Six fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Kingshuk Mitra
![Kingshuk Mitra]()
Kingshuk Mitra
Building and Growing Things | IIMB, IITKGP | Strategy Consulting, Growth, Performance Marketing, Brand Building, Analytics, Strategic Ops, BD | CARS24, Kearney, Capital One, Barclays, InMobi, Jio embibe, ImpactGuru
Search Engine Optimization is the organic way of getting ranked on a Search Engine Result Page (SERP) for a particular user query. There are numerous ways to rank in the top 10 links Google provides on its first page. To understand how Google chooses the webpages to show (or not show) in its SERP, you need to understand the intricacies of its algorithms. Although Google updates its algorithms on a regular basis to root out webpages that do not fulfill user intent, there are a few fundamentals that have persevered.
Moz's Beginner's Guide to SEO provides a pyramid akin to Maslow's hierarchy of needs to help understand the steps that improve a webpage's competitiveness in ranking on a SERP. These steps are:
- Crawl accessibility so engines can read your website
- Compelling content that answers the searcher’s query
- Keyword optimized to attract searchers & engines
- Great user experience including a fast load speed and compelling UX
- Share-worthy content that earns links, citations, and amplification
- Title, URL, & description to draw high CTR in the rankings
- Snippet/schema markup to stand out in SERPs
The question then arises: how do we implement basic SEO for a webpage? Here I enlist six steps that can help you in improving your webpage rankings if executed correctly.
SETTING SEO GOALS
Start with your company goals for the month, quarter, or year (say, increasing sales). Then come up with your marketing goals - which part of the AARRR (Acquisition > Activation > Retention > Referral > Revenue) funnel do you want to target - acquiring new users or bringing back old ones or referrals? Only after answering that question can you set smart SEO goals. Most growth marketers have a laundry list of things they want to try to improve rankings but they are not connected to the larger goals that the company requires to accomplish. Therefore, this is a fundamental step that should not be ignored. Based on this, one can come up with relevant metrics to measure performance:
- Rankings (global, national, local)
- Organic search visits
- Branded vs non-branded search visits - branded would be homepage, non-branded would be blogs, resources, etc.
- SERP ownership/reputation
- Search volume (branded vs non-branded) through Google Trends, Adwords campaign, Moz's keyword explorer
- Links and link metrics - number of linking root domains, the total number of links, authority, DA distribution, spam score distribution
- Referral traffic
GET YOUR PAGE CRAWLED, INDEXED AND RANKED
There are seven questions that, if answered, will help your page be easily crawled by Google bots, indexed and ready for being ranked on a SERP.
Have you checked your indexed pages?
- Head to Google and type "site:yourdomain.com" into the search bar. This will return results Google has in its index for the site specified.
- Go to Google Search Console (with this tool, you can submit sitemaps for your site and monitor how many submitted pages have actually been added to Google's index) and use the Index Coverage report.
Did you check your Robots.txt file?
- Robots.txt files are located in the root directory of websites (ex. yourdomain.com/robots.txt).
- They suggest which parts of your site search engines should and shouldn't crawl.
- To direct Google bots away from certain pages of your site, you should use Robots.txt.
Do you know when Google bots CANNOT crawl your pages?
- If you require users to log in, fill out forms, or answer surveys before accessing certain content, search engines won't see those protected pages.
- Non-text media forms (images, video, GIFs, etc.) should not be used to display text that you wish to be indexed. Use alt text or best to add text within the <HTML> markup of your webpage.
- Robots cannot use search forms on your webpage.
- If you’ve got a page you want search engines to find but it isn’t linked to from any other pages, it’s as good as invisible. Search engines need to be able to follow your site navigation.
- If you have a mobile navigation that shows different results than your desktop navigation, those pages may not be crawled
- When the menu items are not in the HTML, e.g., JavaScript-enabled navigation
- Personalization, or showing unique navigation to a specific type of visitor versus others, could appear to be cloaking to a search engine crawler
- Forgetting to link to a primary page on your website through your navigation
- Unclear navigation and unhelpful URL folder structures
- When in the process of crawling the URLs on your site, a crawler encounter errors. You can go to Google Search Console’s “Crawl Errors” report to detect such URLs
- When you don’t implement a 301 redirect to your new pages
- It can be difficult for Google bots to reach your page if it has to go through multiple redirects. Google calls these “redirect chains”
How can you make sure Google bots can crawl your pages?
