what is seo?€¦ · like sitemaps, the structure of a site’s data can have a big impact on seo...

What is SEO?A Guide to What Goes into SEO & Why it’s Important

CONTENTSIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PG 1 The Technical Side of SEO . . . . . . . PG 2 URL Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PG 3

Robots .txt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PG 3

WWW and non-WWW URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . .PG 3

Sitemaps and Structured Data . . . . . . . . .PG 4

404 Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .PG 4

HTTPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .PG 5

Site Speed, Increasing Ease of Use . . . . . .PG 5

On-Page Optimization . . . . . . . . . . PG 6 Page Titles and Descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . PG 7

On-site Calls to Action (CTAs) . . . . . . . . . . . PG 7

Alt Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PG 8

Long-tailed Keyword Focusing . . . . . . . . . . PG 8

Headings H1-H4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PG 8

Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PG 9

Internal Link Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PG 10

User Experience (UX) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PG 10

Taking Control of Your Site’s SEO . . PG 11

IntroductionBy now, most business owners have heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the process of affecting the visibility of a website, or a web page, to appear in a search engine results page (SERP). In simpler terms, SEO is all about making your site visible on search engines by making sure it’s useful, relevant, and easy to use.

Although the exact ways that search engines rank sites are guarded secrets, there are many known factors that makeup SEO. The three main focuses are technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO. We’ll be diving into technical and on-page efforts.

The degree of control an organization dedicates to these three main focuses of SEO differs for each company based on individual factors, but overall these statements hold true:

• Technical SEO can be challenging for organizations thatare competing with different departments for developmenttime as well as roadblocks due to technology.

• On-page SEO is typically easy for an organization to getcompleted either internally or externally, however it istime-consuming and sometimes there are internal approvalprocesses that can create bottlenecks.

• The social media side of off-page SEO is very easy for anorganization to control. Getting links from other sitescan be challenging as well as extremely time-consuming.

What is SEO? A Guide to What Goes into SEO & Why it’s ImportantPG1


Technical SEOWhile much of technical SEO deals with the structure of a site, it can be the most challenging for companies. The larger and more complex your site is, the more challenging the optimization process will be.

While technical SEO can be a very complicated topic, the following are bestpractices and tips that should be done to any website looking to be featured in search engine results.

URL Structure – SEO Friendly URLsIn addition to being the clickable links you see every day, URLs describe a page tovisitors and search engines.

When building URLs, be sure to add relevant and descriptive keywords that have high search volumes. These are the terms that your ideal customers are searching for and help your site to appear in search results.

Your URL should also represent your site’s structure, such as folders, subfolders, etc. Make sure to keep URLs as short as possible to make them easier to understand. Overall, here are three main benefits of URLs:

• Clarity: Make sure it’s easy to tellthe subject of a page by its URL.

• Relevancy: URLs, like title tags,are used to determine relevancyin the search results pages. Stayaway from codenames, stick withthe standard terms of your industry.

• Links: URLs can serve as their ownanchor text when copied/pastedas links in forums, blogs, etc. Thekeywords used within the URL canprovide some potential rankingcredit to the page it is linking to.

Robots .txtA robots.txt file is a file at the root of your site that indicates the parts of your site you don’t want to be crawled by search engines. The file uses the Robots Exclusion Standard, which is a protocol with a small set of commands that can be used to indicate access to your site by section and by specific kinds of web crawlers (such as mobile crawlers vs. desktop crawlers).

Sometimes it’s just as important to make sure that search engines aren’t looking at the wrong content on your site as it is that they’re seeing the right content. While we aren’t in control of search engine crawlers, we can do things to guide them towards certain pages and divert them from others.

Optimizing your robots.txt file helps to make sure that any necessary but irrelevant content isn’t detracting from your site’s ranking. It can also prevent search engines from penalizing your rankings when pages built for desktop monitors aren’t optimized for mobile users.

WWW & Non-WWW URLsThe “WWW” in front of a site’s URL acts as a hostname. It serves a purpose when helping with flexibility with DNS (Domain Name System), the ability to restrict cookies when using multiple subdomains, and more. Recently many sites have been moving away from relying on the hostname in their sites, to make the URLs more compact and easily sharable. These non-WWW domains are referred to as naked domains and do not have a technical advantage.


