SEO 101

What is SEO 101 and why is it important?

Welcome! We are excited that you are here! If you already have a good understanding of SEO and why it's important, you can skip ahead to Chapter 2 (although at the end of this section, Google and Bing's We recommend that you take a look at their good practices; these are supplementary information). For everyone else, this section will help you build your basic SEO knowledge and confidence as you go.

What is SEO?

SEO, "Search Engine Optimization", "Search Engine Optimization" means." It is the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of website traffic and exposure to your brand through non-chargeable (also known as "organic") search engine results. Despite the acronym, SEO is as much about people as it is about the search engines themselves. What people are searching for on the internet, the answers they are looking for, the words they use and the type of content they want to use; It's about understanding. Knowing the answers to these questions allows you to connect with people who are looking for the solutions you offer online. If knowing the intent of your audience is one side of the SEO coin, presenting it in a way that search engine crawlers can find and understand is the other side. In this guide, we hope you learn how to do both.

Search engine basics

Search engines are answer machines. They scan billions of pieces of content and thousands of factors to determine which content is most likely to answer your query. they evaluate. Search engines do all this, “crawling and indexing”. by exploring and cataloging all available content on the Internet (webpages, PDFs, images, videos, etc.) through a process known as "sort" It does so by sorting by how well it matches the query in a transaction we call a . We'll cover crawling, indexing, and sorting in more detail in the next section. Which search results are "organic"? Truck? As we said earlier, organic search results are untested (i.e. not advertising) results that are earned through effective SEO. These were easy to spot, the ads were clearly labeled as such, and the remaining results were usually "10 blue links" listed below them. took shape. But with the way search has changed, how can we detect organic results today? Nowadays, it's often referred to as "SERP". Search engine results called s Its pages generate more ads and more dynamic organic results than I've ever seen before. It is packed with formats (called “SERP “features”). Some examples of SERP features are featured snippets (answer boxes), People also have boxes, carousel images, etc. they ask. New SERP features continue to emerge, depending largely on what people are searching for. "For example, "Denver weather" If you search for it, you'll see a weather forecast for the city of Denver directly in the SERP instead of a link to a site that might have that forecast. If "pizza Denver" If you search for Denver is a "local takeaway" of pizza places. you see the result. Useful, isn't it? It is important to remember that search engines make money from advertisements. Their purpose is to better solve searchers' queries (in SERPs), keep searchers coming back, and keep them in the SERPs longer. Some SERP features on Google are organic and can be affected by SEO. These are the snippets that pop up (a promoted organic result that displays an answer in a box) and related questions (aka "Users Have Asked This" boxes). ;soluble. It's worth noting that while they're not paid ads, there are many other search features that aren't usually affected by SEO. These properties often have data from proprietary data sources such as Wikipedia, WebMD, and IMDb.

Why is SEO öimportant?

While paid advertisements, social media, and other online platforms can generate traffic to websites, the majority of online traffic comes from search engines. it is directed from the shelf. Organic search results more digital properties covers, looks more reliable for savvy searchers, and gets much more clicks from paid ads. For example, of all US searches, only ~2.8% of people click on paid ads. In summary: SEO has ~20x more traffic opportunities than PPC, both on mobile and desktop. SEO also pays dividends over time when set up correctly. It's one of the only evolutionary marketing channels that can keep saying what. Your traffic can grow exponentially over time if you provide solid content that deserves to rank for the right keywords, whereas ads need constant funding to send traffic to your site. Search engines are getting smarter, but they still need our help. Optimizing your site helps you present better information to search engines so that your content can be properly indexed and displayed in search results.

Should I hire an SEO expert, consultant or agency?

Depending on your bandwidth, your desire to learn, and the complexity of your website(s), you may find that you can do some basic SEO yourself, or you may prefer the help of an expert. It happens either way! If you are looking for expert help, many agencies and consultants "provide SEO services". It is important to know, but it can show great differences in terms of quality. Knowing how to choose a good SEO company can save you a lot of time and money, because Wrong SEO techniques can do more harm than help to your site. We also provide a list of recommended agency partners who use Moz SEO tools to strengthen their work on your behalf! "White Hat" and "Black Hat" SEO "White Hat SEO" refers to SEO techniques, best practices, and strategies that follow the search engine rule of thumb, which is the primary focus for contributing more to people. "Black Hat SEO" refers to techniques and strategies that try to fool search engines. Black Hat SEO can work, but it puts websites at great risk of being penalized and/or not indexed (removed from search results) and has ethical implications. Penalized websites have bankrupt businesses. This is another reason to be very careful when choosing an SEO specialist or agency. Search engines SEO industry Shares similar goals with Search engines want to help you succeed. In fact, Google's own SEO startup. A Search Engine Optimization Starter very similar to our guide. It even has a guide! They also strongly support the efforts of the SEO community. Digital marketing conferences like Unbounce, MNsearch, SearchLove, and Moz's own Mozcon regularly attract engineers and representatives from major search engines. Google helps webmasters and SEOs through the Webmaster Central Help Forum and by hosting live Hangouts during office hours. (Bing, unfortunately, shut down the Webmaster Forums in 2014.) Webmaster guidelines vary from search engine to search engine, but the basic principles remain the same: Don't try to fool search engines. Instead, offer your visitors a wonderful online experience. To do this, follow search engine guidelines and fulfill user intent.

Google Webmaster Guidelines

Basic principles:

• · Make pages primarily for users, not search engines.
• · Do not deceive your users.
• · Avoid tricks to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you feel comfortable explaining to a Google employee what you do to a website. Another helpful test is, "Will this help my users? Would I do this without search engines?"
• · Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or interesting.

