What is a search engine and how does it work?

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Many people tend to think that when a surfer types a query into the search bar, the search engine performs a real-time check of the various websites scattered across the web, finds the sites relevant to the query performed by the surfer, and displays the results, in descending order of importance. Well, things work a little differently.

The various search engines include software components which are called crawlers. The job of crawlers is to constantly crawl the web, find new web pages or those whose content has been updated and changed, decide whether the search engine wants to index them, and if so, keep copies of these pages in its databases.

So in fact, a surfer who queries in the search engine gets the results that exist in the index of the search engine, and not necessarily those that represent the current state of the various sites. Search engines strive to bridge this gap all the time, and find smart methods to prioritize the crawling budget of the various web pages so that they can get an increasingly up-to-date snapshot and present the search results in the most up-to-date way for that moment…

However, the real challenge of the search engine is to decide in what order to display the search results that already exist in the index to the various surfers. How, then, does the search engine know which of the search results is relevant to a query performed by the surfer? Here are 3 concepts that the SEO industry calls using the three letters that represent them: EAT – Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness or in Hebrew: expertise, authority, and reliability.

The search engines, and in particular the Google search engine, would like to present to surfers search results that represent sites with as much expertise as possible in their field, sites that are authoritative and trustworthy.

Here the question arises: how can a search engine, which is basically a software component, as advanced as possible, measure aspects like expertise, authority, and reliability? You can read about Google’s EAT mechanism, which is designed to perform exactly this task, in the article Get to know Google’s EAT.

What are the parameters that Google uses to rank sites?

In order for Google to be able to decide which of the web pages that exist in their index should be presented to a surfer for a particular search query, those search engines are required to make use of complex decision-making mechanisms that include reference to over 200 different parameters. Very few people know exactly what these parameters are, what their weight is, and also whether it is a single constitution mechanism for all the sites in the world or the search engines use several constitution mechanisms according to interest and niche (various categories like health sites, sports sites, news sites and the like). ).

However, the prevailing agreement is that Google’s search engine would like to rank high sites that are safe to use, that contain quality and valuable content for the surfer, that are authoritative in their field and experts in their field, that are optimized for mobile browsing and offer a great user experience. Built in a correct hierarchical manner and allowing the surfer to navigate them easily, the behavior of previous surfers who entered these web pages indicate satisfaction and is full of various other parameters which, we assume, that Google will use to rank the search results.

Some concepts worth getting to know before diving deep

Cannibalization of Key Phrases

Before we approach the job of website promotion, it will be important to understand what website promotion actually is. In fact, in the process of organically promoting websites, we are not really promoting a website but promoting certain pages on the site in the face of various search terms. Our ambition is that for the key phrases that are important to us, the search engine will display a single page to the surfer, which will best match the query performed by the surfer. To do this, publishers are required to invest time in properly planning the structure of the site, deciding what the purpose of each page on the site is, and making sure that no situation arises where the search engine displays more than one relevant page for a search query. The situation where there are several pages on the same site that match the same query is called ” keyword cannibalization “, and we will try to avoid this situation. Each page on our site has one address.

Conversion

The conversion ratio is a term that refers to the ratio between the number of surfers who performed a certain action that we asked them to perform on the site, and all the surfers who came to the site, in a certain period of time. Conversion rate is one of the most important elements in any marketing campaign, especially in organic website promotion. At the end of the day, when we want to measure whether the organic promotion process has helped the business, achieved its goal, and met the goals, we will ask ourselves what is the conversion rate we have achieved through the organic promotion.

Types of conversions can vary depending on the niche in which the business operates and its goals: for one business it will be important to get quality leads by leaving customer contact information, another business will define the important conversions in the form of customer phone calls to a business, others will decide to measure sales. As conversions, other businesses will decide that conversion for them is the customer joining the group they manage.

Why is this concept related to organic promotion? Because in the right promotion process we will seek to improve the site’s metrics not only by better rankings and by increasing the organic traffic to the site, but by improving the conversion rates in the value chain offered to the customer. For example, investing the budget needed to place a particular phrase in the search engine may be disproportionate to the expected revenue from that placement, whereas improving third-rate phrase click rates can bring greater value to the business.

The conversion ratio is a concept that will accompany any business that intends to drive a process of organic promotion in its business, on an ongoing and ongoing basis.

CTR

The acronym Click Through Rate – CTR refers to the click-through rate of surfers for a particular link. The click-through rate is the ratio between the number of surfers who clicked on the link and the total number of surfers for whom the link was displayed. Why is this concept associated with organic website promotion? Because the click-through rate of surfers is probably also a parameter of the search engines in ranking websites on the search results page. Think about it: if surfers are presented with a search result in the search engine for a query they have made and many of them choose not to click on it, the search engine may think it does not meet the surfer’s needs, then rank it lower down in the search results.

In contrast, a high click-through rate of a search result, along with additional metrics such as their time spent on the site, the number of pages they viewed, and other metrics, can signal to Google a search result relevant to such queries by the surfer.

Beyond that, a high click-through rate will inevitably lead to more site visits and will improve the business’ sales potential. Sometimes it is much easier to improve the click-through rate of surfers, than the organic ranking of a particular phrase on the search results page.

