Tag: Backlink

The top ranking of search engine results page(SERP) already became a competitive market for brands. SEO marketing has already become an attractive marketing strategy especially for small businesses in that their website can land high when the it is well built with quality content.

There are already hundreds of guides and tips for SEO marketing – from simple ones to complicated ones. However, this page is to summarize the fundamental tips for beginners in an easy-to-understand way.

[Definition] What is SEO?

SEO, an acronym of search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing your website to get organic traffic from the search engine result page. In other words, SEO strategy aims to build your website more attractive to a search engine.

What content do search engines prefer?

Search engines are to give users what they are looking for. Put it simply, search engines work for users. They use their own algorithms to provide the best result for users.

Based on their own algorithms, search engines discover content pieces (crawling) and categorize them based on relevancy (indexing), and put them in order based on its own ratings (ranking).

Benefits of SEO

Well built SEO helps a brand meet more audiences. By creating more engaging and effective SEO-focused content, a brand website can have more organic traffic.

Content relevance and Website authority are both important

This means delivering results on the search engine pages that are not only high quality but also relevant to what the searcher is looking for.
If your content isn’t relevant to search keywords, then it has little chance of ranking, no matter how credible it is. If your website isn’t credible, then it has little chance of ranking, no matter how relevant the content is.

SEO is the process of building relevance and authority

How to build relevance? Create high-quality & relevant content (On-Page SEO) How to build authority? Build high-quality links (Off-Page SEO)

On-Page SEO

Though creating content takes time and resources, it will more than pay off in the end.

The on-page SEO factors are the ones you can control on your website.

• Fundamental checkpoints: Crawl Accessibility
  Before make the content, make sure that your website or content are searchable. They should be public for search engines to discover them.

• What topics to choose? Build Topical Relevance
  Figure out which topics you want to be known for. Think about what users want to know. Choose the topic that satisfies both will help attract more traffic. Mind that a post should be able to answer searcher’s question and query.
  
  Also, remember that engines such as Google rewards freshness. Google introduced a freshness factor into its ranking algorithm in 2011.
  
• Use Relevant Images
  Choose the right images for your content. And optimize images by resizing images for proper page load time. Include captions also help boost visibility.

Secret to be the first? Simple. Just go one step further than the first runner.
The formula to rank #1 on SERPs is that simple. Identify pages that rank high for the keywords you want to rank for. Create better content than they got.

On-site SEO covers more than creating relevant content. The elements that you can control for better website, such as content format or website design, are also included.

• Keyword optimization to attract traffic
  Integrate keywords into the content but be cautious of over-using them. But do not overuse them. Google penalized keyword stuffing. The content should create more values to users beyond just incorporating keywords into the content.

• Title Tag
  A title tag is an HTML attribute that specifies the title of a web page. Title tags are displayed on SERPs in a clickable format. The title tag of a web page is the first thing users notice and it should be a concise description of a page’s content.

• Alt Text (alt attribute, alt description)
  An alt text is an HTML attribute applied to image tags to provide a text alternative for search engines. Search engines such as Google can’t see the images. Instead, they collect text. Search engine crawlers read the alt text value and associate images with a web page’s content. Therefore, applying alt texts to relevant images can positively impact search engine rankings. (Using relevant images is another fundamental tip for SEO marketing)
  The alt text that describes the image should be accurate and concise. For example, it’s better with “beagle dog playing fetch” than “beagle dog” (ReliableSoft).

• Meta Description
  The meta description is a brief summary of a web page — typically up to 160 characters long. Sometimes it is okay not to write any meta descriptions, but normally it is recommended to a accurate and attractive copy for a web page. However, you should avoid duplicate meta description tags (MOZ, more tips for meta description)

• Responsive Design
  Considering that approximately half of all web traffic are made from mobile, it’s safe to build a website with responsive design. Responsive websites are designed to fit the screen of whatever type of device your visitors are using.  As users don’t have to tap twice to optimize the screen size, a responsive page helps visitors navigate the site more conveniently. Great user experience includes a fast load speed and compelling UI/UX design. Make sure whether your web page is SEO friendly, especially for mobile users.
  
• Page Load Speed
  Make your website faster. People abandon and leave a web page when it takes too much for loading. If it takes more than 3 seconds to load your page, then the 40% of customers leave web pages. Don’t make slow page speed kills traffic.
  
• Links
  Don’t let any broken links on a web page harm its authority. You can use tools like Dead Link Checker to search for links with errors on your website.
  
• Clean and formatting page URLs
  URLs help describe a web page to search engines and users. Short, accurate, enticing, and well-structured URLs are considered appropriate. For more tips for URLs that work, you can refer to: Tips to create SEO-friendly URLs.

• Advanced Optimization for Featured Snippets
  A featured snippet is a summary of an answer to a user’s query, which is displayed on top of Google search results. It’s extracted from a web page and includes the page’s title and URL.

If your post ranks in top(#1 ~ #5) positions, you could use featured snippet optimization to stand out in SERPs.

• Make Strategic Updates: Historical Optimization
  Google and other search engines love fresh content. However, rather than start from square and build all things up, it is much easier to achieve the goal by updating the existing posts – thereby generating more organic traffic than they already do. This refurbishing process is called historical optimization.

Off-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO is mostly about building links. Once you’ve got everything in place, it’s time to expand your influence by earning attention and links from other sites and influencers.

Search engine works for searchers. Their mission is to provide a site that visitors can trust most. One of the best ways that your website can earn trust is by building quality backlinks from sites that have trust (or authority).

• Backlinks (or Inbound links)
  Backlinks are a signal to Google that your site is a high-quality resource that people want to reference. That means that sites with MORE backlinks – and higher QUALITY backlinks – tend to earn higher ranking in search (Hubspot).

• Give to Get : link building
  Too boost SEO, build relationships with influencers or website with quality content can help. If you can encourage more people to link your website from theirs, you get higher chances of getting upper ranking. When you put a backlink of certain content, you can inform the original creator (tag him/her or mention it) and request to do the same for you. Link building for SEO is also building human networks. And do a favor is always a valid tactic to get what you want.

SEO vs SEM

Search engine marketing is a form of Internet marketing that involved the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPS) through optimization and advertising(Wikipedia).
SEM includes components of paid search, such as PPC(pay-per-click) and also SMM (social media marketing). SEM also includes SEO as well as other search marketing tactics mentioned above.

Recommendations for Further Study

Execute SEO, and learn from failure to succeed

Last but not least, another crucial part of any SEO strategy is knowing what’s working (and what isn’t) and adjusting your approach as you go along. Try A/B Test for SEO strategies. Track and monitor SEO performance and find the most effective strategies that perfectly work for you.
If there are little changes in KPIs, figure out why and try another tactics. Through this repetitive process, you may find the best SEO model that suits your customers and your brand.