"I want to gain more visibility.
and what are you doing to achieve this?
"I have a website.
This is like saying I'm rich because I carry money in my wallet. The result is the same. You can have a great website, with awesome quality and super cool appeal, but if it's not designed for SEO, forget about being found or getting many conversions.
Call it search engine optimisation or search engine optimisation. The goal is still to improve the visibility of a website and reach the top positions in Google and other search engines. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) implies something more than just a presence on the internet, perhaps a set of actions and techniques to improve visibility in search engines, but... What are these techniques?
what are these techniques? How do I implement them? Where do I start working on the SEO of my website? What factors are involved? How do I analyse positioning?
RES-PI-RA
We have come to ease your way through a complete guide to search engine optimisation, just what you are looking for if you are taking your first steps in your company's digital strategy or want to learn some key concepts about SEO.
get comfortable and open your mind!
First things first, now that you know that SEO is the process of improving a website's visibility in organic search engine results, it's time to start building your strategy from the ground up.
It is a study or research of the keywords that are relevant to our business or clients and that are going to help us position our website in a totally organic way, that is to say, in a natural way and without resorting to paid techniques. These terms are used to improve the visibility of our website in search engines.
A basic requirement to get a good positioning for your page is to use the keywords selected in the keyword research in the texts. And although they can often come almost naturally, it does not hurt to spend a little time researching which keywords are relevant to your content.
For example: on a website dedicated to selling running shoes, we could deduce terms such as 'running shoes', 'women's running shoes' or 'brands of running shoes', but if we do an exhaustive study using keyword analysis tools, we will know with certainty which terms are better positioned, with less difficulty and higher search volume.
Doing SEO without keywords is like playing football without a ball - you can't do it!
There are an infinite number of platforms and tools available to start working on your keyword research. Here are 11 examples:
did you know any of them?
When you come up with a new website, you want to use the best keywords for your SEO strategy. While you are creating your list of terms, your competitors are doing exactly the same. What's more, some of them will already have achieved the top positions in the search engines.
it is possible to beat your competition, and to do so you need to target keywords with a lower level of competition.
are you one of those who think that the difficulty of a keyword only depends on the search volume?
For example, if a keyword like 'sport shoes' has a monthly search volume of 26,000, we automatically think that it is a term with a very high difficulty. Correct! But it will not always be the volume that establishes the difficulty, other aspects such as the average number of backlinks (inbound links) of the URLs that use that keyword, the seasonality, indirect competitors, pageRank, etc. influence it.
Depending on the tool you use, different filters or indicators about the keywords will appear. We show you the most relevant ones to determine their relevance:
"SEO work today is more than keywords and high quality backlinks. It is more than metadata optimisation. It is more, even, than content. It is the guarantee of a frictionless user experience while delivering the right information at the right time and in a timely manner " - Dainius Runkevicius.
Every business that offers products and services through a web channel and dreams of increasing its visibility needs to do some research beforehand to understand its current situation and opportunities for improvement. Are you one of them?
If your answer is yes, then it is essential to know the types of keywords that exist and that could be part of your content strategy. How to classify them?
According to the intention:
According to length:
Depending on the type of business:
Other keywords according to usage:
Now you have the basics to start your keyword research, you know the different tools to start it, the requirements to determine the relevant keywords and the most suitable terms depending on the intention, length and type of business.
It's time to start your keyword research with these steps, let's get started!
Our recommendation is to rule out keywords with less than 50 monthly searches, because they will not generate enough traffic to compensate for the effort of generating content. However, there may be some exceptions.
Competition in SEO positioning can be high (there are many businesses trying to rank for this term), medium or low. The ideal? Finding keywords that are highly relevant to us, with a high number of searches and low competition. But it is not always possible. So, if you are taking your first steps, we recommend using long tail words with low competition.
oK?
If you're going to work on your company's keyword research, you need to always have these tips at hand. Grab your smartphone... or your tablet... Or go get a pen and paper. Well, look, wherever you want, but take notes.
Amen.
As the name suggests, these are those factors within a web page that Google takes into account for positioning. First of all, it is important to check that your website is indexed by Google. For example, search for https://www.occamagenciadigital.com/ and check if the number of results corresponds to the total number of internal pages of your website. However, the best option to find out for sure is to check it directly in Google Search Console by submitting the sitemap.xml.
