SEO Basics

Set up GSC and Bing Webmaster tools

Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster Tools are free web-based programs offered by Google and Bing respectively. They provide website owners with valuable insights into how search engines interact with their website, including information on average positions, click-through rates, and impressions.

GSC also offers a range of features to help website owners improve their site’s visibility in Google search, such as the ability to submit sitemaps and request manual inclusion of pages.

Bing Webmaster Tools provides similar data to GSC, but also includes some unique features such as keyword research and backlink analysis.

Both GSC and Bing Webmaster Tools are essential tools for any website owner serious about improving their site’s visibility in search engines.

Set up Google Analytics

If you want to track your website’s traffic, you’ll need to set up Google Analytics. Analytics is a free service that gives you insights into how people are finding and using your site. To set it up:

1. Sign up for a Google Analytics account.
2. Follow the instructions to add the tracking code to your site. (The code needs to go in the section of every page you want to track.)
3. Wait a day or two for the data to start appearing in your account.

Once you’ve got Analytics set up, take a look at some of the reports it offers:

The Audience Overview report shows you how many people are visiting your site, where they’re coming from, and what they’re doing while they’re there.

The Acquisition reports show you where your traffic is coming from — whether it’s organic search, paid search, social media, or another source.

The Behavior reports tell you what people do when they get to your site, such as which pages they visit and how long they spend on each one.

Install and configure an SEO plugin (wordpress)

There are many SEO plugins available for WordPress, but we recommend Yoast SEO. It’s a comprehensive solution that covers all the basics, and it’s free.

1.Install Yoast SEO
2.Configure Yoast SEO
3.Verify your site with Google Search Console

Keyword Research

The process of keyword research is important for several reasons. First, it allows you to find out what potential customers are searching for when they are looking for products or services like yours. Second, keyword research helps you to identify which keywords are being used most often by your competitors. Finally, keyword research can help you to decide which keywords to target in your own marketing campaigns.

Identify your competitors

Competitor analysis is a first step in your keyword research. By understanding what keywords your competitors are targeting, you can get insights into which keywords may be most valuable for you to target. There are a few different ways to identify your competitors:

• Look at the keywords they are targeting in their advertising campaigns, such as Google AdWords or Bing Ads.
• Check which keywords they are organically ranking for in search engine results pages (SERPs). You can use a tool like MozKeyword Explorer to check SERP rankings.
• Look at the content they are publishing on their blog or website, and identify the topics and keywords they are covering.
  Once you have identified your competitors, you can start to analyze their keyword strategies to see what keywords they are targeting and how well those keywords are performing for them.
  Conduct a keyword gap analysis
  
  A keyword gap analysis is the process of comparing your site’s keywords to your competitors’ to identify areas where you could improve your keyword coverage.

To conducting a keyword gap analysis:

1. Make a list of your competitor’s websites.
2. Use a keyword research tool (such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Moz Keyword Explorer) to generate lists of relevant keywords for each site.
3. Compare your site’s keywords to those of your competitors. Identify any gaps in your coverage.
4. Prioritize the keywords you want to target, and add them to your site’s content.
   Find your main ‘money’ keywords
   
   Before you start any keyword research, it’s important to understand what your main ‘money’ keywords are – these are the terms that you really want to rank well for in search engines, as they have the potential to bring in the most traffic (and therefore, revenue) to your website.

To find your main money keywords, start by brainstorming a list of potential terms that you think people would use to find your product or service. Once you have a good list of potential keywords, you can then use a keyword research tool like Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Moz Keyword Explorer to get more information about each term, including how many people are searching for it and how much competition there is for it.

Once you’ve found your main money keywords, it’s important to include them in all aspects of your SEO strategy – from your website copy and meta tags to your blog posts and social media updates. By incorporating them throughout your marketing efforts, you’ll increase your chances of ranking well for these terms in search engines, which will ultimately lead to more traffic and revenue for your business.

Technical SEO

Leverage “Inspect URL” feature in GSC

Google Search Console (GSC) has a really useful tool called “Inspect URL”. You can use this tool to check whether your website is being indexed by Google and to find out if there are any issues with your website that could be preventing it from being indexed.

To use the “Inspect URL” tool, simply enter the URL of your website into the GSC interface and click “Inspect”. Google will then provide you with information on whether your website is being indexed and, if so, any issues that could be preventing it from being indexed properly.

If you’re not sure how to use the “Inspect URL” tool, you can check out this helpful video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoBaq0-Q4U4.

Ensure your website is mobile-friendly

One important ranking factor for Google is whether your website is mobile friendly or not. You can test this using Google’s free Mobile-Friendly Test tool. Simply enter your website URL and Google will run a test to see if your website is mobile friendly.