Stay time

Stay time is one of the metrics that the search engine can use to understand the satisfaction of the surfer on the site, and deduce from it whether it is worthwhile to rank certain pages on the site high on the search results page. A long stay can, admittedly, indicate a certain degree of satisfaction of the surfer from the site, but a time that was short does not necessarily indicate the opposite: sometimes the query that the customer makes is such that it can be answered through short and focused text. Common queries that are an example of this are the entry time of Shabbat, the date of the change to wintertime, the weather forecast and there are of course many more queries.

The planning stage in the process of organic promotion is critical to the success of the process. Mistakes we made due to poor planning at the planning stage can make the process very difficult afterward. When dealing with the planning of an organic promotion process one has to consider a whole set of aspects: What is the budget we have for promotion? What are our business strategy and business differentiation? What key phrases would we like to focus on? What services does the business provide to its customers? What are the sources of income for the business? Who will write the content for us? How do we manage the link profile? And many more good questions.

Research competitors

Just before we begin the process of planning and organically promoting our site, the most important part of creating a promotion strategy is understanding the activities of the competitors. At this point, we will try to map all our competitors, understand what benefits they provide to their customers, what services they offer we do not offer, what their site looks like, what user experience is offered on it, how much reliability, authority and professionalism the competitor’s site transmit, what profile looks like Their links, and countless other variables are worth checking out before getting started. why? Because only in this way can you, in fact, determine what is the business strategy that guides you, and what is the difference that your business offers, compared to the competitors.

Business strategy and differentiation

First and foremost, before beginning any process of promotion, we need to ask ourselves what we expect to get from a process of successful promotion. What will be considered in our eyes as the success of the organic promotion process: good placements of key phrases? Lots more surfers and organic traffic to the site? Increasing sales?

It will also be important to understand what the business differentiation of the business is in the niche in which it operates. The whole promotion process should be based on this differentiation. If, for example, a business is considered a liqueur in its field but very professional, it will have to address this in the promotion process in a wide range of aspects: design, logo, authority, link profile quality, site depth – all of these should signal to surfers that it is an authoritative business that produces quality content.

On the other hand, a business whose main advantage it provides is the low prices, should take this into account in the research of key phrases it will perform in order to promote the site, in headlines that will improve later, in the content incorporated on the site, and in the service and support behind the site.

Content strategy planning

Content is a very significant factor in any organic website promotion process. It is clear to everyone that without a quality content base a website, certainly in competitive areas, will not be able to move forward. However, what does it actually take to formulate a successful content strategy?

The answer is a comprehensive and comprehensive reference to the various aspects required in content management, including:

How often will the content be published on the site?
What will be the depth of content on the site?
Will a professional and niche content writer be required in the field or will any writer be able to do the work?
In what format will the various contents be published?
How do we avoid duplicate content?
Which would be better, to publish a lot of regular content or a little quality content?

The answer to all these questions and many other questions should actually be derived from the business strategy: What kind of business do I want to be? A business that provides knowledge or services? A business that deals with a few complex issues or a lot of simple and light-hearted issues? Am I in a dynamic and frequently changing field or is it in a relatively stable and static field?

We will return to a detailed content guide in the executive section of the guide, however, at this point, it is important for any business that reads the guide to understanding the importance of early planning of its content strategy.

Keyword research

At the end of the day, you will want to be ranked for key phrases that are important to you and no less important, not to be ranked for key phrases that will drive poor quality traffic to your site. How do you do that? It all starts with quality keyword research, where you will map the phrases that are important for you to be ranked high in the search engine for, understand the scope of searches for these phrases, discover other phrases you did not think of, find keywords that your competitors rank for and not yet, find ideas for writing articles on your topic, questions surfers are looking for in your niche, and more and more.

This is the place to point out that quality key phrase research is the foundation for your entire promotion process. It will determine what the site will look like, how the content strategy and service and sales systems will be formulated, how the menus on the site will be arranged, what the categories of content on the site will be, what tags you will use to help surfers navigate the site and what content will be included in Potter.

Website hierarchy planning

In order to achieve the best result from the site construction process, the planning of the hierarchy that will be integrated into the site is, in fact, a central key control. Since website promotion is a theory in which we promote pages on the site as opposed to key phrases that the surfers are looking for, it is of proper importance to properly distribute pages on the site according to the type of content embedded in them and their hierarchy on the site.

For example, if we want to run a news site, then we may choose to incorporate at the second thigh level, the one below the home page, the various topics that the magazine covers: economics, health, sports, law, consumerism, etc. Third level hierarchy, under the sports page, for example, you can divide the sports niche into categories: football, basketball, tennis, volleyball, handball, etc.

In this way, we will not create a situation where we try to rank a single page on a large number of key phrases from different content worlds. We can in this way signal to the search engine that a search for sports news – should lead to our sports page, while a more detailed search, of the result of a handball game held yesterday – should lead to the sub-category of handball, under the news page, at the third hierarchy level.

Planning the construction of the link profile

Later in this guide, we will deal extensively with the construction of an inbound link profile to the site. We will understand what a link is, what it looks like, what are the various components in the link need to be addressed in the process of proper promotion, and what are the different methods that will allow you to get different links to the site.

