7 Types Of SEO To Boost Your Website's Visibility And Traffic

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7 types of SEO

White Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO
ON-Page SEO
Global SEO
Local SEO
OFF-Page SEO
Technical SEO

1.WHITE HAT SEO

What is White Hat SEO Strategy?

White hat SEO refers to the process of optimizing your site for search engine indexing using only best practices. While there are many black hat techniques that essentially try to trick or bypass Google’s algorithm, these tricks often produce short-term results that end up thwarted. constant Google updates. A white hat SEO strategy is an overall planned and executed effort to increase organic traffic through search results while strictly adhering to white hat tactics.

With the shift to a digital world, white hat SEO has inevitably become a key element of any business strategy. By building a strong and lasting search engine presence through SEO, companies are effectively using Google as a “free” lead generation tool. Of course, investing in SEO comes at a cost, time, and effort, but the result will be a healthy influx of organic traffic.

Important SEO Tips You Need to Know in 2023

White Hat SEO Strategy AndMine

AndMine’s approach to creating and implementing an SEO strategy for clients is open, honest and 100% white hat. Our goal is always to produce clean, stable and long lasting organic results for our clients; that’s why we adhere to SEO best practice that is consistent with Google’s algorithms and its constant evolution.

White hat SEO takes time; results won’t happen overnight. Our steps to develop an SEO strategy for your business that work:

Business goal assessment
Digital presence and website analysis
Analysis of competitors and markets
Keyword matrix generation
Outline of the “Big Picture” SEO Strategy
Set realistic goals for organic traffic based on budget, company size, current growth trends, and market opportunities
Set paths to achieve goals
Create a team and resource

Once the SEO strategy has been determined, AndMine’s in-house team can execute the plan on an ongoing basis for your site. Alternatively, we can pass on the information and process for your team to follow through with recommendations on how to ensure your SEO efforts adhere to white hat techniques. We can also offer support in more technical areas of SEO such as site architecture and provide guidance on tools and monitoring.

Best SEO Practice for Better SEO Results

Our confidence in white hat SEO strategy is based not on being the “good guys” but on pure, unchanging fact. We provide reporting and analytics for every SEO campaign we make and measure the results that turn into insights – insights that tell us SEO is working. And Mine tracks and monitors all of our activities based on results achieved and a fine strategy until we are not just SEO but brilliant SEO.

We refrain from giving empty promises of “first page results” to our clients. Instead, we aim to develop a strategy that will generate a healthy growth in overall organic traffic for your business, whether it be ranking #1 on Google or finding obscure keywords that translate into a traffic jackpot.

If for some reason SEO is not the best investment for your business, we may consider other options to expand your reach. If we find that PPC, email marketing or social advertising promises a comparatively better ROI – or maybe even newspaper ads (!) – then we can reallocate your digital spending in a new way.

2.BLACK HAT SEO

Black Hat SEO: What Are Risky Positioning Techniques?

The article considers the risks of using “black” positioning methods. Why are Black Hat SEO techniques dangerous for a website?

Online visibility is the basis for customer acquisition for many companies. It is not surprising that in the course of such competition, some resort to dishonest and risky methods – these are commonly referred to as “black hat” SEO methods. What are the risks of using such methods?

Black Hat SEO – Unscrupulous Positioning Techniques

Black Hat SEO defines all actions that increase the visibility of a given page using methods that are contrary to Google’s guidelines. White hat SEO, on the other hand, refers to quality SEO practices recommended by Google. Why are we talking about hats in the context of positioning? The terms “black hat” and “white hat” are borrowed from the IT environment, where they respectively refer to “bad” and “good” hackers who use their skills to secure various systems. The very mention of this headgear as a symbol comes from Westerns created in the 1920s and 1940s. White hats were worn by the “good guys” and black hats were worn by the “bad guys”.

Google pursued the following goals: to organize the world’s information resources so that they become widely available and useful to everyone.

As a result of Black Hat SEO, websites may rank higher than they actually deserve. As a result, such content is poorly organized and not useful to target users. In addition, such page positioning is a very risky path for several reasons. Below are the most important ones.

Risk of severe punishment

While Black Hat SEO can bring some results, it usually comes with a high risk of being penalized by Google. As a result, the visibility of a particular page can drop dramatically for a long time – in the mildest cases it is a matter of weeks, but most often several months or even more than a year. This scenario is very unfavorable for the company, as reduced visibility means fewer visits and profits and reduced customer confidence. In the worst case scenario, Google may even remove the entire site from the index entirely.

The effect is usually short-lived

Even if the site owner manages to achieve visible results using Black Hat SEO methods, he will not be able to enjoy them for a long time. Google’s algorithm is getting better at detecting methods used to manipulate rankings. In serious business, you cannot rely on methods that do not produce tangible and long-term results – using Black Hat SEO methods, the site is exposed to unnecessary risk.

Building a weak foundation for user experience

User experience is becoming more and more important from Google’s point of view. Over the years, this indirectly led to issues such as bounce rate, time spent on the website, and conversions, which undoubtedly affect visibility in search results. The problem is that many of the methods that go against Google’s guidelines are also very harmful to users in the long run. Such methods will not help you gain the trust of visitors, which is also the reason why, as mentioned earlier, Black Hat SEO has a short-term effect.

Below are seven specific methods used in the context of Black Hat SEO.

Types of Marketing: 10 Marketing Strategies

Buying links

Links are one of the most important factors in SEO. They give the page authority and are an important clue to Google that the site they are linking to deserves attention. For this reason, buying links was (and still is) quite a popular practice. Their providers create special pages where you can buy a lot of links pointing to the customer’s site. In the case of such transactions, the most important thing is their number. Selling links is not the same as a well-organized guest email campaign. This process includes posting quality content on thematically related pages. Such exchanges come down to the cooperation of two entities (for example, a company and an authoritative industry site), and not just “filling up” a lot of links.

