SEO basics are essential knowledge if you're about to start your own business. Although search engine algorithms change regularly and adapt to new conditions, you should first get the basics that will help you take your site to the top and get the most profit from it.
Part 1. Competitor analysis and promotion strategy
Where do you start promoting a brand? The first step is monitoring your closest competitors. By studying their strengths and weaknesses, you can create a site that meets all your target audience's needs and wishes. This process is called an SEO audit and includes several stages:
1. Identifying your closest competitors. Usually these are the top 10 sites in search results for a keyword.
2. Listing the characteristics for comparison: number of pages and links, domain authority, number of queries, quality and volume of content, site age, etc.
3. Putting the data into a table or chart.
4. Comparing the figures with your own site and identifying strengths and weaknesses relative to others.
5. Building a promotion strategy.
After a detailed analysis of each point, you'll understand how to promote your site and get it ranking high in search engines.
Part 2. The long tail of search queries and site structure
To build an effective promotion system, you need a list of queries your site will rank for. They're roughly divided into several categories:
— Informational (answering the user's question).
— Commercial (offering to buy what people search for).
— Mixed (giving a detailed answer while offering a product or service).
The site should also contain the keywords users will find it by. By search volume, they are:
— high-volume;
— mid-volume;
— low-volume.
The first category is the most popular, so competition is highest and promotion is expensive. The last involves the rarest queries. A pool of such keywords can quickly push a site to the top and significantly increase traffic. This tactic is called long-tail promotion, because such queries consist of four or more words. The more precise the answer a user gets, the better your chances of ranking among the top sites.
Part 3. Content marketing
When indexing a site, search algorithms use its text content, so it's important to regularly update and add to your content.
Informational queries and content marketing
The main requirements for copy are expertise, usefulness and readability. Information is presented in different formats:
— video and audio;
— themed photo collections;
— tutorials, webinars;
— charts, comparison tables.
Your main query should be surrounded by useful, unique information that users will want to share. Sharing content on social media will attract more and more visitors to your site, build backlinks, push you to the top and convert visits into sales.
How to choose topics for your content
There are several ways to find topics for relevant content:
1. Keyword research tools. They show not only popular queries but related ones too.
2. Analysing competitors' websites. By studying their most popular articles, you can create more complete expert content.
3. Studying foreign competitors' websites. An adapted translation of relevant information will attract users' attention.
4. Analysing the queries that bring visitors to your site. Perhaps some topic deserves a closer look.
How much to publish
In the competitive race, the site with richer content always wins, so publish as often as possible. Usually copywriters are hired to write articles regularly. A content plan with a publication date for each piece is based on how often your closest competitors publish.
Optimising the informational section (blog)
A blog (the informational section) is promoted a little differently, since user queries differ from commercial ones. There are several rules for running a blog:
— Content should be regularly updated with unique articles. Longreads are best — texts of around 5,000 characters that cover a topic in depth.
— Articles should be easy to read: break text into blocks with subheadings and use visual formats (tables, charts, photos, videos). Distribute keywords evenly throughout the text in a natural way.
— Include the target keyword in the URL. In the text, link to other articles and blog pages, and add social sharing buttons.
Following all these recommendations gradually pays off, taking your blog to the top of search results.
Part 4. Synergy of promotion channels
Besides SEO, there are several other ways to promote a website:
— Social media brand promotion (SMM). You can post links to your main site, attracting potential customers. Social media's extensive options let you run targeted ads for your audience, advertise your company in other groups and with popular bloggers, and build a personal brand.
— Email marketing. Working with your own customer base lets you reach people who really need your product or service. Set up regular emails with special offers, sale announcements and company news. Two emails a week is optimal.
— PPC advertising. By paying for ad placements in Google, you can be sure potential customers will see your site at the top of the results.
