SEO Basics

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

Set up GSC and Bing Webmaster tools

You need to understand how search engines work and what they see when they visit your website before you can start improving your site’s ranking. Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster Tools are free tools provided by Google and Bing that show you data about your website from the search engine’s perspective. This data includes things like how often your pages are appearing in search results, what keywords people are using to find your site, and any issues that the search engine has found with your site. Setting up GSC and Bing Webmaster Tools is the first step to understanding how well your site is performing from a search engine’s perspective, and it’s a crucial part of any good SEO strategy.

Set up Google Analytics

1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account, and select the Admin tab.
2. In the ACCOUNT column, use the dropdown menu to select the account to which you want to add the property.
3. In the PROPERTY column, select + Create Property from the dropdown menu.
4. Select Website as yourProperty Type, and set the reporting time zone.
5. Fill out all of the required fields on the next page, and then click Get Tracking ID.
   Install and configure an SEO plugin (wordpress)
   
   If you want to ensure your website is as search engine friendly as possible, then you need to install an SEO plugin. An SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugin helps you to optimize your website for the search engines by providing you with powerful tools and features.

There are many different SEO plugins available for WordPress, but we recommend using the Yoast SEO plugin. Yoast SEO is a popular and well-supported plugin that offers a comprehensive set of features for optimizing your website.

To install Yoast SEO, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard and go to Plugins > Add New.
2. Search for “Yoast SEO” in the search field.
3. Find the Yoast SEO plugin by Joost de Valk and click Install Now.
4. Once the plugin has been installed, click Activate Plugin.
5. You will be redirected to the Yoast SEO configuration wizard. Follow the steps in the wizard to configure the plugin settings.
   Keyword Research
   
   Identify your competitors
   
   Before you begin your keyword research, it’s important to understand who your competition is. Your “competition” isn’t just the other businesses in your industry who also want to rank for the same keywords. It also includes the websites that are already ranking for those keywords.

To find out who your competition is, do a Google search for your target keywords. Look at the websites that are ranking on the first page of results, and take note of their domain names. These are your direct competitors.

You can also use a tool like SpyFu to research your competitors. Just enter a competitor’s domain name into the search bar, and you’ll see a report showing all of the keywords they’re currently ranking for. You can also see how much traffic they get from each keyword, and how much they spend on paid advertising.

Conduct a keyword gap analysis

A keyword gap analysis is the process of finding keywords that your competitors are ranking for that you are not. This can give you insights into which keywords you should be targeting to improve your SEO.

To conduct a keyword gap analysis, you will need to:

1. Choose your competitor(s). Ideally, you will want to choose a competitor that is similar to you in terms of size and location.
2. Use a keyword research tool, such as Google Keyword Planner or Moz Keyword Explorer, to find a list of relevant keywords.
3. Compare your list of keywords to the list of keywords that your competitor is ranking for. The keywords that they are ranking for but you are not are your keyword gaps.
4. Target these keyword gaps with your SEO efforts. This can include creating new content, optimizing existing content, and building links to your site.

By conducting a keyword gap analysis on a regular basis, you can stay ahead of the competition and ensure that your SEO efforts are targeted towards the right keywords.

Find your main ‘money’ keywords

If you want to make money from your website or blog, you need to be ranking for keywords that people are actually searching for. And not just any old keywords – but keywords that will actually convert into sales or leads for your business.

So how do you find these magical money keywords? Start by brainstorming a list of potential keywords related to your product or service. Then use a keyword research tool like Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Wordtracker to get more ideas and find out how many people are actually searching for each keyword every month.

Once you’ve got your list of keywords, it’s time to start creating content that is optimized for these terms. That means doing things like including the keywords in your page title, using them in your headings, and putting them prominently in the body of your text. By doing this, you’ll make it much easier for search engines like Google to find and index your content, which will in turn help you to rank higher in the search results for those keywords.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the practice of optimizing a website to make it easier for search engines to crawl, index, and understand the site’s content. It’s a branch of SEO that focuses on the infrastructure and architecture of a site rather than the site’s on-page content. Technical SEO includes optimizing the site’s code, structure, and architecture to make it more accessible to search engines.

Leverage “Inspect URL” feature in GSC

The “Inspect URL” feature in Google Search Console is very useful for Technical SEO. You can use it to check if your pages are being indexed by Google, and to find out if there are any errors that are preventing your pages from being indexed.

Ensure your website is mobile-friendly

One of the most important aspects of technical SEO is making sure that your website is mobile-friendly. With more and more people using smartphones and tablets to access the internet, it’s crucial that your website is designed to be responsive and easy to use on smaller screens.