- Sitemaps: One of the easiest ways to ensure Google is finding your highest priority pages is to create a file that meets Google's standards and submit it through Google Search Console
- Don’t include a URL in your sitemap if you’ve blocked that URL via Robots.txt or include URLs in your sitemap that are duplicates rather than the preferred, canonical version
When can your webpage be indexed and when not?
- To check if your page has been crawled and indexed earlier, try the cached version of the page. The cached version of your page will reflect a snapshot of the last time Googlebot crawled it. Click the drop-down arrow next to the URL in the SERP and choose "Cached"
- Pages are removed from the index when: the URL is returning a "not found" error (4XX) or server error (5XX), the URL had a noindex meta tag added, the URL has been manually penalized for violating the search engine’s Webmaster Guidelines, the URL has been blocked from crawling with the addition of a password required before visitors can access the page
- To check if your page is showing up in Google index, you can do two things: use the URL Inspection tool, or use Fetch as Google which has a "Request Indexing" feature to submit individual URLs to the index
- You can use Robots meta directives to instruct search engine crawlers to not index a page (noindex tag), or not pass link equity to on-page links (nofollow tag), or restrict them from saving a cached copy of the page (noarchive tag)
How do search engines rank URLs?
- Number of inbound links or backlinks: The PageRank algorithm checks not only the quantity but also the quality of the backlinks in estimating the importance of the page. Natural backlinks from high-authority websites will help your page rank higher.
- Fulfilling the query's intent: matching the words that were searched for, and the amount of time the user stays on your page to absorb the content feed into the ranking methodology of the search engine
- RankBrain: RankBrain is the machine learning component of Google’s core algorithm. This algorithm demotes the rank position of pages that people don’t spend as much time on.
- Lastly, the ranking algorithm changes regularly. If your ranking has suffered after such a change, have a look at Google’s Quality Guidelines or Search Quality Rater Guidelines
What engagement metrics should you consider?
- Clicks (visits from search)
- Time on page (amount of time the visitor spent on a page before leaving it)
- Bounce rate (the percentage of all website sessions where users viewed only one page)
- Pogo-sticking (clicking on an organic result and then quickly returning to the SERP to choose another result)
KEYWORD RESEARCH
There are three questions you want answered with your keyword research:
- What are people searching for? To better understand your target market
- How many people are searching for it? To get an idea of the search volumes
- In what format do they want that information? Videos, infographics, SERP features to help users
Understanding the business and customers
What you want to rank for and what your audience actually wants are often two wildly different things. You need to focus on the audience and not on arbitrary keywords. To do these you need to ask pertinent questions about your customers: What products are they looking for? Who is searching for these products? When are they searching (seasonality trends)? What words or phrases do they use (search terms)? Which devices do they use? Why are people seeking the product? Where are potential customers located? How can you best provide the content that customers are looking for?
What terms are people searching for and what to target?
You can use the following steps to understand what terms people are searching for, what the search volumes of such terms are, and how you should go about targeting such keywords.
- Start with seed keywords: your product/service, topics on your website
- Use a keyword research tool like Moz Keyword Explorer or Google Keyword Planner
- Discover average monthly search volume and similar keywords
- Determine which variations of your keywords are most popular among searchers. It may be more advantageous to target terms with lower search volume because they're far less competitive
- Diversify your website’s pages by optimizing each for uniquely valuable keywords - that can help target high- and low- volume keywords
- Target long-tail keywords - highly specific, lower competition search terms which show more intent
- There are two strategies to target the keywords your competitors are targeting: Prioritize high-volume keywords that your competitors are not currently ranking for, OR use an aggressive strategy - compete for keywords your competitors are already performing well for
- Use seasonal trends to push content with the right keywords
- Strategically target a specific location by narrowing down your keyword research to specific towns, counties, or states in the Google Keyword Planner, or evaluate "interest by subregion" in Google Trends
Tip: Discovering what questions people are asking in your space and adding those questions and their answers to an FAQ page can yield incredible organic traffic for your website.
What are the tools you can use to enhance your research?