What is SEO? A Guide to What Goes into SEO & Why it’s Important PG4

Sitemaps and Data StructureA sitemap acts as a kind of “Table of Contents” for a site. It’s a file where you can list the web pages of your site to tell Google and other search engines about the organization of your site content. Search engine web crawlers like Googlebot read this file to more intelligently crawl your site. The structure, as well as the content of a sitemap, can go a long way in optimization, so make sure your structure is as simple as it can be.

Like Sitemaps, the structure of a site’s data can have a big impact on SEO rankings, even making some sites non-functional for using non-standard structures. There are three different markup specifications currently recognized by the major search engines: microdata, micro formats, and RDFs. Structuring your site’s data in these formats makes it easy for search engines to understand. Search engines then take that data and create rich snippets.

Rich snippets, or structured data markup, can be used on reviews, people, products, business/organizations, recipes, events, music, and video content to provide a better presentation of your site in search results. Because you are providing data that can help users find useful information better, rich snippets help build consumer trust and often encourage clickthroughs.

404 Error PageWe’ve all seen a 404 page. You click a link, or type in a URL and see those unfriendly numbers rather than the page you wanted. Sometimes, companies design clever pages to redirect users back to their site. The 404-error page should be capable of convincing the user to keep on browsing your website and not leave.

Users are bound to leave and find what they are trying to find elsewhere when they’ve identified a 404 page and read the phrase ‘file not found.’ Consequently, your page must keep their attention and at least provide them with a hyperlink back to your website or a navigation which allows them to browse the menu from the 404 page.


HTTPSHTTPS is part of a URL that informs users that a site has a certain level of security built into their site structure. Outside of the obvious security benefits, HTTPS is also important to SEO.

Back in August of 2014, Google published a post titled: “HTTPS as a ranking signal” on the Google Webmaster Central Blog. This blog announced that “going HTTPS” – aka adding an SSL 2048-bit key certificate on your site – will give you a minor ranking boost. Google said this gives websites a small ranking benefit, only counting as a “very lightweight signal” within the overall ranking algorithm.

On September 8th, 2016 Google posted “Moving towards a more secure web” on the Google Security Blog. With an update to Chrome, the browser now indicates connection security with an icon in the address bar. Historically, the Chrome browser explicitly labeled HTTP connections as non-secure. But in their post, Google stated that after the introduction of Chrome 56 in January 2017, they began to mark HTTP pages that collect passwords or credit cards as non-secure, as part of their long-term plan to mark all HTTP sites as non-secure.

Today, HTTPS is easier and cheaper than ever before and enables both the best performance the web offers and powerful new features that are too sensitive for HTTP. Get more information about the benefits of HTTPS at: https://parqamarketing.com/2016/10/google-secured-site-https-next-year/

Site Speed, Increase Ease of UseNo one wants to be stuck waiting for a page to load—especially when we need answers quickly. For that reason, search engines equate site speed with ease of use and choose to include it in SEO rankings.

In 2010, Google announced that page speed would be included as one of the ranking factors for their search index. Following that, in 2017, Google announced they would give page speed even more consideration and incorporating mobile site speed as a ranking factor.

Images make any content easier to digest. Take this guide for example. Without the images breaking the text up, it would be a daunting wall of text. You may not have gone past the first paragraph without the variety images provide.

Many studies have concluded that large images on websites leave great first impressions and can increase conversion rates. However, large file size is the primary perpetrator for slowing down the loading time for your site. For most “full page” images, 80Kb-100Kb should be thetarget range for file size. If you’re struggling to scale back image sizes, remember: reducing image quality 30-50% is hard to notice from the naked eye and greatly reduces file size.

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!Site Speed, Increase Ease of Use No one wants to be stuck waiting for a page to load—especially when we need answers quickly. For that reason, search engines equate site speed with ease of use and choose to include it in SEO rankings. In 2010, Google announced that page speed would be included as one of the ranking factors for their search index. Following that, in 2017, Google announced they would give page speed even more consideration and incorporating mobile site speed as a ranking factor.

Images make any content easier to digest. Take this guide for example. Without the images breaking the text up, it would be a daunting wall of text. You may not have gone past the first paragraph without the variety images provide.

