SEO
1. Describe SEO.
SEO is the process of improving a website’s organizational structure. It contributes to the relevance of the content and the attractiveness of the links so that the pages are easier to find, more pertinent, and more conspicuous in response to web searches, and as a result, rank higher in search engines.
2. Explain the term keyword. What function does a keyword serve in SEO?
Words and phrases that define the content on your page are referred to as keywords, SEO keywords, or focus keywords. The search term that you want your page to rank for is known as a keyword. They enable users to find a website using search engines.
3. Why are businesses so dependent on SEO?
One of the most well-known inside jokes among web professionals is that if you want to hide a corpse, you should put your website on Google’s second page. If your industry isn’t on the first page of Google results, your competitors will grab all of your customers because few people look past the first page. Position by position, CTR gradually declines. One important advantage of SEO over PPC is that, in contrast to PPC, your results will not stop if you stop using SEO right now. If a company wants to increase sales without spending a fortune on promotions, SEO is essential.
4. List the various categories of keywords.
There are two basic sorts of keywords that are used to optimize a web page:
Primary Keywords: A website should contain at least one of these. For effective content optimization, this term should occur in the opening sentence, headings, and subheadings. It shouldn’t be packed too full.
Related Keywords: Other names for it are Latent Semantic keywords. It is a synonym for the main keyword and ought to surface naturally in the on-page text.
5. Why is page speed essential and what does it mean?
The rate at which a user may access the content on your website is known as page speed. The pages that load quicker are more effective and provide a better on-page user experience, so it is crucial. When ranking websites, Google takes page speed into account as well.
6. What is a search engine?
A search engine is, in the words of Google, “a program that searches for and identifies objects in a database that correspond to keywords or characters given by the user, used specifically for discovering certain sites on the World Wide Web.”
7. What is Google stands for?
The characters “GOOGLE” have no meaning. It’s not a shorthand. Backrub was the name of the business when it was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They intended to call themselves Googol after realizing they needed a new moniker. They spelled Google incorrectly during the registration process, and the rest is history.
8. What is crawling?
Search engine bots crawl websites as part of the web crawling process to index them. They are referred to as spiders or spider bots. Links allow crawlers to access other web pages and documents while returning data to the web servers for indexing. After visiting a page, the crawler copies it and adds its URLs to the index.
9. Describe SERP.
The search Engine Results Page is referred to as SERP. This page displays all of the search engine results when you perform a query. SERP covers both organic and PPC listings. Depending on the term, different listing forms are offered.
10. What does “organic result” mean?
One of the two types of search results in SERP is organic results, which are shown by search results based on relevance, quality, and other ranking characteristics. Organic consequences also referred to as “free results” or “natural outcomes,” are free of charge. The order of organic results is determined by several factors.
11. Explain Paid Result.
Adversaries that pay to have their adverts displayed alongside more advantageous organic results on SERPs are known as paid results. Advertisers are not required to improve their website or content to rank because paid results are quick. Your rank will be determined by your quality score and maximum CPC. Your quality score increases with the amount of money you save.
12. What is Google Sandbox?
According to the Google Sandbox Effect, new websites are frequently on trial (within a box) and so are unable to properly rank for their most crucial keywords.
13. Describe Google Autocomplete.
A search engine feature that functions with search engines like Google is known as Google Autocomplete. Google autocomplete provides you with a list of ideas as you type in the search field to assist you in finishing your question. It makes it possible for users to finish searches considerably more slowly and without as much initiative, which is especially helpful while searching on a mobile device.
14. Explain TLD.
The top-level domain is located at the end of an internet address (TLD). TLDs come in many different varieties, including. com,.net,.org,.co.in, and others.
15. Explain ccTLD.
An abbreviation for a ccTLD is a country code top-level domain. Each country’s domain extension is unique. There are just two characters in each ccTLD. For instance, the symbols.in and.us represent India and the United States, respectively.
16. What is a long tail keyword defined as?
Long-tail phrases are extremely specialized and typically contain more than four words. In contrast to broad keywords, long-tail keywords describe the intent and value of the search, which, if properly targeted, can result in a large number of sales.
17. What does the term “bounce rate” mean in SEO?
According to Google, the percentage of all sessions on your site during which users only viewed one page and made a single request to the analytics server is known as the bounce rate.
18. Describe robots.txt.
Robots.txt is the name of the text file. Everything is carried out using this file. It discusses how to index and cache a domain, a webpage, or a directory’s file for search engine crawlers.
19. Explain an HTML sitemap.
A brand-new website called HTML sitemap enables users to browse a list of pages organized so they can quickly comprehend and navigate the site. If your website only contains a few user-accessible sites, an HTML sitemap is not necessary. If you have a big website, HTML sitemaps are a huge help.
20. Define an XML sitemap
The abbreviation for “Extensible Markup Language” is XML (Extensible Markup Language). An XML sitemap is used to alert search engines about the most recent modifications made to a website.
21. Describe DA.
Domain Authority, sometimes known as DA, is a statistic created by MOZ. It contains a hierarchy of 0 to 100. The better, the higher. Your chances of ranking are better the more DA you have.
22. How crucial is DA?
DA is still a crucial indicator for SEOs. They employ it to quickly gauge the caliber of websites. They can compare several websites and gauge their legitimacy thank it.
