SEO Essentials: The A-Z SEO Guide
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is about making your website easier to find in search results. It helps people discover what you offer when they’re looking for it online. Many of the basics are simple enough to do yourself – no technical know-how needed. This A–Z guide will walk you through the key terms and tips to help you get started. SEO first started to get going as an idea in the mid-late 1990s. Since then, it’s grown into a huge and sophisticated global industry, where dedicated professionals compete fiercely to bring top search engine rank to businesses. It’s all about making your website easy for search engines to find and, in turn, making it more visible to people who are searching for what you have to offer. But don’t be intimidated by all the technical jargon: SEO isn’t (though I may need to go into hiding after I’ve said this) rocket science. For most website owners, the DIY basics are really easy. Finding the right keywords, optimising content, and being mobile-friendly – it’s all well within your reach. This A-Z glossary aims to make SEO easy by outlining the essential strategies to boost your website in search results. Let’s dive in and hit your search engine potential. Alt Text Short for “alternative text”, Alt Text is a short description you add to an image on your website. Alt Text helps with SEO so that people can find your website better. It’s important to know that alt text isn’t the same as a caption that everyone can see — it’s hidden in the HTML code. If the image doesn’t load, the Alt Text can appear instead. Screen readers can use Alt Text to describe images to people who can’t see them. If you want to include image credits or copyright info, though, it’s better to put this somewhere else on your page. Anchor Text Anchor text is the visible, clickable text placed on a link. It serves as a short description of the linked destination, helping users and search engines understand the content’s relevance. For example, if I were to say that it’s so easy for anyone to buy a domain name and build a great website — that’s Anchor Text. Using descriptive anchor text is good for user experience and provides valuable context for search engines, improving your website’s ranking for SEO. Author: Seobility – License: CC BY-SA 4.0 Backlink A Backlink is a link from an external website to a page on your own website. Backlinks are really important to SEO because search engines interpret them like a sort of endorsement for your content’s value and credibility. That is: the more high-quality Backlinks you have, the better your site is likely to rank on Google. Outbound links, where you link from your website to others, can also help by providing readers with additional resources. Linking to low-quality or spammy websites, however, will potentially harm your SEO. Bounce Rate A certain ratio of visitors will, unfortunately, take one look at your website and run — navigating away without so much as a click. In the world of SEO, this metric is known as Bounce Rate. A high rate of bounce would suggest visitors aren’t finding that content very relevant, interesting, or groovy. But there’s something you can do about that. See also: Quality Content Canonical URL A Canonical URL is a special HTML tag that helps search engines identify the “master copy” of a page when multiple versions exist. This prevents confusion and guarantees that the most important version is the one that shows up in search results. Think of it as a signpost directing visitors and search engines to the main version of a page. Good to know: Many website platforms like WordPress handle canonical URLs automatically, so you often don’t need to worry about them. Crawling Crawling is a name for the process that search engines use to systematically explore the web. Search engines like Google all use automated programs, called “bots” or “crawlers”, to scan the internet, discovering and mapping out websites. These bots follow links from page to page, discovering new content and updating their index, sort of like a giant library catalog of the internet. See also: Robots.txt Click-Through Rate (CTR) The Click-Through rate (CTR) for a link is a measure of how many people click on it after seeing it. There’s two sorts: ☐ SERP Click-Through Rate is the percentage of people who click on a website’s link after seeing it on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). It’s an important SEO metric because it shows how well your Meta Tags attract clicks. See also: Meta Data ☐ On-Page CTR is about the percentage of users who click on a specific link or call to action within your website’s pages — moving from a blog to a product page, for instance. How it’s calculated: Divide the number of clicks your link receives by the number of times it’s shown (impressions), then multiply by 100%. For example, if 1000 people see your link and 100 click on it, your CTR is 10% (a strong result on a SERP!) Author: Seobility – License: CC BY-SA 4.0 DoFollow DoFollow Links are links that search engines follow and factor into website rankings. They act as a signal of trust, passing authority (“link juice”) from the linking site to the linked site. By including Dofollow links to relevant, good-quality sites, you can potentially improve your own ranking. In short: they help webpages get noticed. NoFollow Links, as you might imagine, do the opposite and work to prevent search engines from following and passing on trust and credibility. They’re often used in user-generated content (like in forums) to avoid unverified sources or spammy behaviour. See also: Robots.txt Duplicate Content When there are sections on your website that are the same (or very similar), this is Duplicate Content. It’s bad for SEO because search engines might struggle to figure out which page is the most important, leaving your website less likely
Quality, quality, quality – The better you are the better you rank
Usability, links and content all have an impact on search engine rankings. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are constantly trying to improve their algorithms so that web users find exactly what they are looking for in as little time as possible. In general, to rank higher in search engines, you site should be: User-friendly, easy to navigate and understand Useful by providing relevant information and high quality content Accessible to the majority of browsers and browser versions Links It is a known fact that high quality sites are more popular and earn more links than low quality ones. Today or 10 years ahead, some search engine algorithms will change but these principles will be constant. If the content on your site is high quality, it will attract attention and get people to write about it and share it. This translates into valuable links and better rankings. Usability Usability and user experience also have an impact on search engine rankings. A quality site is also a site that has a good structure that people find to be logical and easy to use. If the site is easy to use, it can increase its popularity and, as a result, influence its search engine ranking. That’s why it’s important to determine which site structure would make it easier for your visitors to navigate and ensure their experience on your site is positive. If they are happy with your site, they will share it, bookmark it and return to it every chance they get. All of this is beneficial for your site from an SEO point of view as you are getting backlinks and can promote your site efficiently. Content worth sharing Publishing unique, appealing and useful content on your site is essential to SEO. The content on your site should provide solutions, solve problems, teach or guide your visitors. When they enter your site as a result of a search on Google, for instance, your content should satisfy their quest and informational needs. When visitors find what they need fast and easy, you get bonus points not only from your visitors who can recommend you to their friends, but also from the search engines. Use every tool you have to give your visitors what they want – useful content backed with examples – images, podcasts, videos and other multimedia files that can help you reach your goal.
