SEO Fundamentals: A Complete No-Nonsense Guide to SEO Success Factors

Many entrepreneurs struggle to increase the web traffic of their businesses. It is important to apply efficient marketing strategies to achieve sales targets. Search engine optimization (SEO) improves the ranking of your website in different search engines including Google. However, it is crucial to learn and understand the basics of SEO to create a successful marketing channel. We present to you a complete no-nonsense guide to SEO success factors.

Client-friendly Content

At times, you might forget to create content that addresses the needs of your prospective clients. It is advisable to add content that suits clients, subscribers, and readers rather than creating it for search engines. Also, avoid dwelling a lot on boosting your content’s ranking. For example, Google regularly changes its algorithms.

Two major changes have a significant effect on keywords and content. Hummingbird is an update which enabled Google to understand queries for web users. It doesn’t rely on single keywords to conduct searches. The update introduced semantics, the application of various keywords from a particular topic. Many people dislike websites that are optimized for single keywords.

RankBrain is another update which Google made. It helped the search engine queries that weren’t possible to process before. Google creates associations which help in understanding the actual meaning of queries using machine learning. It is among the leading ranking factors. Do not to focus on keywords alone. Instead, create high value and clear keywords to attract huge web traffic.

Email marketing is a generic marketing strategy. It causes search engines such as Google to provide unclear results. There is a clear distinction between cross channel marketing and email marketing. You might find transactional and informational keywords on a single website. Most conversion-focused investments prefer using transactional queries. You could target long-tail keywords to optimize transactional queries. Create specific keywords to upload relevant content on your webpage thus increasing your web traffic.

Create adequate security measures to prevent bots, fraudsters, click farms and other computers from accessing your ads. You can easily set up the content for a free trial. Aim at creating keyword research and topics to have an edge over your competitors. Improve your understanding of how web users use search engines. Engaging content improves the visibility of any web page. Ensure that 60 percent of your queries comprise of more than four words and that your website has a word count of at least 1,800 words.

Some people find it hard to determine what most people search for online. Just study your audience using advanced audience tools such as Autocomplete, people also ask and related searches. They constitute the most common questions which people ask. The data offers you extra content for your website. Provide clear and detailed answers to your web visitors to understand them better.

Entrepreneurs can learn about their clients through social media platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Twitter. Create comment sections to address customer queries and concerns. Besides, you could choose a common theme or topic to start a discussion about social media. However, it is important to control each conversation about your brand or service. Typically, clients complain about the accessibility of a business, its customer service and types of products or services it offers. You can convert the queries into the content.

Search and analyze websites that have competitive topics to determine what is right for your enterprise. You could discover content gaps through a content audit. Pick specific topics which your audience wants you to highlight. However, this type of research could be uncomfortable and complicated for some website owners.

Optimal accessibility is crucial to create great content. Ordinary mobile-first experiences load fast. It is wise to use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) if you apply organic traffic. Nice user experience includes having high content loading rates. SEO performance could decrease if your content takes longer to load. It is prudent to test and optimize it frequently. Also, you could test your web pages if you are unfamiliar with mobile search experience. Tools such as Pagespeed Insights are useful in optimizing content accessibility.

Link Building

Besides creating client-friendly content, it is important to build strong links. You can build a unique brand; nurture an audience to earn links from other websites. Quality content and links are among the top SEO ranking factors. Inbound links are HTML links which direct web users from one web page to another. Internal links connect internal pages that share a single domain. You can use them on your web page. Typically, numerous internal links which redirect to a specific website shows Google that it is genuine and important. Other search engines consider the number of links a website has to rank it.

Google has strict Quality Rater guidelines that focus on the authority, expertise, and trust a website has. It gives pages that lack those three characteristics a low rank. Search engines evaluate the user intent of all websites. An appropriate query should have a clear intent. Popular websites have hundreds or thousands of links. Use tools such as Spam Score, Domain Authority and Page Authority to assess the strength of your web links.