If it isn’t, you’ll need to make some changes to your website so that it is. Google has some helpful resources on how to do this.

Once you’ve made your website mobile-friendly, be sure to run the test again to verify that the changes you made were effective.

Check your site’s loading speed

One of the most important technical SEO factors is site speed. Web users are impatient – they expect pages to load quickly, and if they don’t, they’ll likely click away. That means slower-loading sites are less likely to rank highly in search results.

To check your site’s speed, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. Just enter your URL and click “Analyze.” The tool will give you a report on your page speed, as well as recommendations for how to improve it.

Here are some general tips for improving your site’s speed:

-Reduce the size of your images. This can be done by using fewer and smaller images, or by compressing your images.
-Minimize the code on your pages. This includes things like CSS and JavaScript.
-Use a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN stores copies of your site’s files in multiple locations around the world, so that visitors can download them from the server closest to them.
-Enable browser caching. This allows visitors to store copies of your site’s files on their own computers, so that they don’t have to download them each time they visit your site.

On-page and Content

Fix duplicate, missing, and truncated title tags

Duplicate title tags
If you have multiple pages with the same title tag, search engines will choose one to display in the search results. If you don’t want to leave it up to chance, pick one page and use a 301 redirect to send traffic from the duplicate pages to the original.

Title tags that are missing or truncated
If your title tag is missing or cut off in the search results, it’s likely because it’s too long. Keep your title tags under 60 characters, including spaces, so they don’t get cut off.

Cramming too much into your title tag
Trying to stuff your title tag full of keywords will not only irritate your visitors, it will also get you penalized by Google. Write titles that are clear, concise, and make use of rich keywords without going overboard.

Find and fix duplicate or missing meta descriptions

It’s important to have unique and accurate meta descriptions on each page of your website. Meta descriptions are the brief summaries that appear under your page title in search results. They help prospective customers understand what your page is about and decide whether to click through to your website.

If you have duplicated or missing meta descriptions, it can hurt your click-through rates and cause search engines to index the wrong page. Use a tool like Screaming Frog to find duplicate or missing meta descriptions on your website, then edit them so they’re accurate and unique.

Find and fix multiple H1 tags

If you have more than one H1 tag on a page, it’s a good idea to fix that. Search engines will often penalize pages with multiple H1 tags because it looks like keyword stuffing.

Off-Page SEO

Analyze your competitor’s link profile

You can get a good sense of the strength of your competitor’s link profile by doing a quick analysis using a tool like BuzzSumo. Just enter your competitor’s URL into the tool and hit “Go.” You’ll see a report that includes the total number of links, the number of referring domains, the Alexa Rank, and more.

Conduct a link intersect analysis

Link intersects is a process where you take a group of competitor sites and find the pages on their site that have the most links pointing to them. You can then intersect those pages with your own site to see where there might be opportunities for you to get more links.

To do a link intersect analysis, you’ll need a list of competitor sites. You can get this by doing a Google search for your keyword and looking at the websites that come up in the results. Make a note of the competitor sites that are ranking higher than you.

Once you have a list of competitor sites, you’ll need to find the pages on their site that have the most links pointing to them. To do this, you can use a tool like Ahrefs or Majestic. Just enter the URL of the competitor site into the tool and it will show you all the pages on their site that have links pointing to them.

Once you have a list of competitor sites and the pages on their site that have the most links, you can then intersect those pages with your own site. To do this, just enter the URL of your website into the tool and it will show you all the pages on your site that have links pointing to them.

Look at the results and see if there are any pages on your site that don’t have as many links as they should. If there are, try to think of ways to get more links to those pages. This could involve reaching out to other websites and asking them to link to those pages, or creating more content around those topics.

Target your competitors’ broken backlinks

Once you have your list of competitor domains, it’s time to start targeting their broken backlinks. There are a number of ways to find these backlinks, but I like to use a combination of Majestic and ahrefs.

If you don’t have access to either of these tools, you can use Google Search Console to find some of your competitor’s broken backlinks. Just enter the following search into Google:

site:domain.com inurl:http

You’ll then want to copy all of the URLs into a spreadsheet so you can track your progress.

The next step is to start reaching out to the webmasters who are linking to your competitor’s broken links and let them know that their link is broken. You can do this manually or use a tool like Buzzstream or Pitchbox to automate the process. I prefer Pitchbox because it allows you to scale your outreach efforts and track your progress in one place.

When you reach out to the webmasters, be sure to include the URL of your competitor’s page as well as the URL of your own page that you would like them to link to. Most webmasters will be happy to make the switch if it means their link will start working again.