What is Search Engine Optimization - A Beginner's Guide (updated 2022)

What is Search Engine Optimization - A Beginner's Guide (updated 2022)

 What is Search Engine Optimization?

 Search engine optimization is a way to improve the ranking of a website in the free search results of search engines.

 A few years ago, Search Engine Optimization gained a bad reputation when optimization professionals used techniques that could trick a site into the top of Google, such as spamming a certain word many times into the text content of a site.

 Google and other search engines noticed the scam and changed their algorithms to make such a scam very difficult or nearly impossible. Those who had achieved cheating results completely lost their search visibility.

 Nowadays, Search Engine Optimization is a  way to build and customize websites according to the guidelines of search engines.

Search engine optimization measures can be divided into two different categories.

 1. For internal site optimization

 Search engines strive to show the highest possible results for every search made by a user. Internal optimization redirects pages to specific search terms.

 2. For external optimization of the site

 External site optimization improves ranking in search results. Search engines evaluate how reliable a site is by counting how many other trusted sites link to it. The reputation of a company/website can also be counted in external optimization. If many people search your site for it because of a TV ad, for example, search engines may raise your site's credit rating.

 Google's recommendations for search engine optimization

 Google doesn't reveal much about its activities. However, here are a few recommendations from Google on how to improve your rankings on Google.

• Make websites for people, not robots or search engines.

• Don’t try to fool people or show different content to people and search engines.

• Make a website with a clear hierarchy and text-based links. Each page on your site must have at least one text link. Search engines do not know how to use search forms.

• Write unique and informative text. Avoid typos.

 Search Engine Optimization Guide Chapter 1.

 On-Site Search Engine Optimization

 On-site optimization refers to the actions performed on the site itself. This chapter goes through the main ones. I tried to write each paragraph as clearly as possible.

 1.1 Find out which search you want each page to appear on

 Before the actual search engine optimization, it is a good idea to check what kind of searches your target audience is searching for your services. Enable  Google Keyword Designer here. The tool lets you test the search volume of your search terms and choose the right wording. Start with one or more search terms for the tool. The tool then provides estimates of how much the term is searching for and suggestions for other similar searches.

 Make a list in which you write a search term (keyword) for each page of your site that you would like the page to appear on in a search engine. However, the best search term may not be the one you search for the most. Choose the search term that you think will best reach your audience. Also, be sure to use the same search term only once per page. So don't optimize two different pages for the same search term.

 1.2 Website structure

 To make your website as search engine friendly as possible. In order for search engines to be able to read the content of your site, it is important that the textual content is in HTML format. Flash, Java Applets, text inside an image, and the like are not indexed by search engines.

 Make sure the internal navigation of the site is clear.

 You can navigate anywhere within the site with a maximum of three clicks on the link. Highly featured content is considered paramount. Old news articles and blog posts that are buried under the new ones may appear worse in search engines.

 Divide each topic into its own subpage.

 Do not do the so-called. “One-page websites”. The search engine reads and indexes the theme of each subpage and categorizes it to address a specific topic. If there are most topics on the same page (e.g. all services are crammed into the same subpage) the search engine will have a hard time figuring out what the page is about.

 1.3 Optimizing subpage content for a search term

 Search engines infer from the textual content of a page what that page is about. So from the beginning, the subpage needs to be built and optimized for the desired search term.

 Page URL The URL

 The page must contain the desired search term. This improves the visibility of the page with the desired search, as well as bold the URL in the search results. The user is most likely to click on a link that fully reflects the search he or she made.

 Page Title

 Adds a search term to the largest title of the page (h1 tag). The title of the page should be the first piece of text on the page and carry more weight than the textual content. It is recommended that you use the search term in other title tags (h2, h3, h4, etc.).

 Page text content

 Build the text of the page so that it contains the desired search term. However, don’t “spam”. Build your content first and foremost so that it is easy for people to read. A good rule of thumb is that the search term appears on the page in about 2 percent of all words.

 Make extensive text content. 

 Write at least 300 words on each page. Studies show that pages with a lot of text appear better in search results than short pages. There is no maximum number of words.

