This is a Seo guide for all people like you who are curious about what it is and how important it is for the success of their website or e-commerce. When I talk about SEO I mean Search Engine Optimization , which is based on search engine optimization.
Behind this mechanism there are SEO strategies that lead to results but only if you follow the rules, if you study the whole situation properly and – not least – you rely on a professional in the sector. The organic positioning – SERP – is determined by the results that are not paid but still in the first places. It looks difficult? Let’s see together point by point what SEO is, how it works and what are the main rules.
What is SEO
Anyone who has to do with a website or a blog has heard of SEO and it is natural to wonder what is this Web Marketing technique that has been the center of attention in the digital world for years now.
The optimization of sites and content on search engines is today more important than ever and it is necessary to understand the true meaning of this term as well as the business potential it offers for every type of business, entrepreneurial and otherwise.
Search Engine Optimization – Seo language – is crucial to place your website or e-commerce on the first page of the search engine. The first mission is undoubtedly to give visibility to the contents or to the site itself: but why?
To put it in words, if you have a perfect website in its content but it is not visible on the first page of the search engines, this will not lead to conversions. Digital activities aim to convert, increase traffic and interest from users. It is therefore important that your site generates qualified traffic – through Seo optimization – and then goes on with all the primary factors, which help users navigate within it easily – accompanying you by the hand towards conversion.
Search Engine Optimization
Its meaning is simpler than you think: SEO is the acronym of Search Engine Optimization (which translated means optimization for search engines ) is the name given to that activity that tries to improve the way a site, blogs and specific content are ranked by engines (such as Google and Bing) in search results.
Things
In other words, it consists of a set of strategies and practices aimed at increasing the visibility of a website by improving its SEO positioning on search engines. These practices aim to increase the traffic that the site receives from Google and Bing, thus making it more visible to people who are looking for those specific keywords through search engines.
Here is an illustrative example of what SEO is : by typing in Google a keyword such as “best smartphones of 2021”, Google will return a list of organic results. The first site shown on this list will have done a better optimization job than the other competitors, offering relevant, high-quality content and an optimized site structure.
Search engines continuously work to improve the experience of users who use these services and to provide results that are increasingly relevant to people’s questions. Google is the most used search engine in the world and is constantly evolving, which is why SEO has changed dramatically over the years. Today it is a very structured, strategic and operational activity, which requires a lot of skills and time to devote to achieve considerable objectives.
The SEO Specialist
While SEO is that set of strategies and techniques to improve positioning on Google and Bing, the SEO consultant, also called SEO Specialist, is the individual who is in charge of carrying out this activity and who has different knowledge. It is therefore a professional capable of carrying out the following operations:
- market study
- study of the project
- study of how the user searches for the site
- study of what the user is looking for on the site
- study and application of new positioning strategies
- research of potential keywords to position the site and its contents
- technical skills
- ability to create content that is valuable to the reader and relevant to search engines.
How to do SEO
Search optimization is divided into two parts: off-site and on-site. There are various points to analyze and we always start from the analysis of the keywords for an ad hoc SEO strategy.
When doing a keyword research suitable for a website, it refers to tools that are made available by professional SEO tools. The best known by us professionals in the sector are Semrush – ahrefs up to the Google Ads Planner.
A mistake that is often made when you are not in the trade is to believe that generic keywords can be enough to rank at the top of the first page of Google. This is not the case, in fact it is good to select various Long Tail words, as per the concept introduced in 2006 by Anderson . The latter described a market situation by taking unsolicited products – or not in demand – from users: he pointed out how all these products together can create a higher market share.
To better understand Anderson’s vision , any keywords that describe the product / service you offer will help you get qualified traffic. These keywords are optimal for responding to users who carry out a specific and not generic search.
You get a conversion and a traffic, as already mentioned, if all the pieces of your website match following an in-depth and specific study.
SEO activity
An SEO activity consists of several practices that concern different aspects of a website or a blog: the optimization of the site structure, the HTML code, the textual content, the management of inbound links (called inbound links or, more commonly, backlinks), outgoing links (which point from the site to other external sites) and internal links.
