When we talk about SEO, we are inherently talking about search engine optimization—something crucial to significantly increase traffic and awareness of a brand within digital environments.
Right now, thousands of people are looking for content like yours. You can help them find it by becoming an SEO expert and positioning your website or blog in the first search results.
According to experts, 80% of website traffic begins with a search query. That is why search engine optimization is vital if you want to make your mark on the Internet.
Appear on the first page
Every day, people use Google to perform more than 3.5 billion searches. In international markets, 78% of people use the Internet to research products and services before buying.
Once your website starts to appear on the first pages of Google search results, it will gain much more visibility. This is precisely the goal of search engine optimization. A better position equals more traffic, more conversions, and, ultimately, more revenue.
Being on page one of the search results has to be the goal of your entire SEO strategy. But the higher, the better. Did you know that 75% of users don’t even click on all the first page links?
Here are the top 4 tools that most people don’t know about:
8 factors that influence SEO
As you may already know, more than 200 positioning factors make our page appear in one position or another on the pages of Google results. These factors are continually changing and are divided into two main types: internal factors (on-site) and external factors (off-site).
1.- Optimization from the on-site
The on-site factors are those that can be controlled directly. For example, the quality of the content, web architecture, and the HTML code is the most relevant website factors.
- Content: To optimize for search engines, the content offered by your site must be original, have a minimum of 300 words, and have the presence of a secondary keyword or main keyword throughout the text.
- Structure: It is the composition of the URL that gives body to your site. When you work on search engine optimization, you should try to present Google spiders or bots with an easy-to-digest platform for them. They should be able to track your content thoroughly. They do this from HTML codes or HTML tags.
These HTML tags make search engine optimization possible. They include the title tag, the blue title that Google comes across first, the “meta description” tag, and the header tags. Also known as <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc. that show in a hierarchical way the different titles that can be found in the content. In this way, they allow the optimization of your content.
The key to search engine optimization is structured data. Well, these offer search engines more detailed information about the content of a website.
The most widely used protocol for structured data is Schema.org. On its website, you can find a complete catalog of structured data and how to implement them on your website.
2.- Optimization from the off-site
They are those that you cannot control directly. However, what is known is that they are the ones that indicate to search engines the authority that a website has. That is if it is trusted or not. Among search engine optimization factors are user behavior, the quality of external links, and social signals.
3.- The keywords
The selection of keywords or keywords is the basis of search engine optimization. Thanks to them, you can know first-hand the reason why users clicked on our website.
What the terms entered in the search engine reflect is the user’s search intention. These are searches that are defined by the goal the user has when they perform them. It is, in turn, divided into three:
- Informative: They seek information. Example: SEO techniques, how to optimize my website for search engines, etc.
- Transactional: The purpose of the search is to complete a transaction, which can be to buy something or download an e-book.
- Navigational: The search is aimed at finding a specific website.
It is also possible to detect keywords that work according to the volume of searches. These can be:
- Head: They are cultivated with a lot of search volume and a lot of competition. Ahem: Cats, Houses, SEO, etc
- Middle Tail: Searches in which more is specified, but are still very general.
- Long Tail: This is where the real opportunities are, as they make up 70% of the total. They are precise searches, with little competition, and most of them are transactional.
The first thing you have to do when generating a list of consistent keywords with your website is to know what you offer, who you offer it to, where you offer it, and what differentiates you. These questions could work as a guide:
After having answered these questions, you will surely come across a word that is repeated continuously. There you have your first keyword. But if what you want is to generate better results, you could investigate your keyword’s behavior. Tools like Google Trends can be a saving table in this case.
4.- Generate links for search engine optimization
As you may have already heard, a website’s authority depends directly on the number of pages that link to it and if they have a good reputation. That is, search engines always verify characteristics such as the authority of the pages that link to you, and the location within the content of those links.
That is why a large part of the pages’ optimization work is directed towards the generation of links to improve the authority of a website. This strategy is known as link building. The most common practices for this are:
- Through content: If you have valuable content, you will be linked. A variant, link baiting, involves generating concrete content to generate attention and links.
- Through social bookmarks: These are pages dedicated to curating the contents of the web, either through the vote of users, popularity in social networks, or other factors.
5.- Use other Search engine optimization tools
The experts always say it: in SEO, it is 90% about clearly establishing your objective and the audience you are targeting. Search engine optimization tools handle the other 10%. If you want some information, these are the essentials:
- Google: It is the most basic tool for SEO. From familiarizing yourself with algorithm changes to getting keyword ideas or analyzing your competition.
- Google Webmaster Tools: Fundamental to tell Google how it should interpret your website. This platform notifies you about errors on your website, penalties, and even Google’s links.
- Google Analytics: Knowing what your users do on your website and how they get to it is vital from all possible perspectives.
- Excel: A fundamental tool for data analysis, link building, competition, reporting. The most useful tool for SEO after Google.
- Adwords Keyword Planner: In Adwords, go to “Tools and analysis” and then to ” Keyword Planner. ” It is not comparable to the previous Google tools, but it is beneficial for finding keyword suggestions.
- Übersuggest: Übersuggest gives you tips around a term you start from, based on Google’s autocomplete. It’s useful because it gives you very varied combinations that you might not have thought of.
- Wordle: Useful to get an idea of a website’s terms map, both to have a visual approach to its keyword density and to make a report or brainstorming.