At this stage, when you are busy planning the organic promotion process, it will be important for you to understand that reference should also be made to the construction of the link profile:

How much of the promotion budget will be spent on links?
In what method would we like to build the links?
How do we disperse the anchor text and the sources from which the links are obtained?

Which is more important – content or links?

As time goes on in the promotion process, you will find yourself investing in two main worlds: the world of content and the world of links. Since your promotional budget is a limited budget, you will have to make a decision on how you invest your content budget and links, or rather, what the content budgeting rate of the content and the budgeting rate of the links will be.

This decision will be based, among other things, on the initial status of the site (how many external links the site has and how much quality content there is in it), the status of competitors, the niche in which you operate, the way surfers will actually consume your content. You have no choice but to write solely for the search engine), on the supply and demand of quality content writers in the field, and more.

Initial construction and connections

Connecting the site to Cloudflare

The Cloudflare service is a versatile service that allows you to manage the site’s cache sites around the world, and in fact, make accessible to the user content from the cache size that is closest to it physically. In this way, the service allows the acceleration of the loading of web pages managed on the site. Cloudflare also allows the site owner to receive information security services through advanced masking performed by the service for some of the data transmitted on the network, and also receive optimization services for more efficient management of javascript code.

Connecting the site to the search console

The Google Search Console tool is the most significant means of communication of the site owner with the Google search engine. The Search Console provides data about searches performed by surfers and led to the site, including the average site’s position on the search results page for those searches. The console also provides data about the quality of the Google index coverage for the site pages, information about security issues or manual actions taken against the site, information about inbound links to the site as well as internal links, information about the last reading time of the site map file, including a number of pages Scanned and much more information.

Each site promoter will take care of connecting the site to the Google console and will ask the site owner to grant him access to the console for the purpose of performing his day-to-day work.

Connecting the site to Google Analytics

The monitoring tool from Google that goes by the name Analytics is a powerful tool that will allow you to keep track of important metrics of website traffic, in particular, the number of visitors to the site for a given period, number of visits, dropout rate, average stay time, average page views and more. Such as browsing from certain devices, using certain operating systems, new visits versus repeaters, and more and more.

Google Analytics will also allow you to set Goals goals in order to thoroughly measure the sources of traffic that produce the highest quality conversions in relation to price.

An organic website promoter must use the analytics tool to understand whether the organic promotion process works and provides organic traffic to the site, and in cases where there is a problem, understand whether the problem is general at all site traffic sources or only organic search engine traffic.

Checking locations

Before you start a website promotion project, you must reflect on yourself, and of course to the customer, the initial status of the website. There are various tools on the market that will allow you to understand wherein the search results in the site you are promoting are ranked, for key phrases that you have chosen in advance.

Why do you need a location checking tool when the test can be done manually? Because a location checking tool offers you a test that is not affected by your browsing profile and the sites you have recently visited. A location checking tool can help you check the relevant data for browsing from a computer or tablet, from a mobile phone, from another country or from Israel, from a certain operating system, and a certain type of device.

Through a joint installation with you and the customer, the owner of the site you are promoting, you will be able to work transparently and see if the promotion process meets the defined goals. One of the mistakes that beginning site promoters make is to forget to connect the site to a placement checking tool right at the beginning of the process, and thus they lose valuable credit, especially in the stages of promotion that are easier to obtain.

SEO Tools

During your day-to-day work, you will probably adopt various tools that will help you perform various tasks: researching competitors and key phrases, mapping links, optimizing site pages, managing tasks, checking placements, managing the business profile on social networks, automation, day-to-day work, and various management tools. Invoices, orders, and quotes.

Using the various tools will allow you to accomplish many more tasks in much less time, improve the quality of the decisions you make, prevent you from making unnecessary human mistakes, and allow you to stay connected to the industry and enjoy the technological and innovative benefits of other companies launching into the field.

Content

Content, as mentioned earlier, is one of the most significant factors in any organic promotion process. Without quality content, the promotion process will not be able to succeed, certainly not for long. Many business owners believe that in the field in which they operate there is no room for writing long articles and filling the site with quality content.

However, the truth is that in almost every field you can find a large collection of content that the site should contain: answering surfers’ questions, professional articles from the field, major news in the niche in which the business is active, interesting case studies, guest posts on tangent products, trends, interesting data backed by research And more.

The rule of thumb is that the more in-depth, longer, more properly constructed the content is, and served in small portions, with the necessary extensions when needed, the better the infrastructure for organic site promotion will be created.

True, not every field requires lengthy content and scientific articles that shed light on core issues on the subject, but valuable content, which provides surfers with value, directs them within the sea of information in which they are flooded and helps them extract the main from the handle.

Choosing a content strategy

The choice of content strategy should be made in the first stages of website promotion, even in the planning stage. At this stage you will use advanced research tools to understand what interests the surfers in your niche, how often you will publish content on the site, what will be the length of the articles, who will write them, what will be the configuration of the content writers, what is required to write content in your niche, In particular, does it require special training, a dedicated academic degree, access to sources of information that cost a lot of money, or is it that any beginning content writer will be able to do the job.

These considerations are important because only after you have answered the key questions, will you, in fact, formulate an orderly plan for incorporating appropriate content on the promoted site.