Many studies have concluded that large images on websites leave great first impressions and can increase conversion rates. However, large file size is the primary perpetrator for slowing down the loadingtime for your site. For most “full page” images, 80Kb-100Kb should be the target range for file size. If you’re struggling to scale back image sizes, remember: reducing image quality 30-50% is hard to notice from the naked eye and greatly reduces file size.

On-Page OpCmizaCon A lot of technical SEO is often overlooked, especially to those not familiar with website design practices. While the last chapter was focused on the behind-the-scenes efforts, this chapter is all about the front of the house. We’ll be looking at what can be done about the elements on your page to improve your SEO.

Page Titles & DescripCons Outside of page content, the page title is the most important element of any page associated with keyword rankings. That said, web page meta descriptions do not influence rankings but are important for calls to action (CTA) and bringing traffic in from Google.

When choosing page titles and meta descriptions, make sure you are being descriptive. They give users and search engines a quick look at the content of a page. Duplicate page titles create confusion in the eyes of search engines and forces them to make a choice as to which page is more important. It also means your pages are competing with one another for ranking for that keyword, which hurts the search equity of both.

https://Google Ranking Factor


On-Page Optimization

A lot of technical SEO is often overlooked, especially to those not familiar with website design practices. While the last chapter was focused on the behind-the-scenes efforts, this chapter is all about the front of the house. We’ll be looking at what can be done about the elements on your page to improve your SEO.


Page Titles & DescriptionsOutside of page content, the page title is the most important element of any page associated with keyword rankings. That said, web page meta descriptions do not influence rankings but are important for calls to action (CTA) and bringing traffic in from Google.

When choosing page titles and meta descriptions, make sure you are being descriptive. They give users and search engines a quick look at the content of a page. Duplicate page titles create confusion in the eyes of search engines and forces them to make a choice as to which page is more important. It also means your pages are competing with one another for ranking for that keyword, which hurts the search equity of both.

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On-Site Call-to-AcCons (CTAs) CTAs are content that drive users to action, asking them to take the next step. In fact, a CTA might be the reason you are here with this guide. CTAs need to grab attention and provide the next steps you want the visitor to take. On your site, the most important call to action needs to be easily visible and linked – whether it be to another webpage, a contact link, or an email address. While you should have at least one CTA on every page, it’s important to remember that starting with a CTA is more effective than ending with one.

Alt Tags Images are great on web pages, but for visually-impaired users, they don’t hold a lot of weight. In addition, when an element or image doesn’t load on your site, users aren’t gaining any information. That is where alt tags come into play.

Adding alternative text to images is first and foremost a principle of web accessibility. Visually impaired users using screen readers will be able to read an alt attribute explaining an image’s content or purpose

TYPO (“a” call to action; “click-through” rates)

On-Site Call-to-Actions (CTAs)CTAs are content that drive users to action, asking them to take the next step. In fact, a CTA might be the reason you are here with this guide. CTAs need to grab attention and provide the next steps you want the visitor to take. On your site, the most important call to action needs to be easily visible and linked – whether it be to another webpage, a contact link, or an email address. While you should have at least one CTA on every page, it’s important to remember that starting with a CTA is more effective than ending with one.

Warm: creates feeling of urgency

Cool: calming,reconsideration

COLOR &CONTRAST

HIGH CONTRACT TO GRAB ATTENTION

TEXT TEXT

WORDINGMATTERS

CONVEYVALUE

CREATEURGENCY

BE DIRECT

ABOVEVS .BELOW

BUTTONS UP TO 200% HIGHER CTR

— FOLD —


Alt TagsImages are great on web pages, but for visually-impaired users, they don’t hold a lot of weight. In addition, when an element or image doesn’t load on your site, users aren’t gaining any information. That is where alt tags come into play.

Adding alternative text to images is first and foremost a principle of web accessibility. Visually impaired users using screen readers will be able to read an alt attribute explaining an image’s content or purpose to better understand an on-page image. Alt tags are also displayed in place of an image if an image file cannot be loaded. Overall, alt tags provide better image context/descriptions to search engine crawlers, helping them to index an image properly.

Long-Tailed Keyword FocusingRecently, search engines have moved toward an approach to ensure your pages, products, and content all meet your users’ needs. In general, search queries have become more specific, longer in length, and structured with true query-based searches.