6.- Analysis of the competition
On the Internet, there are millions of proposals like yours. In SEO, it is essential to be attentive to the behavior of the competition. Discovering new competitors has to be a constant process.
You may discover them after a long time knowing the market. When locating them, please review the content they generate, the format, and how it works.
7.- Rankbrain
Specialists define it as the third most crucial element classified and indexed by search engines. And it is responsible for understanding the context in which some searches are carried out through artificial intelligence.
8.- Always think responsive
Although there are some dissertations in which the importance of the browsing experience from smartphones has not yet been defined, it is a fact that the highest rate of searches today is made from a mobile device.
So it is not unreasonable to think about search engine optimization by creating content that improves the user experience. A good, responsive design will ensure that users can consume your content from any device.
The most important Google SEO tools
Used by more than 90% of Internet users worldwide, Google is the most popular search engine, followed by far by Bing or Yahoo! Consequently, understanding how it works and using it for your benefit is the aspiration of any web project. Everything that has to do with search engine optimization must necessarily be based on Google’s preferences. The good news is that the search engine offers some essential tools for free to facilitate positioning in search engines. Here is a list of the best Google SEO tools.
Google Search Console
The Google Search Console, formerly known as the Google Webmaster Tool, is an SEO analysis tool that offers detailed information on how Google classifies a web page while showing points for improvement, which developers can use to optimize positioning. It also allows the web analysis with a retroactive effect to understand previous developments of the page.
With the Google Search Console, you get information about:
- Crawl errors
- Indexing status
- Searches
- Keyword development
- Number of site visits
- Profile backlinks -what sites link to the website
In addition to all this, it is responsible for transmitting the sitemap to Google, another SEO factor to take into account.
Google analytics
This is the SEO professional web analysis tool par excellence, used by most programmers. Thanks to a detailed evaluation of user data, it allows the traffic to a web page to be analyzed with great accuracy. This tool allows not only to know the number and origin of the visits, and what searches were made to find the web, how long they stayed on it, and when they left it. Also, the Real-Time function allows the monitoring of website or campaign activity while it is taking place – to see precisely, for example, how a viral campaign is influencing traffic to a website.
Getting started with this tool is simple: just follow the instructions on the Google Analytics page to generate a tracking code inserted into the source code of the web page.
AdWords keyword planner
The AdWords Keyword Planner analyzes and evaluates search terms based on their relevance and search volume, which is very useful for finding ideas for new keywords or groups of words that can be implemented in the project itself. Together with the results, we obtain the figures that refer to the volume of searches and the competition, which broadly defines whether a term is long-tailed or short-tailed – something that can be interesting in the case of targeting a thematic niche. You can enter groups of words, a web page, or even a Google category to search. Other AdWords features that can be very useful include:
- Get historical statistics and traffic forecasts
- Create lists of combinable keywords
- Choose competitive bids and budgets suitable for campaigns
The Google cache
In this case, it is not a tool itself, but an option that Google offers to view web pages as it indexes them, and the search engine robot runs through them: a basic version of the text, without images, without animations, where the words key are highlighted. This allows programmers to know when was the last time a page was indexed by robots and, on the other hand, to understand how robots see and interpret their navigation, their format, and their images. With this, it is possible to determine interpretation errors originated, in many cases, by the use of Flash or JavaScript.
How is this function activated?
- The search for a web page is carried out in the search engine
- Click on the green arrow that appears behind the page’s URL in the organic list of results
- The “cached” function is chosen
- On the page that appears next, at the top, select the option “text-only version.”
Google AutoComplete
In this case, it is not an SEO tool, but a function available in the search engine as standard. When a search term is entered, it can be surprising how the search engine completes the phrase or word entered with more or less accurate contributions. These search suggestions appear based on the frequency with which other users entered them in the search engine. Thus, the Autocomplete function proposes search hypotheses that can be useful for any SEO manager, since they can be long-tail keywords that can correctly be included in the search for keywords before a campaign or web content development.
Google Trends
This is an SEO tool frequently used as a source of inspiration to obtain content that arouses interest since it shows the most searched topics in the last 24 hours and the number of articles published on purpose, filtered by region category if desired. Google Trends also allows you to examine specific terms and check their current status and estimate on the web.
Finding attractive topics and spotting trends can indirectly affect building a strong backlink profile.thanks to the publication of “sharable” and exciting content. And it is that when the content of a web page is perceived in its quality as current and valuable, not only the probability of obtaining a good ranking increases but also of being linked by other pages.
Mobile optimization test
One of Google’s latest updates detects those web pages that have a version optimized to be viewed on smartphones and tablets and rewards them with a better position in the search engine. To check if a website is optimized, Google offers the ability to run a free check on its Mobile Optimization Test tool. You have to enter the URL of the site, and you get a report that indicates whether the site takes these display alternatives into account and offers suggestions for improvement. Of course, Google analyzes the subpages and not the page globally.
Measure performance with Google PageSpeed
PageSpeed Insights measures the loading speed and performance of a page for both computers and mobiles, and this is another aspect to take into account in search engine optimization. Looking at factors unrelated to the network’s behavior such as the HTML structure or the use of JavaScript or CSS, this tool provides the results with indicators from lowest to highest priority to make the appropriate changes and a score from 1 to 100 as a global rating.
