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When potential customers search online for services you offer, the goal is to be positioned at the top of search results. But how do you get there? If you’re just starting your search engine optimization (SEO) journey, check out these frequently asked questions about SEO, how to boost your rankings, content optimization best practices and more.
The Basics: SEO Best Practices & Definitions
One of the most critical elements of digital marketing, SEO helps grow brand awareness, increase conversions and gain valuable traffic through organic search results. While SEO is important, it’s a long-term strategy that can be difficult for small businesses or beginner marketers to execute without proper education. Since SEO is at the foundation of any successful digital marketing strategy, it’s important to understand the basics of what SEO is before implementing it into your own website.
What Is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of writing and coding website content to best communicate with a search engine. The goal of employing an SEO strategy is to improve your business’ online visibility, outrank competitors and get in front of new, high-quality users organically.
Why Is SEO Important?
SEO boosts your website’s visibility and ranking in search results, ultimately driving more valuable, qualified users to your website. In the mindset and market for your services or products, organic users are more likely to engage with your website content and take valuable conversion actions.
How Does SEO Work?
SEO involves processes such as adding relevant keywords, internal and external links, error correction and content optimization to help search engines find and understand your content to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).
How Do I Improve The SEO Of My Website?
We recommend starting by fixing any SEO errors to make sure your site has a solid foundation. Then, you can improve your website’s SEO by creating relevant, engaging content, implementing keywords into headings and body copy and linking to internal and external content. Check out our full SEO Guide for SEO best practices, recommendations and recent news.
How Many Words Should Be On An SEO-Compliant Webpage?
An SEO-compliant page must have a minimum of 300 words for Google to consider it a valid resource. However, to ensure a page is valuable for users, we recommend at least 600 words for most pages and upwards of 1,000 words for longer content pieces and blogs. While word count is not a direct ranking factor, there is a strong correlation between pages with more words and higher rankings, as it can be an indicator of higher quality content.
How Long Should A Meta Title And Description Be?
To improve the likelihood of Google displaying your meta titles and meta descriptions as written, we recommend crafting unique meta titles between 40 and 60 characters and meta descriptions between 70 and 120 characters.
Why Does It Matter If A Website Has Duplicate Content?
Google’s algorithm values engaging and original content, so having large amounts of duplicate content can negatively impact your site’s SEO value. Duplicate content can confuse search engines as they won’t know which version of the content to rank in search results.
What Is Schema Markup?
Schema markup, also known as structured data, is a piece of code that describes page elements to help search engines better understand your page content. Having structured data on your site can improve your chances of appearing for highly engaging and visual rich results in SERPs.
Learn more about how to implement schema markup in our SEO guide.
What Is The Purpose Of Heading Tags?
Heading tags are a crucial on-page SEO element, used to organize content on a page through headings and subheadings. Heading tags make copy easier to scan and more digestible for users, while improving your site’s ADA compliance for visitors using assistive technology such as screen readers.
What Is Internal Linking And Why Is It Important?
Internal linking is the process of adding any link from one page on your website to another relevant page. Internal links benefit search engines by aiding in their understanding of your site structure, while improving the user experience by guiding their journey through related topics, ultimately leading to increased time spent on your site.
What Is A Backlink In SEO?
A backlink is a link on another website pointing back to a page on your website. Quality backlinks from reputable websites can improve your site’s SEO value by driving reliable traffic from one site to your own. Search engines take backlinks into account when determining website authority and credibility.
How Much Should I Spend On SEO Consulting?
The price you pay for SEO consulting varies depending on your site’s goals and the specific SEO agency, who may bill based on an hourly or project rate. For example, page optimization can take anywhere from a few to several hours per page depending on the SEO tactics involved. To effectively utilize SEO, it requires attention and monitoring for a long period of time. Remember that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. If you’re looking for an experienced SEO consultant, be prepared to be in it for the long haul when budgeting.
From digital marketing discoveries to building annual strategies, explore Blue Compass’s SEO service offering.