Hiding links

Putting a link on a site that users can’t see isn’t that hard, you just need to add it as white text on the edge of a page of the same color. However, Google is not easily fooled, as the algorithms are able to detect this behavior.

In addition, Google expressly forbids methods such as:

– hiding content behind the image;

– hiding text outside the screen using CSS;

– use font size 0;

– placing links with small characters such as a dot or a hyphen.

Link hiding is typically used for redirects that are not related to context. For example, it is understandable that a marketing blog will contain links to SEO, technology, or PR websites. However, links to pages of oriental restaurants from another country should not be there, so in such a situation, the site owner will probably use the above methods to hide them. It is also worth adding that such links, the presence of which does not make sense in the context of the page’s subject, in themselves negatively affect the site, as they blur its thematic meaning from the point of view of Google.

Disguise

For example, a user enters the phrase “best movies of 2020” into Google. One of the search results pages should contain a list of several dozen such items. The user opens the link, but finds gambling at this URL. This is how disguise works. This is an advanced method that creates two versions of the same page. One of them is configured in such a way as to occupy the highest position when analyzed by a search robot. The target user is shown only the second option. It’s worth noting that content masking isn’t always a bad thing. For example, JavaScript and Flash graphics sometimes have indexing issues. Some sites then use some form of masking to improve analysis of this type of content. In such cases, Google does not impose a penalty. “Black”

“Doorway” (input) pages

The purpose of the doorway (jump page) is to redirect the accumulated traffic to another site that the user would not visit of his own free will. This method is used, for example, on sites with pirated content, where clicking on one link even opens a lot of ads or leads to sites that start downloading malware. Technically, doorways work similarly to masking pages, but with this method, traffic is redirected to a different URL, and not to the second option.

Filling with keywords

It is thanks to the keywords that Google is able to recognize the subject of the page, so you should carefully add them to the text. However, deliberately placing too many of them at the expense of content readability is already a good fit for Black Hat SEO. Keyword stuffing is intended to increase the visibility of a given page for related queries. This method still worked to some extent ten years ago. However, Google’s algorithms are now more advanced and better able to recognize the topic of a given page. Therefore, filling with keywords will not help in any way, but will worsen the user experience. Since unnatural keyword stuffing is undesirable from the user’s point of view, techniques like those discussed in the context of link hiding are also often used for keyword stuffing.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content occurs when one or more domains have identical content. One often repeated myth is that Google severely penalizes even small amounts of duplicate content. The creators of the popular search engine are aware that duplicate content often occurs naturally and is sometimes difficult to get rid of (for example, in the case of online stores). For this reason, penalties are only imposed on those sites that intentionally and quite knowingly want to manipulate search results with a huge amount of duplicate content. According to Google, even using duplicate product descriptions from a manufacturer won’t hurt a site’s rankings, although it’s always a good idea to replace them with unique content, of course.

Automatically generated content

Duplicate content is easy to spot with a variety of tools, so Black Hat SEOs try to “enhance” such content a bit by automatically generating or modifying it.

Automated texts

More often you can find the practice of “mixing” articles, which creates the so-called synonymous texts. To create them, you need to prepare a special template.

Selected terms in several synonymous variants are enclosed in curly brackets. When mixing, the program selects random words, which creates versions of the text with the same meaning, which does not have problems with duplication. Such texts are of limited use (they can help reduce duplication in the case of, for example, short descriptions of categories in an online store). However, if they are used to duplicate content intended to manipulate search results without creating any new value for the user, Google may take action against the website.

What to do if the site has received a penalty?

In this case, you should use the services of an agency that will conduct an SEO audit. The audit will allow you to find out what exactly contributed to the imposition of a fine and what actions to take to correct the situation.

How to restore the trust of the search engine?

To prevent conflict with Google, the solution is simple – you just need to follow the recommended positioning practices while following your long-term White Hat SEO strategy. By providing users with great content and a quality user experience, trust in the algorithm can be restored over time. By focusing on “correct” positioning techniques, you can create a good foundation for future SEO success.

On-Page SEO

Most people think that on-page SEO comes down to just adding a few keywords here and there. This is wrong. While keyword placement still matters, it’s far less important than it used to be.

While on-page optimization isn’t as straightforward as it used to be, it’s still arguably the easiest part of SEO. It’s one of the few things you have complete control over that doesn’t require any special technical skills. If you can do basic website editing, write (or know someone who can) and are willing to do a little research, you can do it well.

So let’s get started.

content

1. Basics of on-page SEO

2. How to create content for SEO

3. How to optimize content

4. Advanced on-page optimization

5. Tools for on-page SEO

Google ADS and Facebook ADS, which one to choose?

Part 1

Basics of on-page SEO

Let’s first make sure we understand what on-page SEO is and why it’s important.

What is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO (also known as “on-page SEO”) is the practice of optimizing web pages to improve their search engine rankings. This includes optimizing the visible content and HTML source code.

Why is on-page SEO important?

Google checks the content on your page to determine if it is a relevant result for a search term. Part of this process involves searching for keywords.

Screenshots from the Google page How search works .

But on-page SEO is about more than including keywords in your content, much more.

Ultimately, Google looks for the most relevant search result for a query, so their algorithms look for other relevant content on the page as well. If your page is about dogs but you don’t mention different breeds, Google knows there are probably more relevant results.

Relevance is an important part of on-page SEO. If you don’t get it right, you won’t be able to rank.

part 2

How to create content for SEO

Before you even think about “technical” optimization, like placing keywords here or there, you need to create content that Google wants to rank. To do this, you need to decide on the main target keyword. Read our guide to keyword research if you don’t know how.

Otherwise, here are four things you need to master:

Relevance
thoroughness
Uniqueness
Clarity

1. Relevance

Relevance means matching your content to search intent and is perhaps the most important part of on-page SEO. If you don’t give users what they want, your chances of ranking are close to zero.

