An Overview of SEO for Google

Google is the world’s largest search engine, and if you’re not properly optimizing your site for it, you’re missing out. In this article, we will discuss the basics of search engine optimization and how you can use it to improve your website’s ranking on Google. We’ll briefly cover every step of the SEO process briefly, so think of this article as your Google seo starter guide.

SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of improving the visibility and rank of a site or web page in search engine results pages (SERPs). In other words, it’s the practice of optimizing a site to rank higher in Google search results. Why is this important? Because when people are looking for information online, they almost always turn to Google first. If your site isn’t ranking high in Google search results, you’re missing out on a lot of potential traffic and business.

To understand why we do certain things in SEO, it is important to understand how a search engine works. Search engines index a site and its pages to provide relevant results to their users. In order to do this, Google needs to know what information exists online and then determine what actually should be displayed. This process can be broken down into crawling, indexing, & ranking.

Crawling is the process of visiting all the sites on the web and attempting to download their content. Search engines crawl a site using bots, such as Googlebot. Then if the site allows it, the search engine will download its contents and index it.

A site can experience issues at the crawling phase if their robot.txt prevents bots from crawling and indexing their content. In addition, it is important to understand bots can’t understand in-page elements such as Javascript, so any content that is hidden from bots and will not be indexed.

Indexing is the process of taking all that content that has been crawled and putting it into a searchable database, so it can be displayed in search results. Although Google will crawl your site, that doesn’t necessarily mean your site will get indexed.

Google chooses which results will appear in their index based on their relevancy and quality. By creating high-quality relevant content with additional search information such as a meta title, meta description, & alt attribute.

Now that you understand how search engines work, it’s time to learn the basics of SEO. We will start by breaking down keywords and backlinks.

Keywords are the foundation of search engine optimization. In order to rank your site in search results, you need to understand what people are searching for and include those keywords on your site.

There are a variety of ways to find keywords that are relevant to your business. Consider what your ideal customer might be searching for and think about ways you can include those keywords on your site. You can also use Google’s Keyword Planner to find related keywords that people are actually searching for.

Backlinks are links from another site that point to your site. The number and quality of backlinks you have is one of the most important factors in determining your rank in search engine results pages.

Earning backlinks for your posts is a slow and steady process, but it is essential to building your site’s authority. You can start by creating high-quality content that is relevant to your niche and then reaching out to another site for links.

Now that you understand the basics, it’s time to learn how to do keyword research. Keyword research is the process of finding keywords that are relevant to your business and targeting them on your site.

The goal of keyword research is to find a set of high-traffic, low-competition keywords that you can target.

When doing keyword research, it’s important to understand the difference between keywords and topics. Keywords are specific phrases that people search for on Google. For example, “golden retriever breeder” Topics, on the other hand, are broader terms that encompass a group of related keywords such as dog breeds.

Although you may find it easier to brainstorm topics for content, its important find the appropriate keywords for that topic. Targeting specific keywords that users are searching for helps improve search rankings by drawing more visitors.

When doing keyword research, it’s important to consider search volume. Search volume is the number of people who are searching for a particular keyword each month.

Ideally, you want to find keywords that have high enough search volumes to justify the work of creating content for it. However, you don’t want to target keywords that are too competitive.

Another important factor to consider when doing keyword research is keyword difficulty. Keyword difficulty is a measure of how difficult it will be to rank your site for a particular keyword.

Different SEO tools measure keyword difficulty differently, but the important point to understand is that you don’t want to target keywords that are too difficult. If you are just starting out, you won’t be able to rank for difficult terms because the competition is too fierce. Instead you should find keywords that have a good balance between monthly search volume and keyword difficult. That leads us to long tail keywords.

Long tail keywords are specific keyword phrases that typically have a lower search volume, but also less competition. Long tail keywords are at least 4 words long and often have more clear search intention.

For example, the keyword phrase “buy gold coins” is a short tail keyword. The keyword phrase “where to buy gold coins in Los Angeles” is a longtail keyword.

