The Ultimate SEO Survival Guide for Beginners…
The goal of SEO
(Search Engine Optimization) is either for your whole domain or a specific page to rank high on Google search engine results pages (aka SERP). Since there is so much competition on the internet, this cannot be achieved by great content alone — even quality content needs to be optimized for Google algorithm so that bots, and eventually people can find it. When people love your content and engage with it, e.g. share it, they drive increased traffic to your website, setting a reaction chain of higher-ranking-means-more-traffic-means-higher-ranking-and-so-on into motion.That’s why every blog post should target relevant keywords that are well-searched-for (have a high search volume) but are at the same time not too difficult to rank for (have a low keyword difficulty). This means one has to find a niche topic to write about that has low competition but high demand! For the purpose of this article, I will use the blog post “The Top 10 Unique Ice Cream Flavors” I wrote for The Trip Boutique as an example.
Additionally, a blog post should target a search query (such as “best ice cream zurich”) by answering a question (“Where is the best ice cream in Zurich?”) or solving a problem (“How to find the best ice cream in Zurich”). The more relevant a blog post is, the more people will find it and click on it. In turn, a higher click-through rate (CTR) means a higher ranking on Google. But that alone does not
suffice: Google algorithm also takes user engagement into account, evaluating how long a person actually stays on the website and whether they comment, like, or otherwise interact with the content. To keep people engaged, quality and originality are key. This means that SEO is a combination of catering to both bots AND people: one without the other won’t increase your Google ranking.
choosing a relevant topic
Of course, the success of your article on Google depends on choosing a relevant topic. You should try to find a topic that is well-searched-for and targets either informational (i.e. the user is looking for an answer, a how-to guide, facts, etc.) or transactional (i.e. the user is looking for a product or service to buy) search queries.
A
free tool that might help you to identify a trending topic is Google
Trends. Since I was writing my first SE-optimized article during summer
and on local businesses and hidden gems in Zurich, I thought that “ice
cream” would be a relevant topic:
Unsurprisingly,
the timeline shows that the topic “ice cream” peaked during the summer
months. If you scroll down, you can also see in which regions “ice
cream” was popular the most as well as related topics and queries:
Related topics and queries might inspire you to find a trending yet more
specified niche topic, such as “best Mochi ice cream in Zurich”, etc.
However, it must be noted that while Google Trends is great for
inspiration and finding or validating a topic, it does not help to find
concrete keywords, as it doesn’t say anything about keyword difficulty.
On the other hand, it is a tool officially issued by Google and as such
is more accurate than other SEO websites.
When you have a general idea on which topic to write, google that topic to see what the competition looks like. If you want to write about ice cream in Zurich, you will first google “ice cream Zurich” to see what has already been written on that topic (and is ranking on the first page!) and how you can improve that content or add value to it.
This is an example of the top 9 results on Google for
This is an example of the top 9 results on Google for “ice cream Zurich” (based on the search date, my location, and search history, meaning that this might look different in your browser). The first one on the list is unsurprisingly a page from www.zuerich.com. As the official website of the city of Zurich, it naturally has a high overall domain authority due to a number of backlinks, high user engagement, and other factors. I go and check this page out to see how I could add value to the content.
What
is missing in the description and what could be improved? I notice that
there is no mention of the ice cream flavors offered — which is a shame
because I know they have some pretty weird ones, like grapefruit &
pepper.
After
checking multiple other websites on ice cream in Zurich, I realize that
this is exactly what is missing — no one talks about the extraordinary
flavors that many ice cream parlors in Zurich make! This is how I
identified a content gap, a niche: instead of describing each gelateria
depending on its location or style, I decided to look at them from a
different angle and focus on their most unusual flavors.
Once
I had my topic, I had to find fitting keywords with low difficulty and
high search volume to increase the article ranking on Google.
Keywords
Keywords are the key to ranking high on Google. A very good (albeit
expensive) SEO tool is https://ahrefs.com/. There you can search for any
keywords and assess them based on their search volume and difficulty.
Focus on 250+ search volumes, as anything below that means that there
are not enough people searching for your keyword. KD (keyword
difficulty) should not be higher than 15 and would ideally be lower than
10: the higher the KD, the larger the competition and the more
difficult it will be to rank for that keyword. Here are some of the
keywords that were assessed for the ice cream blog post (this particular
keyword analysis is US-specific):
For example
For example, you can see that the last keyword “Italian gelateria” has a
high difficulty and a low search volume, meaning that it is difficult
to rank for it and that not many people look for “Italian gelateria” in
the first place — a combination which renders this keyword pretty much
useless for SEO. But this does not mean that you can’t use “Italian
gelateria” in the text — it merely suggests that you either look for a
synonym that has a lower difficulty and larger search volume, such as
“Italian ice cream parlor”, or just don’t highlight “Italian gelateria”
in bold, as marking words in bold facilitates keywords recognition for
bots. That said, I have still chosen to highlight “Italian gelateria” in
the text because it helps the reader to navigate the article — SEO
should serve not only bots but also people, and so I try to accommodate
both needs.