Since no one understands search intent better than Google, the best starting point is to analyze current top-ranking results for the three Ks of search intent:

Content type
Content Format
Content delivery method

We’ve already covered this concept briefly in our Keyword Research Guide . But we’ll take it a little further here, as again, the consistency of your content with search intent is critical.

1. Content type

The content type usually falls into one of five categories: blog posts, product pages, category pages, landing pages, or videos. For example, all the pages that rank in the top for “black long dress” are category pages of well-known online stores.

US ranking data for “long dress” from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer .

If you want to rank for this keyword, it’s unlikely you’ll achieve it with a blog post. Users are in buy mode, not explore.

However, for some keywords, not everything is so clear.

If we look at the top results for “plants”, you’ll see a combination of online shopping pages and blog posts.

US ranking data for “plants” from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer .

If you encounter such a situation, proceed at your own discretion. In this case, although the results are roughly 50/50 split between blog posts and e-commerce pages, the top three are made up of e-commerce pages. This suggests that most users want to buy rather than explore, so you’re probably more likely to rank for that keyword with an ecommerce page.

2. Content Format

The content format concerns mainly blog posts, as they usually take the form of instructions, lists, news articles, opinions, or reviews.

For example, all results for “force restart iPad” are how-to guides, except for those posted on apple.com.

US ranking data for “iPad force restart” from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer .

For “marketing ideas”, all results are lists.

US ranking data for “marketing ideas” from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer .

To have the best chance of ranking for any of these keywords, you need to follow a common path. Trying to rank with a list when users want to see a how-to guide will be a challenge.

However, as with content type, SERPs are not always as obvious as in the examples above.

Just look at the pages ranking at the top for “how to get more subscribers on YouTube”. There is a fairly even distribution between blog posts in how-to guide and list formats.

US ranking data for “how to get more YouTube subscribers” from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer .

In this case, since there is a “how” part in the target keyword, this is probably the best approach. But it is worth noting that there is no single answer. Everyone sees things differently and you can go either way. We chose the list format for our post on getting more YouTube subscribers because it seemed more appropriate for the tips we wanted to share.

Our 9th-ranked page for “how to get more subscribers on YouTube”.

2. Content delivery method

The way content is presented is its main commercial feasibility. For example, those searching for “how to make a latte” seem to want to learn how to make one at home—without special equipment.

US ranking data for “how to make a latte” from Ahrefs Keyword Research .

And for “best MacBook,” people are clearly looking for the most up-to-date results.

US ranking data for “best MacBook” from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer .

If suddenly you have not yet understood the essence, the way of presenting content is not always so unambiguous. If you look at the top results for “fried rice recipe”, you will see a variety of options: the best, simple, restaurant-style, etc.

US ranking data for “fried rice recipe” from Ahrefs Keyword Research .

In this case, one can only guess about the ideal way to present content. Just choose the method that you think will be the most attractive and useful for those who are looking for “how to cook fried rice”.

PROFESSIONAL ADVICE

While it’s important to align your content with what users expect to see, you may not always want to act like everyone else. If you’re confident that you can grab users’ attention with a different type, format, or delivery of content, feel free to take the risk.

2. Thoroughness

Having content that broadly matches the search intent is a good start, but it’s rarely enough. To earn a place on the first page of Google, it must deliver what it promises. And this means covering everything that users expect and want to see.

Given that you’ve identified the three K’s of search intent, you probably already have a rough idea of what users want to see. For example, if you are writing about how to buy bitcoin and the top ranking pages are aimed at beginners, it would probably be inappropriate to explain the blockchain in detail.

However, the analysis of the three K’s gives only a general idea of the intention. To get a better idea of what your content should cover, you need to dig deeper and analyze the relevant pages ranking at the top.

The emphasis here is on “relevant”. If you are targeting the keyword “best golf club sets” and planning to write a post about the best sets, then there is no point in analyzing and drawing inspiration from e-commerce pages or posts about individual clubs ranking at the top. You need to analyze pages similar to yours.

Let’s see how to do it.

Look for common subheadings

Most pages break topics into subtopics with subheadings. They can give you a quick idea of what users are looking for, especially if you notice the same or similar subheadings across multiple pages.

For example, if we check the subtitles of other on-page SEO guides, we can see that each page has a definition.

Page #1 in the SERP for “on-page seo”.

Page number 2 in the issue of “on-page seo”.

Page #3 in the SERP for “on-page seo”.

Considering that this information is available on all relevant pages in the top ranking, we can conclude that users are interested in it. Google probably knows that pages that answer these questions satisfy users more than those that don’t, and prefers to rank them higher.

If you’re making a list, you can also look at the subheadings to get an idea of specific products, services, or tips you might want to mention.

For example, if we use Ahrefs SEO Toolbar ‘s free on-page optimization report , you’ll see that the top ranking pages for “best golf club sets” mention some of these sets.

Page #1 subheading data for “best golf club sets” sourced from Ahrefs SEO Toolbar .

Subheading data on page #2 in SERPs for “best golf club sets” sourced from Ahrefs SEO Toolbar .

The main thing is not to forget to apply this approach with a grain of salt. If your keyword is “best golf club sets” and every top ranking page mentions a set you know is terrible, you shouldn’t include it just because everyone else did.

Look for subtopics among pages ranked by keywords

According to our study of three million search queries , on average, a top-ranking page ranks in the top 10 for nearly 1,000 other relevant keywords.

Many of these keywords represent other searches for the same things. For example, if we submit the top 1 page for “best golf club sets” to Ahrefs Site Explorer and look at the “Organic Keywords” report, we can see that it also ranks for keywords such as:

best set of golf clubs
best golf club sets 2020
nice set of golf clubs
best complete set of golf clubs
best golf kit

Screenshot from Ahrefs Site Explorer .

But some keywords will represent subtopics that fall under a broader topic.

