SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a set of optimization techniques for sites, blogs, and web pages. These optimizations seek to achieve the right organic rankings, generating traffic and authority for a website or blog.
One of the most significant ambitions of companies that invest in Digital Marketing is to reach the top positions in search engines – after all, who doesn’t want free clicks and more visitors to your site?
But making your website stand out among the millions of pages on the web seems like an impossible task. And I say it isn’t.
However, being on the internet is not enough to ensure that your website, e-commerce, or blog reach a place on the first page of Google. It is necessary to invest in a specific strategy to optimize the results and ensure that your business reaches a good position for the most important keywords in your segment.
With SEO, you can make your website appear in relevant searches, connecting your content with people who are looking for products or services like the one you offer. It is the whole operation!
But you should know that doing SEO requires a lot of studies to understand terminologies, build strategies, and apply practices that take you to the top of the Google search results pages.
Do not worry! Whether you want to take your first steps in the world of search engine optimization or you want to refresh your knowledge, in this complete SEO guide, we will explain everything you need to know about the subject.
In this article, you will find:
- What does SEO mean;
- What are the advantages of organic ranking;
- What types of search exist;
- How Google results pages are set up;
- What is the difference between SEO and SEM;
- A brief history of SEO;
- How to develop an effective SEO strategy;
- What are the leading SEO tools;
- What are the SEO trends for 2020
Read carefully and become an SEO specialist!
What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a set of optimization techniques for sites, blogs, and web pages.
These optimizations aim to achieve excellent organic web rankings, generating traffic and authority for a site or blog.
This marketing strategy is essential for your company to gain prominence, visibility in the digital world, and, consequently, more leads, and customers for your business.
How?
Optimizing sites and blogs through the use of techniques to improve the rankings of your pages and rank your company in the first page of Google, for example, increase (and much) your business opportunities.
In the end, 90% of people who search on Google only click on the results that appear on the first page of the engine.
The main objective of SEO, therefore, is to increase the volume of organic traffic and ensure more visibility for web pages.
But what are the advantages of this strategy, and how efficient can it be? Here are the main ones.
Seven benefits of implementing an SEO strategy
1. Increase the visibility of a brand
Implementing an SEO strategy is one of the best ways to increase the visibility of your brand organically.
Imagine the following scenario: your business is responsible for the sale of washing machines. A user, let’s call him Goda, is having problems with his smart TV, so research on Google how he can repair it himself.
Coincidentally, you have an article that shows a step by step to repair smart TV, so conquer that visit for your website.
And although the article talks about repair and not a sale. This is only the beginning of a customer relationship with your brand. It is what we know in Inbound as the stage of attraction.
2. Attract qualified traffic
Like Goda, many other users will reach your content to solve their doubts or find solutions to their problems.
With the creation of valuable content, optimized for search engines, your website will be able to attract the leads at the right time organically.
In this way, the more visitors you receive, the more people will know you, and the more likely you are too close a sale, which leads us to the next advantage.
3. Generate sales opportunities
Imagine that, although Goda repaired his smart TV, he needs to change it, as he continues to face other faults.
As Goda already knows your brand, because he has found the solution to his questions in your articles, he will surely already trust your business and think of you, as a first option, to buy his next smart TV. This is the decision stage in the Inbound methodology.
4. Ranking a brand as an authority in the market
Following our example, in Goda’s mind and in that of many other users like him, your company will occupy its Top of Mind, that is, it will be the first brand that comes to mind when they think of smart TV.
SEO allows you to achieve this by facilitating correct indexing and improving the organic ranking of your content.
Thus, whenever Goda or any other person searches for information on a smart TV, your website will be the first to appear, or at least, the result they are looking for.
In this area, a concept that has been highlighted is that of EAT (Expertise, Authoritative, Trustworthiness). An acronym used to represent the three fundamental elements of quality content.
Recently Google has looked with good eyes on the content published by authors who have technical authority and credibility recognized in the respective topics.
For example, on a health-related website, it is convenient to have articles written by doctors, with an author page containing information about their professional history.
5. Educate the market
Users like Goda have been educated with your articles about the operation, care, and maintenance of their smart TV.
They have also managed to understand what are the specifications they are looking for with their smart TV, according to their personal needs.
As you can see, the importance of ranking content lies not only in closing sales but also in educating the audience so that they make better decisions.
6. Success over the competition
Finally, if it is your website that produces the most complete and relevant content about smart TV, who do you think users will look for when they want to know something about smart TV? Who will they trust if they need to make a purchase?
Although it takes time and a lot of work to implement an SEO strategy, in the long term, it generates consistent and lasting results.
7. Better return on investment
SEO requires a much smaller investment than other approaches such as SEM or traditional advertising.
We will explain now, step by step, the essential SEO concepts and teach you the strategies we use to reach the top places of Google.