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- Google Keyword Planner
- Google Trends - Google’s keyword trend tool is great for finding seasonal keyword fluctuations
- AnswerThePublic - This free tool populates commonly searched for questions around a specific keyword
- Keywords Everywhere - To prioritize AnswerThePublic’s suggestions by search volume
- SpyFu Keyword Research Tool - Provides some really neat competitive keyword data
- Google Correlate - This free tool allows you to see queries whose frequency follows a similar pattern to your keyword
ON-PAGE SEO
There are two things to consider in On-Page SEO: Content and Non-Content optimization.
To optimize content of your page so as to fulfill user intent, you need to apply your keyword research: survey your keywords and group those with similar topics and intent; evaluate the SERP for each keyword or group of keywords to determine what type and format your content should be - image, video, long-form, short, list, bullets; come up with some unique value could you offer to make your page better than the pages that are currently ranking for your keyword.
CONTENT: What are the right tactics to rank higher?
- Perform the search queries you want to rank for - in Google and BuzzSumo (a tool to find the most shared content and key influencers)
- Browse through the top 10 results on Google and shared content on social media and answer the following questions: What questions are being asked and answered by these search results? What type of UX is being provided by these search results - in terms of speed, mobile-friendliness, rendering, layout and design quality? What level of detail and thoroughness is provided by the results? Are visuals being used to improve quality of content? What kind of information and data elements are present - source and its quality, types of info present? What kind of information is missing that you can provide for?
- Evaluate which of your webpages are already bringing in good amounts of organic traffic and converting well. Refurbish that content on different platforms to help get more visibility
- Evaluate what existing content isn’t performing as well and adjust it using the insights you gathered from researching the top 10 results
- If you’re a business that makes in-person contact with your customers, be sure to include your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) prominently, accurately, and consistently throughout your site’s content. You’ll also want to mark up this information using local business schema. If you are a multi-location business, it’s best to build unique, optimized pages for each location.
CONTENT: What are the tactics to avoid?
- Avoid thin content - creating a page for every single iteration of your keywords in order to rank on the first page
- Avoid “duplicate content” - refers to content that is shared between domains or between multiple pages of a single domain
- Cloaking - never hide text in the HTML code of your website that a normal visitor can't see
- Keyword stuffing: including keywords multiple times doesn't increase your rank
- Auto-generated content that don't make sense
NON-CONTENT: On-Page Optimization
- Each page should have a unique Header tag (H1) that describes the main topic of the page - the H1 should contain that page’s primary keyword or phrase
- Be sure to internal links that pass link equity and crawlability
- Link accessibility: Opt for links that are directly accessible on the page
- Anchor text: Too many internal links using the same, keyword-stuffed anchor text can appear to search engines that you’re trying to manipulate a page’s ranking. It’s best to make anchor text natural rather than formulaic.
- Link volume: The more links on a page, the less equity each link can pass to its destination page - only link when you mean it.
- Redirection - if you do move a page, make sure to update the links to that old URL
- Image optimization - compress your images - test various options like "save for web," image sizing, and compression tools like Optimizilla; choose the right format
- Optimize thumbnails properly to avoid slow pages and to help retain more qualified visitors
- Alt text within images is a principle of web accessibility, and is used to describe images to the visually impaired and crawlers
- To ensure that Google can crawl and index your images, submit an image sitemap in your Google Search Console account
- Text size and color: Avoid fonts that are too tiny. Google recommends 16-point font and above to minimize the need for “pinching and zooming” on mobile
- Headings - Breaking up your content with helpful headings can help readers navigate the page
- Bullet points - Great for lists, bullet points can help readers skim
- Paragraph breaks - Avoiding walls of text can help prevent page abandonment
- Supporting media - When appropriate, include images, videos, and widget
- Bold and italics for emphasis - Putting words in bold or italics can add emphasis
- Title tags - have a unique, descriptive, compelling title tag - use keywords in the first 50–60 characters, end title tags with brand name if necessary
- Meta Tags and description within the Head tag - important for click-through rate - write relevant details (key concepts in the page) within 150-300 characters
NON-CONTENT: URL structure - Naming and organizing your pages
- Ensure unambiguous page naming - URLs that reinforce and clarify what information is contained on that page
- Page organization under relevant folders can send the right signals
- URL length - searchers often prefer shorter URLs - use fewer words in your page names
- Use keywords in your URL
- Static URLs - avoid the overuse of parameters, numbers, and symbols
- Use Hyphens for word separation
- Case-sensitivity - avoid case sensitive URLs - adding a rewrite formula to something known as the .htaccess file can automatically make any uppercase URLs lowercase
- Use Geographic modifiers in URLs
- HTTPS - obtain an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate
LINK BUILDING AND AUTHORITY
External links or backlinks from trustworthy sites help in ranking your page higher. A high amount of internal links pointing to a particular page on your site will provide a signal to Google that the page is important. Expert, authoritative, and trustworthy - sites that don't display these characteristics tend to be seen as lower-quality. The more popular and important a site is, the more weight the links from that site carry. You should keep a few points in mind about links:
- Use of Nofollow links: Linking to a website without passing link equity or without signaling to Google that you trust it. A nofollow link might not pass authority, but it could send valuable traffic to your site and even lead to future followed links.