There are a few ways to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly:

• Use responsive design: This means that your website’s design will adapt to fit any screen size, whether it’s a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone.
• Use a mobile-specific website: This is a separate website that is designed specifically for mobile devices. It will usually have a simplified design and layout, and may only include a subset of the content from your main website.
• Use app indexing: This allows Google to index your app so that it appears in search results. This can be a good option if you have an app that complements your website. whichever option you choose, making sure your website is mobile-friendly is essential for technical SEO.
  Check your site’s loading speed
  
  Slow loading websites are a turn-off for website visitors. If your website takes too long to load, your visitors are likely to click away before they even have a chance to see what you have to offer. Search engines are also taking loading speed into account when ranking websites, so it’s important to make sure your site is as fast as possible.

There are a few different factors that can contribute to slow loading times, but some of the most common include large images, unoptimized code, and slow server response times.

To ensure your website is loading as quickly as possible, you should:
-Optimize your images by reducing their file size
-Compress your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files
-Minimize HTTP requests
-Use a content delivery network (CDN)

On-page and Content

The first thing you need to take into account when you want to improve your SEO is on-page and content. That’s right, the two go hand-in-hand because if you have great content but it’s not properly optimized, you won’t rank as highly as you could. Likewise, even if you have fantastic on-page SEO, without content, no one will stay on your site long enough to see it.

Fix duplicate, missing, and truncated title tags

truncated title tags
Duplicate title tags are when the same title tag appears multiple times on a single website. This usually happens when a website has multiple pages with very similar content, or when a developer accidentally copies and pastes the same code multiple times. Either way, duplicate title tags are a bad idea and should be fixed.

Missing title tags are pretty self explanatory—they’re just title tags that are missing from your website entirely. This is usually caused by lazy or inexperienced developers, and it’s something that should be fixed as soon as possible.

Truncated title tags happen when your title tag is cut off because it’s too long. This can happen if you have a long website name, or if you try to stuff too many keywords into your title tag. While there’s no definitive length that will always get truncated, a good rule of thumb is to keep your title tags under 60 characters.

Find and fix duplicate or missing meta descriptions

If you want your website to rank high in search engines, you need to make sure that all of your content is optimized for SEO. That includes your meta descriptions.

A meta description is the brief summary that appears under your page’s title in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s one of the most important elements of on-page SEO, so it’s important to get it right.

Unfortunately, many websites have either duplicate or missing meta descriptions. This can hurt your SEO in two ways:

1. Search engines may not know which version of your content to rank, or
2. Search engines may not be able to find your content at all.

Luckily, there are some easy ways to fix this problem. In this article, we’ll show you how to find and fix duplicate or missing meta descriptions on your website.

Find and fix multiple H1 tags

One of the most common issues we see with on-page SEO is multiple H1 tags. This can be a really big problem, because it confuses Google (and other search engines) about what the main focus of your page is supposed to be.

Ideally, you should have just one H1 tag on each page of your website. This H1 tag should contain your primary keyword for that page, and it should be optimised to help Google understand what that page is all about.

To fix this issue, simply find all the H1 tags on your page and choose one to be the main tag. Then, update all the other H1 tags on that page to be H2 tags instead.

Off-Page SEO

Analyze your competitor’s link profile

One way to get an idea of the kinds of links your competitors are getting is to analyze their link profile. Use a tool like Moz’s Open Site Explorer or Majestic’s Site Explorer to get a list of their backlinks. Alternatively, you can use a backlink checker like Ahrefs.

Once you have a list of your competitor’s backlinks, take a look at the Anchor Text Distribution to see what keywords they’re targeting. If you see that most of their links are from low-quality sites or sites that are not relevant to your industry, then you know that you can focus on getting higher-quality links.

Conduct a link intersect analysis

Link intersect is a quick and easy way to find new link opportunities. Simply put, it’s a way of finding sites that link to your competitors, but not to you.

To conduct a link intersect analysis:

1. Choose some of your main competitors. If you’re in a really competitive niche, you may want to choose 10 or more. If you’re in a less competitive niche, you could get away with 5.
2. Use a tool like Majestic or ahrefs to find the sites that link to all of your chosen competitors.
3. Now it’s just a case of conducting a manual review of these sites to see if there are any opportunities for you to get a link from them too. For example, maybe they have listed your competitors as “Recommended Sites” but not you. Or maybe they have listed some of your competitors in their blogroll, but not you. These are both opportunities for you to reach out and try to get a link.
   Target your competitors’ broken backlinks
   
   There are a variety of ways to find your competitor’s broken backlinks, but one of the easiest is to use a tool like Ahrefs.

Once you’ve identified your competitor’s broken backlinks, reach out to the webmaster and ask if they’d be willing to link to your site as a replacement. This can be a great way to earn high-quality backlinks.