For example, this same page is also in the top 10 for the following queries:

golf club sets for men
best budget golf clubs
best golf club brands
best set of golf clubs with bag
best golf clubs for beginners

Screenshot from Ahrefs Site Explorer .

Searching for subtopics among the keywords of relevant pages ranking at the top is a great way to find something you might want to mention in your content.

Another way to do this is to look for keywords that overlap across multiple pages. To do this, paste a few URLs of relevant pages into the Ahrefs Missing Semantics tool and then play with the number of intersections until you get a reasonable set of results.

Insert top-ranking relevant pages into Ahrefs’ Missing Semantics tool …

… Then adjust the “Intersect” radio button until you see the keywords representing the subtopics.

Check pages manually

Searching for common subheadings and keywords is the fastest way to figure out what needs to be said. But this does not give complete information. Nothing replaces the manual analysis of the pages to get a complete understanding of the topic.

If we open the top 3 pages of the best golf club sets, we can see that most of the sets featured are starter sets under $300. None of these pages list the “best” kits because they cost thousands and thousands of dollars. This tells us that this keyword is mostly searched by beginners, so it makes no sense to write reviews of top-class products because users will not find it useful.

In addition, we see that most popular pages list the pros and cons of each kit.

The pros and cons described on page #1 in the SERPs for “best golf club sets”…

…and the same information is presented on page #2.

This gives us an idea of how we should structure our publication for users and the product attributes they are most interested in. For example, the durability of the bag seems to be an important selling point for those looking to buy a set of clubs.

Look at issuance functions

In addition to analyzing competitor pages, you can also get useful information by looking at various SERP features, such as response boxes and People Also Searching (PAA) boxes.

For example, for the query “best golf clubs” there is no answer block, but there is a PAA block. And these questions provide insight into other things that users might be interested in.

Block “People are also looking for” for the query “best golf club sets”.

The penultimate question tells us that users are probably very price sensitive and want a set of quality clubs at a reasonable price. This confirms our assumptions obtained after manual analysis of pages ranking in the top. Most users are almost certainly beginners and are not looking for the top clubs.

If we look at the results for the query “how to swing a stick”, we can see that the answer box is a YouTube video.

Video on Youtube in the block with answers to the query “how to swing a stick”.

Even if you were to target this keyword with a blog post, the fact that a video appears in the answer box tells us that users are probably interested in visual aids. For this reason, it makes sense to include a video or image showing the swing in your post.

3. Uniqueness

It’s critical to give users what they want, but you also need to offer them something new. Don’t do this and your content will be the same as everyone else’s. Nobody wants to give links to the next content of the same type.

Everything we’ve seen so far has been to provide a winning structure for your content, but there still needs to be room for some creativity.

For example, if we look at the SERPs for “SEO tips”, the intent is clear. People need a list of tips to improve ranking positions and increase traffic.

US ranking data for “SEO tips” from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer .

This is exactly what we did, as you can see from the ranking of the post in second place.

While many of the tips on our list aren’t unique, there are some that you won’t find anywhere else. One of them is to embed videos in relevant posts to get traffic from Google. If someone comes to our page, finds this tip helpful, and decides to share it with others, they have no choice but to share a link to our page.

This is a bit more difficult to pull off for other content types, but still possible.

For example, it might seem almost impossible to create a unique product or category page, but you can always play around with things like:

improved filters
improved product photos
unique product descriptions
reviews

4. Clarity

No matter how well your content matches the search intent or how carefully crafted it is, no one will read it if it’s incomprehensible. For example, the page below matches the user intent for the keyword “all-grain brewing”—but it’s a canvas of small text that no one wants to read.

Great result, but it’s a canvas of text!

Follow these simple tips to create understandable content that people will want to read.

Use lists for those who don’t like to read a lot.
Use descriptive subheadings (H2-H6) for the hierarchy.
Use images to break up text.
Use simple words everyone understands.
Use short sentences and paragraphs , avoid “text canvases”.
Use large font sizes so that readers do not have to strain their eyes.
Write as you speak to make the text more interesting and conversational.

It’s about making it as easy as possible for users to find what they’re looking for. If you list everything people want to know on your page but they can’t find it, they’ll hit the back button looking for a clearer, easier to read page.

In addition to the advice above, we also recommend putting “need to know” content before “good to know” content. This is known as the inverted pyramid method.

For example, when we wrote the guide on comparing 301 and 302 redirects, there were a lot of questions to consider. But thanks to the analysis of the SERPs, we also found out that most users just want to know the difference between these two types of redirects. So while we have written a detailed guide explaining the pros and cons of both types, we have tried to summarize the key differences in one sentence at the very beginning of the post.

If you’re not sure what is “need to know” and what is “good to know” for your topic, take another look at the pages ranking at the top. If we do this for our “best golf clubs” example, we can see that they all list the best sets of clubs before going into details about each set, so people will probably want to know which are the best. before learning about the pros and cons and other information.

Part 3

How to optimize content

Creating content that Google and users want to see is the hard part. Now you just need to optimize the “technical” stuff like meta tags and URLs. It’s the icing on the cake and helps Google and users make sure your page is the top result for a query.

Here is a short checklist.

1. Include the keyword in the title

Page titles are usually enclosed in an H1 tag. This is probably why including your keyword in the title has always been traditional wisdom in SEO.

Google’s John Mueller even confirmed the importance of headlines in 2020.

When it comes to text on a page, the title is a really strong signal that tells us that this part of the page is about a specific topic.

John Mueller, Google search engine lawyer

Including a keyword in the title is a common practice for most SEO professionals. You probably noticed them in the headlines of our posts.

Keywords in our title tags.

Just keep in mind that sometimes it makes sense to use not the exact keyword in the title, but it’s close variant. For example, the main target keyword for this post is “SEO Outsourcing” and the title is “How to Outsource SEO (Simple Diagram)”.

It’s also important that your titles sound natural, so use conjunctions and stop words where necessary.