"The goal is not to rank, it's to stand out, and if you get the highest percentage of clicks on your results for the searches you are trying to rank for, so much the better.
ready? Now, we show you a compilation of the factors within the website that Google takes into account (SEO on page):
Each of your blog posts should have a title and a description. Here are a couple of tips for each of them:
In addition to a title, each page has a tag or text fragment that search engines display when they list the page in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Choose your words carefully, because title tags have a maximum of 75 characters.
Meta tags are snippets of code that can be included in the HTML of the website and are placed near the title tag code. Meta descriptions have a maximum of 150 characters and describe what the specific website is about. How to identify them? They appear below the blue link in the search results. If you don't add them, then the search engines will do it for you at random.
Also, when search engine robots start scanning web pages, they look for clues to determine what they are about. The use of keywords that are different from the rest of the page are the guidelines that show which ones are the most important. Now do you understand why it is essential to use tags in the header of your page?
Web semantics has a lot to do with the diversity of terms or keywords and refers to those that are related. For example: if we have a text that talks about Nike, it is convenient to include terms that surround its semantic circle, such as 'trainers', 'sportswear', 'sportswear brands', etc.
why use semantic words? Because you will provide greater value to the user and Google will take this into account when processing your content.
Google values long content, but without overusing keywords. Ideally, you should analyse a specific topic in depth. You already know that content is king, so you should also make sure it is relevant and valuable to your audience. Did you know that the way your site's pages are formatted can influence the way search engine robots digest your content?
The best recommendation is that each page you create should have a thought-provoking (attention-grabbing) headline, include a keyword or phrase and bold type to highlight the most important terms that you are optimising for. Don't forget to check your spelling and wording.
Add internal and external links in a natural way. For example: if you are talking about a previous post on your blog, you should ideally link to it. And the same goes for mentions of other organisations, media or others.
doI really need to link to external sites? Yes, you do. As contradictory as it may seem to mention other organisations, these links help you improve your relationships, expand your information and increase your chances of being mentioned by other brands.
Images are a fundamental element to support your content. Surely, you are using some, but Google is not able to detect them, it is important that you facilitate this task through an HTML tag to indicate what appears in the image. There are CMS that allow its insertion automatically (alt text). And do not forget to rename the images BEFORE uploading them, because it is not the same download-J1.jpg as "zapatilla-deporte-infantil.jpg", neither for us, nor for Google.
H1, H2, H3, H4... Do you know them? They are the subtitles that indicate to Google the parts of the content and their importance. They are indicated through simple HTML tags, so that the higher the number of tags (e.g. H5), the lower their relevance within the hierarchy. Remember that the H1 should always correspond to the title of the publication and there should only be one. And it should not be the same. Do not copy and paste the title of the page, it is a bad practice.
did you know that it can have a big impact on the ability of search engines to index and understand the content of your website? That's right. That's why it's best to opt for organised structures. If your URL contains arbitrary numbers and codes, it may be optimal for the authoring software, but it serves no purpose. Ideally, edit it whenever you can to include the page title. HubSpot, for example, already automatically creates URLs based on content to eliminate this problem. Avoid using accents and whitespace.
Its main purpose is to improve the indexing of the website while providing search engines with the URLS that make up your page.
are you giving it the importance it deserves? It's a file that tells Google what you do and don't want it to index.
funny thing! One of the reasons why many authority pages don't dominate the top of the organic lists is because they are very disorganised with basic on page SEO.
These are techniques aimed at obtaining external links that point to our website in order to improve organic positioning in Google and other search engines. Although their objective is still the same as on page SEO - to improve positioning - they differ in the steps they follow to achieve it. Off page SEO carries out actions outside the website.
how do we improve our off-page organic positioning? By increasing our Page Rank score. And what is this? It is a factor integrated into Google's algorithm to mark the position that a website will obtain after user searches. To put it in a nutshell, off-page SEO tells Google what others think of your website.
For example, if there are many relevant links pointing to your pages, the engines will understand that you have valuable content for users. Why else would they link to it? The question is, who links to you, how do they link to you and how is your content shared?
You can use free tools to find out, and while 20 of your friends' websites might be a first step to getting inbound links, we assure you that getting one link from an educational website could be more valuable than the power of all the other links put together.
