When we talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), we're talking about making gradual improvements and adjustments to websites. These actions can have a significant impact on the ranking of these websites in natural (organic) search results when combined with other enhancements. Therefore, you need to optimize your website to serve the needs of users. One of these users is the search engine, which helps other users discover your content.
Table of Contents:
How Search Engines Work?
Why Care About SEO?
Key SEO Strategies
Keywords
Link Building
Featured Snippets
RankBrain System
Mobile Indexing
AMP and AMP Stories
Structured Data
Voice Search
SEO Testing
Do I Need to Hire an SEO Specialist?
Important Guidelines from Google Webmasters
How Search Engines Work?
Search engines can access billions of pages regularly through what are called web crawlers. The process starts with these bots following links online to find new pages, so they can index them and add them to their database. Then comes the stage of analyzing the information contained in these pages, whether they are images, videos or texts, to determine if their content is unique and not copied from other pages, and it ends with arranging them according to preference to ensure that the user gets the best relevant search results to what they want to find.
Why Care About SEO?
Every day, people search for answers to their questions on search engines, which in turn archive and organize the content published online in the hope that users will get the best answers to their questions. On the one hand, visitors will benefit from useful answers that appear to them first, and Google and other search engines will benefit by providing the best possible user experience for their audience. So what can you gain whether you are a business owner or a digital marketer?
Attract Your Target Audience
The main purpose of relying on SEO strategies is to appear to your target audience while they are searching for anything related to the service or product you sell. Customers commonly use search engines to search for information about a particular product or to search for the best nearby pizza restaurant and others. This is a great opportunity to achieve your marketing goals.
Stay Ahead of the Curve
When you optimize your website for search engines, the progress you make is not limited to improving your ranking in the results, but also means progressing over your competitors. The higher you rank in search engines, the more clicks you get over your competitors. The goal of SEO is to improve the ranking of your website on the search results page to get the highest direct visits, and ideally convert visitors into potential customers.
Ease of Measuring Results
Unlike traditional marketing methods that can be measured through achieved sales, every aspect of your website's performance on search engines can be measured. There are many tools that help evaluate and measure results to determine which strategies have the greatest impact on achieving your goals and then invest in them.
Free Investment
You don't need to buy ad space to improve SEO, but rather strategies that target search engine algorithms that focus on providing the best user experience. Organic search results don't pay any money in return for your website topping the search results.
Key SEO Strategies
It has become necessary to do more than just build links and create content and stuff it with keywords. Search engines have witnessed new changes in their policies, tools and strategies, as well as emerging trends such as: voice search and technological developments such as machine learning or (RankBrain). The purpose is to improve the ranking of organic search results to ensure a better experience for users and increase the visibility of your business or brand in a way that is consistent with it. SEO can be improved through several strategies, the most important of which are:
1. Keywords
"Use the right keyword and you'll get more visits through the search engine," "Optimize your website's keywords and you'll get a better ranking." These two phrases were among the most important tips echoed to those seeking to improve SEO.
That's because keywords are the first thing you need to deal with when starting SEO. If you've been blogging for a while, you've probably noticed some of your articles getting a number of search engine visits, thanks to their richness in specific keywords, which helped these articles top the search results.
So here's the main question you need to think about: On what basis is your content classified in search engines? Quite simply, it's an algorithm that looks for certain phrases and captures them to properly classify or archive content. By "archiving content" we mean the order in which this content appears on the search engine results page (SERP) as a result of the searched keyword.
What are Keywords?
Keywords are phrases that define your content, and for search engine optimizers, they are the words or "search queries" that searchers enter into search engines. As a content creator or website owner, you need to be closely linked to keywords in your field to answer what your audience is looking for, so that your page's content has a better chance of appearing in search results.
What is the Acceptable Keyword Density?
Keyword density in its simplest form is the ratio of keyword repetition to the total number of words in the article. If there's an article of 100 words where the keyword is repeated 3 times, that means the keyword density is 3%. There is no specific recommended percentage for your articles to achieve in order to get a high ranking. Although, keyword density is an indicator of how much your article targets that particular word, especially if it's done without stuffing or repetition.
What are LSI Related Terms?
In addition to the main keyword, you should also pick up some related terms or Latent Semantic Indexing, known as LSI for short. This method is one of the effective ways that helps enhance content and link it together and strengthen the target word. To further illustrate, let's assume your page is about Apple, so how can Google know if you're referring to the fruit -apple- or to the company? In this case, search engines look for LSI related words:
If your page contains the words: "red apple" and "apple nutrition" then your page is most likely about apples (fruit).
And if your page contains the words: "itunes," "apple news," and "apple price," then the page is most likely about Apple devices.
Remember, you can target more than one main keyword in a post or page, but I would suggest you make it less than three because if your article is high quality, related keywords will be ranked indirectly.