2. Use Short and Descriptive URLs

Short and descriptive URLs help users understand what a page is about before clicking on it.

Most CMSs make it easy to change the URL (the part after the domain and subfolders) and the easiest way to optimize it is to set your target keyword for it. We do this for almost all of our blog posts.

Just know that this is another time to use your target keyword when and if it’s appropriate. In some cases, it is better to vary requests. For example, our target keyword for this post is “how long should the blog post be”. But since it seemed a little long and awkward to us, we used “blog post length” instead.

Brevity is important because Google truncates long URLs in SERPs.

3. Optimize the title tag

Having an eye-catching title tag is important because it shows up in search results.

The title tag in search results.

Often the easiest way to create it is to set it to be the same as the title of the page or post. This is exactly what we do for almost all of our blog posts. For example, the post above has the same title and title tag.

This is also the title tag of our post.

However, there are times when you need to change your approach a little, for example, if your title is too long. As with URLs, Google truncates long title tags in search results.

Use common sense to shorten overly long headlines. For example, in our content writing guide, we simply cut off the ending.

NOTE. If you’re creating title tags for hundreds or thousands of similar pages, such as product, category, or service pages, you’ll find it helpful to use the same formula for all of them. You can learn more about how to do this in our title tag guide below.

4. Write an engaging meta description tag

Google often displays a page’s meta description as a descriptive block in search results.

How often? According to our study of 192,000 pages, this happens about ⅓ of the time.

Meta descriptions are not a ranking factor, but they are still important because a compelling description can drive more clicks and traffic.

Use the following tips to quickly write an engaging description.

- - Expand your title tag. Include the USP that you didn’t fit in the title.
  - Follow the purpose of the search. Pay attention to what users are searching for.
  - Use an active voice. Contact users directly.
  - Be concise. Keep the description in 120 characters or less.
  - Use a keyword. Google highlights words and phrases that are closely related to the query.

Don’t spend too much time writing meta descriptions as these tags are relatively unimportant to the big picture.

5. Optimize your images

Images can rank in Google image search and drive more traffic to your pages. In fact, over the past 28 days, our blog has received over 4,000 visits from image search results.

Ahrefs blog visits from Google Images searches in 28 days.

Here is a quick three-step checklist for optimizing your images.

a) Name the images appropriately

Google says the filenames give them a hint about the subject of the image, so dog.jpg is better than IMG_859045.jpg.

Unfortunately, most cameras and smartphones use standardized names for pictures and images. This also applies to computers. If you are taking screenshots for a blog post, they will usually be named something like Screenshot 2021-01-12.png.

For this reason, you should rename them. Here’s how to do it.

- - Titles should be descriptive . black-puppy.jpg > puppy.jpg
  - Titles should be short . black-puppy.jpg > my-super-cute-black-puppy-named-jeff.jpg
  - Don’t spam keywords in the title . black-puppy.jpg > black-puppy-dog-pup-pooch.jpg
  - Use hyphens between words . black-puppy.jpg > black_puppy.jpg (This is an official Google recommendation )

b) Use descriptive alt text

Alt text (alt text) is an HTML attribute used in <img> tags to describe an image. It doesn’t appear on the page itself and looks something like this:

The main purpose of alt text is to make the page more accessible to visitors using screen readers. These programs convert page content, including images, to audio. Browsers also display alt text instead of images if the image doesn’t load.

Google’s John Mueller also stated that alt text helps rank in Google Images:

Translation: Alt text is extremely useful for Google Images if you want your images to rank there. Even if you’re using lazy loading, you know which image will be loaded, so pass that information in as early as possible and check how it renders.

When writing alt text, Google recommends “focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and is in context with the page content.” But they also advise: “Avoid stuffing alt attributes with keywords (keyword spamming), as this leads to a negative user experience.”

With that information in mind, here’s our top tip for alt text.

- - Write descriptively. Use relevant keywords where appropriate.
  - Write concisely . Be concise so as not to annoy users using screen readers
  - Write accurately. Describe what is actually shown in the picture.
  - Avoid keyword spamming. This may result in your site being treated as spam.
  - Don’t mention that this is an image. Don’t write “Image showing…” or “Picture showing…” in the description. Google and screen readers can figure this out on their own.

Let’s create alt text for this puppy photo for demonstration purposes.

If you’re using WordPress, you can easily add alt text to images when you embed them in posts.

And here are the instructions for adding alt text in Squarespace , Wix , and Shopify .

c) Compress images

Image compression reduces file size, which reduces download times. This is important because page speed is a ranking factor for both desktop and mobile .

There are many tools for compressing images, we like the ShortPixel tool . It has a web interface where you can compress up to 50 images at a time for free, and a WordPress plugin that compresses images during upload.

NOTE.With the free version of ShortPixel, you can compress up to 100 images per month, and more for a mere penny.

5. Add links to internal and external resources

Links to relevant internal and external resources help visitors navigate your site and find additional information. However, some people think that linking to other websites is bad for SEO.

It is a myth. There is no evidence that linking to other websites is bad for your SEO.

As John Mueller of Google said:

Linking to other websites is a great way to add value to your users. Links often help users learn more, check your sources, and understand how your content is relevant to their questions.

John Mueller, Google search engine representative

While he didn’t say anything about the effect of outbound links on SEO, he did say that they help users. And from Google’s guide to how search works, we know that a search engine is designed to help people “find the most relevant and useful results.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you have to link to anything, anywhere for the sake of it. Add links to internal and external resources where appropriate, such as sources, product recommendations, or relevant blog posts. You may have noticed that we refer to many internal and external resources throughout this guide.

Part 4

Advanced on-page optimization

Everything we’ve covered so far will be enough for good page optimization, but there are other things you can do. So, if you’re already ranking well and want to climb even higher, or just want to learn how to be smart and fast with on-page SEO, here are some “advanced” optimizations.