How do you find good content writers?

If you want to manage your content strategy over time, it will be inevitable to find talented content writers, the ones you can trust. A good content writer is one who masters the language in which he writes at the level of a mother tongue, who adheres to the rules of language and syntax, who writes on the subject, at length but in a focused manner, who meets the schedules you agree (otherwise you will have a problem with angry clients). Appropriate, and the price it charges for writing can allow you to contract with it over time.

Experienced or novice content writers can be found in the dedicated Facebook groups or in various agencies that provide writing services, however at the end of the day, there is no substitute for a recommendation that comes from a colleague’s experience.

Content planning and deployment

If you are writing about a topic that is not subject to changes and changes in the niche in which you operate, and it will be possible to publish it without any change even in a month, then you can use automated tools that will allow you to properly plan the publication layout.

Why is this important?

The frequency with which you publish content is important because this content has two sides: the side that writes, but also the side that reads. Publishing invested and large articles too often to your target audience will cause you to miss this audience, as it will not have enough time to digest the material.

Also, posting content too infrequently can impair the engagement of the target audience in the content, and make them forget the possible contribution of your business.

Which is better, a lot of superficial or a little quality content?

Like answering many questions in the field of organic website promotion, here too the answer is: Depends. High-frequency superficial content can suit business-selling businesses, in areas where customers are not looking to deepen their knowledge, and where a high level of trust between the contracting parties is not required. In such cases, the purpose of publishing the content is often to serve as a reminder that the business is alive and well and continues to provide services.

In contrast, in cases where prospects are required to trust the professional, understand that he is an authority in his niche, and have the professional knowledge and tools to assist them, then writing in-depth content, albeit infrequently, can certainly deliver the goods.

What is lean content?

Lean content is content that does not add value to the surfer.

Many people tend to think that lean content is content with a small number of words. Well, that’s not necessarily the case.

Lean content can come in a wide variety of forms: pages to be printed on the site, duplicate content, content that has no new message to the reader, content with a very limited volume in relation to the niche it is reviewing, and more.

Search engines generally do not like the existence of lean content, and in some cases are even able to take various actions against sites that run lean content.

Duplicate content

Duplicate content is content that appears in such and such variations on the site itself or on other sites. Important to understand: Duplicate content does not always come from copying information in a prohibited manner that infringes copyright. Duplicate content can be created on the site due to a collection of circumstances: product pages with the same description and varying characteristics such as color, size, etc., print views or different pages on the site of the same content, recurring paragraphs on different pages on the site and more.

In principle, the creation of duplicate content on the site should be avoided as much as possible. When this is not possible, we have tools at our disposal that allow us to signal to the search engine which of the contents it is worth considering for the index. One of these tools is the Canonical tag.

The canonical tag

This is a tag that is defined at the top of the page, in the Header area and its function is to explain to the search engine what is the source page represents the original home of the content that appears on the page. Combining the canonical tag correctly will allow you to avoid manual action by the search engine for copyright infringement and content duplication.

The tag alternate

Another way to indicate to the search engine that the existence of different pages containing similar to identical content is legitimate is by using the alternate tag. Unlike the Canonical tag presented earlier, here the recommendation for the search engine is to index all the relevant pages.

When is it happening? Well, a common case of using the alternate tag is a case where different pages on the site are managed, in versions for different languages, different locations, and different dialects. In this working configuration, we actually want the search engine to index all the page versions and provide the customer with the most appropriate version for him.

The ideal structure for the article

Proper writing is an integral part of the SEO process since if we want the search engine to fully understand what the surfer can find in the article, we need to make its content accessible in an orderly fashion.

Maintaining one main title, several subheadings including regular content paragraphs, attaching table of contents to the article that will allow the surfer to skip directly to the content that interests him, making sure to include a date and name of the author of the article, maintaining a correct hierarchical sequence of titles, appendices, footnotes, internal links And external for text expansion – all of these are important components in creating content that will make the search engine index easy. Maintain the principle of submitting complex information in small batches, using the techniques presented above.

How to enhance content with emotion

At the end of the day, in order to mobilize the surfers for greater involvement in your site, you will need to make use of emotion-based content. How do you do it right? First, understand that emotion is a great motivator for action when properly incorporated into the body of the text.

For example, if you combine fear, joy, hope, sadness, pride, a sense of belonging, curiosity, humor, fulfillment, a sense of ability, and another whole range of emotions in your content, you will be able to keep the surfers longer on the site you promote, make them consume more Content, and motivate them with higher success rates for action.

Testing, optimization, and technical aspects

Along with the content and links, another important element is the ongoing optimization of various components on the site, in order to adapt them to the search engine and the surfers themselves. Here is a large part of the tests and optimization actions that every promoter must perform in order to improve the visibility of the site in the search engines.

Robots.txt

The Robots.txt file is used as an instruction file for the search engines, including which directories on the site allow the site owner to access the search engines, and what content the site owner recommends for the search engine to index.

Using the robots.txt file allows webmasters to prevent the indexing of sensitive pages on the site, or to reject the indexing of pages that are in the process of being edited and rearranged.

Sitemap

A sitemap file is a text file that helps the search engine understand which pages are on the site. Because the search engine uses internal and external links to discover new pages and prioritize its crawling budget, embedding a sitemap is very important to provide the search engine with a complete picture of the pages on the site.