Content Optimization: Keyword Research Tips
Content optimization is crucial for ensuring your website stays relevant and fresh. Keywords are always evolving, which can change the SERP layout drastically. Conducting regular keyword research to optimize heading tags and body copy will help ensure your content is reaching the right audience at the right time, and will aid in maintaining your position in SERPs. For more content writing tips, check out our top SEO copywriting best practices.
What Is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the process of finding relevant queries to strategically include in your heading tags, meta information and body copy to increase the chances of your page ranking in search results. Keyword research allows you to target the words, phrases and questions your audience is searching for to drive organic traffic to your site.
How Do I Perform Keyword Research?
Before you begin the keyword research process, we recommend creating a list of general categories, words, phrases and questions your audience could potentially search for to find your website in SERPs. Once you have your list, utilize a keyword research tool to find related terms you can use to compile your full keyword list.
As a final step, we recommend testing each keyword in consideration in Google Search to confirm the current search results appear relevant and match the intent.
How Many Keywords Should I Use On A Page For SEO?
While there isn’t a magic number for how many keywords to use on a page, we recommend including each of your chosen keywords at least once in a heading tag, and incorporating your most prominent keywords at least a few times in the body copy. Including keywords strategically is crucial to avoid your content appearing keyword-stuffed.
What Is Keyword Density?
Keyword density, or keyword frequency, is the percentage of times a keyword appears on a page compared to the total number of words on that page. To calculate keyword density, divide the number of times a given keyword is mentioned by the total number of words on the page.
What Are The Best Keyword Research Tools?
There are many tools available to help you with keyword research. For more advanced features, we recommend SE Ranking or SEMrush. These tools allow you to perform competitive research and view various words, phrases and questions along with their keyword volume and other metrics.
What Are Free Keyword Research Tools?
If you’re seeking free keyword research tool options, Google Trends or Google Keyword Planner can provide a great start. These tools allow you to view basic overarching keyword trends and keyword volume for relevant terms and phrases. Additionally, we recommend utilizing Google Search Console to determine which keywords your website is already ranking for that you can better optimize content for to improve ranking position.
SEO For Images: How To Keep Images SEO-Friendly
When it comes to SEO, images are often an overlooked and underutilized asset. Elements such as alt text give you the opportunity to insert keywords and valuable information to boost SEO value and meet ADA compliance guidelines. Learn the difference between alt tags and title tags and how file size can affect website performance.
What Is An Alt Tag For An Image?
An image alt tag, or alt text, is a keyword-rich piece of text describing an image on a webpage. Critical for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), alt text helps users who can’t see an image and are using assistive technology, such as screen readers, to verbally visualize the page. Alt tags are beneficial from an SEO standpoint because Google tends to reward websites with proper alt text, potentially increasing your rankings.
What Is An Image Title Tag?
An image title tag, or title text, is an HTML attribute that provides additional information about an image. The title tag should include at least one relevant keyword to provide additional SEO value. Depending on your browser, title text may also display when you hover over an image.
What Are Image Alt Text Best Practices?
Alt text should be utilized for all non-decorative images. When writing image alt text, we recommend concisely describing the image using proper punctuation with a period at the end. For users reading alt text via assistive technology such as screen readers, it’s important to provide the image’s content in less than 100 characters.
Does Image Size Affect SEO?
Large images on your site slow down page load, which can affect search rankings. Core Web Vitals focuses on metrics such as site speed, and large images can contribute to poor CWV scores. Slow site speed caused by oversized images may affect your overall site traffic, as recent data suggests 47% of users won’t wait longer than two seconds for a site to load before leaving.
What File Size Should Images Be For A Website?
In general, we recommend keeping images sized to 100 kilobytes or less to avoid slow site speeds. Using a web-optimized image file type, such as JPEG instead of PNG, can also help reduce image size. To identify which images are causing your website the most issues, we recommend starting with an SEO or CWV audit. Ask our team how to get started!
How Do I Compress An Image?
There are many free image compression tools you can use to reduce image size, such as Image Resizer or Optimizilla. Many of these tools have the ability for bulk image resizing, if you need to compress multiple images at once.
