text. But don’t overdo it! Google will penalize you if you stuff your keywords too much.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the term used to describe SEO strategies that focus on improving the technical aspects of a website in order to improve its search engine rankings. This can include improving site speed, making sure the website is mobile-friendly, and improving the structure of the website. Technical SEO can be a bit technical and tricky to implement, but it can be worth it in the long run.
Leverage “Inspect URL” feature in GSC
In Google Search Console (GSC), the “Inspect URL” feature allows you to submit a URL to Google for crawling. This can be helpful if you’ve recently made changes to your website and want to ensure that Google sees the updates.
Ensure your website is mobile-friendly
One of the most important ranking factors for Google is whether your website is mobile-friendly. In fact, Google recently announced that they will be rolling out a mobile-first index, which means that they will be basing their rankings on the mobile version of your site rather than the desktop version.
To make sure your site is mobile-friendly, start by checking Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. This tool will analyze your website and tell you if there are any issues that need to be fixed.
Once you’ve fixed any mobile-friendliness issues, it’s also important to make sure your site is optimized for speed. Mobile users are generally more impatient than desktop users, so if your site takes too long to load, they are likely to go elsewhere.
To check your site’s speed, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. This tool will give you a list of things you can do to speed up your site. Make sure to implement as many of these as possible to ensure your site is as fast as it can be.
Check your site’s loading speed
Site speed is an important factor when it comes to SEO. A fast site helps improve the user experience, which can lead to higher search engine rankings. Check your site’s loading speed with Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
On-page and Content
There are many benefits to on-page SEO and content marketing, and they often go hand-in-hand. If you want your website to rank higher in the search engines and get more traffic, you need to make sure you have great content. On-page SEO will help you to make sure your website is optimized for the search engines so that they can easily find and index your content.
Fix duplicate, missing, and truncated title tags
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines state that “Our systems analyze content to provide the most relevant results to a user’s query. Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here.” In order to ensure that Googlebot can easily discover, crawl and index your content, you need to make sure that your title tags are unique, descriptive and not missing or truncated.
There are a few ways to fix duplicate or missing title tags:
- Use a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider to crawl your site and identify pages with duplicate or missing title tags.
- Use a plugin like Yoast SEO for WordPress to automatically generate unique and descriptive title tags for your pages.
- Manually edit the tag of each page on your site to make sure it is unique and descriptive.</li> </ul> <p>If you find that your title tags are being truncated in Google search results, you can try one of the following methods:</p> <ul> <li>Use a shorter title tag.</li> <li>Use Meta Tags software to dynamically generate shorter titles for each page on your site.</li> <li>If you are using WordPress, try the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin which allows you to set a separate title tag for use in Google search results.</p><br /><h3>Find and fix duplicate or missing meta descriptions</h3><br /><p></li> </ul> <p>If you want your website to rank well in search engine results pages, it’s important to have unique and accurate meta descriptions for each page. A meta description is a short summary of a webpage’s content, usually appearing underneath the page’s title in the search engine results.</p> <p>Duplicate or missing meta descriptions can hurt your website’s SEO, so it’s important to check all of your pages to make sure they have unique and relevant descriptions. You can use a tool like Screaming Frog to find and fix duplicate or missing meta descriptions.</p><br /><h3>Find and fix multiple H1 tags</h3><br /><p><br /> When creating a website, it is important to have only one H1 tag per page. This H1 tag should be used to describe the topic of the page in a concise and clear way. Multiple H1 tags on a single page can cause confusion for search engines when they are trying to index your site, and can also lead to decreased search engine optimization (SEO) rankings.</p> <p>If you have more than one H1 tag on your page, you can fix this by either removing all but one of the tags, or by editing the tags so that they each describe a different section of the page. In either case, make sure that the H1 tag is at the beginning of the page and is followed by relevant content.</p><br /><h2>Off-Page SEO</h2><br /><p>Off-page SEO is the practice of optimizing a website for the purpose of achieving a higher ranking in the search engine results pages (SERP) for certain queries. It is a process that can be used in addition to on-page SEO, or as a standalone process. The goal of off-page SEO is to improve the visibility of a website in the search engine results pages (SERP).</p><br /><h3>Analyze your competitor’s link profile</h3><br /><p><br /> Off-page SEO (also called “off-site SEO”) refers to actions taken outside of your own website to impact your rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs). </p> <p>A solid off-page SEO strategy can help to:<br /> -Build relationships with other websites and influencers in your industry<br /> -Drive traffic to your website<br /> -Increase the authority of your website</p> <p>There are a number of ways to build relationships and drive traffic, but one of the most effective is to analyze your competitor’s link profile. This will give you an idea of which websites and influencers they are working with, and how you can get involved with them as well.</p><br /><h3>Conduct a link intersect analysis</h3><br /><p></p> <p>To find out where two chords (or other lines) intersect, we can use a technique called link intersect analysis. To do this, we draw a line connecting the two points of interest, and then measure the angles formed by this line and the lines connecting each point to the center of the circle. If the two angles are equal, then the two chords intersect.</p><br /><h3>Target your competitors’ broken backlinks</h3><br /><p> A useful off-page SEO tactic is to target your competitor’s broken backlinks. You can do this by using the Google Search Console to find 404 errors on their website. Then, contact the website that is linking to your competitor’s broken link and let them know about the 404 error. Finally, ask them to replace the broken link with a link to your website. This will help you get backlinks from websites that are already linking to your competitor, which can be a valuable source of high-quality backlinks.</p></p>