SEO Basics

SEO is short form for “Search engine optimization”. It is a long-term marketing strategy employed in order to improve a websites visibility and organic search results in google and other global search engines.

Set up GSC and Bing Webmaster tools

Setting up Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster Tools is one of the first things you should do when starting your SEO journey. These tools will help you track your website’s progress and give you insights into how your site is performing in the search engines.

GSC will show you things like your website’s click-through rate (CTR), average position, and the number of impressions your site is getting. You can also use GSC to submit your sitemap and submit URLs for indexing.

Bing Webmaster Tools will show you similar data to GSC, but for Bing instead of Google. You can also use BWT to submit your sitemap and submit URLs for indexing.

Both of these tools are essential for any website wanting to rank in the search engines, so be sure to set them up as soon as possible!

Set up Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free service that website and app owners can use to track how their visitors are interacting with their properties. It’s a powerful tool that helps you understand what’s working and what’s not, so you can make informed decisions about how to improve your online presence.

To set up Google Analytics, you’ll need a Google account. If you don’t have one already, you can create one for free. Once you have a Google account, you can sign up for Google Analytics here.

Once you’ve signed up for an account and created your first property (i.e., website or app), Google will provide you with a tracking code. This code snippet needs to be added to every page of your website or app that you want to track.

If you’re not comfortable adding code to your website yourself, you can hire a web developer to do it for you. Once the code is in place, Google Analytics will start collecting data about your visitors, and you can start analyzing it right away!

Install and configure an SEO plugin (wordpress)

There are many factors that go into configuring an SEO plugin, but here are some basics to get you started.

1. Choose a plugin that is compatible with your version of WordPress.
2. Install and activate the plugin.
3. Configure the plugin settings according to your needs.
4. Test the plugin to make sure it is working properly.
   Keyword Research
   
   Identify your competitors

Before you start your keyword research, it’s important to first identify your competitors. To do this, you’ll need to find out who is ranking for the keywords that you’re targeting.

To find your competitors, simply do a Google search for your target keyword. Look at the websites that are ranking on the first page of Google and try to determine who your main competitors are.

Once you’ve identified your competitors, take a look at their website and see what keywords they’re targeting. You can also use a tool like Ahrefs to check what keywords they’re ranking for.

Now that you know who your competitors are and what keywords they’re targeting, you can start your own keyword research.

Conduct a keyword gap analysis

When you’re conducting keyword research, it’s important to look for gaps in your competitor’s keyword coverage. This will help you identify opportunities to fill those gaps and improve your own search engine ranking.

To conduct a keyword gap analysis, start by creating a list of all the keywords you want to target. Then, use a tool like Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Moz Keyword Explorer to research your competition. Finally, compare your list of keywords to the keywords your competition is targeting to identify any gaps.

Once you’ve identified a keyword gap, you can fill it by creating new content that targets that keyword. This could be a blog post, an infographic, or even a video. By filling these gaps in your keyword coverage, you can improve your search engine ranking and attract more traffic to your site.

Find your main ‘money’ keywords

‘Money’ keywords are the ones that are going to make you money. These are the terms that people are searching for that you want to rank for in Google.

To find your main money keywords, start by brainstorming a list of terms related to your business or website. Once you have a good list, you can use a keyword research tool like Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Moz Keyword Explorer to get more ideas and find out how many people are searching for each term.

Once you have a good list of money keywords, you need to figure out how to integrate them into your website. The best way to do this is to create content that is optimized for these keywords. This can be blog posts, product pages, landing pages, or even just general articles about your topic.

If you want to rank for certain keywords, make sure that those words appear in your title tags, meta descriptions, and H1 tags. It’s also important to use the keywords throughout the body of your content in a way that sounds natural and not forced.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing a website for the search engines. It is a subset of the larger field of search engine optimization. Technical SEO includes optimizing the website architecture, code, and content for the search engines.

Leverage “Inspect URL” feature in GSC

The “Inspect URL” feature in Google Search Console is a great way to check if your site is being indexed properly and to find any crawl errors. To use this feature, simply enter a URL into the search box and click “Inspect.”

Ensure your website is mobile-friendly

In 2015, Google announced that mobile-friendliness would be a ranking factor in its search algorithm. This means that if your website is not optimized for mobile devices, it could negatively impact your search engine ranking.

To ensure your website is mobile-friendly, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. This tool will analyze your website and give you a report on what needs to be fixed to make it more mobile-friendly.

Some common issues that can cause a website to fail the mobile-friendliness test are:
-Text that is too small to read
-Links that are too close together
-Content that is wider than the screen
-Images that are not sized correctly

Check your site’s loading speed

Your site’s loading speed is important for a few reasons. First, a slow site frustrates visitors. They may not stick around if your pages take too long to load. Second, slow sites can negatively impact your search engine ranking. Google and other search engines consider page speed when ranking websites in search results.

To check your site’s loading speed, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. Just enter your website’s URL and click “Analyze.” The tool will give you a score for both mobile and desktop versions of your site, as well as specific recommendations for how to improve your site’s loading speed.

On-page and Content

This may not be the most cheery of topics, but let’s talk about on-page SEO for a bit. On-page SEO is all about optimizing your website for the search engines. This includes optimizing your title tags, meta tags, and header tags. It also includes optimizing your website’s content.

Fix duplicate, missing, and truncated title tags

Title tags are one of the most important on-page SEO elements (next to meta descriptions). Unfortunately, they’re also one of the most commonly neglected. A well-optimized title tag can make a big difference in your click-through rate (CTR) and search engine ranking.

Here are some tips for optimizing your title tags:

1. Make sure each page has a unique title tag.
2. Avoid truncation. Keep your title tags to 60 characters or less, including spaces.
3. Use keyword-rich phrases that accurately describe the page’s content.
4. Place important keywords at the beginning of the title tag.
5. Use capital letters for the first letter of each word (except for prepositions and articles).
   Find and fix duplicate or missing meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are the short snippets of text that appear below your page’s title in the search results. They give searchers an idea of what your page is about, and can help them decide whether or not to click through to your site.

Unfortunately, many websites either don’t have meta descriptions at all, or have duplicates (or near-duplicates) that don’t offer much value to searchers. This can hurt your click-through rates and, as a result, your search engine rankings.

Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to fix this problem. First, you can use a tool like Screaming Frog to crawl your site and look for pages without meta descriptions. Then, you can either add descriptions to these pages, or consolidate duplicate pages into a single URL.

Find and fix multiple H1 tags

One of the most common on-page SEO issues is having more than one H1 tag on a page. Although it’s not technically incorrect to have multiple H1 tags, it can be confusing for both users and search engines, and it can cause your page to be less effective in terms of SEO.

There are a few ways to fix this issue:

-Remove all but one H1 tag from your page. If you have multiple H1 tags, you can remove all except for one. This is the simplest and most effective way to fix the problem.

-Use CSS to hide all but one H1 tag. This method is not as effective as simply removing the extra H1 tags, but it can be helpful if you’re unable to remove the tags for some reason.

-Use a different heading tag for your secondary heading. If you absolutely must have two headings on your page, you can use a different tag (H2, H3, etc.) for your secondary heading. This will make it clear to both users and search engines which heading is more important.

Off-Page SEO

Analyze your competitor’s link profile

The strength of your site’s link profile is a major ranking factor. The number of links, the quality of the links, and the diversity of the links all play a role. You can increase your link count by acquiring links from other websites, but you’ll also want to focus on getting high-quality, diverse links.

To get an idea of the quality and diversity of your competitor’s link profile, you can use a tool like semrush.com. Just enter your competitor’s domain into the search bar, and semrush will show you information about their link profile, including:

-The total number of backlinks
-The number of unique domains linking
-The anchor text distribution
-The “nofollow” ratio

semrush will also show you the top keywords that your competitor is ranking for, as well as their estimated traffic levels. This information can give you insights into why they are outranking you and what you need to do to catch up.

Conduct a link intersect analysis

Link intersect analysis is a process of understanding which websites link to multiple competitors, but not to you.

The idea is that if these websites are linking to your competitors, they may be open to linking to you as well.

To conduct a link intersect analysis, you’ll need to use a tool like Ahrefs. Once you’ve entered your competitor’s URL into Ahrefs, click on the “Backlinks” tab and then click on the “Competing domains” link at the top of the page.

This will bring up a list of all the websites that link to your competitor, but not to you. You can then contact these websites and ask them to link to your website as well.

Target your competitors’ broken backlinks

The first step to finding opportunities for your own off-page SEO is to target your competitor’s broken backlinks. You can do this by running a backlink analysis with a tool like SEMrush or Moz. Just enter your competitor’s URL into the tool and you’ll see all of the backlinks that are pointing to their website.

From there, you can export the list of broken links and start reaching out to the webmasters who are linking to your competitor. Let them know that their link is broken and offer them a replacement link that points to your website. This is a great way to get high-quality backlinks from websites that are already linking to your competitor.