Things to avoid:

• · Automatically generated content
• · Joining link schemes
• · Little or no original content pages that are not creation (copied from elsewhere)
• · The practice of hiding-displaying content different from visits to search engine crawlers.
• · Hidden text and links
• · Landing pages—pages built to rank well for specific searches to drive traffic to your website.

Bing Webmaster Guidelines

Basic principles:

• · Provide clear, deep, engaging, and easy-to-find content on your site.
• · Keep page titles clear and relevant.
• · Links are considered a sign of popularity, and Bing rewards organically growing links.
• · Social influence and social shares are positive signals and can affect how you rank organically in the long run.
• · Besides a positive, helpful user experience, page speed is öimportant.
• · Use alt attributes to describe images so that Bing can better understand the content.

Things to avoid:

• · Pages that display poor content, mostly ads or affiliate links, or redirect visitors to other sites, will not rank well.
• · Abusive link tactics that aim to inflate the number and structure of inbound links, such as link buying, joining link schemes, can lead to de-indexing.
• · Make sure you have clean, concise, keyword-containing URL structures in place. Dynamic parameters can contaminate your URLs and cause duplicate content issues.
• · Make your URLs descriptive, short, keyword-rich if possible, and avoid non-letter characters.
• · embedding links in Javascript/Flash/Silverlight; Keep the content away from them too.
• · Duplicate content
• · Keyword stuffing
• · The practice of hiding-displaying content different from visits to search engine crawlers.
• Guidelines for representing your local business on Google
• The business you are doing SEO work for is eligible for a Google My Business listing if it operates locally, outside of a store, or to locations where customers are present to serve. For local businesses like this, Google has listed guidelines that govern dos and don'ts when creating and managing these listings.

Basic principles:

• · Make sure you are eligible for inclusion in the Google My Business directory; Even if you have a home address, you must have a physical address and serve customers face-to-face at your location (such as a retail store) or at theirs (such as plumbing).
• · Provide all aspects of your local business data, including name, address, phone number, website address, business categories, opening hours, and other features, succinctly and accurately.

Things to avoid:

• · Creation of My Business lists for ineligible organizations
• · “Filling” your business name with geographic or service keywords or misrepresenting your essential business information, including creating lists of fake addresses
• · Using mailboxes or virtual offices instead of unique street addresses
• · Destroying the Google My Business listing for review through false positive reviews about your business or false negative comments about your competitors
• · Costly, novice mistakes from not reading the finer points of Google guidelines

Satisfying the user

• Focus on understanding and fulfilling user intent rather than violating these guidelines to trick search engines into ranking you higher. When a person searches for something, he or she wants to achieve a desired result. The content requested, whether it's an answer, concert tickets, or a photo of a cat, is their "user intent".

   

  Common user purposeç types:

• Informative: Searching for information. "Example: "Best series for photography" ;top&; computer type which one?"
• Navigation: Searching for a specific website. ÖExample: "Apple"
• Tradeable: Making a call to buy something. "Example: "Good deals on MacBook Pros"
• You can take a look at user intent by searching Google for your desired keyword(s) and evaluating the current SERP. For example, if there is a carousel of photos, people searching for that keyword are very likely to search for the photos.
• Also, evaluate the content provided by your top competitors that you are not currently providing. How can you provide 10x more value to your website?
• Providing relevant, high-quality content on your website will help you rank higher in search results and, more importantly, build reputation and trust with your online audience. /li>
• Before you do any of these, you need to understand your website goals in order to execute a strategic SEO plan.
• Know your website/customers goals
• Every website is different, so take the time to really understand the business goals of a particular site. This will not only help you determine which areas of SEO you should focus on, where to track conversions and how to set benchmarks, but also to identify customers, bosses, etc. It will also help you create topics to discuss SEO projects with.
• What will your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) be to measure the return on your SEO investment? More simply, what is the key to measuring the success of your organic search efforts? Even if it's that simple, you'll want it documented:
• My primary SEO KPI for the
• ____________ website is ____________.

   

  A few&c to help you get started. common KPI:

• · Sales
• · Downloads
• · Email records
• · Contact form submissions
• · phone aches

   

  If your business has a local component, you will also want to define KPIs for your Google My Business listings.

  These may include:

• · Clicks to search
• · Clicks to website
• · Clicks for directions
• "Sorting" and "traffic" You may have noticed that things like this are not on the KPI list, and this is intentional.
• "But wait a minute!", "I came here to learn about SEO because" I heard it could help me rank and get traffic, and you're telling me these aren't important goals? you say.
• Noç even! You heard right. SEO helps your website to rank higher in search results and as a result; As it can help drive more traffic to your website, only ranking and traffic is a way to achieve a result. If no one is clicking on your site, it will do little in ranking, and if that traffic isn't meeting a larger business goal, it's of little use in increasing your traffic.
• For example, if you were running a lead generation site, you would prefer:
• 1000 monthly visits, 3 people filling out a contact form? or...
• 300 monthly visits, 40 people filling out the contact form?
• If you're using SEO to drive traffic to your site for conversion purposes, we hope you'll choose the latter! Before you start SEO, make sure you set your business goals, then use SEO to help you achieve them – not the other way around.
• SEO accomplishes much more than makeup metrics. When done well, it helps real businesses achieve real goals for their success.
• This guide will help you become more data-driven in your SEO efforts. Instead of shooting random arrows all over the place (and getting lucky once in a while), you'll put more wood behind fewer arrows.
• Take a bow (and some coffee); Let's start Chapter 2 (How Search Engines Work – Crawling, Indexing and Ranking).

“SEO requires attention and patience. To be successful, follow the changing technological developments closely.”
– SEOART TEAM

The beginning here More about this source textSource text required for additional translation information Send feedback Side panels History Saved Contribute 5,000 character limit. Use the arrows to translate more. ç By following these seven steps with our guide, we can achieve a successful SEO: