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Everything about SEO
In this article, I explain whatever you will encounter in the SEO World in a simple way so that it is undoubtedly the best choice for those who want to get to know SEO and its details.
After 9 years of experience in the field of Internet Marketing, especially SEO, as well as someone who has applied SEO himself in order to attract customers, I decided to write an article for entrepreneurs, marketing managers and anyone who likes to get to know SEO for the first time. I tried to include whatever needed for a beginner or business owner, to know about SEO here, for instance from the general to the most important details of the science and skill of SEO. welcome to Sitawo where you can revolutionize your business.
A Few Basic rules and Basics of SEO Tutorial
If you care about SEO learning, it’s better to mention a few important things first. One of the ways to succeed in achieving Google’s superior results is to create a specialized site in a specific field. In other words, try to devote your site to a specific field. on the one hand, this leads to focusing on content creation and site updates, while on the other hand, Google loves specialized sites. In fact, if Google recognizes that your site is specialized in a particular field, it will gradually pay more attention to this particular case. For example, if you are specialized in architecture, Google pays more attention to your website than public sites in this particular realm.
The next issue in SEO is the importance of site activity. Google easily recognizes whether sites are active or not, and if you do not care about your site, then it won’t pay much attention to it either. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to keep your site up-to-date by writing articles and business-related content.
Mind your Business rivals!
One of the most essential SEO tips that require a lot of attention is the continuous pursuit of competitors. SEO means a war against rivals, so the more knowledgeable you are, the more chance you have of winning. According to a traditional view, SEO means rank increasing in the search engine, but in fact, SEO is considered as being superior to competitors and overcoming them, since if you don’t have any competitors in a keyword, you will still be placed at Google first rank without following the SEO rules. Therefore, it’s important to continually watch your rivals.
Today’s SEO
In today’s SEO, one of the most significant and professional techniques that the world’s largest websites use is analyzing competitors. You have to analyze your competitors in terms of content and produce better content than them. You should also be aware of your rivals’ BACKLINKS and various strategies of the link-building section, and try to be one step ahead of them.
What is the Google Index?
If Google stores your site in its database, it means that it crawls a particular page on your site at least once and saves it in its database. In this way, your page or site has been indexed.
How do you know that a page has been indexed?
There are numerous ways to find out whether your site or a page from it has been indexed, but it’s easier to use the phrase “info” before the URL of that page. For example, to find out if the same page has been indexed on Google SEO, search the following phrase on Google
info:https: //sitawo.ch/seo
Different parts of SEO
Internal SEO (on- page SEO)
A part of the process devoted to increasing the site’s rank on Google should be done on the site itself. For example, what your site content is, how fast it is, or even what its design and UX are. All SEO-related activities performed on the site itself are known as Internal or on-page SEO or On-Site. Internal SEO is of high importance to Google and has been especially over the past few years.
Google has given much more attention to the issue of internal SEO by creating new algorithms such as the Hummingbird algorithm and Rank Brain. In a recent survey of 1,200 active internet marketers, 43% of them believe that internal SEO has the most impact on SEO and improving site rankings on Google.
External SEO (Off-page SEO)
External SEO might be the most attractive part of the SEO process. Unlike internal SEO described above, some SEO processes must be performed outside our website in order to improve Google rankings, and it has nothing to do with the content of our site or the site itself. Such SEO processes performed outside the site is called External or off-page SEO. One of the most prominent parts of the External SEO can be referred to as Link Building and social signals (social networking sites and Social Media).
External SEO plays a vital role in SEO
The significance of external SEO is so high that until a few years ago, we could only bring the hardest keywords to the Google first page, but as mentioned, Google has made some changes on algorithms over the past few years and has paid more attention to Internal SEO, especially to the content.
However, the importance of external SEO, especially with Backlinks not diminished yet, in order to reach Google top ranks, it’s important to take this point into consideration. Based on the recent surveys done by the Moz site, Backlinks still have the greatest influence on Google’s ranking.
The importance of content in improving Google rankings
You’ve probably heard the phrase “Content is king”. The fact is that content has become fundamental in Google’s search engine algorithm in recent years, and Google is increasingly concerned with content. But Google does not care about any old content; your content should have specific features. First, the content of your site and your entries should be unique, which means that you mustn’t copy the content from another site.
But, is having unique content enough to be ranked?
The answer is no. The content should be of high quality in addition to uniqueness. Suppose you’ve searched the phrase “SEO WordPress Learning” and entered a site. Although this site has unique content, it hasn’t fully addressed SEO WordPress. Therefore, you have to research the same phrase on Google, only this time you log into a site that, in addition to content uniqueness, explains all the techniques and training needed for SEO WordPress.
This means that you do not need to go back and search after reading this content. In conclusion, the first site, despite its unique content, lacks high quality, whereas the second site has provided an incredibly rich content. Google recognizes this feature in a variety of ways and gives more value to sites with rich content.
High-quality content in Google ranking
After the paragraph above, we come to the conclusion that high-quality content responds to all queries of the searcher so that the searcher will be convinced in all aspects of the searched phrase. If you have already produced such content in your site, congratulations! you are producing high-quality content, but if you have written articles on your site that you think aren’t fully complete, don’t hesitate to put them right.
Use different formats of content
In producing high-quality content, remember that rich content is not only restricted to text and note. Try to include as many relevant images as you need in your content.
Using videos can also help in creating high-quality content if you think that a video can give visitors a more complete view of your content. In addition, be sure to use one in your posts.
SEO Tutorial Tip: How many words should a high- quality content contain?
This is a common question: Does Google really care about the number of words in a content? Suppose you have written a 500-word content for a topic. Now have a flashback to read the definition of high-quality content in the paragraph above! if you want to fully explain your topic and answer all the possible questions in that field, then do you think that 500 words would be enough? Google also knows well that a 500-word post cannot be completely content. Yes, Google cares about the number of words, and this can be understood from Google’s results.
The average number of words in most of Google’s first page results is over 1890 words (of course, the results are based on the research of about 1 million English websites, and the average word numbers on German websites is less than this, so it’s a good opportunity to overtake your competitors through writing longer texts).Consequently, when writing high-quality content, try to focus not only on the exact number of words but also take all aspects of that page’s content into consideration.
Internal SEO: The importance of a site’s speed is improving Google rankings
I’ve been asked endlessly, “Does Google really care about the site’s speed?” In my opinion, this is a fair question to ask. It has been pointed out many times that Google is trying to provide the best sites for its search engines. Do you think that a slow site that makes you wait for several seconds to load all the elements, can be ranked among the best sites? Over the past few years, Google has been increasingly concerned about UX (user experience) and does not want to steer its users to sites that aren’t user- friendly enough.
Undoubtedly, being on a fast site is a much better experience than being on a slow one. The issue of a site’s speed is so important that Google has officially announced it on its own blog, despite Google not often directly referring to its algorithm factors. Also, having a quick site will allow users to get access to many pages from the site.
SEO Tutorial Tip: how long should it take for a site to be loaded?
Basically, the speed of the site should be measured according to the volume of the page. For example, you shouldn’t compare the speed of a high-volume page with too many images or large requests with a low-volume one, though the best speed can be considered below 2 seconds. If your site opens in under 2 seconds, that’s ideal. If your page volume is high, in this case, the best time is under 3 seconds. However, if your site loads more than 3 seconds, you should increase its speed.
How can the speed of a site be measured?
There are different tools for measuring the speed of a site, but the best are of three kinds: Pingdom, Google, and GTMetrix.
Pingdom: This site is one of the best sites that I’m personally interested in. It’s very easy to measure a site’s speed in Pingdom. Simply select the Stockholm server in “Test From” box, as well as the address of your site in the ” URL” box, then click on “START TEST”. The speed provided by Germany server is roughly accurate in 95% of cases. At the bottom of the page, a complete analysis of all your site requests, alongside the volume and loading time, is shown. Therefore if your site is slow, you can easily find out where the problem is.
Google Page Insights: This tool has been provided by Google for testing site speed. Simply enter the site address and click on ANALYZE to see the result. Google analyzes your site’s speed and gives it a score of 0 to 100. If your score is green and above 80, it means that your site is of a good standard. If your rating is orange and above 60, then the speed of your site is moderate and you should pay attention to it. If your score is red, that means the speed of your site is not up to scratch, and you should try to increase its speed. Google itself also offers some ways to speed your site up.
GTMetrix: This site is also one of the most popular sites in the world. It scores your site in two ways: Page Speed Score and YSlow Score. Try to get the green score in the first index, since it’s important. In case of a problem, this site also lists the site problems below. You can increase the speed of your site by acknowledging them. (Attention: Note that the GTMetrix site gives you a second-based loading time, but the loading time of Pingdom and its server in Stockholm is much more accurate).
If you gain good points on the sites above, then your site has good speed.
External SEO; Link-Building and its kinds
In this section of the SEO tutorial, we refer to the Backlink. Backlink means your site’s link will be placed on other sites. In fact, any link linked to your site from other sites by text or image is regarded as a Backlink to your site. Let me begin by asking you this: ‘Where has the link come from and why is it so important’? Since its inception, Google has been looking for a way to rank the sites to showcase the best of them in the results. Google’s algorithm was very simple at first, and Google didn’t identify the quality of the content, user experience, etc like today. ( Today Google’s search engine uses artificial intelligence).
The solution that Google’s experts at that time offered was that, if a site links to another, then it somewhat introduces the second site. Now if a site is introduced and linked by many sites, it shows that it is a valid and important site because it’s been introduced by many sites. In fact, this would increase the power of that site in Google’s algorithm. This early idea was so important that the connection among sites through links is still one of the most important factors in the ranking. Of course, today, besides this factor, Google also cares about other factors, and it can be said that Google has 200 factors for site rankings.
Backlinks are critical in SEO
Specifying backlink as a Google ranking factor has made webmasters pay more attention to it worldwide and try to get backlinks from other sites. Basically, the backlink should be created naturally. For example, you can write high– quality content on your site which visitors will share with the users of their site and blog. Due to the high quality of your content, they will link your site. This is the most natural and best kind of backlink that Google expects. But it does not always go as Google would like.
This has led to link-building and buying backlinks. Of course, Google is also making it harder for Webmasters. Nowadays the backlinks belonged to the strong and authorized websites, are important for the site and if your backlinks are all made from non- authorized sites, they will not affect the ranking of your site.
One way of link-building is making requests to users, for example, you can ask your users or customers to put your site’s link on their site or blog. You can also write guest posts on some sites, for instance , write articles on these sites and link your site at the bottom of the article as the author.
How many types of backlinks are there?
Backlinks can be different types and created in various ways. For example, there are side-bar backlinks on the left or right side of the site, footer backlinks that are at the bottom of the site, profiled backlinks created within an existing user profile on other sites, backlinks coming from the comments section, image backlinks that can be like banner ads, reportage backlinks that come from an article related to your keywords, as well as the backlinks coming from social networking sites and …
SEO Tutorial: Are Nofollow Backlinks valid?
In general, there are two types of backlinks. A backlink created with the rel = “follow” code when creating the link, and a backlink created with the rel = “nofollow” code. Some believe that only follow backlinks are worthy, and Google does not care about no-follow backlinks. Matt Catts (Google’s Spamming Manager) also said in a video that, no-follow backlinks aren’t precious for Google. Experience has shown something different, however.
According to my own experience, Google also cares about no-follow backlinks and takes them into consideration in the ranking, but its strength and value are less than follow backlinks. Of course, this does not mean that all our links should be of follow type because if all your links are of follow type, it demonstrates the abnormality of your backlink making. In the backlink making process, you must also have the nofollow backlink.
SEO Tutorial tip: The Importance of Being Branded in SEO
Perhaps at first glance, there is no connection between SEO and branding. In fact, branding is something performed on people, products, and companies to popularize them among others, whereas SEO is something done for the search engine. So how can these two issues be related to each other? Google likes the sites shown in the top results to be more valid. Google trusts branded sites more than other sites. That is, if your site is branded, Google will give you more value and credibility than rival sites.
But how can you show yourself as a brand to Google?
One of the most important issues that can make your site known as a Google brand is to search the exact name of your company by users. If a lot of users search the name of your company or site on a daily basis, this will make Google think that your business is a brand, and people will search for that brand to find your site. For example, many people search the word “Adidas” daily, in this way Google recognizes that Adidas is a brand.
As a result, you should be able to make your users search for your name more often. You can write articles in newspapers and magazines which will make people search for your name on Google. The second solution is to have a backlink from the sites with high authority.
As I mentioned in the discussion of backlinking above, Google considers backlinks as an introduction, meaning a site introduces another site. When the number of these backlinks goes up on legitimate sites, you will be introduced by more sites from Google’s view, and this will also help you to be branded and increase Google’s trust.
The Importance of Web Design in SEO
In general, you can claim that whatever is related to a site is in connection with SEO. A site’s design can increase the power of your site in different ways. The most important factor that can be mentioned is UX or User Experience. In fact, any user who logs in to your site can feel pleasant or uncomfortable. How a user feels on your site is called the user experience, so you should always try to make users feel comfortable and satisfied on your site. This not only boosts your business but also allows users to spend a lot of time on there and see more pages or take actions in the site-related activities, for example, comment and …
All these are important from Google’s point of view. In fact, Google will monitor the user and evaluate his activities on your site from the time they are sent to your site until they exit. If Google thinks it would be a pleasurable experience for the user to be on your site for a long time and see more pages, it will increase your site’s validity.
Sometimes a simple change, for example changing the position of a button, can cause a lot of users to click on that button and see more pages. To apply this, the site should be designed by site-design experts and also be evaluated by UX experts. That’s why I’m totally opposed to using the site’s templates because in these templates we can not design the elements in accordance with UX science.
A summary of Google Algorithms
Google has developed algorithms throughout its inception to increase the quality of search results and prevent fraudulent methods. There are many Google algorithms that we will mention below, alongside their usage.
❖ Google Penguin algorithm
Google pays more attention to a site with a greater number of links compared to other sites, and places it in higher search ranks. The Penguin algorithm has the task of identifying spam links and sites that have a large number of unprotected links.
❖ Google Panda algorithm
You have heard over and over again that content can be easily copied and placed on another site on the internet. Well, this would interfere with the SEO process, and the first-class sites would disappear among a myriad of sites, with no specific place, as long as the Panda algorithm appeared. As the crawlers of this algorithm are constantly looking for the contents of the first batch, they identify other sites that copy the content and delete it from the search list.
❖ Hummingbird algorithm
This algorithm focuses on analyzing queries that are searched for by users, so Google can show users better results and improve these results. In fact, this algorithm does not have a direct impact on the ranking results and merely examines the terms that the user searches for. It is based on the users’ intention and tries to show the best result.
❖ Pigeon algorithm
The main issue of the Google search engine is the pigeon algorithm. This algorithm simply works in the following way. The information of the websites is placed in the data cages, and there are a number of pigeons in each cage that examine the content of these sites. They are then compared with the searched keyword, and every time they find the right word for the keyword, they peck at it once. The pages with the highest amount of pecks will be displayed on Google’s top pages.
❖ Zebra’s algorithm
This algorithm was designed and performed to determine the quality of online stores and prevent counterfeit online stores to be spread. Responsive site design, bar code for all goods, discount coupons to encourage users to buy the products, making comparisons with goods on other sites, reducing purchasing procedures, as well as convenience of the buyer, the availability of price tags on goods, and a validate address for the store, are factors that Google cares about in this algorithm.
❖ The mobilegeddon algorithm
Google has announced its latest algorithm with regard to Internet usage and statistical ratios compared to other devices. This algorithm is one of the most recent Google algorithms that has been applied in May. Sites that are not well displayed on tablet and mobile pages will gradually be removed from search results.
What is a Google penalty and why can we get a penalty?
If Google detects a violation of the site, it may fine or penalize it. If Google decides to penalize a page, even if that page has a very good rating, it will remove that page from the search results.
SEO Tutorial Tip: Will Google penalize the whole site or just one of its page?
This is an important question. Google used to penalize the entire site before, but at the moment it would only penalize the page that detected the violation and remove it from the results.
What are the grounds for penalizing a site?
Here’s a tutorial on the subject of Google Penalty. In general, it can be said that if you are doing fraudulent work to increase your site’s ranking, you may be penalized. So either you should not look for fraud strategies or have full confidence in applying the procedures.
