SEO Basics

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It 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

Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster Tools are both free platforms that offer webmasters a wealth of insights into how their site is seen and performed by the respective search engines. They also offer the ability to submit new content to be indexed, as well as troubleshoot any problems that might be preventing your pages from appearing in search results.

To get started with GSC, you’ll need to add and verify your site. This can be done by connecting your site to Google Analytics, adding a DNS TXT record, or uploading an HTML file to your server. Once your site is verified, you can start exploring the different reports and features that GSC offers.

Bing Webmaster Tools works in a similar way, but requires that you create a Bing-specific account. After adding and verifying your site, you’ll have access to Bing’s tools and reports.

Both GSC and BWT are excellent resources for understanding how your site is performing on these major search engines, so be sure to take advantage of them!

Set up Google Analytics

To set up Google Analytics, you’ll need a Google account. If you don’t have one, you can create one here. Then, sign in to your Google Analytics account and add a new “property” to start tracking your website.

You’ll be asked to provide some basic information about your website, including the website name, URL, and industry category. You can also choose whether to share your data with Google products and services.

Once you’ve provided this information, you’ll be given a tracking code that you’ll need to add to your website. This code will allow Google Analytics to collect data about your website visitors and their behavior.

If you’re not familiar with code, don’t worry! There are a few different ways to add the tracking code to your website, including using a plugin or inserting the code into your website template.

Once the tracking code is added to your website, it can take up to 24 hours for data to appear in your Google Analytics account. However, it’s worth noting that not all data will be available immediately — some data may take longer to collect, depending on the nature of the report.

Install and configure an SEO plugin (wordpress)

Before we get started, you need to install an SEO plugin. For the purpose of this tutorial, we will be using WordPress SEO by Yoast. You can get it for free at https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/.

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, click on the newly added “SEO” link in your sidebar. This will take you to the plugin’s configuration page. The first thing you need to do is click on the “Titles & Metas” link in the left-hand sidebar.

On the Titles & Metas page, you will see a number of options for configuring your titles and meta tags. For now, we will focus on the “Homepage” tab.

The first option on this page is “Title Separator”. This is the character that will be used to separate your site title from your page title when they are both displayed in the title tag. The default character is the pipe ( | ), but you can change it to something else if you prefer.

The next option is “Title Format”. This is where you decide how your titles should be formatted when they are displayed in search engine results pages (SERPs).

There are three variables that you can use in this field: %%sitename%%, %%title%%, and %%sep%%. %%sitename%% will be replaced with your site’s name, %%title%% will be replaced with the title of the current page or post, and %%sep%% will be replaced with the title separator character that you selected above.

So, if your site is called “example.com” and you are configuring the titles for your homepage, a title of “Home | example.com” would result if you entered “%%title%% | %%sitename%%” into this field. If you want something different, simply change the order of the variables or omit one or more of them altogether. Just remember to include %%sep%% wherever you want your separator character to appear.

The next option on this page is “Meta Description Format”. This works in much the same way as Title Format, except that it is used to configure the meta descriptions for your pages and posts rather than the titles. As with Title Format, there are three variables that you can use: %%sitename%%, %%title%%, and %%excerpt%%. Again, these will be replaced with your site name, the current page or post title, and an excerpt from the content respectively.

The final option on this page is “Noindex subpages of archives”. This setting tells search engines whether or not they should index sub-pages of archive pages (e.g., individual posts within a category). If you want search engines to index all of your content, then leave this setting unchecked

Keyword Research

If you want to rank higher in the search engines, keyword research is a must. You need to find out what people are searching for and then create content that is relevant to those keywords. However, you don’t want to stuff your content with keywords. That will just make it difficult to read and could get you penalized by the search engines.

Identify your competitors

As you begin your keyword research, it’s important to think about your competition. After all, they are also trying to rank for the same keywords that you are. Here are a few things to consider as you identify your competitors:

-Who are your biggest competitors?
-What keywords do they rank for?
-How much traffic do they get from their keywords?
-What is their keyword difficulty score?