On
the other hand, the keyword “weird ice cream flavors” is a great
candidate because it has a fairly large search volume (1.7 thousand
queries) and a KD under 10. So if you are for instance deciding between
“weird” and “crazy” ice cream flavors, you can easily check with this
SEO tool and see that “weird” is a) slightly easier to rank for, and b)
has a much higher search volume! This is why it’s
important to try
multiple synonyms for the keywords you want to rank for on Google — some
will raise your chances to climb the results page, while others won’t
have the same effect. (Of course, search volume and KD are constantly
changing so what was true three days ago won’t necessarily apply now.)
Keep
in mind, though, that no SEO tool can provide a 100% accurate
assessment of KD or search volumes, as they are not officially issued by
Google. KD and volume also differ depending on the country — since
search results are location-dependent, you will see two different
rankings for the same query in Switzerland and in the US. On
https://ahrefs.com, though, you can see how a keyword performs in a
specific country.
Finally,
high-performing keywords and their synonyms should be repeated
throughout the article as much as possible (but without ruining the
writing style, of course).
search engine optimized
For search-engine-optimized articles, i.e. articles that will rank high
on Google results, choose shorter titles (max. 60 characters) so that
they a) display fully on the SERP and b) are easily comprehensible and
attention-grabbing. “Top 10 Unique Ice Cream Flavors” — is only 26
characters long, begins with the catchphrase “Top 10” , contains the
main keyword (“unique ice cream flavors”)
of the
article, and adds a
specifier — “Zurich” — which means that the article should rank high on
Google whenever someone searches for something like “ice cream Zurich”
(this is easier to rank for than just “ice cream”!). You could also add a
year, a country or anything else that will narrow down the focus of
your article and makes it easier for you to target specific groups of
people with specific queries
(for instance, “Top 5 Vacation Spots in
Europe in 2019” will target people searching for anything containing the
keywords “vacation”, “Europe”, “2019”; this is already more narrowed
down than just “Top 5 Vacation Spots” which only contains the keyword
“vacation”)
It
is also recommended to choose words with emotional value, such as
“powerful”, “rare”, “high tech”, etc. You can check the emotional
marketing value of your headline with the help of this free tool.
After
you open the emotional marketing value headline analyzer, you will
enter your headline and select the topic the headline represents.
You
then click “Submit For Analysis” to receive your emotional value score:
the score should be not less than 30%. Anything between 50%-70% will
have a high emotional impact on your readers, meaning that they are more
likely to click (and a higher CTR, i.e. click-through-rate, means a
higher ranking on Google).
The
meta description of an article is what will be displayed on Google when
your post appears in the search results (or on the SERP, i.e. search
engine results page). For the description to appear in its whole glory,
it should be max. 160 characters (with spaces) long.
This
is how the article “Top 10 Unique Ice Cream Flavors in Zurich” shows on
Google for the search query “ice cream zurich”. In contrast to the
description for “Gelati Tellhof” above, it appears whole.
The
intro or lead-in, i.e. the first 100 words of your article, should
contain as many low-difficulty, high-search-volume keywords as possible!
You should highlight these in bold to ensure that they will be
recognized by Google algorithms:
As
you can see, I used “rhubarb ice cream or hemp ice cream” instead of
the more elegant “rhubarb or hemp ice cream” — this is because when you
have a “weak” (as in young) website, i.e. it has not gained enough
credibility and overall domain authority on Google yet, the exact word
form matters to the SE algorithm. If, for instance, the keyword “unusual
ice cream flavors” ranks higher than “unusual ice cream flavor”, you
should opt for the plural.
For
better SEO, your article should contain both external and internal
links (at least 6 links each). External links are those leading to
another website:
As
you can see, external links can lead anywhere: to official brands, such
as “Kalte Lust” or “Turicum”, businesses, such as “Himu & Höll”,
“Badertscher”, and “office” (aka Impact Hub Zurich), or Wikipedia pages,
like those on “Moscow mule” and Züri Tirggel. The important thing is
that these websites are credible in the eyes of Google.
Internal links are the ones leading to different pages on the same website:
This
example links to The Trip Boutique homepage and to the author page on
The Trip Boutique domain. Plus, there is a clickable button.
Ideally,
you also want to generate content that could result in backlinks, i.e.
links to your pages from other websites. These links dramatically
increase your credibility on Google — slowly, Google learns that you
have a trustworthy website and the algorithm will push it upwards. Of
course, you don’t have much control over backlinks — but if you, for
instance, include other businesses in your content (such as ice cream
parlors), you can tag them on social media, hoping they will repost, or
you might even proactively write them an e-mail, asking whether they
could share your post with their audiences.
For SEO, the text length should be at least 1500 words (some sources say at least 1800 words).
The
goal of SEO is to rank high on Google results. What does ranking high
mean, though? As research shows, any position lower than 20 (this means
anything beyond the second results page) is unlikely to be clicked at.
Ideally, one aims at ranking higher than the middle of the second SERP.
For
the search query “ice cream zurich”, the article “Top 10 Unique Ice
Cream Flavors in Zurich” occupies the 12th place. However, organic
search results (i.e. not paid ads) change daily and are
country-specific, meaning they are not set in stone. As a website gains
more credibility through backlinks, high engagement (users spent more
time on the site, like, comment, etc.), and high click-through-rates,
the Google ranking will rise as well.
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon