SEO Basics

So you want to rank higher in the search engines? You’ve come to the right place. In this article, we’ll be discussing the basics of SEO and how you can use it to improve your website’s ranking.

Set up GSC and Bing Webmaster tools

SEO can be complex and time-consuming, but there are some basic things you can do to set yourself up for success. One of the most important things you can do is to set up Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster Tools for your website. These tools will help you track your website’s progress and performance in the search engines, and they will also alert you to any potential problems.

Google Search Console is a free service from Google that helps you track your website’s progress in the Google search results. You can use it to see how often your site appears in the search results, as well as which keywords are driving traffic to your site. Bing Webmaster Tools is a similar service from Bing that provides similar information for your site’s performance in the Bing search results.

Both of these services are essential for any serious website owner who wants to rank well in the search engines. If you don’t have them set up yet, take a few minutes to do so now.

Set up Google Analytics

GA) is a free service that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website.

Google Analytics shows how visitors found your site, how they interact with it, what modules and pages are most popular, and where users are located. It also shows what technology visitors use (e.g., browsers, operating systems), and measures conversions and e-commerce activity.

Install and configure an SEO plugin (wordpress)

Installing and configuring an SEO plugin is a great way to improve your site’s search engine optimization. There are a number of different plugins available, but we recommend using the Yoast SEO plugin. Yoast SEO is a popular plugin that is available for free through the WordPress plugin directory.

Once you have installed and activated the Yoast SEO plugin, you will need to configure it. You can do this by going to the SEO tab in your WordPress dashboard and clicking on the General tab. From here, you will need to enter your site’s title, description, and keywords. Yoast SEO also allows you to enter a custom URL for your home page and each of your posts and pages.

After you have finished configuring the general settings, you can move on to the other tabs in the Yoast SEO settings page. The next tab is the Post Types tab, where you can configure settings for your blog posts and pages. The third tab is the Taxonomies tab, where you can configure settings for your categories and tags. The fourth tab is the Social tab, where you can enter your social media profiles. The fifth and final tab is the Tools tab, where you can find a number of useful tools, such as an XML sitemap generator.

Keyword Research

You need to have a strategy for keyword research if you want to rank your website in the search engines. There are a few different methods that you can use to find keywords that people are searching for. You can use a keyword research tool, you can look at Google AdWords, or you can do some competitor research.

Identify your competitors

You can identify your competitors by searching for businesses that offer a similar product or service in your industry. To find your competitors, you can search online directories, such as Manta and Hoovers, or use a Google search.

online directories, such as Manta and Hoovers, or use a Google search.

Conduct a keyword gap analysis

In order to improve your website’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs), you need to understand how search engines work and what searchers are actually looking for. Once you have that understanding, you can begin to identify the keywords your website should be targeting to improve its ranking. This process is known as keyword research.

One way to approach keyword research is to conduct a “gap analysis.” This simply means identifying the keywords your competitors are targeting that you are not. This gives you a chance to fill that gap and improve your ranking. Here’s how to conduct a keyword gap analysis:

1) Identify your competitors. Look at the websites of other businesses in your industry or niche, as well as any major players in your industry (such as national brands). Identify at least three, but no more than ten, of these websites.

2) Use a keyword research tool like Google AdWords Keyword Planner or SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool to identify the keywords each competitor is targeting. Make sure to look at both the “organic” and “paid” results, as both can be helpful.

3) Compare the list of keywords you’ve compiled to the list of keywords you are currently targeting on your website. Any gaps represent potential opportunities for you to improve your website’s ranking.

4) Prioritize the keywords you want to target. Not all keywords will be equally valuable or relevant, so it’s important to prioritize those that are most likely to help you achieve your business goals. Consider factors like search volume, competitiveness, and relevance when making your decisions.

5) Start targeting those keywords on your website through SEO best practices like using them in page titles, headings, meta descriptions, and throughout the content itself. Over time, this will help improve your website’s ranking for those particular keywords, helping you draw more traffic from organic search results.

Find your main ‘money’ keywords

In order to find your main keywords, you will want to use a keyword research tool. There are many different ones available, but we recommend using Google AdWords Keyword Planner.

Once you have signed up for an account, you will want to create a new campaign. You can do this by clicking on the ‘Campaigns’ tab and then selecting ‘+ Create new campaign.’

Once you have created your campaign, you will be able to access the keyword planner by selecting ‘Tools’ and then ‘Keyword Planner.’

From here, you will want to select ‘Find new keywords’ and then enter in some seed keywords that are relevant to your business. After entering in your seed keywords, you will want to select ‘Get Ideas.’

On the next page, you will see a list of keywords that are related to your seed keywords. You can filter these results by various criteria, such as keyword popularity or advertiser competition.

You should also pay attention to the estimated search volume for each keyword. This is an estimate of how many people are searching for that keyword each month. The higher the search volume, the more valuable the keyword is likely to be.

Once you have found a few keywords that are relevant to your business and have a high estimated search volume, you can add them to your campaigns.

Technical SEO

If you want people to find your website, you need to make sure it’s visible in the search engines. To do this, you need to optimize your website for search engine algorithms. One way to do this is by using keyword-rich titles and descriptions. However, you also need to be careful not to stuff your keywords too much or your website will be penalized.

Leverage “Inspect URL” feature in GSC

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free web-based service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s appearance and performance in Google Search results. It also provides valuable insights about your website, such as which keywords are driving traffic to your site and which pages need improvement.

