More and more people are interested in promoting websites in
search engines, or SEO. Someone wants to see their site at the top of search results, and
someone is planning to get a new profession. Regardless of the motivation,
everyone can independently master the technique of website promotion from
scratch. But right away, you need to prepare for painstaking complex work —
there is no other way to get into the top 10 pages today. But how do I get
started? Effective SEO promotion of a website is the result of implementing a
certain strategy of action. Therefore, novice optimizers need to
understand what kind of work and tasks they will face. Knowing the general
strategy makes it possible to direct time to study exactly those aspects of SEO
that will be used in practice.
Stages of SEO promotion
Standard SEO promotion is based on the following plan:
1. Preparatory stage (assessment of the competitive environment,
identification of the target audience, formation of an overall strategy).
2. Technical optimization of the site.
3. Writing and posting text content.
4. Improvement of behavioral factors.
5. Creating an external link profile.
6. Optimization of commercial factors.
7. Analytics and improvements.
After learning more about the implementation of each step of the
strategy, you can make a plan to study different areas of site SEO.
Step 1. Preparatory stage
To properly prepare for this stage, you need to understand the following
aspects:
- Analysis of
the competitive environment: Sites that are at the top of the search
results and those that are slightly behind are evaluated, This analysis
helps you understand which solutions search engine algorithms (PS) had
better perceived, It is better to make an assessment using special
services (for example, Spy words or Monitor Backlinks).
- Creating a
strategy: The data obtained should
become the basis for drawing up a strategic plan for website promotion
from scratch.
- Collecting
semantics and clustering queries: The semantic core, or set of keywords, largely
determines the direction of project development. You can add semantics
during the promotion process, but then you will have to change the
structure of the entire site. Therefore, it is better to work out the
semantics efficiently at the resource development stage.
This is all you need to know in order to prepare your site for active
search engine optimization.
Step 2: Site Technical optimization
Technical, or internal, optimization is a set of activities aimed at
bringing the site to the requirements of search engines. In this direction, the
main ranking factors are as follows.
Download speed, security, and server responses:The page should take no longer, than 3-5 seconds should load. You can check the metric using the PageSpeed Insights service. A reliable antivirus program must protect the site, and traffic must be encrypted using HTTPS protocols. Sometimes servers can transmit incorrect response codes to requests. You need to learn how to detect and correct this. In addition, you need to learn how to choose a high-quality hosting service that can handle even unexpected peak loads.
Usability and adaptability: Promotion will be successful if the site is intuitive and convenient for any user. It should be comfortable to use regardless of the type of device or browser. You also need to add so-called breadcrumbs-these are special links that demonstrate the user's step-by-step movement through the site structure. SEO promotion involves the use of URLs whose readable text conveys the semantic context of the page.
Creating a title and description: These special fields for titles and descriptions are displayed in the site snippet. Their content also helps algorithms evaluate the page's relevance. The title and description are subject to strict keyword content and volume requirements.
Optimization sitemap.xml and formation robots.txt: The service file sitemap.xml should contain information about the resource structure, which simplifies indexing. File robots.txt includes instructions for search robots. The skill of optimizing it is to correctly close sections that should not be considered for ranking from indexing.
Deleting duplicate pages: You need to learn how to identify duplicate pages and get rid of them in a timely manner. It is better to use special services for this task.
In addition, you need to register in the webmaster panels of search
engines – this allows you to monitor the site and get a lot of useful
information for analytics; and set up a redirect to correctly redirect traffic
from mirrors to the address of the main host. It is better to study the subtleties
of implementing all these stages of SEO optimization before launching the
project since most of them are implemented directly during the site development
process.
Step 3: Writing and posting Content
The content plan is created with a direct link to the semantic core. For
each important page, a unique text is created that is optimized with the
appropriate keywords. The following requirements apply to content:
- relevance,
- full disclosure of the
topic,
- clear structure,
- literacy,
- The presence of synonyms and
thematic word forms.
Good texts should fully disclose the subject of the search query that
users can use to get to the page. It is also important to monitor the
regularity of content placement. You do not have to do this too often, but you
need to follow a conditional schedule.
Step 4: Improve the quality of user factors
Today, search engines pay more and more attention to user factors when
ranking. In a sense, they use humans as their own robots. Therefore, if user
behavior shows that the site was uninteresting, incomprehensible, or not
useful, then this will have a bad impact on the project's rating. Search
engines analyze the following user factors:
- return to search results;
- depth of interaction with the
site;
- session duration;
- snippet clickability in
search results;
- bounce rate;
- Click-through from bookmarks
and the address bar.
User factors are improved by constantly improving the site. To achieve
positive results in this direction, it is necessary to study the subtleties of
optimizing usability and creating "catchy" content.
Step 5: Creating an external link profile
Representatives of search engines regularly report that the value of external links for promotion has decreased to almost zero. However, the practice of optimizers shows that links continue to produce results, but the approach to working with them has changed fundamentally. Today, the following methods for creating a link profile are acceptable.
Perpetual links: You need to buy not just links, but, in fact, the placement page. It should no longer contain any other outgoing links. The link should be surrounded with high-quality relevant content. For publishing, it is better to choose reputable thematic sites. It is good if the donor does not sell links on popular exchanges.
Crowd marketing: This approach involves "spying" the placement of information with a link to the promoted site. For this purpose, we use comments in blogs, sites with reviews, forums, and other platforms with the possibility of guest publishing.
Outreach: In fact, this is a classic advertisement, since links for search promotion are published on the basis of an agreement with journalists, site administrators, or bloggers.
When studying SEO on your own, it is important to learn how to evaluate
the relevance of information. So, even today you can find a lot of articles
that recommend using exchanges for the mass purchase of external links. Yes, it
once worked, but today this approach not only does not give a positive result
but is also a direct threat to the site.
Step 6: Optimize commercial factors
Commercial factors do not directly affect the ranking results. Moreover,
many of them cannot be analyzed by search algorithms. However, they affect user
behavior and largely affect traffic conversion. This is important because the
goal of SEO is not limited to attracting users alone. The category of
commercial factors includes the following points:
- the physical address of the
company and contact phone numbers;
- reviews, portfolios,
certificates, licenses, and industry awards;
- availability of online
consultants and a telephone hotline;
- detailed information about
delivery, guarantees, and payment methods;
- Driving directions;
- Variety of products, quality
of description, and positioning of goods/services.
It is important that the elements are located in the usual zones for the
user. For example, everyone is already used to the fact that the phone number
can always be found in the" header " of the site, and if it is not
there, the user can simply close the page.
Let's sum up the results
It is obvious that in our era of accessible information, it is quite possible to learn SEO yourself. It is only important to divide the process into areas and study them systematically. But you need to understand that at the first stages, not everything may work out. Therefore, if the main motivator is the development of a serious commercial project on the Internet, then it may be better to order a website promotion in Moscow. This is due at least to the fact that one person will not be able to perform the full amount of work physically.