And it all starts when the user does a search.
What types of searches exist?
The psychology of the search revolves around the user: their needs, their way of looking for answers, the results they expect when looking for something, etc.
Companies that invest in Digital Marketing should respond objectively to all these doubts and needs.
One of the first steps to understand the user’s search is to know the intention of their search, which is essential to be able to attract the right audience to your site.
So we are going to explain what brings the user to Google. There are three types of search:
1. Navigation Search
This type of search – also known as a shortcut search – happens when the user already knows which site they would like to visit, but they may not remember the full URL or are lazy to type.
2. Informational search
As the name itself says, in the informational search, the user searches for information, whether through news, product launches, or informative articles.
Unlike the navigational search, the user does not know exactly which site they will reach to find the content they are looking for, since it is not possible to identify his search intention.
In an Inbound Marketing strategy, this organic visibility is essential to attract users to the pages of business.
3. Transactional search
In this type of search, the user wants to execute a transaction, such as buying a product directly or finding a store. This search is extremely valuable, especially for e-commerces.
Now that you have understood the three types of search, in the next topic, we will explain how the world’s largest search engine, Google, works.
How are Google results pages set up?
It is essential to understand how Google works to develop an aggressive SEO strategy.
Searches in this mechanism are divided into two groups: organic (free) results and paid results:
Paid results appear at the top of the page, indicated by a green mark with the text “Ad” or “Advertisement”. To occupy these spaces, companies pay per click-through a Google tool called Google Adwords.
Below these paid results are the organic one.
The sites of the first search positions are defined by Google robots according to the level of relevance and authority they present – always focusing on the quality of the user experience.
But in the results pages of Google, there are outstanding fragments that earn a visually peculiar space for users, and that can also be overcome with SEO techniques.
They are the featured snippets and rich snippets, which you will meet below.
What is a rich snippet?
The Rich Snippets are pictures that appear with expanded information on your website. They occupy the position that your website holds for a particular search.
If the Snippets are a combination of the title, short description and URL of the website, the Rich Snippets are a rich version of these that includes more detailed information that is relevant to users.
To enrich your website with these resources, it will be necessary to establish a reliable and organized structure of information that can be understood by the algorithm. That is achieved by configuring the pages with the snippets available in the Schema Markup.
What is a Featured Snippet?
On the other hand, Featured Snippets are a type of Rich Snippet known to be Google’s famous position zero. These are pictures that appear above all the results with a specific response to a user’s search.
In general, terms, to conquer a Featured Snippet you must create valuable content and presented in a simple way that thoroughly answers a question.
Therefore, lists, definitions and short answers are the most common content found in Featured Snippets.
As additional information, you should know that when you do a voice search, the result you get will surely be read from a Featured Snippet. Hence it is so important to try to get the position zero.
There are three types of featured snippets:
- lists;
- boards;
- and paragraphs
Here you can see an example of a featured paragraph snippet that we conquered for the keyword “marketing information system”:
What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
We do not want to leave out this article a topic that causes a lot of confusion among professionals who are starting in the world of Digital Marketing and this is the difference between SEO and SEM.
Although at first they may seem to refer to similar actions given the similarity of their acronyms, you should pay close attention because they refer to completely different actions. Let’s see one by one.
SEO = Organic Ranking
As you know, SEO refers to all those actions you can take inside or outside your website to optimize your search engine rankings in an organic way. This last point is key since organic means “no payment . “
With an SEO strategy you don’t pay Google or any other search engine to gain rankings in the SERP. It is your valuable content and your optimizations that earn those places in their own right.
SEM = Payment Marketing
On the contrary, the SEM – Search Engine Marketing – refers to those strategies that include the use of paid advertisements.
That is, with an SEM strategy, you create an advertising campaign so that when a user enters a search, your site appears before the organic results in the form of an ad, as long as it matches the user’s search intention.
Which to choose?
A complete Digital Marketing strategy should not opt for one and exclude the other. That is, you must include in your strategy a combination of SEO and SEM strategies to increase your results.
With the use of the SEM results are generated instantly in the short term, necessary when you want to increase visibility or brand recognition quickly or when you want to launch products or promotions for a limited time.
In addition, SEO is a strategy that works in the medium and long term, bringing better quality visits constantly.
A brief history of SEO and how the Google algorithm has evolved
Since people realized that the best way to deliver their content to Internet users was through search engines, they devised a series of techniques to get their first places. These techniques are SEO.
However, in the 90s, there was an abundance of content that cared more for ranking than for user experience. That is why Google started constantly updating its algorithm to deliver the most relevant results in each search.
Next, we will take a look at the main algorithm updates.
