What is search engine optimization (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing the number of organic visitors to a given website by increasing the way a site rankings higher in the search engines. It is the process of evaluating a website and determines the proper keywords to target to drive traffic to the site that will convert into sales. I believe that all SEO starts with keyword research, on-site analysis and optimization, and content creation.
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is looking for and determining keywords that generate high search volumes and determine a low competition level. You can use any keyword suggestion tool for your research. You need to be careful when you are performing your keyword research to not get blindsided and distracted by a keyword that has a high search volume that you will not be able to rank for. For example, it will be tempting to want to rank for SEO when it gets 90,500 monthly searches, whoever there are over 19 million sites that you will be competing with. This is a short tail keyword.
You will want to start off with long-tail keyword terms that will generate a steady flow of traffic for your site. It’s very rare that you can find a term that will generate a high search volume that people are not targeting. If you were targeting a competitive niche like bodybuilding, that term gets 27,100 monthly searches but best supplements for muscle gain gets 1300 monthly searches and had 1200 sites competing for that term. Sometimes the long-tail keyword is the way to go.
SEO Best Practices
The best SEO practice is to perform a complete audit on the site. The first step on an existing site is to see if and how it ranks currently. Once I have identified a page that is ranking for the keyword, I look at a way to enhance that page. It could be as simple as adding an image or 5. I could add more content to the page to make it longer. I could alter the meta title and or description. This is all part of the on-page optimization. This is basic on-page SEO.
What if my site is not ranking?
If your site is not ranking, there are several reasons why. You could have any of the following issues. You might not have proper and well-optimized content. I have seen countless sites that just needed well-written content as each page of their site had 1 to 2 paragraphs of content only. You could have some serious coding issues. I have seen a site that could not rank the way it was coded. The terms and niche they wanted were not competitive but the website was hindering the SEO.
Another major reason that your site might not be ranking is due to your links or lack of links. Google has placed a value on links and has penalized site owners for over-optimizing and buying links. This is the Penguin Penalty. The penguin penalty is an algorithm that penalizes sites and removes them from the SERPs.
What is SERPs?
SERPs is the Search Engine Results page or the listing results you see when your search results are returned or displayed. The SERPS are filled with Ads, aka PPC, Maps results, Images, Videos, and Organic results. Ads or PPC, Pay Per Click is a form of internet marketing where an advertiser pays a fee each time a user clicks on an ad. You are paying for each visit to your site and are banking on converting the visitor into a sale. Map results show up when a localized term is being searched for. Google has made several changes to its map listings. There are 3, 5, and 7 pack map results. Google has played around with the placement of the maps be either placing them at the top of SERPs below the maps and down at the bottom of the page. The older SERPS was 10 organic spots. On the first page, a SERP can actually hold 17 results between images, maps, and organic listings. An organic result is a naturally placed listing.
I like to dive deeper and look for flaws and issues inside the coding. There is a major difference in how a site will rank based on the code. A newly and properly coded site will out rank a poorly coded site from 2 years ago. Most people do not know or fully comprehend this. A website and SEO is not like Field of Dreams, if you build they will come. I have seen tons of sites that could not rank without some major recoding. I have seen an overnight increase in rankings when a properly coded site is relaunched. It can be the difference between several additional months of link building.
Another one of my search engine optimization basics is to check for broken links on the site. There are two types of links on-site, internal and external. Both can have the ability to harm or reward a site. Broken links will count against you. A good SEO audit will take several hours. Be careful as there are a lot of bad SEO auditing services.
How to increase SEO.
If you are able to follow and implement these steps, you will be able to see a dramatic increase in your organic rankings. There are countless great SEO optimization tools. You can use Screaming Frog, SEMRush, or Siteliner. Make sure your content is original and not duplicated as well. You can run your content through Copyscape.