Here are the factors that play a role in our page ranking:
Undoubtedly, it is one of the most important factors. And although most people associate off page SEO with link building (defining internal pages, doing basic on page SEO and choosing thematic keywords), there is life beyond that. The link building technique consists of creating external links to a page in order to generate web authority and organic positioning.
There may be a high number of links on a single domain, but ideally (and what Google values most) is to have more links on different individual domains.
If you link to a page with a very low ranking but from a well-ranked domain, it will be more beneficial than the other way around. Domain authority counts for a lot! It is an indicator that measures the quality and credibility of a website's content, as well as improving search engine rankings.
It is not always the case that links from pages with related topics are more relevant to search engines. Try to identify the pages with the most relevant links, you will gain positions in search engine rankings.
Not all pages are equal, nor do they achieve the same results. Links from pages with higher rankings are more relevant than those with lower rankings.
Also known as anchor text and functions as a hyperlink from a piece of content to where it directs if the user clicks. However, although it has long been a ranking factor, it can sometimes be used as an indicator of web spam, which affects organic ranking.
Simply put, they are stronger than links from secondary pages.
The typology of your links is also important in building your website. In fact, if you include too many links of the same type, it could negatively impact your ranking.
Links that come from content are more valuable than links that come from other places, such as sidebars, for example.
according to Google, its algorithm does not take nofollow links into consideration, but dofollow links do affect ranking. dofollow links are a kind of credibility vote, so the more dofollow links your page receives, the more important it appears to search engines.
Maybe in the past, if I generated 200 links on my website and you only generated 10, Google would give me more value and authority. But things have changed. Now, quality matters much more than quantity of links, so Google is asking: Where do the links come from? How fresh are they? How natural are they? And how good are they? And how good are they? And so on.
We've compiled a short list of tips for building valuable links:
The answer is YES, of course you can. High quality backlinks are very important, especially when you want to maintain the position of your website, but you should be aware of Google's penalties for unnatural links.
Although there is no exact step-by-step to save yourself from being penalised, there are some good practices to stay off the radar:
backlinking is a fundamental part of your website's positioning!
did you know that external links are the first local positioning factor for Google's organic results and the second for Google Maps?
Backlinks or inbound links are a key factor in the ranking of your website. It is a link pointing to your website from a different site. The more quality backlinks you get, the better your website will rank. Why?
Because search engines rank the results according to the relevance of a web page (how well the content matches what a user is looking for) and the authority (how well the page has a good reputation on the internet).
Google is more concerned than ever with user optimisation and valuable content. So the focus is no longer on whether people use a link to your page, but on the intention with which they do so. Off page SEO is made up of all the techniques aimed at obtaining these external links. Imagine the importance of generating them... Here are some tips for obtaining clean links. Or, in other words, examples of off page seo:
Natural links from relevant and authoritative websites serve as a vote of confidence that helps search engines to trust your website more. Getting other relevant websites to link to your site, having a greater presence on other websites in your sector or guest posting are some examples of off-page SEO that you should not forget.
This process of link building is known as link building, which allows crawlers to find your content and your domain to acquire a higher level of visibility and authority. The time that Google spends crawling your website is known as the crawl budget, i.e. the number of requests that Googlebot makes to your page in a specific period of time.
how to develop a link building strategy to improve your search engine ranking? Your strategy will not be complete if you do not implement these tactics:
And above all, listen to your competition. When it comes to assessing the most effective strategies for positioning, one of the most effective is to detect and take advantage of broken links.
Finally, a complete backlink analysis can help you to detect precisely which links are good and bad links for your site.
"Better one good link in hand, than a hundred bad ones in flight" - David Martin
So far, there have been many terms used to refer to on page and off page SEO, as well as other related processes. But it doesn't end here. On the contrary, we want to share with you some terms related to positioning that you should know:
"Time puts everyone in their place, and if you do SEO, a little higher " - Carlos Redondo
If you want to increase visibility, build better engagement and convert more leads into customers, pay attention to the loading speed of your page.
The page speed of a website is the time it takes for a page to load and is a key ranking factor, not only to satisfy users, but also search engines.
Audiences demand speed and agility at all times, so if a page takes too long to load content, it is very likely that the user will lose interest and look for other options. Therefore, the loading speed directly influences the user experience.
