Search Engine Optimization
Begginners Guide 2019
This is a basic introduction to search engine optimization. SEO is always changing, for that reason, we will be updating this content constantly. Make sure to bookmark it and came back regularly.
SEO 101 Introduction Startup Guide
We are DMR Agency, and we help business all around the world with their SEO. For example, we use search engine optimization to ranks for keywords like SEO Salt Lake City or National SEO company, and attract more clients.
We understand how SEO can help business to get more traffic, leads and sales. That is why we decided to put a quick SEO Guide to help you understand what is SEO, how to rank in the search engines and how it can help your business.
What is SEO?
What is SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it's the process of optimizing a website in order to improve rankings in the search engines.
There are different sources of traffic, for example websites get direct traffic, social traffic and search traffic, which is related to SEO.
Search traffic is the traffic that is generated when someone is looking for something. People go to the internet and use search engines to search for what they are looking for.
Here is where the SEO process takes place. People get the results from websites. Search engines display hundreds of websites that can match what people are searching for.
Search engines, like Google have an search algorithm to determine which website content is more relevant for an specific search.
Then, websites optimized their content and signals to improve search results.
In this article we are going to give you an introduction on how search engines work and what are the ranking factors that makes websites to rank higher.
Search Engines
A search engine is a software built to provide results to a search query. When you search through the World Wide Web (www), you are searching for organized in a systematic way.
Search engines have algorithms to determine how to display information and what is relevant for a search.
In order for a website to be consider for a search engine, it needs to be indexed in Google. You can submit your website to Google using the Google search console.
After getting indexed, then Google will crawl your site.
Ranking Factors
When Google crawls at your website, Google will look for content relevancy and signals to determine the theme of your website, quality and relevancy.
Is here where SEO take place. You want to optimized your site to be relevant to search engines like Google.
Google's algorithm display search content based on its ranking factors. According to experts, Google has over 200 ranking factors. However, you can simplify them in three: technology factors, on site factors and external factors.
Technology Factors
In today's world, we depend and rely in the technology in everything we do. We want things working easier and faster than ever. For that reason, technology is a prominent factor in Google's algorithm.
This is the foundation of your site where you can build a proper SEO. Having a weak foundation can diminish all your other efforts to makes your site rank. Here are some of the main elements:
SEO Mobile Factors
By 2018 most of the web traffic came through mobile devices, in fact 58%. That is why Google look at how website looks like in mobile phones.
The Mobile elements Google looks at are responsiveness, speed and size element.
Responsiveness: It's all about user experience. You should ask yourself, if your website content will response to the device of the user.
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages): People use mobile devices in the go. They use their mobile networks to connect to the internet. In most cases this causes their connection being slower. For that reason, if a website is too heavy, then it will makes the user experience slower for a mobile device.
That is why we have something call accelerated mobile pages (AMP). This is a Google project design to makes the html code of websites lighter and faster.
User Experience: Lastly, another big factor is how the user will interact with your website on a mobile device. Sometimes is not enough make your content responsive, but mobile unique. There several tools and plugins, that allows to determine what content is for a large device screen like a desktop vs mobile devices.
Website Speed
As we mention before, speed is a big consideration factor for users. People wants thing faster and faster. You can check your website speed by using the Google PageSpeed insights tool. There are many factors that makes a website faster:
Hosting: Everything start with what is hosting your website, is it a dedicated server or a share server, and were is building upon. Amazon AWS is one of the best options because you pay as you use. If you are using a WordPress site, then WP engine is our recommendation because they use Amazon AWS.
CDN: Another way to speed up your website is using a CDN (content distribution network). You can add your statics files on your server and share it directly instead on your website. That will speed up your site drastically. Most hosting have the option to use a CDN.
Use a Cache: This can also help your website speed. Using a cache allows Google to save a static version of your pages, and display them faster when users comes to your website.
Minify CSS and JavaScript: JavaScript and a custom style sheet (CSS), is what makes your website looks good. However that also, slow down your website. The good news is that you can minify those files by using tools and plugins.
Compress Images: Images are awesome! but they can be heavy files that can slow down your pages. You can use tools like TinyPNG to compress your images without affecting the quality.
Website Readbilty and crawdability
Lastly as fast as technology, make sure that your website have elements that will help understand search engines to read and understand.
HTML Code: Use a website that use a code like HTML where search engines like Google can read it. Avoid websites that uses flash.
Meta information: is a code that allows Google to read it and attribute it to a specific content. For example, you can use metadata to tell Google what is your title, what is a headline or what is a image and what that image means.
There are multiple plugins that allow you to easily create meta information.
Make your website Crawl Available: You can use the search console to make your site available for indexing. Also, you can create a sitemap that will help Google to crawl the content of your site.