- Link profile: It is an assessment of all the inbound links your site has earned - their number, quality, diversity, etc. Moz Link Explorer helps find your backlinks.
- Unlinked mentions of your brand can be found at Moz's Fresh Web Explorer . You may ask the owners of such pages to provide a link to your site.
- Links from websites within a topic-specific community are generally better than links from websites that aren't relevant to your site. Additionally, links from topically irrelevant sources can send confusing signals to search engines regarding what your page is about.
- Anchor text: If links point to a page with a variation of a word or phrase, the page has a higher likelihood of ranking well for those types of phrases
How should you build high quality backlinks?
- Find customer and partner links - write testimonials or blogs for them to earn backlinks from them
- Publish blogs that earns listings and links from other blogs - avoid low-quality guest posting
- Create unique, high-quality resources that elicits strong emotions, is something new, visually appealing, addresses a need or is location-specific
- Build resource pages - check resource pages for your keyword through advanced Google operators (keyword intitle:"resources")
- For a local business - get involved in the community events
- Refurbish your own top content for other platforms (Slideshare, YouTube, Instagram, Quora, etc.)
- Reach out to websites that are using your images and not citing you or linking back to you and ask if they'd mind including a link
- Earn the attention of the press, bloggers, and news media
- Craft a custom, personal, and valuable initial outreach email
- In Keyword Explorer’s "SERP Analysis" report, you can view the pages that are ranking for the term you're targeting, as well as how many backlinks those URLs have.
What should you avoid in trying to build backlinks?
- Purchasing links was a known black-hat SEO strategy and it is penalized by Google
- Link exchanges or reciprocal linking - exchange of links at mass scale with unaffiliated sites that can warrant penalties
- Low-quality directory links from pay-for-placement web directories
MEASURING SEO PERFORMANCE
There are a number of engagement metrics that can help you understand the performance of your SEO activities. Some of them are listed below:
- Conversion rate can help gauge your ROI
- Time on page - ideal time will depend on intent of the page
- Pages per visit - if the intent of the page is to take the readers to other pages
- Bounce rate - can be misunderstood if the intent of the page is not to engage users for a long time
- Scroll depth - If people are not scrolling down to find the important content, bring it to the top - can be set up in your Google Analytics
- Search Traffic - use Google Analytics to: isolate organic traffic (view traffic to your site by channel), view total sessions/users/pageviews to your site over a specified date range, find unique visitors within a given date range using site content reports for a page, gauge traffic from a specified campaign using UTM (urchin tracking module) codes in GA's campaigns report
- Click-through rate can provide insights on how well you’ve optimized your page title and meta description. You can find this data in Google Search Console
- Google Tag Manager is a free tool that allows you to manage and deploy tracking pixels to your website without having to modify the code. This makes it much easier to track specific triggers or activity on a website
- Domain and Page Authority
- Number of backlinks from unique domains
What are some of the SEO website audit tools?
- Google Search Console
- Bing Webmaster Tools
- Lighthouse Audit
- PageSpeed Insights
- Structured Data Testing Tool
- Mobile-Friendly Test
- Web.dev
What are some of the SEO audit factors you should know about?
- Crawlability - accurate sitemap.xml file, robots.txt
- Indexed pages - Doing a site:yoursite.com/specific-page check in Google can help
- Page titles & meta descriptions - their CTRs in search results, according to Google Search Console
- Page speed - performance on mobile devices and in Lighthouse? image compression?
- Content quality - richer content, multimedia, PDFs, guides, audio content
- Website pruning - Removing thin, old, low-quality, or rarely visited pages
- Keyword research and competitive website analysis