Tips from an Agency on Successful SEO & Ranking on the First Results Page
If you are wondering why it’s so important to be ranked on the first Google search results page, this article will give you the answer. Moreover, we will tell you how to do SEO yourself to get your website on Google’s first results page. Or if you would like to hire an agency to do SEO for you, this article will give you the knowledge and vocabulary to understand them and communicate effectively. If you’re ready, let’s get started with the definition. What is SEO?
Actually, we have written a thorough article on the definition of SEO, so in this article we will elaborate on the fundamental requirements for doing SEO instead. We will start by talking about Search Engines.
Table of Contents
‘Search Engine’ means:
In literal sense, it means “the tools used for searching”. Imagine the world today without search engines. How would you find what you need among millions of other websites? It definitely wouldn’t be easy. A search engine assembles all the data on the internet including websites, images, and videos, and shows results based upon the keyword/s submitted by the user.
Which Search Engines are Most Popular?
The first search engine that comes to mind is Google. However, there are also others like Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and Chinese ones like Baidu Search.
What Should I Know Before Doing SEO?
Truthfully, doing SEO takes knowledge in various fields, especially website basics. But you don’t have to be able to write a programme, however you must know and understand the elements of HTML language. The basic elements of a web page are generally: Header, Body and Footer.
Header
At the top of the web page showing things like the website name, the logo, and the navigation bar to access other pages on the website.
Body
The middle part of the website where the content is posted. The body mostly consists of words, articles, data tables, images, videos, etc.
Footer
The bottom of the website with links which redirect to other pages with non-essential information (contact information, advice, copyrights, etc).
*The footer is optional for a website.
Tags That SEOs Should Know
<head>…</head> = is the tag defining the name, which has a Title as a sub tag.
<title>…</title> = is the sub tag to define the title of a website, which will work only within the tag <head>, it is an indicator to tell people more about your website.
<body>…</body> = is the tag which defines the content of the website.
<h1>…</h1> = is the tag which defines the title of your content, which can be ranked down to the smallest title at <h6>, respectively.
<p>…</p> = is the tag that defines the article parts and paragraphs.
***The size of the font for <h1> does not need to be large, it depends on your sitemap plan. You can choose different font sizes for <h1> – <h6> (you can choose the same size for all of them too, but no one does since it can be confusing when maintaining and updating the website.)
HTML: A Web Language That SEOs Must Know
HTML language is the international language for writing websites. The display of content on a website will be ranked in order of importance, indicated through the use of tags from <h1> to <h6> followed with <p> tags. To put it simply, from your point of view, the rank you see will be differentiated by the size of the font, small to big, whichever you choose. However, in the system, the rank will be defined by the tags used. You have to plan the tags systematically, then choose the fonts for each tag later.
What is h1?
h1 is the tag on a website which defines the title, header or the main topic of the content you have posted. It is like when you write a letter, h1 is the title, followed by h2 and h3 respectively. Any websites that do not add the tag <h1> will have content without a topic, and Google will not be able to identify the content within the website, affecting the site’s SEO in the long run.
h1 is different from the Title tag (which is the subtag of the Header), because the Title will not show up in the content but only on the Google search results. It is a way to tell Google what kind of website you have. While the tags h2 – h6 are the topic ranking, as we mentioned.
If you have content with many subtopics, you cannot use the tag <p> or Paragraph, or adjust the font size. Instead you have to use <h1> – <h6> to define the topics. The tag <p> is used within content only.
*Many SEO beginners often misunderstand and misuse the tag system.
Why do you Need to Understand This?
Because writing content, adding keywords, and uploading it to your website will not magically result in you appearing on Google’s first page. SEO involves improving the quality of the website, from on-page developments and sitemap planning, to writing content with proper keywords, and link management.
There are also off-page factors to thnik about, like backlinks. This is the name for referral links redirecting back to your website. Backlinks can be created in various ways e.g. when someone refers to your content and adds your link in articles on other websites. You cannot do this yourself since it depends on the third party to write about you. Another way to get backlinks is through Outreach, or inserting Anchor Links for readers to access a referred link. For this to be effective, the website that posts your article or link must be a high-quality website as well.
Things to Adjust, Improve and Enhance for Effective SEO
On-Page
If you are in the process of building a website, we suggest you plan the Sitemap carefully from this early stage; linking between web pages, adding keywords in the content, considering the size of the content, using tags, etc. If you already have a website, it’s important to manage the tags, as we have mentioned above. What did you put in the Title? Are there any keywords? Did you put <h1> on every page? These things are all important.
Off-Page
As we mentioned earlier, writing content for external websites and getting backlinks in return is crucial, but it must be done “naturally” (not adding too many keywords). The important thing is that the content must be as useful to the readers as possible. A good example of this is evergreen content, or content which would still be useful in 5 years, not just trendy or new content.
Avoid using too many keywords as it will make your website look spammy. Avoid creating too many articles to share, or article spinning (cutting and pasting, mixing content from top to bottom to make it look different). This might move your website up the rankings nicely at first, but in the long run, if Google detects it, you will be faced with a penalty, and it’s not really worth it. This is why we strongly suggest doing SEO slowly, naturally and consistently.
Is SEO difficult?