Recommended Resources: Tools For Search Engine Optimization
Digital marketing is an ever-changing industry that brings constant best practice and algorithm updates that alter what we do every day. It’s important to stay on top of industry trends and news so we can do our best work for our clients. To maintain expert knowledge in our field, we utilize a variety of reporting tools and resources to stay in tune with SEO updates.
What Google Platforms Should I Use For SEO?
Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google Business Profile are three free tools that can help you track website performance, improve SEO and increase your business’ visibility in search results.
What Resources Do You Use To Stay Up To Date On SEO?
Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land and Social Media Today provide timely articles and resources about SEO and social media news. We also follow John Mueller and Danny Sullivan on social media platforms such as X for key Google updates and insights.
What Tools Or Platforms Are Best For SEO?
Some of our favorite SEO platforms to use to analyze the health of client websites and determine areas of opportunity are Screaming Frog, SE Ranking, Moz, Google Search Console, SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner and Hubspot.
Am I Signed Into My Google Business Profile (GBP) Page?
To find out if you’re logged into your GBP page, open another tab and Google your business name. If you are signed in, a box should pop up above search results with edit functions. If not, follow this link to get signed in.
How Do I Create A Google Business Profile?
Can You Update Google Maps Images?
While you can update images shown by Google in the panel on the right-hand side of search through your Google Business Profile, you cannot edit satellite or street views unless you hire a Google-approved photographer.
What Is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google to help you monitor, maintain and troubleshoot your website’s presence in organic search results. While your website can appear in Google SERPs without a Google Search Console account, this tool allows you to understand and improve how Google sees and ranks your site content.
Why Should Marketers Care About Search Console?
Google Search Console provides the necessary information to make informed decisions on your marketing efforts. You can use the data provided in Search Console to see which queries are driving organic traffic to your site, identify SEO errors that prevent your pages from being indexed, submit updated sitemaps and more.
SEO Errors: What They Mean & How To Fix Them
If your website is inundated with SEO errors, search engines may have a difficult time crawling your website’s content, which could affect your ability to rank in organic search results, preventing users from finding your brand online. To keep our clients’ websites healthy, Blue Compass runs regular SEO audits to find and fix errors that may be affecting site performance or ranking. Looking for a more thorough analysis? Our experts provide in-depth Digital Marketing Discovery audits to examine your company’s online presence layer by layer.
What Are Technical SEO Errors?
Technical errors prevent search engines from properly crawling or indexing your site due to website or server issues. While most technical errors are not visible to site users, fixing these types of errors is crucial in laying a solid SEO foundation. If your website is unable to be indexed due to technical errors, any marketing efforts will be irrelevant as users will not be able to find your website in search results.
What Are On-Page SEO Errors?
Found within page headings or metadata, on-page errors affect your site’s ability to appear in search results because search engines may find it difficult to understand the main topic of the page. On-page SEO errors may also affect your website’s ADA compliance if headings are missing, out of order or duplicated.
What Is A 301 Redirect?
301 redirects are permanent redirects put in place to move users and search engines from one URL to another. For example, if you delete a web page in favor of a more relevant resource, you would use a 301 redirect to direct traffic from the deleted resource to the new resource without any disruption to the user experience.
Why Are 301 Redirects Important For A Website?
301 redirects allow you to retain traffic from old URLs that users may access to reach your site. Additionally, 301 redirects also allow you to pass any SEO value from the old URL to the new page, allowing you to retain any organic search rankings for the moved page.
For example, if you’ve upgraded your SSL certificate to HTTPS, any link pointing to your site with the old HTTP address will be invalid. Setting up a 301 redirect to point to the new HTTPS address will ensure those clicking on the link make it to your page.
Although redirects are beneficial for URLs that no longer exist, it’s important to avoid unneeded redirects. Plan to update internal linking throughout your website to reduce unnecessary redirect chains, which will eat into your crawl budget.
What Is Crawl Budget?
Crawl budget refers to the amount of processing and time Google is willing to spend crawling your site in a given time period. Through your website’s sitemap and robots.txt file, Google will determine the most important pages and decide whether or not to crawl them. SEO errors function as the hurdles a crawler has to jump through that eat into a given crawl budget.