Google Panda
In 2011 came the first major update of the algorithm. Google Panda began analyzing and evaluating websites based on the quality of their content by reviewing aspects such as grammar and duplicate content and rewarding, in turn, the original and valuable content.
Google Penguin
A year later, in April 2012, Google Penguin was launched to monitor the health of link building websites.
Basically, Google Penguin checks that the external links that are sent to the pages are natural and of quality. Therefore, it stimulates the relevant backlinks and that add value to the user who arrives at another website from them.
Google Hummingbird
In 2013, with Google Hummingbird, content began to be classified according to semantic factors and user interest.
It is with Hummingbird that Google copies the natural language, expanding its way of interpreting the content to variations of the keywords or related keywords.
Google Pigeon
In 2014, with Google Pigeon, the search engine began to organize the search results according to the geographical location of the users. It is from here that local SEO begins to gain prominence.
Google Mobilegeddon
In 2015 the boom of mobile devices arrives and Google adapts to it with Google Mobilegeddon. With this update, Google rewards sites that are mobile-friendly: those that have a responsive design and that optimize their loading speeds.
Google RankBrain
One of the most radical changes in the algorithm was with Google RankBrain, in 2015. With this update Google delivers the most relevant content to the user according to their search intention.
How to build a good SEO strategy and conquer the top of Google?
Now, it is time to know the step by step you must follow to create and implement a successful SEO strategy. Take note!
1. Create for a target audience
The first step is to define who you want to reach with your content, that is, define who your ideal customer would be. For this, the concept of a detailed description, created to better understand your customers, their interests and their problems or needs.
2. Do a keyword research
Since you know who you are going to talk to and what are the topics that might interest you, it is time to land those ideas to create relevant content for your audience.
What separates your content from your users is called keywords. A keyword is the term that users type in search engines to find content that addresses their concerns.
What I put in quotes are the keywords, which have different types of those terms that cover exciting topics for your visitors.
Doing keyword research is a complete process:
1. You start with an idea on a topic,
2. you use tools like KWFinder or Google Keyword Planner to identify the keywords you can use in your articles,
3. you determine if your search volume is relevant or how difficult it is to position a content by that word,
4. Create a list of the best keywords.
3. Analyze the competition to identify opportunities
Another fundamental step before starting content creation is to review what your competition is doing.
With tools like SEMRush you can identify which are your most successful keywords, which of your articles are the ones that are best positioned and how they are being found by users.
With this information you can make adjustments to your strategy, adopt your best practices or try to rank your keywords by creating complete content.
4. Organize the contents with the Topic Clusters methodology
After identifying your best keywords with their different types, it’s time to write your articles.
It is necessary that you explore the main topics of your market with complete contents, which should be reconciled with smaller and more specific articles on topics related to the most prominent issues.
It is necessary that you explore the main topics of your market with complete contents, which should be reconciled with smaller and more specific articles on topics related to the most prominent issues.
Once you have several specific articles on a general topic, you can organize them in Topic Clusters, which means gathering several related articles in a main post, creating interconnections between them.
It is important that you pay attention to this methodology since more and more, Google is paying attention to the user’s search intention and not only to the keywords that appear in an article.
5. Optimize and publish your materials
Once you have created your materials after searching for keywords and organized them in Topic Clusters, it is time to optimize them under the magnifying glass of SEO. To do this, you must pay attention to the different factors of On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO.
The On-Page SEO brings together all the variables that you can control directly within your website, such as:
- Title length,
- Meta description length,
- Friendly and easy to understand URL
- Keyword density,
- Loading speed,
- Formation (intertitles H1 to H6),
- Outgoing links -which are related to the subject of the article-,
- Alt tag of the images, which will allow them to position on Google;
- Usability in different devices,
- Sitemap and robots.txt file.
Now, speaking of Off-Page SEO, the matter is a bit complicated, because we talk about aspects that you cannot control directly. Some of them are:
- The domain authority,
- The origin of the links that point to your website,
- Linkbuilding
Currently, when we talk about ranking factors, we know that there are more than 200 factors that really impact the results of a SERP.
6. Invest in link building
By talking about essential factors that Google takes into account to classify the results between its pages, external links or backlinks cannot be forgotten.
In the end, if a website sends you a link to one of your pages, it means that it is transmitting authority and confirming that in that URL, the user will find a relevant response for a given topic.
That makes it necessary to get backlinks for the pages of your blog, since the algorithm follows the path of those links and ends up finding your web pages, indexing them to their results lists.
But beware, not all backlinks are advantageous for your website. In the end, if you receive an external link from a domain with low relevance and spam, your pages can be viewed with bad eyes by the search engine algorithm.
To get backlinks of high authority and that are valuable for your blog or website, the best practices are:
- Produce original and unique contents that deserve to be shared naturally on the internet, and can be based on data and surveys;
- Send content to blogs and websites of your market, to mention your brand;
- Find broken links that websites send to others and propose replacing them with pages in your domain.