One of the most relevant ranking factors is notoriously the number and quality of backlinks from other websites. In simple terms, if the website were a person, Google would rate its authority and relevance based on the amount of relationships that person has with other people. So let’s think of backlinks as if they were handshakes: the more they have, the more valuable they are, and the more Google will reward the site by positioning it well on its pages.
The SEO audit should not be neglected in the activities . This is a real site analysis that should always precede any optimization intervention. It allows you to know exactly all the problems of a site or a blog and to find the most suitable solutions to solve them, offer greater navigability to users and go better in the virtual eyes of search engines.
SEO and positioning
Now that you understand what SEO is, it’s time to take a step forward. In fact, the content must now be understood and placed at the top of the search engine : but how does this aspect work? The search engine’s reasoning phases are repeated every time a user is looking for some information.
Stages of crawling and indexing
The phases of the search engine are purely technical, but it is important to know them to understand how SEO should be studied for your website in order to obtain indexing and conversion. The crawling and indexing stages are primary processes of the search engine, which refers to the crawler (internal robot software). This scans everything inside your website through the links and it would be optimal if you facilitate the work, following the SEO rules and the technical (fundamental) precautions.
Soon after, the crawler takes all the data read and stores it in the search engine database. The data is sorted and returned taking into account the various keywords a user searches for throughout the day.
SEO positioning
Now that all that data has been sorted and the scan results are ready for users, what happens? Here comes the SERP, that is the ranking that is “personalized” according to the user and the search based on more than 200 different factors.
User feedback is very important, because according to these, Google – or at least a search engine – continues to propose certain topics if useful, otherwise the ranking is updated gradually. All quickly and automatically.
A little curiosity that you might like to know is that the continuously updated algorithm structure is also secret. Google operates on special rules and indications that become effective starting from your country of birth and then arriving in Europe. What does it mean? Unfortunately, there is no certainty that the website today on the front page tomorrow is still so, so much so that it is necessary to do a continuous search for keywords and strategies to have continuity.
On-site SEO optimization
We start with the on site SEO which basically refers to all the factors that need to be optimized and are part of the website.
Keyword and keyword study
As already mentioned, I recommend that you carry out a study on the contents and all the keywords of competence. These must be aimed at optimizing the website by answering the user’s question when carrying out a search. The Serp is constantly evolving and must be studied, as well as the competitors, who are positioned above your site.
Deepening of the contents
But the site is also content, which must be rich – complete – unique and in perfect Italian. Always remember that Google evaluates many factors that influence optimization, but if the page – article – description are not complete, then there will never be a presence on the first page.
Reading a content
The content of your website must be read by the search engine. In this specific case we are talking about JS – HTML – CSS – which are fundamental even if not everyone pays attention to them. The professionals of the sector also help you to evaluate the technicalities for a particular internal structure: this allows the search engine to interpret all the contents that are existing (such as numbers).
Not least the Sitemap , a hierarchical index in xml format for all the pages that are present within the website. This must be sent to Google with the Seach Console to get a high quality element of the site.
For the website to be complete, don’t forget to also evaluate:
- The internal link that connects the content to the others that are present within the site (with topic of competence)
- Meta Description and its main mission is to make the user curious about the content
- The Headings , which are the titles for the content (H1 – H2 – H3 and so on).
Local SEO
What is Local SEO ? Is it different from traditional SEO or not? The search results pages are not all the same, but they change completely depending on the location (location) we are in when we search. Local SEO is therefore the activity aimed at positioning local activities (such as bars, restaurants, shops of all kinds) on search engines. Carrying out activities to enhance a local business requires somewhat different mechanics from SEO for non-local businesses.
Difference between SEO and SEM
Google and the other search engines mainly carry two types of traffic:
- an organic one , coming from the search results that the engine proposes in an index ordered according to the quality and relevance of the websites
- another for a fee , coming from advertisements that are activated based on users’ search queries.
The SEO, as we have anticipated before, aims to improve the position of sites and content in the rankings of search engines, in the non-paid results (called organic results). The SEM (Search Engine Marketing, literally marketing on search engines) is instead that paid activity for the acquisition of visibility on the sponsored results of Google, and takes place through the Google Adwords tool.
SEO takes time to be effective and it is not always possible to rank first on Google, but where possible it is the best long-term result for any type of business. SEM offers immediate results against a cost that can be very large.