Part 5. Promoting a website yourself
Promoting a site takes long, thorough preparation: researching queries, building a semantic core and keyword list, writing quality articles for the site and posts for social media. Then you just need to follow a certain promotion algorithm, and results won't be long in coming.
A step-by-step website promotion guide
For a search bot to single out your site, the relevant page must answer the user's query. To do that, follow these steps:
1) Put the keyword in the Title (page title) and Description (its summary).
2) Add the keyword to the page URL.
3) Write the H1 heading around the main keyword.
4) Use exact and partial matches of the keyword in the text. It's best to put the main one at the very start of the article.
5) Use partial-match keywords in internal links.
6) Use tags to group articles.
Building a semantic core is the main task here, enabling SEO optimisation of the site. The keywords are then clustered (grouped by meaning), and content is created for each page.
Learning (sources of knowledge)
For learning, you can use relevant books, webinars and video tutorials. Today it's easy to find paid and free training materials on promotion from leading specialists online.
SEO courses and seminars
Although search engines change their algorithms regularly, there are universal rules of effective marketing. You can learn more and exchange experience at dedicated courses or seminars. They're easy to find, and you can study remotely if there's no suitable specialist in your city.
Action is the key to results
When creating and promoting a business online, the key is constant, painstaking work on the site and creating interesting, varied content.
When creating unique content, remember that it should be written "for people". That's exactly what your potential customers are searching for. A dry list of keywords is more likely to put them off and make them leave. Don't forget the technical side either — incorrect settings will drag all your work down. For example, a misconfigured robots.txt can stop search engines from distinguishing you from competitors. The same goes for internal linking: place tags and links to your other articles that may interest visitors throughout the text.
Pay special attention to usability. The simpler and more intuitive your site, the larger the audience it will attract. Fast page loading and a mobile version are also an advantage. Only after making sure everything is in place should you move on to placing links in directories, media and third-party services.
What team of professionals you need
For a successful project, you need a team that includes:
— a copywriter (writes the content);
— a designer (creates visual materials);
— a web developer (maintains the site, fixes errors and publishes new information);
— a PPC specialist (brings paid traffic to the site);
— an analyst manager (monitors indexing, incoming traffic, leads and other metrics, and updates the content plan based on new data).
Analysing promotion results
To achieve tangible results, you need to constantly analyse the data and track your progress. Analytics tools provide summary reports on traffic and give insight into your target audience, rankings and number of backlinks. Regularly track the following:
— visibility to search bots;
— search rankings;
— traffic from search engines;
— number of enquiries and requests (leads).
Pros and cons of promoting a website yourself
DIY promotion is a fairly complex but interesting process. Its advantages include:
— saving money;
— personal commitment to the result.
But there are pitfalls too:
— you'll need to study SEO rules thoroughly;
— build a team of professionals;
— track analytics regularly and keep your knowledge up to date.
How to succeed at promotion
If you want to optimise your site, reach the top and stay there for a long time, you'll need to work on it long and hard, keep adding to it and follow changes in how search bots work. You can't achieve this quickly, even with black-hat SEO (buying links, faking traffic, clickjacking, etc.). Be patient and write quality content following all the experts' recommendations.
Creating and promoting a website
Even before development starts, draw up a promotion plan. How is the site different from similar ones? What content is needed to earn trust from search engines? Looking at these questions in detail will help you create quality content that won't need reworking and optimising later.
Which content management systems are best for SEO?
The best management is always the work of a professional, because software can't keep up with regular algorithm changes. So the management system will need updating periodically anyway.
Responsive design or a separate mobile version?
Easy navigation is one of the main requirements for a website. Your task is to take care of smartphone users and adapt the site for them. From an SEO perspective, responsive design is the priority: it uses the same URL as the desktop page, unlike a separate mobile version. This rules out ranking errors.
If you need to promote your business in search engines, we recommend turning to professionals! A great option is to order the service from Cyborg Studio! Here you'll get a range of recommendations from an SEO specialist and access to other equally popular services!
