Have you ever heard of SEO positioning, but still don’t know what it is? It’s a pretty big term in the world of digital marketing, to the point where virtually every online business needs to know what SEO is and how to implement it properly. Whether it’s a simple blog or an eCommerce site, SEO plays a fundamental role for your website, mainly to have so–called “organic” visits, and it’s only in an area where being among the first places brings enormous advantages.
Researching how to gain positions in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) of Google and other search engines has become a constant goal for all webmasters. But what exactly is SEO?
What is SEO and what is it used for?
Let’s start with the basics: referencing or SEO, in English “Search Engine Optimization” which could be translated as search engine optimization is a discipline that combines a series of techniques, actions and strategies that, along with some specialized tools, aim to improve the positioning of a given website.
This concept can also be found on the Internet as “web or organic positioning“, and its usefulness or main function is precisely to help a website gain positions in the main search engines, although Google is generally considered to be the engine research objective in which each website wishes to have a good place.
If we take this concept further, we can say that there are two main types of SEO, Off–Page and On–Page. The Off–Page is everything that is not implemented directly on the page, such as Backlinks, which we could include in what would be the Linkbuilding strategy.
On–Page, on the other hand, are all the SEO techniques that are applied within the website, from the optimization of the keywords that we use as the basis for our content, to the internal linking that we apply.
SEO is not an exact science
Once the definition of SEO and its uses has been clarified, an important point must be explained in more detail: although SEO positioning is a discipline with a well–defined objective, it is not an exact science.
In other words: it is not a rule in which “if you do such and such, you will have such and such results”.
For this reason, it’s common for those new to SEO to make a few mistakes that can lead to this conclusion: “SEO is useless.”
First of all, it must be understood that it depends on trial and error, and that although there are proven cases where a technique works, there are many factors that come into play, so that in each situation the same result will not occur.
More than 200 factors intervene on a given web page in order to obtain such or such organic positioning.
Despite this, website professionals feel that Google’s algorithm contains hundreds (if not thousands) of additional factors, although these are obviously not shared publicly.
What are the benefits of boosting SEO in your digital strategy?
Boosting the SEO of your digital strategy has a very specific benefit: the better you rank in the major search engines, the more organic traffic to your website will be.
High organic traffic can in turn translate to more people interested in your content, brand, or business, and therefore more conversions and sales. It should be noted that organic positioning has much more possibility of attracting customers, since, in general, the traffic that enters your website organically usually has more interested users, being what they are looking for directly. and not what appeared in an ad.
What SEO factors should you consider to position your blog content?
As we have already said, there are many factors that influence SEO, some that we cannot directly control, but without a doubt, all of them contribute their little something to improve the positioning of a website.
Among the main SEO factors, both On–Page and Off–Page, the ones you need to consider are:
1. Keyword optimization and search intent
Correct keyword optimization is an important part of organic positioning, it is this On–Page SEO factor that allows you to define the keywords you want to position, as well as tell Google important information such what your website deals with, what you offer and so on.
But don’t forget that after the latest updates to its algorithm, and even more so after we know that “BERT” is about to arrive, it brings with it greater importance as to whether our content fulfills or satisfies the search intent that the user hypothetically had by typing certain keywords into the search engine.
And each time it will be to a greater extent to what will tend to give more importance to Google by giving a better or worse positioning to the content generated on the Internet, by you and by the other millions (even billions) of users, who regularly create content on the web.
2. User experience on the internet
This topic is a little more general, however, it is perfect for covering some important factors of On–Page SEO.
Google cares about the experience you provide to your page visitors, which is why it is important that your website is optimized for users to have a satisfying experience on your site.
This means that you need to work on aspects such as navigation on your website, loading speed, quantity
ads you display, errors in your internal linking, and other factors that may affect the user experience on your site.
3. Relevance of your content
Along with keywords, you also need to pay close attention to the relevance of your content and as we said before, it’s not just about choosing the right keywords, but also intent. user research.
With that in mind, you need to know that the relevance of your content is vitally important, and you need to be able to give users exactly what they’re looking for.