People often think that SEO is a technical task that requires expensive technical tools and specialist knowledge. Only half of that assumption is correct. SEO does require technical knowledge but you can study and learn about it yourself.
Your industry determines how easy or hard your SEO journey will be. The more competitive the industry is, the fiercer the competition to be on Google’s first page becomes, and every business has an online presence nowadays.
Before doing SEO, you should study your competitors to see how they manage to get their website on Google’s first page, and then adapt your own website accordingly. The content on your website should be easy to understand, and invite people to spend as much time as possible on your website. We are not saying that you should emulate your competitors, but study their ways and adapt them to your own business.
Where do I begin?
There are new businesses starting every day, and some may not have the budget to hire an agency to manage SEO for them. They may have to do it themselves without an agency. Of course it can be done, and here are the steps:
1. Determine your SEO objectives
The goal of SEO is of course to make your website rise up the rankings to Google’s first page. However, there are also details which you should dig into a little deeper. For example, why do you want your website to be on the first results page? It could be for people to access the website for more information, or for customers to make a purchase. Whatever the reason, these objectives need to be established.
Once you have clear objectives, the website development will then take its course, from the web design, modifications, UX & UI, to the keywords used in your content. All of these factors affect how Google views your website.
2. Select your web pages
One thing you should know is that doing SEO is not a one time job and just because one page ranks well, it does not necessarily mean that every page of your website will be on Google’s first page. Usually, when it comes to SEO, we choose to focus on the homepage. But business websites don’t just have one page. You will have other pages as well e.g. Services, Contact Info, etc. These pages all need optimising for SEO as well. The pages you choose to do SEO on should be consistent with your objectives.
3. Website performance audit
If you already have a website, you need to conduct an SEO Audit of each element to determine whether they are currently appropriate for SEO. Things that should be focused on include the tags that we mentioned previously, and the page speed of your website (which should be stable and not too slow). The audit should also look at the UX & UI of the website, ensure your images are high definition but not be too big, that alt tags are present, and other small details. In summary, do what it takes to impress the people who visit your website and make them stay as long as possible.
**You can use these tools to test your page speed for free!
https://tools.pingdom.com, https://gtmetrix.com, https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights, https://www.webpagetest.org
4. Update your content
When it comes to SEO, it’s important your content is high quality. This means the content must be useful, use keywords that are good for SEO (but not too many), and the writing must be comprehensible. Sometimes web developers focus purely on adding the keywords, and when there’s a mix of keywords, the article can be confusing and incoherent.
Another matter to consider is Anchor Links. You must ensure that the link you insert and the keywords are actually related. Because if the keyword is about one thing, and the link attached takes people to a totally irrelevant page, your SEO points will decrease instantly.
5. Analyse and stay up to date
After conducting your audit, modifying, adjusting and improving the quality of your website, don’t stop there. You have to keep your content up to date as information tends to change over time. To get to the first page of Google you must adjust keywords, improve your content, and use Google Search Console to monitor how people find your website so that you can understand the situation and keep improving.
What are the Benefits of SEO?
“Where there’s people, there’s business”. If you’ve heard this phrase before then you should understand why being on the first page of Google is so important. Doing SEO will improve the chances of people finding you online. For example, a user wants to buy a pair of shoes. There are countless brands of shoes in the world, but after searching on Google, your website is one of the first websites that come up. It gives your website more credibility, since everyone knows that getting on Google’s first page is not an easy task.
Another benefit is that you can also do SEO for free. When your website rises to Google’s first page, it will help reduce your advertising budget since it can be found by searching. Normally, if a website is not on the first page, the fastest way for your website to appear there is by purchasing Search Ads from Google, and of course there is a cost associated.
All of these are SEO methods you can apply to your own website. Now, let’s take a look at the SEO terms that you should know.
Terms That SEOs Should Know
Algorithm
is a process or pattern that a certain platform (Google in this case) designs using the logic of cause and effect for the purpose of improving the quality and transparency of the platform.
Keyword
is a search term that people use on search engines, e.g. someone wants to buy a pre-owned home in the Rangsit area, so they may use keywords such as “second-hand home, Rangsit, not over 2 million”, etc.
Web Page
is a page on a website. Usually, one website has many web pages e.g. homepage, article pages, product pages, contact info page, etc.
Rank
is your website ranking on Google or other search engines. If your rank gets higher, that means your website is on the way to Google’s first page.
Organic
means doing something naturally, without paying ad fee or using spam.
Optimisation
is the process of improving the quality of your website through audits, modification, adjustment and constant updates.
Backlink
this is when your website link is posted on another website and someone clicks it. The links are mostly posted in the form of references or Anchor Links.
Rich Snippets
are the details of a website shown on Google results pages. This is more than just a Title and Description, this includes reviews, images, product prices, etc. Information which users can fill in for Google to show.
SERPs
are the ranking results of search engines. They are the results pages that appear on Google after you enter keywords. There are two types of SERPs: Organic SERP Listings (showing organic ranking) and Paid SERP Listings (showing pages that pay Google for ads, or Sponsored Links).
If you thought doing SEO was technical and difficult to pull off then hopefully having now read this you can see that SEO can be studied, understood and done yourself. You just have to take time and be consistent with it.
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