When users are using longer search terms to find information, your site needs to take that into account. Tailoring your on-page content to the terms your potential customers are using is key in the modern search landscape. Understanding user intent through data from analytics, site testing, and expanded keyword research will pave the way for content creation and longer tailed keyword focusing.

Headings H1-H4We’ve covered site structure, but what about page structure? A page’s ability to effectively engage users is another way Google organizes its search results. Heading tags mark content headings in terms of importance and relevance to users.

The H1 tag is often the first page element a user sees upon landing on a page. Therefore, it is imperative that this headline assures the user they are in the right place and have found what they are looking for. If it doesn’t, they will leave your site in a hurry. When a user leaves your site quickly, it effects your bounce rate, which is arguably the most important engagement metric as measured by Google’s algorithm.

Marking each page’s subject heading with the H1 tag tells search engines and users what the page focuses on, allowing both to find it more easily. The structure of a page should start with a H1 as the heading of the entire page with subheadings following as H2, and then H3, and so on.

This is heading 1

This is heading 2

This is heading 3

This is heading 4

This is heading 5This is heading 6


ContentOther than contact links, images, and headings, content is what makes up your site. In many cases, content is the reason that a user is on your site. Because it is so much of your site’s makeup, content is key to determining your search engine rankings and organic search traffic.

After you research and discover the keywords that are relevant to your target audience as well as to your company, build content that relates to those terms. Including them in the content on your site is important, but it isn’t about cramming in as many keywords as possible. Remember, search engines want to promote relevant and useful content. Make sure your site is written to the keywords but also providing value to the users searching for you. While there are numerous factors involved with search engine algorithms, content continues to remain a constant for rankings, traffic, and creating links that matter.

!Content Other than contact links, images, and headings, content is what makes up your site. In many cases, content is the reason that a user is on your site. Because it is so much of your site’s makeup, content is key to determining your search engine rankings and organic search traffic.

After you research and discover the keywords that are relevant to your target audience as well as to your company, build content that relates to those terms. Including them in the content on your site is important, but it isn’t about cramming in as many keywords as possible. Remember, search engines want to promote relevant and useful content. Make sure your site is written to the keywords but also providing value to the users searching for you. While there are numerous factors involved with search engine algorithms, content continues to remain a constant for rankings, traffic, and creating links that matter.


Internal Link StructureOutside of making your site easier to navigate, internal linking across pages within a website has considerable benefits for SEO and user experience. Search engines can read link text on all internal links and, where appropriate, assign keyword relevance to pages within a site.

When building content for your site, make sure to pay attention to these key internal linking methods:

1 . Internal Body Copy Links: Linking to other relevant pages on your site in the body of content (e.g., linking to your contact page in a blog’s CTA to encourage readers to reach out).

2 . Footer Links: Use branded keywords for site-wide links that appear on all pages to increase ranking and usability.

3 . HTML Sitemap Links: Linking to the sitemap establishes a better ranking by confirming the structure of the sitemap.

Your HomePage

Page A > Page C >Page D >Page G >Page A

Page F >

Page C

Page H1

Page F

LandingPage B >

Page D

Page H1

Page H2

LandingPage B Page H2

Page G

User Experience (UX)This is a simple question: Are you optimizing your website for Google AND your customers?

In the end, understanding your customer is more important than understanding Google’s algorithm. If your page is optimized to grab search engines’ attention but isn’t useful/usable to your customer, you are wasting your time. 10,000 visits per month means nothing if it is not contributing to leads or revenue. Focus on filling your site with useful information and making sure it is easy to use and worth returning to. The referral traffic users generate is worth the time and effort. When a site is known for being useful, its traffic grows quickly.


Taking Control of Your Site’s SEO

In this guide, we’ve just scratched the surface of the SEO rabbit hole. If your curiosity has been piqued, we encourage you to read our other articles and guides on SEO. We dive deeper into some of the optics and give step-by-step instructions on how to implement proven tactics.

If you’re experiencing information overload or wondering how you could possibly have time to implement these tips, don’t worry, you’re not alone. In fact, that’s why we’re here. Reach out to our team of SEO experts for a consultation on what Parqa can do for your site. Let us handle your SEO efforts and watch your search engine rankings climb.

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what is seo?€¦ · like sitemaps, the structure of a site’s data can have a big impact on seo...

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