1. Optimize for blocks with answers

Answer boxes are a variation of the SERP feature that often appears at the top of search results. They answer the user’s question with a short excerpt from one of the most popular pages.

Block with answers to the query “what are local citations”.

Since the content of the answer block is taken from the SERP page, you can effectively shorten your path to the top position by “winning” this block.

Often easier said than done, but the basic principle is as follows.

- - - Rank in the top 10. Google usually pulls block content from one of these pages.
    - Make sure Google already shows the answer block. You can use it to figure out how to “answer” a question.
    - Provide an answer on the page. Google won’t be able to pull the response from your page if it’s not there.
    - Use the correct format. A paragraph of text, a list, or a table – what do Google and searchers expect to see?

Let’s say we want to know if it’s possible to use an answer box for our always up to date content post. If we paste the URL into Ahrefs Site Explorer and filter the top 10 positions in the Organic Keywords report , we can see that we are already in the top 10 for “always relevant content”.

US ranking data for “always relevant content” from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer .

If we look at the search results, we can see that the current answer block is a short paragraph with a definition of the term.

Definition in the block with answers for the query “always up-to-date content”.

To work with this answer box, we need to add a definition to our page.

On the other hand, if we wanted to win a block for the “most visited websites” query, we would probably need to include a table with the most popular search terms and their monthly search frequency.

2. Embed Content That Generates Links

Links remain an important Google ranking factor. While link building is off-page SEO and not on-page SEO, you can get more links by adding link-friendly snippets to your page.

How do you know which fragment will be attractive for links?

See why people link to similar competitor pages.

For example, the main target keyword of one of our posts is “long tail keywords”. If we insert this keyword into Ahrefs Keyword Explorer , we will see several similar posts with lots of backlinks.

US ranking data for “long tail keywords” from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer .

Let’s paste at least one of these posts into Site Explorer and look at the Ankora report . It shows the words and phrases that people most often use when linking to the page. In this case, we see that a lot of people are linking to the page because of the statistics.

This tells us that we should probably include some statistics in our post in order to increase the “likelihood of attracting links”.

If we shift gears and look at the Anchors report to find the page ranking in the first position for “SEO copywriting”, we can see that a lot of people are linking to it because of two unique concepts.

It probably doesn’t make sense for us to include these same concepts in our post, but we can mention some of our own unique ideas to increase the likelihood of attracting links. This is exactly what we did when we wrote about copywriting for SEO.

3. Get rich snippets with schema markup

Featured snippets are search results with additional information below the title, description, and URL.

For example, Google shows estimates, cooking times, and calories for these recipe pages.

Google extracts this information from the structured data on the page, also known as schema markup. In this case, the pages use a special type of schema markup called Recipe markup.

Here are a few other types of schema markup that can contribute to rich snippets.

How-to (Instructions)
product
Review (Review)
Software (Application)
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

For example, here is a page in the SERPs that uses FAQ markup:

Extended snippets with FAQ markup.

While featured snippets are not a ranking factor , many believe they can drive more clicks—at least on some pages.

Translation: There is no overall improvement in ranking positions from using structured data. As far as I remember, it does not change. However, structured data can make it easier to understand what a page is about, which in turn can make it easier to display its relevance (better targeting, maybe ranking for the right terms). (nothing new for me)

If you are using WordPress, you can apply schema markup to posts and pages using popular extensions like Yoast or Rank Math. The main thing to keep in mind is that not all content types are suitable for advanced search features such as rich snippets.

4. Improve Topic Relevance

Google considers a page more relevant to a search query if it “contains other relevant content besides the keyword.” For example, if your page is about dogs, a list of breeds will likely make your result more relevant when searching for the term “dogs”.

If you followed the tips in Chapter 2, your content should already contain a lot of relevant words, phrases, and concepts. This happens in a natural order as it is being written.

However, it is easy to miss something, especially when it comes to complex topics.

For example, this page is one of the top results for “how to brew beer”. This is a pretty thorough beginner’s guide, but it doesn’t mention the fact that you’ll need a siphon to bottle your beer from your fermenter.

A page about brewing beer that is missing important details.

In this case, if your ranking position doesn’t suit you and you’re not sure why it is, it might be worth looking into what you might be missing on your page.

Here are some ways to do it.

Use the “Also Discussed” report

The Also Discussed report in Keyword Explorer shows the keywords and phrases that are frequently mentioned on pages ranking in the top 100. Just enter your target keyword to instantly see what the top pages are talking about.

For example, if we check the report for “how to brew beer”, we see a lot of keywords related to ingredients and equipment:

hop inflorescences
yeast
barley malt
malt extract
wort cooler
mash kettle
automatic siphon

What is discussed on the top ranking pages for “how to brew beer”. Data from Ahrefs Keyword Research .

Given that most of these things need to be known to beginner brewers, it’s worth covering them in a beginner’s guide. If you forgot to talk about them, you may need to update your article.

Most importantly, do not forget that you should be guided by common sense. Just because a word or phrase appears in the Also Discussed report doesn’t necessarily mean you should talk about it in your content. Use this report to find important things you missed.

Perform TF-IDF Analysis

TF-IDF (from the English TF – Term Frequency, IDF – Inverse Document Frequency) stands for the frequency of occurrence of the term and the inverse frequency of the document. It is a statistical measure used to evaluate the relative importance of a word in the context of a document. Calculated by comparing the frequency of this word in the document and the frequency of the word in all observed documents.

By performing TF-IDF analysis between your page and other relevant pages ranking in the top, you can sometimes uncover concepts exposed by competitor pages that you have missed.

For example, if we do this kind of analysis for our post on negative SEO, we can see that competing pages are talking about things like a rejection file and unnatural links.

Just remember that the idea here is not to “cram those keywords” into your content, but to bring out relevant ideas and concepts that you may have forgotten to mention. You can then update your content to make it more current and complete.