It should be noted that there are different types of sitemaps: for texts, images, video, simple mobile phones, and news.

Improving the sitemap will allow the search engine to crawl your site more efficiently, and prioritize the crawling budget effectively.

Site

One of the most basic and important tests to perform before any organic website promotion process is mapping all the pages that the search engine indexes. This can be done using the command site: domain name.

The results that a site command will return: can teach us a lot about the state of the site. First, we can use it to understand whether the pages on the site are indexed correctly, and also how many pages from the site are indexed in the search engine. It would be natural if there were pages here and there that an engine decided not to index, but if a significant percentage of the pages on the site are not included in the index, it already says preachy.

Also, the site command can provide the site owner with some indication that the site has been hacked. In case the site owner recognizes that pages he does not know have been indexed, for example in the Chinese language, he can assume that this is the work of hackers who have gained control of the site.

Check the link profile

Just before starting the promotion work, another element that is very important to check is the status of the profile of the inbound links to the site. Using tools like Ahrefs, Majestic, Semrush, and others can help you in the craft of mapping. This way you will know whether resources are needed to thicken the link profile and whether there are inbound links that should be denied using the disavow tool.

Continued construction of the link profile is an integral part of the promotion work, and it must be done in no sense and in a controlled manner. Care must be taken to distribute the anchors so that they look natural and balanced (you can read more about this here ), to diversify the sources of the links and their quality, and to constantly monitor the development of the profile of the inbound links to the site.

Footer

The potter is the regular part at the bottom of the site, which is repeated on all pages on the site. In Potter, it is customary to manage horizontal and complementary information for the other menus on the site, and due to its limited size, search engines attach great importance to the internal links to various pages on the site that are managed on it.

In any promotion work, you should make sure that a Potter area has been defined on the site, and that it includes the links to the internal pages on the site, that it will be more important for you to promote, on commerce sites, preferably the Potter contains links to important product categories.

Hierarchy

In the planning chapter, we dealt with creating a methodical and logical hierarchy for the site even before the actual construction of the site. That is, at the design and characterization stage of the site. However, a site promoter does not always accompany the project of setting up and promoting the site from the beginning (in fact, most of the time he does not). Therefore, if the site promoter recognizes at the optimization stage that the hierarchy on the site makes it difficult to manage the site’s promotion (for example, there are multi-themed pages that are difficult to rate popular key phrases), then one of the actions he can take (carefully, of course) is to update and recreate the hierarchy. On the site.

Crawling budget

The search engine does not necessarily reach the site you are promoting every day. In fact, the frequency with which the search engine visits your site for the purpose of delaying and mapping pages added to the site depends on quite a few parameters: the number of links from various sites to your site, the frequency of site updates, the quality of site updates (search engine will not update its index The site), the history of the domain to which the site is associated and more.

Also, when it comes to you for the crawling visit of the search engine, the main challenge is to channel its visiting time to maximize the indexing of the pages that are most important to you. To do this, it will be important to ensure that the site loads quickly and the bandwidth of the media is sufficient (search engines declare that they operate as long as the user experience of the surfers is not harmed as a result of crawling activity), and the site – All allow the search engine to understand which pages on the site are more important to crawl and index.

Website speed

One of the important parameters for ranking the site in a high position in the search results is the user experience provided to the surfer (which we will deal with in an extensive chapter, later), and in particular the speed of browsing the site. The search engine will try to keep surfers away from slow sites, which are loaded in a lengthy process and which can result in high abandonment rates of the site, a small number of page views on average per visit, and less time.

It should be taken into account that in a user’s browsing activity on the site there are quite a few bottlenecks that make it even harder to connect to the site: the device the user is browsing, his surfing package, reception where he is, location of servers in the world, quality of communication company and more. Therefore, it will be important for website owners to make sure that they do not form the bottleneck that will cause the camel’s back to break.

AMP

Google’s AMP project is a project to accelerate web pages on mobile devices. You can read about the pros and cons of using AMP, as well as the innovative technology that makes it possible, in the separate article I wrote. When a website promoter approaches the job of promoting a website, one of the tests he must do is whether there is a justification for implementing AMP on the website (a complex implementation that requires technological orientation), in order to increase users’ browsing speed using mobile devices. If there is such a justification, the site promoter must act in front of the technical bodies that manage the technological infrastructure of the site, and implement it.

Sitelinks

Site links are usually displayed on the search results page, below the site’s main search result. In this way, in fact, the search engine allows surfers to directly access relevant internal pages on the site by clicking on the appropriate link. Unlike a sponsored promotion process, in the organic promotion the site owner has no control over the site links that will be displayed on the search results page, however, there are quite a few actions that the site owner can perform to encourage the search engine to generate such site links.

Title tag

The title tag or in its German name Meta – Description is the definition performed by the site promoter in order to signal to the search engine which title it should use when displaying the relevant page on the search results page. The title tag is of immense importance in website promotion, probably in relation to the very low cost of its update. A good title displayed in the search engine can result in higher click-through rates, more traffic flowing from the search engine, and even affect the position of the page on the search results page.

