HOW TO DO S.E.O FOR YOUR WEBSITES
What are search engines, actually?
What’s the big deal with Google? What makes it different from Yahoo and Bing?
They’re all search engines.
Essentially, what search engines do is collect information and content from all over the web and store it in a database.
According to a November 2018 report by net market share, 73% of all searches are powered by Google. In second
the place is Bing with 7.91%.
So„ what exactly makes one search engine so different from another?
HOW DOES GOOGLE WORK?
Here’s a simplified version of the entire process of search, split into three parts: crawling, indexing, and returning
queries.
Or, in plain English: finding pages, storing them, and then showing them to searchers.
Crawling
Imagine that you need to explore an unknown country. You start in a small town and drive down a road that connects
you to the next town. You take the next road to the next town and the next road after that. If you drive down every
possible road from your starting point, you’ll eventually end up discovering every town.
This is how Google works–except the towns are web pages, and the roads connecting them are backlinks.
So: Google first starts with one webpage. It finds the links on these web pages and follows them to discover other
web pages. It then finds all the links on those pages, and the next pages, and the next. Eventually, they’re able to
discover pretty much everything on the web.
And how does Google do this?
It uses a computer program that’s commonly referred to as a crawler to “crawl,” or discover, pages and links.
Crawlers are sometimes also called “spiders” –because they, too, crawl the web.
In SEO, we want to do everything we can to make the spider’s job easier. This, in turn, makes it easier for our
web pages to get crawled.
Indexing
After finding pages on the web, the spiders then extract data from them and store, or “index,” said data in Google’
s database—to then be shown in search results
That’s the kind of data spiders collect and store: the date a page was created, its title and meta description, main
keywords, links to and from it, and other details specific to that search engine’s algorithm.
In SEO, we want to ensure that the data that Google indexes after crawling our pages is as accurate as possible. This
makes it much more likely that they show up in search results where we want them to.
Returning Queries
When you enter a search query into Google, it searches in its database for the web pages that are most relevant to your
query and displays them as search results. This relevancy is determined by its algorithm.
Unfortunately, nobody knows exactly what Google’s algorithm prioritizes„except for one universally agreed-on
factor:
The number of quality backlinks to the target page.
Google places a strong emphasis on backlinks as a form of authority and relevance.
Even as a beginner, there are thankfully plenty of ways you can get yourself ahead of the game when it
comes to backlinks. We’ll cover this a little later on.
HOW DO I OPTIMIZE MY WEBSITE FOR GOOGLE?
Now we know that web pages need to be crawled and indexed.
Which brings us to the big question: what do we do to help this process along? And when it comes down to it just
what are we optimizing in “search engine optimization”?
The answer can generally be split into two categories, namely on-page and off-page efforts.
On-page SEO is all about adjusting elements on a webpage so that Google understands what it’s about,
recognizes how awesome it is, and decides that it deserves to be #1 in search results.
Off-page SEO is a fancy way to say “build lots of great backlinks so that Google thinks of your page as
trustworthy.”
Generally speaking, the more and better quality backlinks you have, the more your pages are prioritized in the search
results
Here’s a 7‑step tutorial you can follow along with easily which incorporates both elements mentioned above.
1. UNDERSTAND WHAT KEYWORDS PEOPLE ARE SEARCHING FOR
People search for your brand or business in tons of different ways.
For example, let’s say that you’re a hairdresser in Lagos. People could search for “hairdresser in Lagos,” “Lagos
hairdresser” or possibly even “hairdresser near me.”
Although they’re all phrased differently, they’re essentially asking the same thing.
So it’s really important to start by finding the most popular ways that people are searching for you. This way, you can
cater to and optimize your content for those phrases (i.e., keywords.)
You have two options: guesswork, or keyword research tools.
Google Trends is one good (and free-of-charge) option that shows you the relative popularity of any search
queries you enter.
2. CREATE CONTENT THAT SEARCHERS WANT TO SEE
Want to rank for a topic or keyword? Then we need to optimize our content for “search intent.”
Here,s the coolest thing: we don’t actually have to guess search intent. Since Google’s algorithm already works to
serve the most relevant content for each search query, we can use this to our advantage. Just look at the existing top
results to figure out what people are looking for.
I can’t figure out what people want to know just by looking at this term on my own. Do they want to know more
about hairdressing techniques? Do they want to find a good hair salon?
Bottom Line: Spend some time analyzing search intent, and make sure you give people what they want to see.
3. GET CLICKS WITH A COMPELLING TITLE
We’ve talked about how to rank a webpage for popular keywords. But you don’t just want to rank. Searchers should
actually, click on your webpage.
Make your titles (and descriptions) as click-worthy as possible. Make your content scream “CLICK ME” in the
Search results!
Unfortunately, there’s no exact science to writing compelling title tags and descriptions. It’s really about
understanding your target audience and knowing what matters to them—then crafting a title that gets them to click.
4. KEEP URLS SHORT AND DESCRIPTIVE
Your URL could be https://www.wehostafrica.com/2018/01/15/287539884.php
Or it could be https://www.wehostafrica.com/customer-review/
Which one includes the keywords you’re looking to target with this article? Which one are you more likely to click
on in the search results?
Keep your URLs as short and sweet as possible. The collective sanity of internet searchers thank you.
5. OPTIMIZE YOUR IMAGES
It can be a little tedious, but make sure to name all your images appropriately.
Google themselves states that “the filename can give Google clues about the subject matter of the image. For
example, great-hosting-plans.jpg is better than IMG00023.JPG.”
In the same vein, optimize all your images by including alt tags with descriptions.
This is the text that shows up whenever your image fails to load or if the user is using a screen reader.
6. MAKE SURE YOUR CONTENT IS EASY TO READ
It’s widely believed in the SEO industry that user signals influence rankings.
Do your best to optimize things like your title and image tags—but keep in mind that user experience is also
important. If your content is difficult to read and digest, readers are going to leave (and for good reason).
7. GET HIGH-QUALITY, RELEVANT BACKLINKS
Backlinks are very, very important.
Let’s start by breaking it down a little. Firstly, what’s a backlink?
It’s an incoming hyperlink from another website, or referring domain, to your target webpage. In plain English, when
another website links to you, it’s giving you a backlink.
In general, any SEO will tell you that the more and better quality backlinks you have, the higher your chances are of
ranking a page and the more search traffic you’ll get.