Tools that Help You Find Keywords
SEMrush
The SEMrush tool allows you to find keywords and see which keywords are archiving your website. You can also choose competing pages and add them to SEMrush to see which keywords these sites are ranking for in the top search results. This will help you create unique and high-quality content to target these keywords.
Google Search
Google provides automated search suggestions when you start typing in the search box. You can create a list of keywords using this technology and then use Google's Keyword Planner to check the search volume for each of these keywords.
Keyword Ideas Using Google Search
Keyword Planner
The free Google Keyword Planner tool provides website owners with keyword suggestions. It also provides real statistics on how many times people searched for the keyword, the number of clicks and the number of impressions your keywords may get. In addition, the level of competition around this word, to help choose the most appropriate word and create a successful advertising campaign.
To use this tool, you will need to create an account in Google Ads. After that, log in to your account on (Google Adwords). Then go to the toolbar at the top of the page and click on (TOOLS) and select (Keyword Planner).
Free Keyword Tool from Google
After that, you will see two options inside the keyword planner: "Search for new keywords" and "Get metrics and forecasts for your keywords." Choose the method that suits you to start with.
Ahrefs Keyword Explorer
Ahrefs Keyword Explorer is one of Ahrefs' popular tools, which helps get related keyword ideas and estimated traffic.
LongTailPro
LongTailPro uses a tool to dig into long-tail keywords. It also allows the user to get hundreds of unique keywords within minutes based on one or more keywords.
How to Use Keywords Optimally?
Now, after you've explored your keywords and picked out what you'll start targeting through your website's pages, you need to know how to distribute the keyword within the text to get the best return on investment in terms of SEO:
Title Tag
The first place that deserves to add the keyword is the article title, which will be -by default- the title that appears in the search engine results. The title is often distinguished within the H1 heading, and it's preferable that the title starts with the keyword whenever possible.
Description Tag
The second place where the keyword should be included is the description that appears to users who visit from search engines. This addition will lead to a more comprehensive look at your page. Tip: You can write the description using the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress.
Body Content
Body content; here's where you unleash your thoughts to inspire ideas and write high-quality content taking into account the targeted keywords and taking into account a reasonable repetition density. Always focus on the fact that content is primarily presented to visitors, not to search engines.
You can use the SEO Rambler tool to determine the common length of articles that are ranked for your target keyword, and this will give you an idea of how many words should be in your article to boost your chances of improving search results. You can also follow your competitors' posts through the free Google Alerts, which will provide you with reports every time your competitors publish new content.
Headers (Header Tags)
Headers include H1, which should not be repeated more than once on the page, passing through the lesser headers H2 and H3... etc. Using headers not only helps enhance the article's targeting of the keyword when included in them, but also contributes to dividing the content into a set of paragraphs that make it easier for visitors to read.
Image Optimization for Search Engines
Don't neglect to focus on SEO in terms of images. This is another development that can become important when performing visual searches. Therefore, to ensure that search engines can understand the content of your website images, you should use appropriate file names for the images before uploading them, including keywords instead of the default names such as: image001.jpg. In addition, after uploading the images, be sure to include an alt text for them, which includes the target keyword.
Website Title Link (URL)
Including the keyword in the website title link is an ideal practice for SEO. The link (www.example.com/seo-best-practices) is ideal for targeting the keyword (Seo best practices) if all other criteria are considered.
2. Link Building
Hyperlinks go hand-in-hand with your content plan. Google, through its search quality strategist (Andrey Lipattsev), has stated in one of its Google Q&A sessions that content and hyperlinks are the first two ranking factors. Therefore, it makes sense for link building to be an integral part of your SEO strategy. Types of links you should focus on:
Editorial Links
Editorial links are not the links you get because you asked for them from another website administrator. They are the links you earn if your content is really great! This is another reason why you need to produce amazing, unique, shareable and shareable content, because it will get backlinks from other sites. In fact, editorial links are the most important type of backlinks, and you're likely to notice your site ranking improving when other authors start referring to your articles.
Acquired Links
When you decide to follow a backlink strategy, be sure to follow the rules, because there are countless websites online that will sell you backlinks, and if you rely on that approach instead of building strong content, then you are putting your site ranking at risk. This approach is one of the exposed methods to Google because it looks for those sites that sell backlinks and takes punitive measures against the site. To that end, follow the right rules, improve your content and always focus on building those links the right way.
3. Optimizing Content for Featured Snippets
Featured Snippets are one of the features that Google has added to the search engine for a while. This feature provides users with a concise and directed answer to their questions - directly on the search results page - without users having to click to reach a specific result, and thanks to it, websites get higher traffic by topping the search results.
For example, when you search for an article titled "SEO," you'll see at the top of the search results a topic from Wikipedia titled "SEO – Wikipedia" with a featured snippet. The snippet contains more than just the title and description, it includes the key points in the topic, as well as giving users the ability to learn about what they're looking for without leaving the results page. Featured snippets often appear in voice search results.
Featured Snippets
According to Ahrefs, if you rank first in search results and also have the featured snippet, you'll get 31% more traffic than just ranking first without the featured snippet. Therefore, your concern about the appearance of a featured snippet for your article means showing distinctive results in SEO. There is no way you can force Google to display your content as a featured snippet, but there are general guidelines that enhance the chances of your content appearing in that format such as:
Avoid long introductions, and give readers the information they're looking for directly.
Give your page a competitive edge by using lists within the content so Google can easily analyze them and include them in the featured snippet.
Use frequently asked questions, as they are in the form of easy questions and answers and tend to be quick and concise enough to be placed in the featured snippet box.
4. RankBrain System
RankBrain is an algorithm that Google has developed that helps in processing search queries and matching them with your content. Google has commented that this system was the third most important factor in the ranking algorithm, along with links and content.
How does RankBrain understand the word you're searching for?
Approximately 15% of the keywords people have typed into Google search have never been seen before. 15% may not seem like a big percentage, but when it comes to handling billions of searches a day, that means Google has to examine every page to see if it contains the keyword someone searched for.
What changed? In the past, Google tried to match the words in a user's search query with the words on the page. Today, RankBrain tries to figure out what the user actually means by matching the never-before-seen keywords with the keywords Google has seen before.
In this post, Google describes a technique called "Word2vec" that transforms keywords into concepts. For example, Google says this technique "recognizes that Paris and France are related in the same way that Berlin and Germany are related (capital and country), not in the same way that Madrid and Italy are related."
Although this post didn't talk specifically about RankBrain, this system uses a similar and more advanced technology. In short, this system goes beyond simply matching keywords, but turns your search term into concepts and vocabulary and tries to find pages that cover these concepts.
How does RankBrain measure user satisfaction?
This system works on filtering search using user experience (UX) signals. In other words, this system ranks for you a set of pages in the search results that were previously well-received by many people. Pages that were not well-received are dropped in ranking and replaced with different pages, and so on.
How does RankBrain affect your SEO strategy?
This system is an AI system capable of simulating human intelligence. It's like a living person evaluating your content to determine whether the keyword is appropriate for the content or not, and it can analyze keyword formats and analyze their content. This system can go beyond simple title words to look at the content itself to determine what is related to the search term. It also evaluates the content and compares it to its like to determine where or where it should be classified.
In addition, the system identifies synonyms in your content to better understand how well this content matches search queries. All of this means you're not confined to one keyword box, which means you need to include relevant forms, synonyms and features to signal to Google that you really know what you're talking about.
The bottom line: Produce high-quality content that's optimized for your keyword and be sure to include synonyms and related words, and RankBrain will take notice and place your content in a high position in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Dwell Time and RankBrain
Dwell time can be defined as the amount of time people spend on your site before returning to the search engine results pages. It's also a factor that affects your ranking, and although Google hasn't officially announced that it's a ranking factor, it plays an important role in RankBrain. If someone clicks on a link to your site in search results and bounces back in less than 5 seconds, for example, that tells Google you didn't provide what they were looking for and your ranking will drop. For this reason, we recommend the following:
Match your content to your keyword and definition descriptions.
Your content should provide valuable and exclusive information.
Include video in the content, as it generally boosts dwell time.
Note that dwell time and bounce rate are different. Bounce rate is when someone visits a page and clicks the back button without clicking anything on the page. Here, it doesn't matter if the person spent two seconds or two hours on the page. There is a correlation between bounce rate and Google's first-page rankings, but this correlation is not strong; bounce rate doesn't tell Google whether the searcher was satisfied with a particular result or not, unlike dwell time.
Click-Through Rate (CTR) and RankBrain
Most of the time, when online marketers talk about click-through rate (CTR), it's about advertising. And while improving CTR for digital ads is important, it's also essential to improve it for your links that appear on the search engine results page.
Why? Because if your link appears on the first page of search results and nobody clicks on it, RankBrain tells Google that your link is not relevant to that search term. As a result, your ranking drops, and to avoid this, go to your search analytics in Google Search Console. If you find that you're getting a subpar CTR, improve your titles and make them more relevant to your keywords, or add more curiosity to them. Give people a reason to click on your particular link in the results list, and you're more likely to get a high ranking.
5. Mobile-First Index
Mobile-first indexing means that Google will use mobile compatibility as one of the ranking factors in search results. Therefore, the best way to prepare your site for mobile indexing is to provide it with a mobile-friendly design. Use Google's Mobile Friendly Test tool to make sure your site is well compatible with smaller screens.
