{"id":2470,"date":"2016-01-21T13:35:37","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T13:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/01\/21\/seo-basics-22-essentials-you-need-for-optimizing-your-site\/"},"modified":"2020-01-17T17:14:37","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T17:14:37","slug":"seo-basics-22-essentials-you-need-for-optimizing-your-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/01\/21\/seo-basics-22-essentials-you-need-for-optimizing-your-site\/","title":{"rendered":"SEO basics: 22 essentials you need for optimizing your site"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here we\u2019ll take a look at the basic things you need to know in regards to search engine <\/a>optimisation, a discipline that everyone in your organisation should at least be aware of, if not have a decent technical understanding.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of our most popular articles of all time is a post entitled SEO Basics: 8 Essentials When Optimizing Your Site<\/a>. It still does the business for us in terms of traffic, however it was first published in April 2013, so you can treat this as its long overdue and expanded update.<\/p>\n

What is SEO?<\/h2>\n

Quite simply, SEO<\/a> is the umbrella term for all the methods you can use to ensure the visibility of your website and its content on search engine results pages (SERPs).<\/p>\n

The methods vary from technical practices you can achieve behind the scenes on your website (we tend to refer to this as \u2018on-page SEO<\/a>\u2019) to all the promotional \u2019off-page\u2019 approaches you can use to raise your site\u2019s visibility (link-building, social media marketing).<\/p>\n

For the purpose of this article, when we talk about visibility, we mean how high up the SERP your website appears for certain search terms in the \u2018organic\u2019 results. Organic results refer to those that appear naturally on the page, rather than in the paid-for sections\u2026<\/p>\n

\"search<\/a><\/p>\n

Paid search is also a large part of search engine marketing. You can read more about this in our recent beginner\u2019s guide to paid search and PPC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why do you need SEO?<\/h2>\n

Building a strong site architecture and providing clear navigation will help search engines<\/a> index your site quickly and easily. This will also, more importantly, provide visitors with a good experience of using your site and encourage repeat visits. It\u2019s worth considering that Google is increasingly paying attention to user experience.<\/p>\n

When it comes to how much traffic is driven by search engines to your website, the percentage is substantial, and perhaps the clearest indicator of the importance of SEO<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Conductor suggested<\/a> 64% of all web traffic comes from organic search, compared to 2% from social, 6% from paid search, 12% direct and 15% from other referral sources.<\/p>\n

This tallies with our own data, with approximately 70-75% of SEW traffic coming from organic.<\/p>\n

Of all organic traffic, in 2015 it was found that<\/a> Google accounts for more than 90% of global organic search traffic. So obviously you need a strong presence on Google SERPs, but how strong?<\/p>\n

Well, according to this study from Advanced Web Ranking (which I\u2019ve trotted out before when discussing how to dominate Google<\/a>) shows that on the first SERP, the top five results account for 67.60% of all clicks and the results from six to 10 account for only 3.73%.<\/p>\n

\"ranking<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s therefore vital that your site appears in the top five results.<\/p>\n

How are you going to achieve this? With the following tips, which I\u2019ve split into two categories: what search engines are looking for and\u2026 drum roll\u2026 what they\u2019re not looking for.<\/p>\n

What are search engines looking for?<\/h2>\n

1) Relevancy<\/h3>\n

Search engines try to provide the most relevant results to a searcher\u2019s query, whether it\u2019s a simple answer to the question \u201chow old is Ryan Gosling?\u201d (the answer of which Google will likely provide without you having to leave the SERP) to more complicated queries such as \u201cwhat is the best steak\u00a0restaurant nearest to me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"where's<\/a><\/p>\n

How search engines provide these results is down to their own internal algorithms, which we\u2019ll probably never truly determine, but there are factors that you can be certain will influence these results and they\u2019re all based around relevancy\u2026 For instance: a searcher\u2019s location, their search history, time of day\/year, etc.<\/p>\n

2) The quality of your content<\/h3>\n

Do you regularly publish helpful, useful articles, videos or other types of media that are popular and well produced? Do you write for actual human beings rather than the search engine itself? Well, you should. Latest research from Searchmetrics<\/a> on ranking factors indicates that Google is moving further towards longer-form content that understands a visitor\u2019s intention as a whole, instead of using keywords based on popular search queries to create content.<\/p>\n

Basically, stop worrying about keywords<\/a> and focus on the user experience.<\/p>\n

3) User experience<\/h3>\n

There are many SEO benefits for providing the best possible user experience<\/a>. You need an easily navigable, clearly searchable site with relevant internal linking<\/a> and related content. All the stuff that keeps visitors on your webpage and hungry to explore further.<\/p>\n

4) Site speed<\/h3>\n

How quickly your webpages load is increasingly becoming a differentiator for search engines. Google may soon start labelling results that are hosted on Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP<\/a>) so this may possibly be the \u2018mobilegeddon\u2019 of 2016. Speaking of which\u2026<\/p>\n

5) Cross-device compatibility<\/h3>\n

Is your website and its content equally optimised for any given screen size or device? Bear in mind that Google has stated that responsive design<\/strong> is its preferred method of mobile optimisation.<\/p>\n

6) Internal linking<\/h3>\n

We\u2019ve talked about the benefits of ensuring your site has clear and easy-to-use navigation, but there\u2019s also a practice that editors and writers can carry out when publishing articles to help push traffic around the site and that may lead to higher trust signals for Google: internal linking<\/a>. (See what we did there.)<\/p>\n

Internal linking has many advantages:<\/p>\n