Also keep in mind that most TF-IDF analysis tools suggest that you use “important” words and phrases a certain number of times on your page. We do not recommend using them in this way.

WHAT ABOUT LSI KEYWORDS?

LSI keywords do not exist .

Translation: There is no such thing as LSI keywords – anyone who says otherwise is wrong, sorry.

The popular “LSI keyword” tools are completely unrelated to LSI and it’s completely unclear how they generate their keyword recommendations. While they may come up with useful ideas in some circumstances, in my experience, their recommendations are rarely outstanding.

How to Optimize for Blocks with Google Answers
Featured Snippets Guide
How to write the perfect meta description
How to use schema markup for SEO
LSI Keyword Guide

Part 5

Tools for on-page SEO

Before wrapping things up, let’s take a look at a few free tools to help with everything covered in this article. Adding title, meta description, OG and structured data tags to posts and pages.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (Free)

Search for missed issues with title and meta description tags, alt text and OG tags on the site.

Ahrefs SEO Toolbar (Free)

Analysis of the structure of other pages ranking in the top.

MetaTags.io (free)

Preview how the title and meta description tags, as well as URLs, will appear in search results.

ShortPixel (free)

Image compression and optimization.

Merkle’s Schema Markup Generator (Free)

Create many types of structured data in the Google-recommended JSON-LD format.

Rich Results Test (free)

Checking structured data on pages to determine if they are suitable for using rich snippets in search results.

GLOBAL SEO

Global SEO refers to the process of optimizing a website or online content to rank well in search engine results pages (SERPs) for a global audience, as opposed to a local or regional one. The goal of global SEO is to increase the visibility and reach of a website or content to users around the world, regardless of their location.

Global SEO involves a variety of tactics, including keyword research and optimization, content creation and localization, technical optimization, link building, and social media marketing. It is important to consider cultural and linguistic differences when creating and optimizing content for a global audience.

In addition to optimizing for search engines, global SEO also involves understanding and adapting to different search engine algorithms, as well as user behavior and preferences in different regions of the world. This may include different search engines being popular in different countries or regions, as well as varying search terms and trends.

Purpose of Global SEO

The purpose of global SEO is to increase the visibility and reach of a website or online content to a global audience. This is important for businesses or organizations that operate internationally, or for those that want to expand their reach beyond their local or regional market.

By optimizing for a global audience, a website or online content can attract more traffic, leads, and sales from around the world. This can result in increased brand awareness, revenue, and growth opportunities.

Global SEO also helps to establish a strong online presence for a brand or organization, which can be especially important in today’s digital age. With more and more consumers turning to the internet to research products and services before making a purchase, having a strong online presence can be critical for success.

Overall, the purpose of global SEO is to help businesses and organizations connect with a wider audience, build their brand, and achieve their goals on a global scale.

Importance of Global SEO

The importance of global SEO lies in its ability to help businesses and organizations reach a wider audience, expand their market reach, and increase their revenue and growth opportunities on a global scale. Here are some specific reasons why global SEO is important:

Increased visibility: Global SEO helps websites and online content rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords, making them more visible to a larger audience.

Greater reach: By optimizing for a global audience, businesses can expand their reach beyond their local or regional market, connecting with potential customers from around the world.

Improved brand awareness: Global SEO can help businesses establish a strong online presence and increase their brand awareness, which can be important for building trust and credibility with potential customers.

Increased revenue: By attracting more traffic, leads, and sales from a global audience, businesses can increase their revenue and growth opportunities.

Competitive advantage: In today’s global marketplace, businesses that invest in global SEO can gain a competitive advantage over those that do not.

Overall, the importance of global SEO is clear for businesses and organizations that want to succeed in today’s digital age and connect with a wider audience on a global scale.

LOCAL SEO

Local SEO refers to the process of optimizing a website and its content to improve its visibility in search engine results for local searches. Local SEO is particularly important for businesses that have a physical presence in a specific location or serve customers in a specific area.

The goal of local SEO is to increase the chances of your website appearing at the top of local search results when someone searches for a product or service in your area. Local SEO strategies include optimizing your website for local keywords, creating local business listings, getting listed in online directories, and building local citations.

By implementing effective local SEO strategies, businesses can improve their visibility online, attract more local customers, and ultimately drive more revenue to their business.

Purpose of Local SEO

The purpose of local SEO is to improve the visibility of a business’s website and online presence in local search results. Local SEO helps businesses to reach potential customers in a specific geographical location and attract them to their physical location or online store.

The primary goal of local SEO is to help businesses rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for local queries. This can help businesses attract more qualified traffic to their website, increase brand awareness, generate leads, and ultimately drive more revenue.

Local SEO is particularly important for businesses that have a physical location, such as a storefront or office, and rely on local customers to drive sales. By optimizing their online presence for local searches, businesses can connect with potential customers who are actively searching for their products or services in their local area.

Overall, the purpose of local SEO is to help businesses improve their online visibility, attract more local customers, and ultimately grow their business.

Importance of Local SEO

Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of optimizing your website and online presence to increase your visibility in local search results. It is essential for any business that wants to attract customers from their local area, such as brick-and-mortar stores, restaurants, and service-based businesses.

Here are some of the key reasons why local SEO is important:

Increased visibility: Local SEO helps you get found by potential customers in your local area when they search for products or services related to your business.
Increased website traffic: Local SEO can drive more traffic to your website, which can lead to increased sales and revenue.
Improved customer experience: Local SEO helps to improve the customer experience by providing them with relevant and accurate information about your business, such as your address, phone number, and hours of operation.
Better search engine rankings: Local SEO can help improve your search engine rankings for local search terms, making it easier for customers to find you online.
Competitive advantage: If your competitors are not focusing on local SEO, you can gain a competitive advantage by optimizing your online presence for local search.

Overall, local SEO is a critical part of any business’s digital marketing strategy, as it helps to increase visibility, drive traffic, and improve the customer experience.