Paid for or not paid for? Investing in Linking
Buying links is not the most effective technique to earn your way to the top rankings. SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin believes that paying for links is short-term and a waste of money because: Rankings are tactical: When you pay for links, you’re earning a small amount of traffic and the conversion is a lot lower than if you would grow your site with honest branding, trust, social media and word-of-mouth. It’s Overpriced: Buying links is more expensive than you would think. You could pay several hundred pounds for a few links in a post, but prices are a lot higher when you are dealing with big sites with a great authority and huge amounts of traffic. It’s Risky: Buying links is not accepted by the major search engine Google, thus you might be penalized for being a “link spammer”. Are paid links a waste of money? Buying and selling links to increase ranking was considered normal back in 2000 but 7 years later, Google declared that manipulating search results with paid links was not an acceptable SEO link building technique and will be penalized according to their Webmaster Guidelines. However, depending on the source, the quality of the links and the short or long-term impact, paying for links can sometimes be a good way to increase your rankings. There are three main types of paid links: Directory links Directory submissions can be a useful component of your link building strategy as long as you select just a few relevant and authority directories to submit your links to. When you have a new website and want to get the word out there and get some traffic back to your site, you can use online directories for that. Some are paid and some are free, but the important thing is for these to be relevant for your site, otherwise you’ll be losing money as well as time. Paid blog reviews Paid blog reviews are not as trusted as unpaid blog reviews. That’s because people tend to assume that a paid review cannot be honest or critical because the author has been paid to write it. On the other hand, when you pay someone to review your product, the review might just not be as favorable as you’d wish it to be. However, if the review is positive, it can work in your benefit and generate the buzz you need to make your product known to the public. Blog reviews also have a great effect on your SEO because when you choose a popular blog that is relevant for your business you can get high-quality links and targeted traffic especially. Online PR links Paid PR distribution sites are only valuable when you use them to share real news. Of course these can work against your company if you are publishing three, four, five press releases a week. It’s unlikely you have such big news to share every two days, thus you should limit your press releases to when you are promoting new products or services, or when you are hosting an event or conference that is of real interest to clients or potential clients. In other words, you can’t get away with spam or press releases that aren’t newsworthy. Press releases are meant to increase brand awareness and generate buzz around your products and services. So, should you invest in paid links as part of your SEO strategy? Yes, as long as you are aware that this is a short-term way to drive traffic to your site. Otherwise, invest the cost of paid links into promoting your business online through the use of fresh content and social media sharing.
Descriptions – more than just what you see
The meta description is mainly used by search engines and is a great way to get traffic to your site, but it can be tricky to get it right. This short paragraph is used to describe the information that is included on a page and it should be written to “sell” it and get people to click. The meta description is the short paragraph that appears on search engines like Google so it’s very important to pitch it perfectly. It’s an elevator pitch We are all busy people, so you have just a few seconds (10, the most) to pitch your idea, article, product or whatever it is that you’re trying to get the world to see. Take an hour or two or how many you need to come up with maximum 160 characters of content that will summarize the information on your page and get people to click. So your meta description should be short, catchy and perfect for your target audience. Craft your description Start with research. See how your competitors or other businesses you look up to are writing their meta descriptions and what details they are including, then start crafting it. You might not get it perfect the first time, but with practice you will get better and better at it. Soon enough you will be able to write it in a few minutes. Another thing to consider is the uniqueness factor. Try to write your description as creatively as possible because if it’s predictable, chances are your audience will not pay attention to it. Things to do, things to avoid The meta description should be written for people, not for search engines. You can include a keyword or two that is relevant for your site or business, but try to avoid over-optimising it or stuffing it with keywords. Each page should have a different meta description, usually between 100 and 160 characters, otherwise search engines tag it as duplicate content. Don’t forget to include a call-to-action, such as “Buy now”, “Find out more”, etc. Have we missed anything? Do you have any tips to share that can help write a perfect meta-description?
SEO direct tips from Bing
However good your SEO, the key aim is always to get a higher listing in search engine directories. So when one of those search engines shares tips on optimising your site for SEO, it’s worth taking notice, after all they should know what works and what doesn’t. On the Bing Webmaster Centre Blog last month Duane Forester who runs the public outreach side of the Webmaster program for Bing gave 18 tips on how to best optimise your website. The 18 points are not comprehensive apparently, but designed to cover “the important aspects you should look at addressing”. Certainly worth a look and if you are designing a new site from scratch, well worth using as part of your template. We suggest you read the full blog but if time is short make sure you memorise these 8 definite no-nos: cloaking link buying like farms link farms three-way linking duplicating content auto-follows in social media the thin content approach Have you seen any other SEO tips direct from search engines?