What Are 4XX Errors?
4XX errors, or broken links, prevent users from getting to certain pages because the resource has been deleted or moved without a redirect in place. These errors often appear with a message stating the page cannot be found or has restricted access. 4XX errors are considered high priority because they affect both the search engine’s ability to crawl your site properly, and a user’s ability to view linked pages as intended.
How Do I Fix SEO Errors?
To fix SEO errors, we recommend using a tool like Screaming Frog, SEMRush or Moz to conduct an SEO audit and identify errors. Once you’ve compiled a list of errors, you can begin the process of fixing them. If you’re not as SEO-savvy, think about hiring an experienced digital marketing agency to correct the SEO errors for you.
Understanding Search Engines: How To Improve Your Website Ranking On Google
Once you’ve built a solid SEO foundation, your website rankings will begin to climb. Discover the factors that go into Google’s algorithm, how to increase your domain authority and how to optimize your site further to appear in rich results for increased visibility and traffic.
What Ranking Factors Are Included In Google’s Algorithm?
Google’s Search Algorithm considers over 300 factors and signals when deciding how to rank pages in SERPs. These factors range from keywords and page relevance to user experience, source expertise and more. The weight assigned to each element fluctuates based on your query. For example, if you’re curious about recent news, the timeliness factor holds more significance than it does for defining terms in a dictionary.
You Talk A Lot About Google. Why Don’t You Ever Mention Yahoo! Or Bing?
As of February 2024, Google holds a whopping 91% of global search engine market share, meaning Google dominates as the top search engine. With so much search happening on Google, it’s important to structure your content according to the top search engine’s best practices.
Are There Any Differences Between Search Engines?
Each search engine has its own set of ranking factors and algorithms it uses to populate relevant search results. This means your rankings may vary from search engine to search engine. Despite this, it’s important to ensure you’re optimizing your content for Google first, as this is the top search engine where you have the highest likelihood of making great SEO strides in organic search results.
What Is SERP?
SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. We use this acronym frequently when referring to organic search results and rankings to describe the overall landscape in search results.
What Are Rich Results?
Rich results are non-standard organic search results designed to visually enhance key information and show additional details from a webpage. Rich results can include featured snippets, FAQs, carousels, images, recipes, videos and more. You can implement structured data, or schema, on your website to help make your site eligible for appearing in a rich result position.
How Does A Website Get To Page One Of SERPs?
Getting to page one of SERPs takes time, patience and strategic thought. If you’re looking for a general starting point, focus on these key factors for influencing organic rankings:
Use strategic, targeted keywords in your heading tags and body copy
Maintain a healthy, error-free website
Include at least 600 words on each page
Implement relevant, unique schema on each page
Increase internal linking throughout the website, and link out to relevant resources when applicable
What Is Domain Authority In SEO?
Domain authority is a ranking system built by Moz to determine the trustworthiness of a site and how well it will rank in SERPs. Scoring is on a scale of 1-100, with higher scores indicating a more authoritative site. While domain authority isn’t a Google metric or ranking factor, it provides a good indication of how Google views your site. Google values authoritative, trustworthy sites, so the higher domain authority score, the higher you’ll rank.
What Factors Contribute To Domain Authority?
Domain authority scores come from several factors, including the structure and content of the website, the amount and quality of backlinks pointing to the website, how long the domain has existed and its history, and the quality of keywords used throughout the website and in metadata.
SEO For Content Architecture: How Your Website Structure Impacts SEO
A well-organized website structure will help Google and other search engines crawl and understand the purpose of your webpages, which can help boost organic search rankings. Ensuring your website has a logical structure can also improve the user experience, as visitors will be able to navigate easily to the pages they’re interested in. If you’re looking to redesign your website, there are a few considerations to take into account to enhance crawlability and user experience.
Is It Okay For My Blog To Be A Different URL Than My Website?