One of GSC’s most useful features is the “Inspect URL” tool, which allows you to check how Google sees your website. This can be helpful in identifying potential SEO issues, such as pages that are not being indexed or crawled properly.

To use the “Inspect URL” tool, simply enter the URL of the page you want to check into the search bar and click “Inspect.” Google will then show you how it sees the page, including any errors that were detected.

If you’re not sure how to interpret the results of the “Inspect URL” tool, don’t worry – our team of SEO experts can help! Contact us today for a free consultation.

Ensure your website is mobile-friendly

Making sure your website is mobile-friendly is a crucial part of technical SEO. In fact, Google’s mobile-first indexing means that if your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices, it may not rank as highly in search results.

To make sure your website is mobile-friendly, start by checking its page speed using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. This tool will give you a report on your website’s performance, as well as specific suggestions on how to improve its speed.

Next, take a look at your website’s design. Is it easy to navigate and use on a mobile device? If not, consider making some changes to its design or layout. You may also want to create a separate mobile version of your website.

Finally, keep in mind that more and more people are using voice search to find information online. To make sure your website is optimized for voice search, focus on creating content that is natural-sounding and easy to understand.

Check your site’s loading speed

One of the most important aspects of technical SEO is site speed. A fast loading website will ensure a good user experience, and also improve your chances of ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

There are a number of ways to improve your website’s loading speed, including optimizing your images, using a Content Delivery Network (CDN), and minifying your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.

To check your site’s loading speed, you can use one of the many free online tools, such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom’s Website Speed Test.

On-page and Content

If you have a string and you want to replace some items in it with other items, you can use the replace method. The replace method takes three arguments. The first argument is the string to be replaced, the second argument is the string to replace it with, and the third argument is the number of items to replace.

Fix duplicate, missing, and truncated title tags

It’s important to have unique, descriptive title tags on every page of your website. Title tags are a key factor in helping search engines understand what your pages are about, and they’re also a major factor in helping users decide which search results to click on.

If you have duplicate or missing title tags, or if your title tags are being truncated (cut off) in search results, there are a few things you can do to fix the problem.

• Check for duplicate title tags. If you have more than one page with the same title tag, choose one of the pages and update the title tag to be unique.
• If you’re missing title tags altogether, add them to your pages. Make sure eachtitle tag is unique and accurately describes the content on the page.
• If your title tags are being truncated, try to make them shorter and more concise. You can also check with your webmaster or SEO professional to see if there’s anything else that can be done to prevent truncation.
  Find and fix duplicate or missing meta descriptions

If you’re seeing the “r number of items to replace is not a multiple of replacement length” error message, it means that your title or meta description is too long. To fix this, you’ll need to shorten your title or meta description so that it falls within the prescribed length limit.

Find and fix multiple H1 tags

On-page and content are two of the most important ranking factors for SEO. That’s why it’s crucial to make sure your website has unique and keyword rich titles and descriptions. Using the same title tag or meta description for more than one page can hurt your website’s search engine rankings. This is because Google sees these duplicate tags as being low quality and not worthy of a top spot in the search results.

To fix this, simply find all the H1 tags on your website and make sure each one is unique. You can do this by using a tool like Screaming Frog or manually inspecting your code. Once you’ve found all the duplicate H1 tags, simply change them to something unique.

This may seem like a small change, but it can really make a big difference in your website’s search engine rankings. So make sure to take the time to fix any duplicate H1 tags on your site today!

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is the act of optimizing a website for better search engine rankings through the process of creating backlinks. Backlinks are links that point from one website to another. The more backlinks a website has, the more popular it is in the eyes of Google, and the higher it will rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Analyze your competitor’s link profile

Analyzing your competitor’s link profile can give you insights into their SEO strategy and help you compete against them. Here are some tips on how to do this:

1) Look at the number of links they have. This can give you an idea of how much effort they are putting into their off-page SEO.

2) Look at the quality of their links. A higher quality link is one that comes from a reputable website with a high PageRank.

3) Look at the anchor text of their links. This can give you clues about what keywords they are targeting.

4) Try to find out where their links are coming from. If most of their links are coming from blog comments, then that is one area you may want to focus on.

Conduct a link intersect analysis

A link intersect analysis helps you identify opportunities to get links from websites that already link to your competitors.

To conduct a link intersect analysis:

1. Make a list of your top 10-20 competitors.
2. Use a tool like ahrefs, Majestic, or Moz’s Open Site Explorer to get a list of everyone who links to each of your competitor’s websites.
3. Export the data and remove any duplicates.
4. Find where your competitors overlap by looking for websites that link to two or more of your competitor’s websites. These are websites you may be able to get links from as well.
   Target your competitors’ broken backlinks

The goal of off-page SEO is to build external signals that show search engines how popular and authoritative your website is. This can be done in a number of ways, but one of the most effective is to target your competitor’s broken backlinks.

A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Backlinks are important because they show search engines that other websites are talking about you. The more backlinks you have, the more popular and authoritative your website appears to be.

However, not all backlinks are created equal. A backlink from a high-quality website will be worth more than a backlink from a low-quality website. And a backlink from a competitor’s website will be worth even more than that.

To find your competitor’s broken backlinks, you can use a tool like BuzzSumo. Just enter your competitor’s URL into the search bar and BuzzSumo will show you all the websites that are linking to them.

Check each of these websites to see if they’re still linking to your competitor’s website. If they’re not, contact the site owner and ask them to link to your website instead. This is an easy way to get high-quality backlinks from websites that are already talking about you.