Targeting long tail keywords can be a great way to improve your search rankings without having to compete with other websites that are more established.

Now that you’ve selected a few target keywords, it’s time to start optimizing your site for them. On-page optimization is the process of optimizing your site pages for specific keywords.

One of the most important on-page optimization techniques is using your target keyword in your page titles and subheadings. Page titles are the titles that appears in search engine results pages, and they are also used as the headline for your pages.

It’s important to include your target keyword or close variations in your page titles, but you don’t want to go overboard. A good rule of thumb is to include your target keyword once in the page title and twice in the subheadings.

In addition to including your target keyword in your page titles and subheadings, you also want to include it in the body text of your site. However, you don’t want to overdo it. Don’t stuff the target keyword everywhere you can, add it where it fits naturally in your blog posts or pages.

Also be sure to include variations of your target keyword throughout your site. This will help Google better understand what your page is about and improve your search rankings.

Meta tags are HTML elements that provide information about a web page. Two of the most important meta tags are the meta title tag & meta description.

The meta title tag is the text that appears on a search result pages below the page title. It’s also used as the headline for your web page when a user bookmarks it.

In addition to the meta title tag, you should also include your target keyword in the meta description tag. The meta description tag is the text that appears under the page title in search engine results pages.

Alt attributes are text descriptions that are used to describe images. They are also used as the alternate text for search results pages when an image is unavailable.

When including images in your articles, be sure they include alt text describing them for search engines. This isn’t just useful for adding keywords, but alt text is important for website accessibility.

Anchor text is the text that is used to hyperlink to other pages on your site. When you include a link in your article, be sure to use anchor text that describes the destination of the link.

This will help Google better understand your site content and improve your search rankings. Don’t focus on adding the perfect keyword as anchor text though. Just be sure you choose relevant text that naturally fits in the body of your content.

Outside of targeting the proper keywords & optimizing your on-page seo, there are numerous technical aspects to SEO that are important for site owners to understand. Failure to properly address these technical elements can result in a decreased search engine rank & visibility.

One of the most important technical SEO factors is page speed. Google has been transparent about the fact that they use page speed as a rank factor. That is because users want fast-loading pages. In fact, the longer your page takes to load the more likely users are to abandon it.

Pages that load slowly will rank lower than pages that load quickly. There are numerous ways to improve your page speed, including optimizing your images, reducing server response time and using a content delivery network. If you are using a slow hosting service, be sure to consider upgrading to improve your website’s page speed. Check out our article about where websites are hosted to learn more.

If you run a media heavy site that delivers a lot of video content, consider using a video hosting service like vimeo. This will allow your site to load faster and better serve your clients.

Another important technical SEO factor is the canonical tag. The canonical tag tells search engines which version of a page to index. Many sites create duplicate pages to try and target similar keywords.

Those duplicate posts might get backlinks to the individual variations, but canonical urls to direct Google to consolidate the links from every variation into one page you have specified. This can help boost that individual pages rank by improving its backlink profile.

An XML sitemap is a file that helps search engines better understand the structure of your site. It lists all the pages on your site, and includes important information like the page’s title, description and last modified date.

After creating your XML sitemap you need to submit it to Google and any other search engines you are interested in indexing with. Some other major search engines you can submit a sitemap to include Bing & Yandex. Several other major search engines use Bing’s index for their own organic search results such as Yahoo & Duck Duck Go.

The URL structure of your website is also an important technical SEO factor. Google prefers URLs that are easy to understand and include the target keywords for the page.

That means you should avoid long, convoluted URLs with a lot of parameters & session IDs. Instead, use clean & simple URLs that are easy to read and include your target keyword. Be sure to set your URL structure in your CMS settings to make sure new content follows a consistent url structure. Be sure to 301 redirect any content where you change the url structure.

Structured data is a code that you can include on your website to help search engines better understand the content of your pages. This code tells Google what type of content is on the page & how to display it in search results.