If your company has a blog, we recommend integrating it into your main website’s structure to gain the most SEO value. As more traffic goes to your blog, Google will see that as a positive aspect of your overall website and your organic rankings in search results may improve.
What Is A Landing Page?
A landing page is a singular, standalone page that users “land” on when they click on a link from an email, ad or other digital marketing campaign. These pages are designed to capture attention and provide a CTA opportunity to encourage users to convert.
What Is A Sitemap And Do I Need One?
A sitemap is a necessary part of a website to help search engines discover URLs so they can be crawled and indexed. We recommend all websites include an XML sitemap to help Google and other search engines understand your website’s architecture and encourage search engine bots to crawl and index your pages.
How Can I Find The Sitemap On A Website?
There are several ways to find a website’s sitemap, including:
Checking common XML sitemap locations (domain.com/sitemap.xml, domain.com/sitemap_index.xml, etc.)
Check the site’s robots.txt file for the sitemap URL
Find the sitemap URL in Google Search Console
Search for the sitemap using Bing Webmaster Tools
Use a website audit tool such as Screaming Frog to render the sitemap
Does My Sitemap Need To Be Updated?
Your sitemap provides a blueprint to your website’s structure and should be updated when new content is added or removed. We recommend regularly checking your sitemap to ensure it’s running properly, is up to date and includes all content you want bots to crawl and potentially index.
What Is A Site Hierarchy?
Your website’s hierarchy is the strategic arrangement of pages on the site. Whether visitors start their journey on the homepage or an interior page, the navigation provides the hierarchy to lead users deeper into pages based on what they are looking for.
What Is A Robots.txt File And Why Is It Important?
A robots.txt file lets search engines know which pages should and should not be crawled by bots. This file helps optimize crawler activity on your site by directing them away from pages that shouldn’t be crawled so they can spend more time crawling pages that matter.
How Do I Know What Is In My Robots.txt?
To see the contents of your robots.txt file, go to your website and add /robots.txt to the end of the URL. If nothing pops up, you do not currently have a robots.txt file but can create one at any time with development assistance.
What Should Be Blocked In Robots.txt?
Types of files and folders we recommend blocking with your robots.txt file include non-essential or duplicate pages, any checkout or customer account pages, CSS and JavaScript files. It’s important to remember that pages blocked by your robots.txt file can still appear in organic search results; if you want to block pages from appearing in SERPs, we recommend placing a noindex tag on the pages.
What Are Orphan Pages?
Orphan pages are web pages that are not navigable from any page, menu or section of your site, meaning a user cannot access the page without a direct link. Orphan pages negatively affect the SEO value of your site, because search engines cannot follow or index them. Google favors logical website structures where each page can be followed by bots.
When Should I Clear My Cache?
We recommend clearing your cache and cookies regularly to prevent slow web browsing caused by increased disk use. If you add new content or pages to your site, you may need to clear your cache to see the updated changes, as well.
How Do I Clear My Cache? (For Every Browser)
Chrome
Open Chrome and navigate to your settings
Click Privacy & Security from the left-hand menu
Select Clear Browsing Data
Select a time range, such as last 7 days, last 4 weeks or all time
Choose the types of information you want to clear
Click Clear Data
Close and reopen your browser for cache changes to take effect
Edge
Open Edge and navigate to your settings
Click on Privacy from the menu options
Click on Ctrl + Shift + Del
Firefox
Open Firefox and choose Preferences from the menu
Select Privacy & Security
Find the Cached Web Content section and click Clear Now
Safari
Open Safari and navigate to your Preferences
Select the Privacy tab
Click Remove All Website Data to clear your cache
Other
Most browsers will house the option to clear your cache in the security or privacy section of the browser.
Whether you’re ready to implement SEO strategies on your own or you’re looking for some guidance, the experts at Blue Compass are ready to help. Our team helps clients with all aspects of executing SEO to meet their business goals, from consulting to full SEO management. Contact us to learn how we can develop a complete SEO strategy that improves your search rankings and drives organic traffic to your website.
Contact the Blue Compass team today. Together we will examine your needs and lay out a plan for taking your digital presence to the next level.