There are a number of ways to gather this information. One way is to use a tool like SEMrush or SpyFu. Another way is to simply do a Google search for your target keywords and see who shows up in the top results.

Conduct a keyword gap analysis

Before you can create content that ranks well in search engines, you need to understand what people are actually searching for. This is where keyword research comes in.

Conducting a keyword gap analysis is a great way to find out which keywords your competitors are ranking for that you are not. This can give you some insights into what kinds of content you should be creating to better compete for those keywords.

To do a keyword gap analysis, simply create a list of all the keywords you want to rank for. Then, using a tool like Google AdWords Keyword Planner, check how many of those keywords your competitors are already ranking for. Any keywords they are ranking for that you are not is likely a good keyword opportunity for you.

Find your main ‘money’ keywords

Your main ‘money’ keywords are the ones that are likely to generate the most traffic and conversions for your business. Sheer volume isn’t the only factor that makes a keyword valuable – commercial intent, competition and ranking difficulty are also important considerations.

To find your main ‘money’ keywords, start by brainstorming a list of potential terms related to your products or services. You can then use a keyword research tool to get search volume data and other metrics for each keyword, and to identify related terms that you may have missed.

Once you have a list of valuable keywords, you can start working on optimization strategies to target them. This may include creating new content, optimizing existing content, and building links to your site.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the practice of optimizing a website to rank higher in the search engines. It is a subset of SEO that focuses on the behind-the-scenes aspects of a website, such as the coding, structure, and architecture. Technical SEO can be a bit tricky to understand, but it is important to know if you want to rank higher in the search engines.

Leverage “Inspect URL” feature in GSC

One of the most useful features of Google Search Console (GSC) is the “Inspect URL” feature. This allows you to submit a URL to Google and get feedback on whether or not the page is able to be indexed by Google.

To use this feature, simply enter in a URL into the GSC search bar. If the URL is able to be indexed by Google, you will see information such as the last time it was crawled, any issues that were found, and more. If the URL is not able to be indexed, you will see a message saying so.

This feature can be extremely helpful in troubleshooting indexation issues on your website.

Ensure your website is mobile-friendly

Making sure your website is mobile-friendly is essential for SEO in 2019. With over half of all web traffic now coming from mobile devices, it’s more important than ever to make sure your site is optimized for small screens.

There are a few key things you can do to make sure your website is mobile-friendly:

• Use responsive design: This means your website will automatically adjust to fit the screen size of the device it’s being viewed on.
• Use large, easy-to-read fonts: Mobile users often have to zoom in to read text, so make sure your font sizes are large enough to be easily legible.
• Use short, concise sentences: Mobile users are often multitasking and have shorter attention spans than desktop users, so make sure your content is easy to scan and digest.

For more tips on optimizing your website for mobile users, check out this guide from Google.

Check your site’s loading speed

One of the most important ranking factors for a website is loading speed. Users are impatient and will not stay on a website that takes too long to load; they will simply go to a competitor’s site. In addition, search engines like Google now take loading speed into account when ranking websites. So, if your website is slow, not only will users be less likely to visit it, but it will also rank lower in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Fortunately, there are a number of ways to improve your site’s loading speed. One of the most effective is to reduce the size of your image files. Images are often the largest files on a webpage, so reducing their file size can have a big impact on loading times. You can also improve your website’s code and make sure it is clean and well-organized. This will help the search engine bots crawl your site more efficiently and improve its indexing. Finally, you can use a content delivery network (CDN) to deliver content from multiple servers around the world, which can further improve loading times.

If you want to rank higher in SERPs and keep users happy, make sure your website loads quickly!

On-page and Content

In order to rank higher in the search engines, it is important to have quality on-page and content. This means that your website must be well-optimized and your content must be relevant and engaging. If you can achieve these two things, you will be well on your way to higher search engine rankings.

