SEO has developed a lot over the years, and now the definition can be quite broad.
However, in a short and simple way, SEO is what helps people find your website from search results when they look for a specific set of keywords related to your business or products/services.
For example: If someone searches "best resorts near Malia", you want them to find your website! Instead of having thousands of competitors above you, it would be better if Google considers you as an authority source and ranks you first in the results. This will help get more visitors to your website (more traffic) which will lead to more potential customers. Even if this person doesn't buy anything there and then but comes back another day after researching some reviews about that product or service he found on your website, then that's considered as a lead. That person is now familiar with your brand and this makes it easier to convert into an actual customer later.
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From the definition above we see that SEO is all about getting visitors/readers (potential clients) to our businesses from the search results of Google or any other search engines. This means we need to make people find us through keywords they type in when they are looking for a specific product or service like "hotel near beach" or "best beaches in Greece".
A lot of companies will try to sell us Webpages and not Websites thinking their customers want only the visual side of the website, forgetting that it's a very important area but definitely not all there is to it.
All those Webpages will never be found through Google if they are not connected with other Websites in order to create a Website Hierarchy. This is why you often hear the term "On-site SEO" (websites) and not just "Webpage SEO".
To make people find us from search results we need to have keywords related to our products/services on every page of our websites or blogs. We also need to link all pages together since without this step we cannot form a Website Hierarchy for Google and other search engines to consider us as an authoritative source for any specific topic.
If we want to rank higher on Google, we need to focus our efforts via both different approaches since it's not enough just to have a good On-site SEO strategy in place. We also need to create Backlinks (Off-site SEO) which are links from other web pages that point back to our website and this will also play an important role.
Anyone can tell you "you need lots of Backlinks" but the real question here is: Which type? Where are they coming from? And why these kinds?
Those questions lead us straight into another important aspect of any Online Business and Online Marketing Strategy: Competitors Analysis.
If we know our competitors and how they treat their websites, this will help us to decide the best way to proceed with our own business. This needs lots of patience and research but it's definitely worth it!
It is very important to be aware of what are Google Webmaster Guidelines since they constantly change their algorithms due to new updates from time to time. For example, in May 2014 Google made a big change when they updated the Penguin algorithm (a big update for Penguin was released already in April 2014) which affected all websites negatively until August 2014. It wasn't clear why these changes were done or if there was an intention behind that but we could tell that most Websites ranking high after the previous update got penalized by Penguin and that's why a lot of websites lost their rankings.
About Penguin Update: This update was released in 2012 to filter sites with spammy backlinks or too many links from low-quality sources, then on April 24 2014 everything changed when Penguin 2.0 was followed by another big update on May 19 2014. From that moment it became clear that Google was acting towards quality content and not just quantity of backlinks. Again they updated the formula for Penguin (3.0) and confirmed all Webmasters once again to focus more on quality than just churning out articles/content no matter how good they are!
For this reason, as SEO Agencies we also need to educate people about these developments so they understand the importance of ranking high in Google and the value of being among TOP results. A lot of people are not aware that a website without traffic is like an empty shop nobody visits (you could say it's dead) no matter how SEO friendly it is.
In this article, we will try to explain to you, as best as possible, how On-site SEO works from both technical and non-technical points of view with practical examples so that you get a clearer picture of what does work for any type of business online!
On-site SEO strategy depends on several factors such as:
Demographics: it refers to age, sex, education level (or income bracket), religion or any other thing that can identify/link us with our potential customers. In this case, I am sure that most of you will agree with me when I say: "The more specific our service/products are, the smaller audience we can find online". If our business focuses in a certain age or sex group (for example only teenagers) then SEO results will be different from another website focusing on equally specialized products but targeting a different audience.
With the current Google updates it's important not just to focus on keywords related to your business services but also related to your target customers that is why if we want good rankings, every article needs to contain at least one keyword and an attractive title for people searching via Google search engine. Now let's see what should be included in a well-written post/article:
Meta Title: contains main keywords + 2 -4 words related to the subject/topic. This is one of the most important things that Google looks at since this title represents the first impression!
URL : contains keywords + %category% + .com or /en-gb/ for UK English dialect.
Meta description: It is the part of every page where you can include up to 160 characters and it appears underneath the Title on Google search results (so if there are no spaces, the character limit is even less). It's also used by other search engines but Google usually takes precedence. In this case, we should focus more on the first sentence/description since it will be what the majority of people read - don't forget to include the main keyword here as well!
Body text:
Use a good ratio of paragraphs (with 4+ sentences) and lists (bulleted or numbered), these are not just for titles, list items can contain important keywords in them too!
Short sentences, preferably with fewer than 30 characters. This makes Google spider scan your content easier and faster plus it gives people enough information from your web page in order for them to decide if they want to return later or move on. Once you get the hang of it, you can also know an article's SEO worth by simply counting the number of paragraphs and estimating their characters: If there are less than 20 - not enough! Between 25 - 40 - pretty good! More than 40 - below average!
Also for every paragraph, we should include an H1, H2 or H3 tag relevant to the subject and keywords. For example, if our target keyword is "SEO" then maybe our page will be about "SEO Service in London" so probably content should look like this:
Title | SEO Services in London | Full description | different tags (using H1, H2, H3)
Introduction - This shouldn't have more than 100 words as Google will index all of the content and if there are not enough words then it will probably return 0 results!
What is SEO? - This doesn't need to be very detailed since Google already has a pretty good explanation in their help centre, this should only briefly tell what we are going to talk about on our page.
Why SEO is important? - In this paragraph, we include keywords related to "business growth" or "expanding your business". Don't forget that first impression is extremely important here!
The more specific your services or products, the smaller audience you can find online. That's why if we want good rankings, every article needs to contain at least one keyword and an attractive title for people searching via Google search engine.