Remember earlier we said bots can’t read all page data such as javascript? Well, structured data helps bots read that information so they can better understand it. This is important because search engines want to return the most relevant information for a user’s search query.

By including structured data on your site, you can help Google understand your content better and display your content in a more visually appealing way. For example, your content could become a featured snippet in search results or be included in an answer box.

There are a number of different types of structured data, but you only need to use the ones that are relevant to your site. You can find out more about which types of structured data are relevant for your site by using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.

One of the most important aspects of search engine optimization for google is link building. In order to rank higher in search results, you need backlinks from other sites that have higher seo rankings. This helps to build your sites domain authority.

Domain authority is a metric that measures the quality & trustworthiness of a site. It’s calculated using a variety of factors including the number of backlinks.

Link building is the process of acquiring links from another site to your own and building internal links. This can be done in a variety of ways, but the most common approach is to create valuable content that another site will want to link to.

Although content creation is important to link building, it’s not the only thing you need to do. You also need to promote your website’s content to other sites and build relationships with bloggers & webmasters.

There are a number of different tools & techniques you can use for link building, but the most important thing is to be consistent. Keep creating valuable content and reaching out to other site owners on a regular basis.

There are different types of links you will want to acquire and build to boost your site to a high ranking search result. The two major categories of link building are internal and external.

An internal link is a link from one page on your website to another. This is a great way to help Google find a new page when crawling your website. It also helps optimize your website navigation for users helping them find information for efficiently.

Internal links are extremely important and are imperative to numerous search engine optimization strategies. For example, cornerstone content or pillar pages rely on a well planned internal link structure to achieve a higher rank for competitive keywords.

When you are creating high quality content review your site content for opportunities to add an internal link. Building links between internal pages is as simple as adding a link to a related article in your blog post.

An external link is a link from your website to another site. This is a great way to build links and increase your website’s domain authority.

External links are important for two reasons. First, they help Google find new & relevant resources to include in its search results. Second, they help your website build trust from Google. Assuming you are getting links from reputable sources and aren’t using any black-hat seo techniques, external links will help improve your website’s search engine rankings.

One of the most important aspects of Google seo is earning high quality links from other websites. A high quality link should come from sites that are relevant seo resources in your industry with a good domain authority.

Domain authority is a search engine ranking metric created by Moz. It’s calculated using a variety of factors including the number of backlinks. It is measured on a logarithmic scale, which means the higher your domain authority the harder it gets to improve. Or in other words, it is easier to go from a domain authority of 10 to 30 than 30 to 50.

A high domain authority score means your website is more likely to rank higher in search results. A low domain authority score means your website is less likely to rank well. In fact, for competitive keywords Google may choose to not even index your pages.

A high quality link is best when it comes from a relevant resource. If you are a digital marketing website, you should seek out links from other digital marketing blogs & organizations. A link from a relevant site in you industry will help Google group your site with similar information.

Although your local community college might have a good domain authority, getting a backlink from them won’t necessarily help you rank better for “consumer skincare products.”

Be sure to carefully select the sites you are targeting for external link opportunities by assessing both their domain authority and relevancy to your seo strategy.

After implementing any search engine optimization strategy it is important to measure the results. This will help you determine if the changes you made are helping or hurting your website’s search engine rankings. Use a tool like Google analytics to help measure your site performance as you implement your Google seo plan.

Measure your monthly search traffic to see if there is any change. Compare the data from before and after you made changes to your website. If you see an increase in search traffic, then you know your Google seo strategy is working!

If you don’t see a change in search traffic, it doesn’t mean that your Google seo strategy isn’t working. It could just take more time to be effective. In fact, most search engine optimization can take between 3-6 months to have any significant effects. Actually SEO content performs its best after nearly 18 months, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t see results right away!

Search engine optimization is a topic that everyone wants to know more about. If you have any questions, or are just curious what it can do for your site- let us know! We’re happy to answer all of your questions and help you get started with seo today. Contact 608 Media at info@608media.com if this sounds like the type of service you need on your marketing team!