7. Monitor and analyze the results to guide the actions
Finally, after having created and launched your SEO strategy, it is time to pause and analyze the results to see if you are meeting your goals or it is necessary to make adjustments to the strategy.
Now, using measurement tools such as Google Analytics or SEMRush, you must follow up on the KPIs and create weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual reports recording their evolution.
In these reports you will have to leave evidence of all your actions, the changes you implemented and their results. This way you will know if an action was effective or, otherwise, know how to correct it.
6 SEO tools you should explore in your strategy
Implementing an SEO strategy is a complex task. That is why it is necessary to work with some tools to enhance and monitor the results of your strategy, because as you know, in Digital Marketing, what is not measured cannot be improved.
We list six indispensable tools that every SEO specialist should know.
SEMRush
An essential tool in the SEO work kit is SEMRush. With this program, you can analyze the general ranking status of your website and identify the keywords in your niche.
But perhaps one of SEMRush’s most valued functions is competition analysis. Thus, you can identify the strengths of your competitors’ SEO strategy and adjust yours.
Ahrefs
If you want to know the status of your link building strategy and the health of your backlinks you should use Ahrefs.
Ahrefs allows you to execute different functions: find link building opportunities, find broken links on your website or in your competition, find ideal pages to make guest posting and analyze the backlink profile of your own page.
To take care of your linkbuilding strategy, and avoid being penalized by Google Penguin, you must use Ahrefs.
Google Search Console
In an SEO strategy, it is essential to check the indexing status of your website, and with this tool, identify opportunities to optimize your visibility to the search engine. For this, there is no better tool than Google Search Console.
This platform also provides information about the behavior of your users on your website, so it does not hurt to take a good look at all its features.
MOZ
MOZ is a suite of tools that, correctly used, will boost your SEO strategy through its recommendations for better ranking, defining the themes of your content and improving your social media strategy.
For example, with the crawl function, you can identify the technical SEO problems of your website. In addition, only with MOZ will you have access to two metrics that are essential to understand Google’s PageRank: the Page Authority and the Domain Authority
KWFinder
Sometimes SEO specialists do not know which keyword to rank their contents. For that, a fundamental tool KWFinder, which you can find long-tail keywords with a low level of competition.
With KWFinder you will identify the keywords with which you are most likely to rank and you will have access to related information such as the exact search volume, the level of competition, the search trends, the cost per click, among others.
Yoast SEO
Finally, we review the vital tool for content writers. Yoast SEO is essential to execute On Page SEO in your articles and content correctly.
Specifically, it considers aspects such as the length of the title, the inclusion of the meta description, the density of the keyword throughout the article, the readability, the outgoing links, the alt tags of the images and many more .
SEO trends coming in 2020
Finally, we want to give you some info on what you can expect SEO trends to be in the coming years because to succeed on the internet, your business must quickly create the necessary strategies to adapt these trends.
Here is a list of 5 SEO trends that you should follow closely.
1. Voice search
One of the SEO trends that has been brewing in recent years is voice search.
We have already commented to you previously that Google increasingly seeks to think humanely and understand the user’s search intentions.
Optimizing your site to respond to voice searches is and will be one of the priority tasks in the coming years.
Learn how to do it by visiting our article on voice search.
2. SEO for YouTube
It is true that in 2019 the video captures the attention of users more than the text. Therefore, companies or bloggers must begin to rethink their content strategies to include video content.
And SEO also has a lot to do in this area.
Although the variables change with respect to the text, doing SEO on YouTube also ensures greater visibility for your videos, which will attract more users and generate more leads.
3. Mobile user experience
It is no secret that internet users have transited from the desktop to mobile devices. Our free time has become the perfect excuse not to leave the mobile.
With so many users browsing the internet from their cell phones, it is better to give them a good experience when they visit your website. Mobile SEO will be one of the main trends to follow in 2020.
4. Influencer Marketing
In times where consumers seek to identify with what they buy and those who buy it, using digital influencers in Marketing stands out as a strategy to give authority to your brand.
5. Data based content
As you know, with the recent updates of the Google algorithm, the search engine rewards valuable content with better positions.
One strategy that will help you create better content is to rely on data to present more specific topics and present information to your users on issues that no one else is dealing with.
Data-based content will surely be one of the main trends in 2020 for its ability to deliver value and be relevant to search engines.
Conclusion
Although SEO is an extensive subject and subject to constant updates, with what you have learned in this post, you are ready to start executing your first web positioning strategies.
However, we recommend expanding your knowledge with the articles we have linked throughout the post to complement your learning.
After all, getting good results with search engine optimization depends mostly on proper planning, execution, and measurement of the SEO strategy.