Important to understand: There is a difference between the title of the article or page you provided through the site’s management system and the title tag displayed in the search engine. They do not have to be the same. In the title tag displayed in the search engine, you can also incorporate marketing elements in order to increase the click-through rates of surfers.

However, you should be very careful about cases where you show the search engine one presentation, while surfers present another presentation. This is an action that could cause the search engine to take manual action against you (penalty).

One of the most important actions a website promoter can take in order to promote a website is a comprehensive update of the title tags in all the relevant pages for promotion. In doing so, it will be important for the site promoter to exercise great creativity and make the title tags stand out above the rest of the search results in the search engine.

Description Tag

The description tag represents, in effect, the content you recommend the search engine display below the title tag in the search engine. In the description tag, you can include the main keywords that will also be highlighted to the surfer when he performs the query in the search engine. Instructions on how to write the description tag, its recommended length, and additional highlights can be found in the following article.

Typically, a site promoter will select the pages that will be important for him to promote in the search engine and will update their description tags accordingly.

Internal links

Internal links are one of the most important components in any process of organic promotion. Internal links are, in effect, references from pages on the site to other internal pages. The use of internal links is made in order to provide the surfer with the required content expansion, make it easier for him to navigate the site, and provide the search engine with an indication of the pages that are more important to the site owner. Internal links can be incorporated in the various texts on the site, in the main menus and side menus as well as in Potter, the regular bottom of the site.

Storage

Finding quality storage on which to run the site is one of the important tasks of the site promoter. Poor quality hosting, such as hosting problematic sites in areas such as illegal gambling, mass production of spam, and selling banned products, can cause the site promotion process to stall.

Choose quality, non-free storage, one that will also help you install an SSL certificate for securing and encrypting traffic to and from the site.

Fast, reliable storage, one that provides reliable backup and recovery services is a key control when it comes to organic SEO.

Domain history

When a website promoter takes on the task of organically promoting a website, one of the important tests he must perform is to check the history of the domain. A domain with a problematic history, which includes hacking, spreading spam, and manual penalties suffered by the search engine, is a domain that will be difficult to impossible to promote. This is why many site promoters avoid promoting a problematic domain and recommend that the site owner purchase a new domain and promote it from scratch.

Securing

Search engines in general, and Google’s search engine in particular, will try as far as possible to keep surfers away from unsafe, hacked sites, where there is a danger to the privacy of surfers’ data. Moreover, Google’s search engine can take manual action against a site that has been hacked and its owner has not properly addressed the root causes that led to the hack and remove the site pages from the index until further notice.

The role of the site promoter in this context will be to ensure that the site is secure and constantly updated with the information security patches released for the templates and extensions used by the site owner. Also, in case of hacking, the site promoter must make sure that the attacker has been identified, the site has been cleaned, safeguards have been implemented to prevent the attack from recurring, and then contact Google with a request to re-examine the site, in order to return it to the index in the fastest and most stable way.

Contact Us

One of the parameters that the search engine examines in the context of promoting your site, is the ability to contact someone real, who is behind the site and can provide some responsibility for the content incorporated on the site. The role of the site promoter in this context will be to ensure the existence of means of contact if the business owners are managed through the site, in accordance with the service strategy he has formulated (there will be, for example, business owners who provide telephone support, while others prefer email only).

In sites that have a significant impact on health or money, this parameter, of the identity of the person behind the site, has become increasingly important in recent years.

About

As in the case of the contact page, the about page is also important for the process of organic promotion. The search engine wants to know that the site has a mom and dad, that there is someone behind the content, that it has a picture, profiles on social networks, and signs that indicate that it is a real persona and not an unknown body whose motives are hidden.

In the process of organic site promotion, one of the functions of the site promoter will be to check that the about page exists, is updated, contains quality content, and refers to social profiles that will provide the search engine with significant signals about the site owner’s credibility.

Legal conditions

A site that presents legal terms, and in particular a site that periodically deals with transactions that include credit card clearing, is considered, in certain circumstances and under different conditions, to be a more reliable site in terms of search engine. In doing so, it will be important for the site to also state when it provides a warranty to the customer, what the business’s refund policy is, whether the business is obligated to compensate a customer for a faulty product or service he was not satisfied with and more.

The role of a site promoter in this context is to ensure the existence of a page that contains the legal terms relevant to the site.

Broken links

One of the tasks that a site promoter should approach when it comes to optimizing a site is to identify the broken links on the site, that is, the links that come out of the site pages but lead to an address that is no longer relevant, and address them. In order to deal with broken links, it is necessary to map the content to which the link refers, to find alternative content that can provide a solution to the browsing experience of the user who uses the link and to make regular or temporary references to the new page. In addition, there may be situations in which the coefficient will actually use a reference of a different type, such that it signals to the search engine that there is no longer any point in the link and page to which it refers, and it would be worth removing it from the index.

Page 404

Page 404 is the default page visited by site visitors when the page they were trying to reach does not exist (the page may have existed in the past but was removed, for a collection of reasons).

Designing the 404 page in a creative and original way is a great opportunity for the site promoter to keep surfers on the site, and to signal to the search engines that this is a dynamic site, which takes the user experience of the site users very seriously.