Fix duplicate, missing, and truncated title tags

Be sure to fix duplicate, missing, and truncated title tags on your site. These are all common problems that can lower your search engine ranking and cause other problems.

Duplicate title tags are a common problem on websites. If you have multiple pages with the same title tag, search engines may not be able to properly index your pages. This can cause your pages to rank lower in the search results.

Missing title tags are another common problem. If a page does not have a title tag, search engines will not be able to index the page correctly. This can also cause your pages to rank lower in the search results.

Truncated title tags can also be a problem. If a title tag is too long, it will be cut off in the search results. This can make it difficult for users to find your page when they are searching for specific keywords or phrases.

Find and fix duplicate or missing meta descriptions

One of the most important elements of on-page SEO is the meta description. The meta description is the short paragraph of text that appears under your page’s URL in the search results. It’s your chance to convince someone to click through to your website, so it’s important to make sure that your meta descriptions are unique, interesting, and relevant to your content.

Unfortunately, duplicate or missing meta descriptions are a common problem. If you’re not careful, you could end up with the same meta description on multiple pages, or no meta description at all. Either way, it’s bad news for your SEO.

If you want to find and fix duplicate or missing meta descriptions, there are a few different tools you can use. Google Search Console is a good place to start. Just go to Search Appearance > HTML Improvements and you’ll see a list of any pages with duplicate or missing meta descriptions.

Another useful tool is Screaming Frog. This software crawls through your website and flags up any pages with duplicate or missing meta descriptions. You can then go in and edit your metas one by one.

Once you’ve found and fixed all the duplicate or missing metas on your website, it’s important to keep an eye on things going forward. Make sure you check your metas regularly, and don’t be afraid to make changes if necessary – as your content evolves, so should your meta descriptions.

Find and fix multiple H1 tags

-Each page should have only one H1 tag -Check for pages with multiple H1 tags and determine which one is most relevant -If there are multiple H1 tags on a page, make sure that they are all relevant to the page’s content -If you have too many H1 tags on a page, it can be confusing for users and search engines, so make sure to remove any that are not relevant

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is all about optimizing your website for the search engines, and it is also a great way to get more traffic to your site. There are a few things that you can do to optimize your site for the search engines, and we will cover them in this section.

Analyze your competitor’s link profile

Start by analyzing your competitor’s link profile. A quick and easy way to do this is to use a backlink checker like Moz’s Open Site Explorer. Just enter your competitor’s URL into the tool and you’ll get a report showing all of the links pointing to that site. You can also see the anchor text for each link, giving you some insight into what keywords they may be targeting.

Conduct a link intersect analysis

A link intersect analysis can be a helpful way to prioritize which link opportunities will be the most valuable for your website. This type of analysis looks at the intersection of three factors:
-The linking website’s authority
-The relevancy of the linking website’s content to your own website
-The number of other websites linking to the same page on the linking website

By looking at these three factors together, you can get a good sense of which link opportunities are likely to be the most valuable for your website.

To conduct a link intersect analysis, you will need to gather data on all of the websites that link to your competitor’s website. Once you have this data, you can begin to look for patterns and identify which websites are linking to multiple competitors. These are typically websites that are authority sites in your industry or niche, and they should be a high priority for your own link building efforts.

Target your competitors’ broken backlinks

Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors for SEO.

A backlink is when another website links to yours. This is also known as an “incoming” or “inbound” link.

Backlinks are important because they show search engines that your site is popular and trustworthy.

Think of it like this:

If someone is linking to your site, that must mean that your site is worth linking to!

Unfortunately, not all backlinks are created equal.

There are two main types of backlinks: dofollow and nofollow.

Dofollow links are the kind that actually help improve your SEO. They pass along “link juice” and tell Google that your site is a good one.
Nofollow links, on the other hand, don’t really help your SEO much at all. In fact, they can actually hurt it.