Each search engine has its own SEO approach, but the basic principles are almost always the same. Search engines are constantly making more and more demands and, to keep up with competitors, you must follow all the changes. In this article, we’ll talk about the new rules for SEO and site optimization in general.
The new and basic rules of optimization for search engines will always be relevant
Topics Covered
4 Basic SEO principles
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex never say directly what a site should be. They only give recommendations for improving it.
- Technical optimization can be considered basic. It allows you to add pages to the index in no time. To make sure that it was carried out correctly, you should check the pages for duplicates, redirects, correct display of styles and scripts, study the sitemap and robots.txt, and follow the formation of the hierarchical structure.
- Content optimization is aimed at uniqueness and information content. Previously, online stores briefly described products and services, today you can add videos, photos, refer to experts, embed feedback modules, and answers to frequently asked questions. Don’t forget about meta tags and uniqueness as well. The texts should be as informative as possible to answer the user’s question from all sides. And to read them conveniently, it is important to divide the text into paragraphs, add headings, lists, tables, and other elements.
- Optimization of commercial factors. This includes the various page elements that assist the user in navigation and selection. Usually, such elements are present in online stores, but they are successfully used for sites offering services, although the criteria are different in both cases. Online stores are characterized by products in stock, prices, various filters, and comparisons. If the company has several branches, you should add addresses and contacts of each of them, tell visitors about delivery and guarantees, as well as promotions, discounts, and bonuses. Sites with services are characterized by prices, addresses of branches, contacts, and guarantees. But unlike eCommerce stores, the qualifications of specialists are important here. To gain the trust of your visitors, you should link to reviews and other mentions of the company. The most interesting,
- External optimization. It consists in building up natural link mass and removing substandard ones. Usually, people themselves talk about the site on social networks and various platforms. If this does not happen, some retail online store owners buy links. In some cases, this approach works, but you should not get carried away with it.
In all cases, the usual methods were used, but even they gave the desired effect. If you follow the basic principles of SEO, you can achieve great results.
Additional ways to optimize your site
The quality of the content on the pages: When Google first introduced an algorithm that looked at the quality of content, a lot of content dropped dramatically. A little later Yandex connected to it. And, if at first only information sites were ranked in this way, today this applies to everyone.
To get listed, it is important to provide expert opinions and reliable facts. And to read the text conveniently, it should be structured. In addition, the materials need to be updated regularly. Such conditions are also suitable for commercial sites, but they must have additional documents, photos, and videos. The characteristics of each product need to be confirmed, not just talked about. For example, videos are provided as evidence, which clearly shows the desired effect.
Page loading speed. This factor pays more attention to Google. In 2021, the search engine released an algorithm that identifies several important indicators. This primarily refers to the loading time of the content. Then the waiting time before interacting with it is considered.
Another indicator is layout offset
Behavioral factors or the quality of user interaction with the site. When a user sees several sites in the search results, he chooses the most attractive one. But then he can return to the issue again. These transitions are monitored by search engines. If a lot of visitors come back to the search results, the site’s positions go down. If visitors linger on the resource, this has a positive effect on the ranking. What it does: more brand queries and direct visits to the site.
For what end purposes SEO is used
The first 3 goals are standard:
- positions
- traffic
- leads
When a site grows in search results, more clicks appear. Therefore, these goals are closely related. As for leads, their number is also increasing, and they usually become the culprit of direct visits. That is, a visitor comes from the SERP, examines the site, and adds it to bookmarks. Then he can visit the site again and become a real customer. The lead came from a direct call, but initially, it was led by SEO optimization, this also applies to brand queries. The visitor simply remembers the name of the site and enters it into the search.
The following goals:
- recognition
- coverage.
SEO is rarely considered such a goal, although it also works here. Of course, search engines like Google bring a lot of visitors to their sites. But today, traffic is received from other systems as well. Take forums and social networks. And the content on these sites is also easy to optimize. To increase coverage, they usually use:
- blogs on your site, which post thematic articles.
- creating communities on social networks and filling them with optimized content.
- work with optimized articles on external resources.
- creating a YouTube channel and adding a site to various geo-location services.
- adding products to marketplaces with appropriate descriptions.
If you use many different sources, each of which will be in the TOP 10, you can become a monopolist in search results.
And another goal is to preserve the result.
When sites change the design or even completely rebuild the engine, there are ranking problems. With the worst outcome, you can completely drop out of the search results, so here you need to be especially careful about setting up SEO.
An approximate list of actions that will help in this case:
- Identification of the most favorable structure if it is going to be edited
- Study of layouts that may contain functional elements
- Creating the right map that will combine the old and new structure
- Transfer of optimized meta tags or writing them from scratch
- Analysis of technical optimization of the new version of the resource
- Studying the correct settings, gluing, and checking in the webmaster’s offices before the final transition
- “Crawling” pages if they are going to change the domain
Search engines are releasing more and more complex algorithms and are also trying to implement neural networks. Understanding SEO is no longer as easy as it was before, but if you learn as many influencing factors as possible, you will be able to quickly bring your site to the first positions in search results.