Domain validation

In the SEO world, it is common to think that a domain that is valid for a longer period of time can progress more easily up the search results. This is because the long-term renewal of the domain may indicate a serious business, whose future is guaranteed, is stable, and builds multi-year work plans for maintaining and increasing the value of the digital asset.

The job of the site promoter in this context is to advise the site owner prior to the date of the domain renewal, on the scope of the renewal performed for the domain, years ahead.

Technical SEO

The technical part of optimizing a website is a very important part of any promotion process. During this chapter, the site promoter will try to take care of all the technical elements needed to promote the site: building the right hierarchy, implementing bread crumbs on the site, creating user-friendly navigation routes, using the site’s internal links, creating user-friendly addresses, installing an SSL certificate and using the HTTPS protocol. Calling customers to the site, making adjustments to mobile, and many other technical operations.

Links

Links are one of the most important elements for promoting a website in the search engines organically. The importance of links stems from the fact that while the rest of the components of the promotion process ultimately depend on the actions performed by the site owner himself, links, which can also be seen as a kind of recommendation from one site to another, are an external factor. Other factors from the site. The perception is that everyone can attest to the fact that it is a successful and fast site and adapted to mobile and contains structured data, etc., but obtaining recommendations from outside sources is a more difficult and complicated task. Over the years, site promoters have been able to perform quite a few manipulations on the link component, while search engines have included accordingly the way of weighting links in the organic ranking process of sites in search engines.

What components do links contain?

So what is, in fact, a link? A link is a reference made by one web page to another web page. The component has several components: the anchor text that is clicked on will lead to the destination page, the destination address to which the link leads, and the source of the link, that is, the object from which the link comes.

Existing link types

In general, it can be said that links are divided into two main types: Follow links and Nofollow links. In 2019, Google released two subtypes of Nofollow links that refer to links created through content uploaded by users of the site and links originating from advertising content.

It would be common to say that Follow links convey link power, or in the professional language “link juice”, and in fact the more the site from which the link was received is more relevant to the field in which we are engaged and more authoritative, the value of the link will increase.

How do you get links?

There are many ways to build links, from exchanging links, through purchasing links, to using advanced techniques to achieve quality links. On the Facebook network, you will find a wide range of services that offer the exchange or purchase of links.

Proper anchoring design

One of the link elements that have great significance in promoting specific keyword phrases in the search engines is the anchor text, or in the professional language the anchor of the link. In order to give the link profile a natural look, it is customary to spread the anchor text and make sure that it is as diverse as possible, with a certain focus on the key phrases we want to promote.

What components do links contain?

Existing link types

How do you get links?

Proper anchoring design

Social activity

We will not expand on this issue too much, however, we will note that the process of organic promotion in recent years, according to various publications, is increasingly using social signals in order to gauge the authority, relevance, expertise, and professionalism of a business. When you think about it, it certainly makes sense: a site that is an authority in its field, is likely to be mentioned quite a few times on social media and will be directed to various questions, inquiries of various kinds, and such and such mentions.

Negative SEO

It will be important to understand that the SEO process can also be carried out by harming the promotion that the competitors perform. This method has moral, and sometimes even criminal, aspects that every website promoter should take into account.

Common mistakes

Many site promoters make quite a few mistakes in the process of organic promotion. Some of these mistakes are due to lack of experience and some due to incorrect prioritization and investment of resources. Such mistakes can result from the existence of a lot of lean content on the site, from a lack of investment in meta tags, poor social activity, unprofessional design, and many other reasons.

In conclusion

We hope this guide has helped you understand the important components of the process of organic promotion, and provided you with sources to expand on the important issues. We want to wish you great success in the process and hope that you will remember that organic website promotion is an ongoing project that must be monitored on an ongoing basis.

Familiarity with the basic systems

Search console

So the first tool I want to talk about is called a “search console”.

This is actually the official tool on behalf of Google where you can receive data and even send data to Google.

The service is provided under your Gmail account so all you have to do is log in to Google’s search console system (search for the phrase in Google) and “verify ownership” of the site you are promoting, the service is provided for free.

Analytics

Another tool you must know is called analytics (Google search).

This is another system from Google that actually allows you to get a lot of data on any site you own, the data obtained is basically on all the traffic of the site and not just the organic traffic.

You can see the data there in an orderly fashion, with a clear separation between organic traffic, traffic that came through social networks, or by typing the URL address directly and more.

Keyword research: the foundation for success

This is a supercritical step in the promotion process. If we do not invest in this part – we will find ourselves giving Paul gas on neutral.

The idea is basically to find as many keywords as possible that are relevant to the site we are promoting.

Relevance = that we were happy to be in the first results when a surfer would search for the same word/phrase in Google.

For an initial understanding, a jewelry store will want to promote its site in terms of “engagement rings”, “engagement rings”, “tennis bracelets” and the like.

A grill and barbecue shop will want to promote the terms “gas grill”, “meat smoker”, “charcoal grill” and more.

Beyond relevance, it is important to make sure that the phrases chosen are really the phrases that people are looking for.

For that matter, if we promote the term “doctors’ negligence” – even if we reach result 1, we probably will not get much traffic to the site, because there are not many people looking for this phrase.

Conversely, if we do research properly, we will find that the most relevant term in the field is “medical malpractice” (a super competitive phrase!).