You can link your web page to Facebook, Twitter or Yelp to increase web traffic. An ideal site should have equally followed and no-followed backlinks. Although no-follow links are not authoritative, they could earn you more traffic and followed links. Highlight your links using MozBar to determine whether they are do-follow or no-follow links.

A link profile helps in assessing inbound links that a web page has earned. It includes the number, diversity, and quality of links. Search engines assess the state of a link profile to understand how it relates to other sites.

Voice Search Optimization

Follow up any changes in search results and behavior to understand voice search. You can research on how to improve the voice search in your investment in the future. For example, most millennial like speaking to search engines to get certain products or services. Reputable tech firms produce advanced voice-assisted gadgets that suit the old and young generations. Featured snippets influence how search engines offer results. Typically, they appear before the first search result in Google to boost your web traffic, trust, and visibility.

Most clients believe in featured snippets. They don’t rely on organic results. Google offers direct answers and pulls content from any website into the featured snippets. Naturally, voice search provides one result, position zero. It is vital to know the context and content of voice searches by identifying queries and questions an audience might have. Create relevant content which responds to their queries and questions. Google makes published content ideal for podcasts, news, and recipes.

Alexa Skills makes content appropriate for informational services and web-based services. Nevertheless, some have a murky understanding of voice search. It is tricky to access voice search data. Google shows the data in a different way from mobile and desktop search in the Search Console. In the past, mobile searches showed close search results. There is no particular equivalent to close searches. Generally, voice search comprises 10 percent of online searches. The number might drastically increase in the future.

Optimize Your Search Experience

Some investors optimize their web pages for search engines. You can optimize your content for people from different countries. It is more sophisticated compared to optimizing content for search engines. You should apply your brand experience to increase the relevance of your content. A 2006 Forrester research revealed that over 90 percent of good online experiences start with search engines. Search engines play a crucial role in promoting brands. It is necessary to increase your creativity for your website to be visible.

Organic results on mobile appear below the fold. They have a featured snippet. People who often use Google for search engine optimization have to rely on popular search features and paid ads. However, they depend on the queries clients raise. Social content and Google News can significantly increase the visibility of your website. They depend on whether a query is urgent.

Knowledge Graph powers the knowledge panels which Google use. They display basic information about a business including the operation hours, phone number and location. Some searches look for particular search result parts including knowledge panels to obtain genuine information.

People also ask pulls content that matches particular search results. They include terms which people search for. The feature helps you identify several opportunities to optimize your content or add extra content to reach your target audience. Moreover, you can apply other methodologies to a wide variety of platforms. The major optimization opportunities include social media optimization, third-party sites, Google My Business optimization and app store optimization.

You can customize search platforms to suit SEO principles and offer content optimization opportunities to improve the visibility of your brand. Search engines such as Bing and Google can pull your content during content optimization. Use different results parts to develop a thrilling search experience.

Optimizing a website is a daunting task for some people. Numerous websites offer genuine guides on search engine optimization. Factors such as on-page, off-page and technical features in your website can affect the success of your SEO strategy. An ideal strategy should cover voice search, exciting search experiences, and client-friendly content.

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Jeannie Brouts

by Jeannie Brouts

Jeannie Brouts is a Marketing Manager at SEO Vendor. She has 10 years of experience in White Label SEO and online marketing. Jeannie loves writing about the latest ways to help businesses market and produce results.

5 comments

  • Avatar
    David Jukes

    June 19, 2019 at 2:45 pm

    The success of my business was because of these seo fundamentals.

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    Jude Jacobson

    June 29, 2019 at 8:40 am

    Incredible post! Didn’t know that link building was still part of the success of a website. Good to know!

  • Avatar
    Jason Trevor

    July 10, 2019 at 10:39 am

    Thanks for the Post! This is pretty good! I will definitely try it out!

  • Avatar
    Katherine

    July 18, 2020 at 11:35 am

    Link building can make or break your site. I would remind everyone that quality links are better than building hundreds of low spammy links.

  • Avatar
    Hanson

    July 19, 2020 at 11:33 am

    Interesting post. I didn’t know that voice optimization is already part of SEO. That is good to know.

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