6.Off-Page SEO

OffPage SEO is the process of optimizing a website for search engine rankings outside of the website itself. It includes things like link building, social media engagement, and other factors that can affect how well a website ranks in search results.

Why is OffPage SEO important?

Off-page SEO is an important subfield of search engine optimization because it helps improve a website’s search engine visibility and organic website traffic. Through off-page SEO, a website can receive high-quality links (backlinks) from other websites, which improve its authority and thereby its ranking in search engines.

5 tips for off-page SEO

OffPage SEO is a complex and ever-changing field, and it’s important to stay current with the latest trends and best practices. Nevertheless, there are some general tips for successful off-page SEO:

Link Building (Backlinks) : As already mentioned, link building is one of the most important OffPage SEO activities. In general, the links should come from quality websites that are relevant to your site. Also, your links should be placed on pages with editorial content (i.e. not just a list of links).
Social Media : Social media is a great way to connect with potential customers and promote your website. Make sure you post interesting and engaging content that will get people to visit your site and backlink.
Business Directory Submissions : Many directories allow you to submit your site for inclusion in their listings. This can be a great way to get links from quality industry websites.
Guest Posting : Guest posting on other blogs is a great way to get your name and website out there. Make sure you write quality content that will engage readers and encourage them to visit and link to your site.
Forum Participation : Participating in forums related to your site’s topic is a great way to build relationships with other webmasters and potential customers and get backlinks. Make sure you add value to the conversations and provide helpful information.

What are the most common misconceptions about OffPage SEO?

A common misconception about off-page SEO is that it’s not as important as on-page SEO. This is not true – both are important for a good search engine ranking.

Another misconception is that off-page SEO is all about link building. While links are important, off-page SEO involves more than just link building. Social media, directory listings, and guest posts can all be part of a successful off-page SEO strategy.

Finally, some people think OffPage SEO is easy. Again, this is not true – OffPage SEO can be time consuming and require a lot of work. However, the effort can be worth it if you contribute to a high ranking in the search results.

How to measure the results of your OffPage SEO campaigns

There are a few ways to measure the results of your OffPage SEO campaigns:

Check the number of backlinks to your website . Use a tool like Ahrefs to see if the number of backlinks has increased since you started your off-page SEO efforts.
Check the quality of the backlinks to your website . In addition to the quantity of backlinks, it is also important to check the quality. Look for backlinks from quality websites that are relevant to your site.
Check the reactions to your social media and forum activities . The more comments, likes and shares you get, the better. This shows that people care about what you’re saying and are willing to share your content with their followers.

7.TECHNICAL SEO

Technical SEO or Technical SEO is used to improve the visibility of a website and the user experience through technical optimization.

The relevant SEO measures are implemented in the so-called on-page area, i.e. they relate to the websites themselves. The goals of technical search engine optimization include simplified indexing by search engines, clean source codes, clear HTML structures and good page speed.

What does technical SEO do for your website?

You have a great design, excellent products, brilliant images and first-class texts: but your website is still not successful? One reason for this may be technical errors. The intricacies of technical SEO often put many stumbling blocks in the way of even well-positioned websites.

In this case, it is important to subject the entire site to systematic technical SEO optimization. If technical search engine optimization is implemented professionally, you will benefit from more visibility, more visitors and ultimately more sales.

Important questions for successful technical SEO

Does the website have an SSL certificate?
At the latest when the GDPR came into force, there is no way around secure encryption for websites. Online shops are particularly dependent on this trust element. We ensure that your certificates are correctly implemented and up-to-date and also convert your website to “https” with regard to internal linking.
Is there an up-to-date XML sitemap?
With an XML sitemap, you can show the search engine crawlers which pages your website contains overall. A sitemap should be dynamic, i.e. it should take account of newly generated or deleted pages. We check your settings and make sure that Google can find your sitemap.
Can search engine crawlers work unhindered?
It must be ensured that crawlers are not excluded from important pages by a noindex command or instructions in robots.txt. In addition, errors that unnecessarily burden the crawl budget should be fixed. With our technical search engine optimization, we find out whether there are such SEO errors and also make sure that internal links work perfectly.
Are breadcrumbs used?
Breadcrumbs (or breadcrumbs) show users which subpage they are currently on. Google also uses this information for navigation. Breadcrumbs are particularly useful for very extensive websites and are not only used for usability, but also for search engine optimization.
Does duplicate content hinder search engine optimization?
Each subpage of your website should only be accessible via a very specific URL. However, if more than one URL is valid for a page, search engines consider this to be duplicate content. Our SEO agency uncovers such duplications and carries out technical measures so that the relevant page is always clearly visible to search engines.
Is the website optimized for mobile devices?
For a long time now, Google has made no secret of the fact that responsive design is fundamental to search engine rankings. During SEO optimization , we check whether your site is mobile-friendly and whether it is displayed as desired on all end devices.
How fast does the page load?
The page speed of a page has also long been considered a ranking factor by Google. Various studies have shown that users tend to jump off after a loading time of more than 3 seconds. During a technical optimization, we uncover the errors that are preventing your website from loading.

This is what technical SEO measures do for the success of your website

Better overview for man and machine
Technical SEO gives your website a clear and well-structured structure, so that users and crawlers can reach their goals without detours. With a technically well-positioned page, you also tell Google directly which pages have priority for you in the ranking.
Shorter loading times
Google made it clear a long time ago that loading time is a very important ranking factor. Loading times that are too long lead to high bounce rates, which worsen your ranking. With Technical SEO, your website can be reached quickly and easily by users.
More traffic & income
With a technical optimization, your website is visible to your customers. This not only means higher traffic, but also more revenue. With Technical SEO, you lay the foundation for users to find you and navigate your website without any problems.
Don’t be afraid of ranking losses.
Even small mistakes can have a significant impact on your ranking. With technical SEO, we uncover problems and use long-term, targeted measures to ensure that your website remains strong in the future.