  1.4 Linking to External Sites

 It is recommended that each page have at least one link to an external site. When Google and other search engines try to infer from the content of your site what topic a page is about, they will take that reasoning into account if the page links to another site on the same topic. There is evidence that the inclusion of external links affects search engine rankings.

 1.5 Page metadata affects the text in search results

 The metadata of the page is just snippets of code for search engines. Metadata can be used to determine which words the page will appear in search results.

 Contrary to popular belief, metadata does not directly affect search engine visibility. However, well-tailored “ad text” can affect how many people click on your link and not your competitor in the search results.

 Meta keywords.

 Google no longer pays attention to meta keywords in any way. Bing still uses meta keywords to find keyword spammers. So don't use meta keywords for optimization.

 Meta description

 The description allows you to specify the text that will appear in the search results. If the description is missing, the search engines will infer it from the content of the site. Often, search engine inferred text is not a good “ad” for your link.

Include a page search term in the meta description. In this case, the words that appear in the search are in bold in the search results.

 1.6 Beware of copied content!

 Search engines love unique content and hate duplicate content. If you decide to copy/quote text from Wikipedia, for example, you will probably not appear very high in search results. Search engines love unique content because it gives the user a new perspective.

 Think about if your competitors could just copy all the text on your website to their own pages and beat them in search rankings. This is one reason why search engines do not pay attention to copied content in search engine optimization.

 1.7 Also watch out for duplicate content within your site

 Internal text copying is also common. That is, the same content is displayed in two or more different places. Here are some common reasons for duplicate content:

 1. Multiple URLs have been set for the same page

• Parameters. For example, yourcompany.com?vari=blue, yourcompany.com?vari=red

• A printable version of the page is required. For example, yourcompany.com/service and yourcompany.com/print/service

• Session ID. For example, yourcompany.com/service and yourcompany.com/service?SESSID=123

 2. The site shows two or more different domain names. Ex: yourcompany.com and yourcompany.com

 Search engines don't like duplicate content, nor do they like duplicate content. Sometimes search engine results may end up with the wrong version of a page.

1.8 Make sure the sites work on mobile devices.

 This is easiest to accomplish by making your site responsive. That is, the content of the page scales according to the screen. The search engine world site is responsive. If you're on a computer, try minimizing your browser window to see how the text size and layout change depending on the screen size.

 I do not recommend making separate pages for mobile devices. You can easily accidentally create duplicate content. Updating pages is also more difficult.

  1.9 Page load speed

 Search engines have limited resources through the internet to collapse. If your site loads very slowly, Google may not be able to crawl your site at all. Secondly, people also have a short surface on the internet. Slow-loading pages affect the user experience, which indirectly affects search engine visibility.

 Search Engine Optimization Guide Chapter 2.

 Site External Search Engine Optimization

 Now that the basics of internal site search engine optimization are in place, one can focus on external optimization. So external optimization means search engine optimization on pages other than your own, such as the use of social media and links.

 2.1 Utilizing social media

 Social media can be utilized in search engine optimization mainly by increasing the reputation of the company and the brand. Appear extensively on some channels wherever your target audience moves. Share interesting content and gather followers. In time, when your reputation in the world has evolved, people will know your business better, people will start searching for you on the search engine. This will improve your search engine visibility.

Links from social media do little to improve search engine visibility. Read more about how social media affects search engine visibility?

 2.2 Link Building

 Links from external sites are considered by many professionals to be the most important thing in search engine optimization. Links are affected by their quality, not quantity. A link from a mega-popular page like Helsingin Sanomat is more valuable than 200 links from obscure blogs.

 The advantage of Google is that links are generated naturally. That is,  a person interested in the site will share the page on social media or even a blog post. When building links yourself, care must be taken not to create too many links. Links should be built as if they were naturally made by different users.

 3.2 Add your business to Google my business (Formerly Google Maps for business)

 By adding your business to  Google Maps, you'll appear in the map list when someone searches for keywords related to your industry.

  Search Engine Optimization Guide Conclusions

 Congratulations. You have now read this 1878 word beginner search engine optimization guide. Did anyone stay busy? Do you disagree? Please comment at the bottom of the site in the Comment Box Section for your feedback. Share the guide with others. Thank you for your time and patience!