And Google knows this very well, rewarding you by sometimes popping you up in SERP features, like the one we’re going to show you next, where someone who searched for “http error 500” which, in theory, we’re supposed to want knowing “what” this expression is, first shows it our definition as follows:
For example, if the keyword is “buy a house in Barcelona“, you should make sure you give it precisely to your visitors, and not give them an explanation of what the houses are or where Barcelona is, because you would be off the mark and people would leave immediately, i.e. they would “pogo sticking“, which would be like going back to the search page and – probably – clicking on a result of a competing site.
To achieve this, our recommendation is that you create a ‘Link Baiting‘ strategy, where you produce highly relevant and useful content for your users… so much so that they will decide on their own to recommend you and, in turn, this will greatly help your organic positioning.
As you can see, many of these factors (those explained so far and the following) are interrelated…
4.CTR
The “Click Through Rate“, or rate of clicks in French, is an important SEO factor, it is a rate that measures the number of users who click on your online advertisements which direct them to your website. The reason this factor is relevant is that Google takes CTR into account when determining if your content is important to users.
The higher the CTR, the more attention Google will pay to your website, as it deems it relevant and interesting to its users. The way to measure CTR is to divide the number of clicks users make on your content by the number of times it appears (impressions).
5. Backlinks
Backlinks are basically the links that our website receives from other pages. It used to be the fundamental pillar of SEO, but over time and the constant changes that Google has had, not that it has taken away importance from this factor, but now puts more emphasis on usefulness that the content has for the user than on the number of inbound links that have your result.
6. Optimizing your meta tags
This is an important point to consider. Meta tags are a fundamental part of your website’s internal SEO optimization. Maybe for users they are not of great relevance, but they are for Google. Therefore, you must create them correctly.
These are title or meta title, description or meta description and URL. You need to optimize them for every piece of content you create on your website and plan to position, because it’s vitally important for Google, and fundamental for users to find you in the SERP.
7. Quality of your content
It’s not just a matter of relevance, it’s also a matter of content quality. The two are related, however, quality has more to do with how the content is created than how important it is to the user.
Quality content should not only meet user needs, but also be free of grammatical errors and
spellings, be as complete as possible, have adequate keyword density, not be spammy to users, and be original.
Please note that Google penalizes duplicate and therefore plagiarized content over content from another website.
Also, if we are only focusing on what you post on your own blog or website, you need to be careful not to generate an “ SEO cannibalism ” phenomenon , i.e. 2 or more of they point to the same search intention, because before that, if in principle you should be on the first page (and even in the TOP1) of Google because it considers that your article is worthy of it, you will not be as good in the SERP, since you have another post that points to the same search intent.
This will “prevent” the first of them from positioning correctly.
8. Internal Links
Internal linking basically consists of the links we place inside our content that redirect to other parts of our website where there will be another article related to the topic and provide information that supplements the current one.
An example of this would be the typical “you might be interested in” or “If you want to learn more about On–Page SEO click this link”. This internal linking not only helps with navigation, but also motivates users to visit other content on your website who may not have known you posted, giving older content more visibility.
It is also advisable to use a variety of anchor texts in your internal links, which may well be considered another factor in this list.
9. Publications on other websites – guestblogging –Classic “guest posts” are a great SEO aid.
They consist of content that you create for other websites which in turn, provided the person responsible for the website receiving the article allows it, usually posts a link to your page with 1 or more backlinks.
Their importance lies in the fact that they help you give visibility not only to your page (if these links are of the “dofollow” type), but also to your personal brand. Plus, they’re a great way to gain exposure on the internet, especially if you manage to post an article on a recognized website with high recurring traffic.
10. Downtime
Downtime is an SEO factor that determines the average time users spend on your website. For Google, high downtime equals relevance and quality. Thus, the time spent by users inside your site is directly proportional to the interest that your content arouses; With this in mind, it is normal for Google to prioritize pages that have longer dwell time.
Many factors influence the average length of visit to your website, but most are related to user experience, content quality and relevance.
Conclusion
Now that you know what SEO is, all we can say is that you need to work on it, it’s not something you learn instantly, it takes time.
Be sure that in 95% of cases, this process will start slowly, very slowly; it’s not about getting results overnight.
Factors such as CTR, Backlinks, creating content that indicates users‘ search intent, writing articles for other websites etc require time, you have to go gradually, because rushing does not not help you at all.
Slowly but surely, here is one of the best ways to do SEO.