SEO: indexing and positioning websites on Google (search engines)
SEO is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimisation (“Search Engine Optimization”), which is the activity carried out on site (on site) and off site (off site) to improve search engine rankings.
The need to do SEO for one’s site arises from the fact that search engines, Google above all, provide results in hierarchical order in response to user searches made for keywords. This creates a ranking of sites to choose from: those that are ranked better receive more visits.
The main goal of any search engine is to provide a useful service, that is, results that are as responsive as possible to users’ expectations, both in terms of relevance and the quality of the proposed sites. The reason is very simple: if the results offered are not satisfactory, users will entrust their searches to other search engines. For this reason, one cannot pay to improve rankings ( paid online advertising is not SEO), because then the sites with the best content would not be rewarded to the detriment of users and, ultimately, the search engines themselves.
The first page of Google you have to earn it with quality content and good SEO work.
The criteria used by Google to determine the ranking of sites, and of each individual page, are many and vary over time; therefore, it is necessary for theSEO expert to keep abreast of the evolution of the technologies that operate the indexing and ranking of information on the Internet. Googlebot, Google’s spider, scours the web for new pages and is continually updated to refine the mathematical algorithms responsible forindexing and ranking sites.
Thus, it can be said that search engines are the referees and websites the players in an increasingly fierce competition where those who know the rules of the game best and, of course, who have the most to offer, win. SEO campaigns, a specialty of web marketing and SEM, are an inescapable tool in this competition. The reason for this is as unobvious as it is fundamental: the costs of compensating for poor search engine visibility tend to be higher than the costs required to win a good web ranking.
You can imagine what this means for eCommerce sites and online stores with large catalogs, which need to advertise many products. Indexing all product pages and positioning them well among the SERPs of search results means being able to save on advertising costs. A larger budget invested initially on SEO leads to savings in the medium to long term.
Not in all cases is it possible to aspire to rank on the first page of google. Everyone would like to but only a few succeed. This is where the honesty of the SEO consultant comes into play, who should always provide the client with a realistic picture of the market environment in which the competition is taking place and the results that can likely be expected.
Analysis of site SEO needs: consulting and optimization
Opting for consulting without direct intervention are those companies that have in-house personnel sufficiently qualified to transpose the consultant’s directives and act on their own SEO optimization interventions. Companies that cannot rely on adequate internal resources entrust the web marketing consultant with both SEO analysis and practice.
The first clarification to be made, as well as the least obvious, is that the smartest SEO is that which intervenes as early as the design and implementation phase of the site. The choice of technology, page organization and information architecture, integration with social networks and other media, even design influence the SEO value of a site. SEO campaigns that intervene after the game is over are diminished in their effectiveness or invalidated in the worst cases.
Consider, for example, the importance of coordinating SEO with content marketing where there is a regular business of producing informational or entertainment content.
Quantifying the amount of work required to position a site well against a set of keywords requires an initial investment of time to:
- Analyze the client’s online presence in terms of ranking against certain target keywords;
- Check the site’s technological architecture, content features, use of social networks and other indicators;
- Assess the level of competition in the industry;
- Conduct a survey of SEO strategies operated by major competitors.
Only after these elements have been carefully considered can a realistic goal for the SEO campaign and a consistent budget be defined.
In most cases, a site with only a few pages and a low-profile online presence will not allow you to compete for the first page of google on many of the SEO campaign’s target search terms. There is no point in creating false expectations. The SEO consultant who promises otherwise, especially without prior analysis, is a charlatan.
Also, for sites with very little content, which do not need frequent updates, be wary of those who offer packages or medium- to long-term contracts, they are useless. Once the SEO campaign is over, it is sufficient to intervene with optimization activities once or twice a year.
For medium-sized sites, blogs, portals and eCommerce sites, on the other hand, SEO optimization can be substantial and require periodic or ongoing forms of collaboration. Depending on your goals and depending on your budget, the main activities to be performed will be:
- Direct code interventions (html tags and meta-tags, javascript management, changes to robots and htaccess files, etc.);
- Elimination/replacement of unnecessary or disturbing code;
- Reorganization of content and related hierarchies;
- Editing or proofreading of texts;
- Internal link building;
- Reformulation of file names (photos and images, pdfs, icons…);
- inclusion of talking urls (permalinks);
- Link building activities for creating backlinks (off-site SEO);
- Sending sitemap for page indexing;
- Implementation of html AMP code to speed up page loading from mobile devices;
- metadata entry;
- SMO (Social Media Optimisation), that is, SEO techniques applied to social channels.
All of these techniques help to increase site visits through better web page rankings; however, given the increasing importance that search engines are placing on social signals and links from social networks, it is safe to assume that Social Media Marketing and SMO optimization will become increasingly crucial to achieving good rankings for sites and social channels themselves.
SMO aka social media SEO optimization
By virtue of the importance gained by social networks and other types of online communities as indicators used by search engines to measure the value of websites, Social Media Optimisation has assumed a prominent role within the broader search engine marketing (SEM) landscape.
There are two goals that SMO aims to achieve:
- Improve the relevance and positioning of corporate social channels as sites in and of themselves;
- Optimize social profiles and their content to increase the SEO value of institutional sites associated with them.
It involves intervening practices that serve to bring published content and the social media that host it more in line with the logic of search engine appreciation. In this sense, SMO is a specialty of Social Media Marketing, that is, online marketing developed through social networks, blogs, forums and communities.
Through SMO strategies such as customizing domain urls, timely inclusion of links and information, and associating tags with posts, increased social media visibility is achieved, which is followed by an increase in subscriptions and participation, which in turn translates into merit recognition by search engines. These, in practice, interpret increased activity and engagement signals from a given social channel as an indicator of the popularity and relevance of the content expressed in it, promoting it in rank.
Benefiting from this in terms of ranking, in addition to the channel itself, is precisely the corporate site to which it is linked. Not to mention the fact that social channels with numerous subscribers are in themselves important sources of qualified traffic to the referring sites.
Widely underestimated by businesses, SMO optimization should always complement SEO campaigns. The two activities are complementary and mutually reinforcing.
SEO services and site promotion on Google
Improving a site’s ranking on Google and other search engines is an SEO activity that to be done well requires a number of skills among which the key ones are:
- Basic technical knowledge of the technologies and languages used to build websites and online stores (eCommerce);
- an understanding of how search engines work and what criteria they use to locate and index website pages (essential to keep up with the evolution of Googlebot);
- language skills to intervene in the content of the site in order to introduce the appropriate keywords and variants while keeping the quality of the texts high;
- ability to leverage different web environments (blogs, forums, social networks, online communities, etc.) to enhance content and improve website ranking.
The ability to optimize Web sites also depends on the ability to take advantage of Internet data monitoring and analysis tools.
The SEO consultant who has access to site analytics statistics acquires a range of information that is decisive for optimization interventions. The company that is not equipped for this will do well to equip itself as soon as possible with web analytics tools to support online marketing.
As will become clear at this point, indexing a website and even more so positioning all its pages well is a complex activity whose success depends on many factors. SEO consulting is all the more effective the more collaborative effort and willingness to understand is established in the relationship between consultant and client. If the former seeks only to sell a service by maximizing profits, and the latter to limit costs by thinking that he knows in advance what he needs, the results will fall short of the actual potential of the collaboration.