In search engines, one of the key factors for the positioning of websites is the loading speed.
Measure, measure, measure.
For this, Google created the Page Speed Insights tool, although there are other alternatives, such as Website Grader or Dotcom-Monitor. In any case, you can detect the real page speed of your pages, even those of your competitors, and obtain a complete diagnosis of those elements that interfere with the speed. In addition, you can access a series of recommendations or improvements to increase the loading speed of your website.
To do this, the tool uses a traffic light rating (green, yellow and red) to show the overall performance of the site. Imagine that you have just received your Page Speed Insights load speed analysis report. It looks clean and simple, but if you don't have much knowledge of this tool, it can be a little difficult to understand.
ask for help whenever you need it!
Here are some tips and strategies to increase the loading speed of your website:
remember, less is more!
If you are taking your first steps in the world of marketing, or if you are an expert, you probably already know that strategies require a lot of creativity and that we need to use tools to check the effectiveness of our efforts.
this is where the conversion rate comes into play.
Conversion rate, conversion rate or CR. Call it what you will, the real meaning is still the percentage of users who perform a specific action, either to buy, to register or to make a booking. It depends on each website.
The conversion rate is the result of dividing the number of goals achieved by the number of unique users visiting the website.
For example, imagine you are using Google Analytics and you need to set up goals, such as the number of pages viewed in a session (set a goal when the user has visited more than 3 pages) or length of stay on the website.
To do this, just go to Google Analytics > Administration > View > Goals > Create New Goal and follow each step to start measuring them.
The really cool thing about this is that after defining your goals, you can start having new conversion-related metrics in all your reports. If you already have an active Google Ads account, you can link it to your Analytics account and import the goals to increase synchronisation.
The conversion rate is the most widely used indicator in digital marketing strategies, as it allows us to measure the impact of our efforts to get users to perform an action (buy, download an eBook, click on a link, etc.).
These are some of the elements measured by CR:
It's not just about understanding what has worked, but taking advantage of opportunities to make your next strategies go further.
did you know that to understand how your strategies are working, you also need to understand how fast your prospects are moving through the customer-based cycle?
With the funnel..
The user was placed at the top, and as they moved up the funnel, brands saw them change to become a customer or buyer.
With the flywheel..
the friction between the different stages and the loss of interest of potential customers is reduced. Thanks to the union between marketing and sales, efforts are unified and a better experience for the user is generated.
Give time to the strategy, organise all your data and use the conversion rate to obtain averages for each of the flywheel stages (customer service, marketing and sales, with the customer at the centre of the strategy).
We have brought you 6 effective tips to optimise the conversion rate of your website, so that you can adapt all the elements or factors of your site to increase the chances of this action happening more often.
ready? Let's go!
"Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust builds conversions " - Andrew Davis
Conclusions about SEO
It is clear that one of the things that most obsesses anyone with an online project is the traffic it receives. The more, the better. And the more potential, not to mention. How to attract the target audience is the big question that everyone asks, and the best way to increase traffic is through SEO positioning.
That's why you're here.
It is the art of being visible in the first results of the different search engines. That's nothing, but underneath this concept there is a universe of techniques, elements and processes that we should all know. Yes, you read that right. And this post is a compilation of all of them, so that you have them at hand whenever you need to remember why you should position yourself.
It's not just about writing about what interests you, but about what interests others. To do this, you need to make the right selection of relevant keywords. You need to do keyword research! And it doesn't matter which tool you choose to do it, because the important thing is to know these terms and increase your visibility.
It goes without saying the importance of a content strategy in this whole story. It could very well be the protagonist, because content is the place where all the elements that favour (or hinder) positioning are found: from HTML tags, such as H1, H2, H3, to keywords, incoming and outgoing links, etc. If a user marks your content as a favourite, be satisfied.
However, this is not all. Within any SEO strategy, you must take into account the factors that increase or reduce the loading time of a website (cache, CSS and JavaScript files, images...) and what is the conversion rate of the same. None of this would make sense without measuring the results.
do you have doubts about how to position your website in search engines? Would you like to put these techniques into practice but don't know where to start? At Occam Digital Agency we can help you solve your doubts.
"If content is king, SEO is its soldier".