Below some of the most important reasons for penalizing a site are mentioned
- Rehashing keywords in a text or keyword stuffing
- Over-exchanging two_sided links with other sites
- Having hyper output-links on one page
- Having a large number of backlinks on spam and poor- quality sites
- Buying a very large number of backlinks at once (sites that sell 1000 or 2000 backlinks)
- Removing a large number of backlinks at once (if you buy monthly links, pay attention to this issue)
- Having plenty of repetitive content
- Site hacking or viruses
- Disconnecting and overloading, as well as the site’s poor access
What are some myths about SEO?
A very useful video of Matt Cutts about SEO misunderstandings.
A few commonly used terms that you need to know about SEO.
White Hat SEO
Seo’s White Hat is, in fact, the most basic SEO style in which has no unofficial way to increase rank in Google’s view and the site’s ranking increase normally.
Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is exactly the picture above. In this model, SEO generally uses non-standard and fraudulent methods to increase site rankings. In this way, the possibility of penalizing the site is very high.
Gray Hat SEO
Gray hat SEO is actually lies between the above methods. In this approach, in addition to basic techniques and white hats, there are some techniques that may not be very consistent with Google’s principles.
Google Crawl
The search engine is equipped with a robot called Google bot or Spider. In fact, this robot crawls on a page is to collect information about that page, this is called Crawling.
HTTPS
It is a security protocol that exchanges information between the user and server in code form. The unsafe type of it is HTTP. You can activate HTTPS for your site at a very low annual cost. As you can see, our site’s URL is now started with HTTPS.
Anchor Text
You definitely know what a link is. A word that is linked is called Anchor Text. For example, here the phrase “SEO training” is linked to this page, the term “SEO training” is an anchor text.
CTR
This is an abbreviation for Click Through Rate, it means click rating and is expressed with a percentage. The percentage of clicks on the results page on your site will mean the total number of page clicks. For instance, if you’ve clicked 100 times to search a phrase and 5 times of these clicks have been performed on your site, your CTR will be calculated 5%. The higher CTR you have, the better your SEO will be.
Bounce Rate
The jump rate represents the percentage of visitors who enter a page of your site and exit it without seeing another page on your site. The lower the jump rate you have, the better the SEO results you get.
DA: Domain Authority
The Domain Authority is based on the Moz site’s scoring system, which is a number from 1 to 100. The higher this number is, the greater the domain power it presents. Authority Domain can be checked by this tool On Moz site.
PA: Page Authority
The power index of a page on the site is based on the Moz’s rating system, which is a number from 1 to 100. The higher this number is, the more the power of that page will be. page authority can be reviewed by this tool on the Moz site.
We create the best SEO strategy for you
In terms of SEO services and optimization, companies can have different strategies. Some called “Black Hat”, raise your site’s ranking in search results temporarily through inaccurate methods. The problem with this, however, is that these incorrect methods will be identified when they are completely excluded from the search results after a few months. Nowadays Google’s search engine is equipped with artificial intelligence and easily detects and punishes sites that have been flawed by the SEO method. This is called the Google Penalty. At Sitawo, first we analyze the overall structure of your website, and then, with a full understanding of your marketing goals, will identify the keywords for your site with various tools. These keywords will then be placed in specific sections of the pages, such as meta tags and…
The content of the pages will be examined in terms of the density of the words so that the content will be optimized. Afterward, all optimization services will be applied on your website, which could include WordPress, Joomla or any other content management system. Increasing the speed of uploading the site is another step to be performed. Using specific ways to increase the speed and loading time can result in an increase of up to 5 times which will have a profound effect on the optimization and SEO of the site.
Thereafter, all images used on the site will be optimized. We will then go through internal linking. The technique of internal link-building between the inside pages of the site will be accomplished via our individual methods. All of the listed steps are considered as a part of the internal SEO service. After completing the internal SEO, we will take the external SEO into consideration, which is an important part of external link-building.
In our link-building method, we will create the links using our specialized, innovative and up-to-date techniques for your site.
The number of links is determined and performed by our specialists according to their quality and type of linking. The link-building process takes place during a period of 1 to 6 months, which is a standard time frame. The site’s optimization and SEO is a time-consuming process, for example, Google doesn’t increase your site’s ranking in the search results within a few days. Seeing the result of a site’s SEO service and optimization usually takes between 3 and 6 months.
All sites performed by Sitawo’s optimization team will have a 100% increase in views and ranking after a given time.
Some more good resources for you to learn SEO
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