Mobile Compatibility for SEO
6. AMP and AMP Stories
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) has been an influential factor in SEO over the past few years. This feature helps provide mobile users with a better user experience, as Google tends to prefer pages that are easy to use and quick to load for display on the results page.
AMP, which is an Open Source library, provides a straightforward way to create attractive, fast, and cross-browser compatible web pages. Google recently released AMP Stories - a new content format from the AMP project - based on (Snapchat stories) and focuses on mobile devices to deliver news, information and content in the same way as stories used in both Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram.
So far, a number of news sites have relied on AMP Stories, such as CNN.COM, which displays many modern AMP stories in a horizontal list in the (CNN Mobile Visual Stories) section.
7. Structured Data
Structured data, also known as Schema markup, is a search engine language that uses "unique semantic vocabularies." It's simply the ability to break down a sentence into different parts. For example, although you may be able to understand the following phrase "the complete guide to SEO" to mean "the complete guide to search engine optimization," computers typically can't. Therefore, Schema markup uses semantic vocabularies in computer language to separate sentence words so that search engines can understand what the user wants.
Schema markup can enhance the appearance of your website pages for all types of content. This is due to the availability of Data Markup for articles, restaurants, goods and products, films, book reviews, and more. If your website pages contain any of these types of content, you can ask a developer to include that data in the Schema markup so it appears perfectly on the search results pages, and it would be good to rely on Google's (Structured Data Markup Helper) page.
The following example is a search result for one of the sites that uses structured data to display recipes and related data directly in search results such as: number of ratings, number of calories, and time required for preparation. Organized results like this will significantly improve your website's SEO results.
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8. Voice Search
"Okay, Google." These two-word phrases may define the next generation of search, according to comscore, 50% of all searches will be by voice by 2020. And if you haven't optimized your site for voice search, now's the time to start implementing your voice strategy. Here are some ideas:
Answering questions: Many voice search queries are in the form of questions, so create content that includes frequently asked questions and answer them directly.
Use simpler language: People tend to be more "formal" when they type in a search query, but when they speak they use regular conversational language. So make sure your content is written in easy-to-understand language.
Divide the content into paragraphs: When Google can easily analyze your content - because it's divided into separate paragraphs - your site is more likely to get a high ranking. This content can also be included in response to a voice query.
Publish long content: Writing content that exceeds 2000 words will help with natural language processing and increase the clarity of voice search results.
SEO Testing
You can't get results for your SEO strategy overnight. It usually takes several tweaks to get satisfactory results. That's exactly why SEO testing is done. These well-executed tests can help you determine what's effective and what can be improved. Therefore, save money that would have been likely spent without getting important results. Some of the tests you can run:
Changing article titles
Testing content length
Adding Schema markup
Changing article descriptions (meta description)
You can use Google Optimize to run A/B tests and keep the changes that yielded the best results. You can also rely on the seotesteronline tool, which provides a complete package of tools including:
SEO Checker: This SEO tool analyzes the page structure, content, and download speed, and also provides important tips for improving page content ranking as well as identifying errors and what to follow to fix them.
SEO Spider: This tool scans and analyzes all your website pages at once and creates a comprehensive and simplified report that focuses on every aspect of SEO. This includes content and titles, keyword analysis and distribution, verifying language settings and image status, monitoring links, identifying internal and external links, and verifying their functionality.
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Keyword Explorer: This tool is for discovering new and appropriate keyword suggestions for your site. It works to compare keywords (in multiple languages) highlighting monthly search volumes, cost per click (CPC) and competition level to choose the most appropriate keyword, which is ideal for content marketing strategies.
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Do I Need to Hire an SEO Specialist?
There's no doubt that hiring an SEO specialist will save you time and effort and help you improve your website significantly. So it's essential for whoever you hire for that task to have several necessary skills, such as the ability to review your website content to suggest technical optimization strategies to develop and improve its performance, research competitive keywords, manage paid advertising campaigns to improve the results of your content's appearance on search engines... etc. So if you don't have these skills, you can take a close look at professional SEO specialists on the Mustaqil platform, the largest Arabic platform for freelance work, and hire whoever you think is suitable for the task.
Important Guidelines from Google Webmasters
Take care of content by creating useful content that provides value to users and aligns with their search intent.
Identify the words users are searching for to access your website content and include these words in prominent positions in your content such as: the main article title and subheadings, the description of included images, and the article description as well.
Participate in specialized communities in your field and tell others what your site offers indirectly by discussing relevant topics and opening discussions about them, then directing them to your website to learn more about what you offer.
Be sure to constantly improve your website's content by following Google's guidelines that facilitate this process, so that you rank high in search results and attract more interested parties.
In conclusion, SEO has witnessed very important updates this year, content has become more about quality than ever before, and search engine algorithms are getting smarter and more sophisticated every day. To that end, keep refining, learning, and trying.