Once we have completed the keyword research we will make a list where one column has the keyword, a second column a number of monthly searches, a third column a contest, and a fourth column – which page on the site we want to rank on the same keyword/phrase.

If you have reached words that do not have a topic on the site – it is time to write in the table that you need to create a page that is relevant to that keyword.

The goal is for each keyword to have a dedicated page that we promote under the same keyword. On the other hand, one has to activate the mind and understand that the phrases “engagement ring” and “engagement rings” are the same and there is really no need to create 2 pages for the sake of it, 1 will definitely do the job.

But if there is a phrase like “gold chains” for that matter, it would be worthwhile to produce a page dedicated to the phrase.

Creating this table is an integral part of quality keyword research, if you have not completed the process with such a table – you have done only partial keyword research, do not skip this section.

I assure you that the first result in your field probably did this part and again – everything is measured in relation to it and you do not want to lag behind it in any parameter.

Familiarity with headlines

Google is not a sucker and certainly not a charity.

Every shekel that this company spends – is calculated and it is very important to understand how this search engine works so that we know how to perform the right actions in order to be ranked high.

In order for Google to maintain a good pace of updating search results (uploading placements to a site that performed correctly or degrading placements to a recently neglected site), it actually sends “spiders” (a type of robot that scans all sites on the web) that return information about each site. Information according to which the engine knows how to upload/download the positions of each site under each search word.

These “spiders” that Google operates cost quite a bit of money, probably in the millions of dollars, and therefore, in order to save costs and in order to have more scans, Google made sure that these spiders can understand what a site is talking about by scanning its headlines.

There are 6 types of titles: H1 – H2 – H3 – H4 – H5 – H6 where H1 is the most important in the hierarchy while H6 is the last. Most often, we will use headings H1 – H2 – H3 and in some cases, especially in long and detailed articles, also in h4.

The first rule is that the H1 header should be only once per page.

This is actually the main headline that the page is talking about and it is very important that it contains the keyword that we want to rank on that page.

For example, if we are in a post called “SEO Guide – This Is How You Will Take 1st Place In Google”, and we decided that the keyword is “SEO”, then it makes a lot of sense that the H1 title should contain the keyword “SEO”. Another good headline for example: “A comprehensive SEO guide updated for 2019”.

Then, if there are subheadings on the same page, we will define each of the subheadings in h2. If we have subtitles for our H2 title (more than 1! If there is only one subtitle – it will also be defined as h2), those subtitles will get an H3 tag.

This way we basically allow Google spiders to understand what each page on our site is talking about, without investing too many resources in reading every word and phrase on our site for the purpose of understanding what our site is talking about. The reason we do not want to waste Google’s resources is that as I wrote at the beginning of the paragraph – Google is not a sucker!

Sites that have not been properly titled will also get a lower score and Google Spiders will visit them infrequently (this is called a “crawl budget”). This action is included under the definition “optimization” for the site we are promoting.

Image optimization

So beyond installing the short pixel plugin we talked about at the beginning of the guide, it is also important to give WordPress as much detail as possible about each image that is uploaded/uploaded to the site. These are the fields that can be filled in when uploading an image:

It is important to fill in each of the fields in a matter-of-fact manner and not to be lazy. It also contributes to the promotion of the site and it is also a good way for Google to display the images found on the site in its image search engine.

Website acceleration

Another parameter that Google takes into account and should be addressed in any SEO guide is basically how long your site loads.

Did it ever happen to you that you searched for something on Google, you clicked on one of the results that Google displayed but the site took too long to load so you gave up and clicked on another result instead? Probably so.

Make sure your customer site is not like this! Google wants to present the best and most relevant search results and therefore, a site that loads quickly will get credit points that will lead to a higher position in the search results.

The acceleration of the site is part of the quality “user experience” that we want to give surfers when browsing the site and it has to do with both the site’s location on Google and the actual purchases of surfers on the site since no one will buy / surf too long on a slowly loading site. (And especially those that load really, really fast) become a positive experience for the surfers, an experience that is probably due to which they will also stay longer on the site and also return to visit it more times.

There are several tools that can measure the speed of your site, but it is important to understand one thing first and foremost: the only fact that actually matters is the actual load time of the site. All sorts of scores are just an indication of why it is worth improving to get a better (lower) charging time but it is not a guarantee that improving the scores will indeed lead to an improvement in charging speed.

For that matter: it is better to have a site that gets all the scores low but actually loads in a second and a half, than a site that gets the most points in all the tools but actually loads in 4 seconds (this is a common phenomenon and you should know it and treat it accordingly).

Some tools for checking loading speed according to the order of importance in my eyes, Google them:

Web page test
GTMETRIX
Pingdom
Google page speed check

There are quite a few more tools, but these 4 are definitely enough.

Another thing that is important to understand: your site needs to load quickly. But if it is already loaded in less than 3 seconds and in order to go down to 2 and a half seconds it requires a ton of work from you – sometimes the work required will not be worth it and it will be worthwhile to invest the time in other actions. (Tachles, the best way to check how fast to charge should be is to simply run tests for all 10 results on the first page, check which result is loading the fastest, and bypass it).

What is a search engine and how does it work?