23. The distinction between DA and PA.
Domain Authority, or DA. It clarifies the legitimacy of your whole website. The likelihood of ranking increases with increasing DA. But of the many ranking factors, DA is a one-page authority or PA. Based on backlinks, social sharing, and other factors, it indicates the authority of a particular page. A page’s PA impacts how highly it will appear in search results. Nearing 100 is regarded as a good score.
24. Describe a domain.
Words are easier for people to recall than numbers. Because it’s simpler to recall a word or phrase than a long string of numbers, domain names were created.
25. What is hosting a website?
Web hosting is the land (space) you buy if you think of owning a website as being similar to buying a home. Web hosting is the use of the space that web hosting firms offer, on which your website can be built. The server must have an internet connection.
26. What does the acronym URL mean?
Uniform Resource Locator, or URL, is a term. It is a website or document’s address on the www. A URL comprises several components. The protocol comes first (HTTPS, HTTP, etc).
27. Describe LSI.
LSI Keywords are closely related to the main term that users enter into search engines. The keyword relevancy will increase when we apply LSI keywords to enhance a page. Without having to worry about keyword stuffing, LSI enables you to optimize keywords on a web page. To assess the relevance of a search phrase, Google’s algorithm makes use of LSI keywords.
28. How is a website made to be search engine friendly?
A website can be made search engine friendly by several variables, such as keywords, good content, titles, metadata, etc. These elements are necessary for a website to be ranked by a search engine and subsequently found by a user.
29. What is White Hat SEO?
White Hat SEO is the technique of raising your page rank while adhering to search engine criteria without sacrificing your strategies. White Hat SEO focuses on creating user-friendly websites and user experiences rather than using dubious tactics to manipulate search engines.
30. Explain Black Hat SEO
To increase search engine ranking, black hat SEO involves trying to trick search engine algorithms. It goes against the rules of search engines. Black Hat SEOs use techniques to see results quickly rather than creating websites with people in mind.
31. Explain PBN
A website called Private Blog Network was created using a dropped or sold domain. Some black hat SEOs create them to transfer authority and link to their significant website.
32. Why is link building important? What is link building?
Google was created with the user in mind. Thus, Google is continuously attempting to ascertain which results are most pertinent to each searcher at each time. Additionally to relevancy, Google takes credibility into account. To find out if other websites have linked to yours, the search engine checks their links. If so, that shows your material is worth linking to and is, therefore, more reputable as compared to a website not linked to externally. Link building, to put it briefly, is what SEO experts undertake to attempt and gain links pointing to their websites to enhance search results.
33. How do backlinks work?
Any time one website links to another, a backlink is produced. In other words, backlinks to your website serve as a kind of endorsement sign for your content to search engines.
34. An explanation of do-follow links.
Without this query, no SEO interview questions and answers list would be complete. The default hyperlink is do-follow. Search engines crawl pages and pass authority (also known as link juice) from one website to another when they discover a do-follow connection.
35. Describe on-page SEO.
The list of tasks carried out on a website to improve its performance in terms of ranking, user experience, and conversion is known as on-page SEO.
36. How often do keywords appear?
The number of times a certain keyword phrase appears on a web page is known as its keyword frequency. We must be careful not to overuse the keyword while optimizing a web page so that it becomes keyword stuffing.
37. How does keyword difficulty work?
Based on its popularity and level of competition, keyword difficulty is a measure that describes how challenging it is to rank for a certain keyword. More time or backlinks may be required the tougher the keyword.
38. Explain Keyword Proximity.
The distance between two terms on a web page is indicated by keyword proximity.
39. Definition of Keyword Density.
The percentage of times a term or phrase appears on a particular web page is known as the keyword density. When the keyword density is significantly higher than the advised amount, search engines may interpret this as keyword stuffing.
40. How does keyword stuffing work?
To rank for possible keywords, a black hat SEO technique called keyword stuffing raises the keyword density to an extremely high level.
41. How do Meta Tags work?
HTML Concise summaries of a page’s content are found in meta tags. The website does not contain any meta tags. They are page data tags that appear in between an HTML document’s opening and closing head tags. They communicate to search engines the purpose of a web page.
42. What function does a website’s title tag serve?
Because they display preview snippets for a page, title tags are important for SEO. They are crucial for SEO and social media sharing since they provide a decent notion of the contents on a web page
43. Describe the Image Alt Text.
An image on a web page is described using an image alt tag, often known as an alt attribute or an alt description. It is an HTML attribute used with image elements that are also shown on the page. Although search engines cannot understand images, an image’s alt text offers a text substitute that they can understand.
44. Define Cross-linking. What is the benefit of cross-linking?
Linking one website to another is known as cross-linking. It might or might not be owned by the same company or person. The user can access reference sites thanks to cross-linking. These citation sites have information about searches.
45. An SEO-friendly URL is what, exactly?
Short, keyword-rich URLs that are SEO-friendly are those that are optimized for search engines. Both users and search engines should be able to understand the URL format, which should be basic yet descriptive.
46. List a few of the SEO tools you’ve utilized.
Popular examples include Google Search Console, the Neil Patel SEO Analyzer, Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Longtail PRO, Screaming Frog, DeepCrawl, Woorank, Ahrefs, and Open Site Explorer.
47. Describe the Panda Update.
The Panda Update is a search filter that Google released in 2011 to penalize thin or low-quality websites from appearing in its top search results and to reward websites with high-quality content by classifying the pages according to their quality.
48. What do doorway pages do?
Web pages called doorway pages are made specifically for spamdexing. This is used to redirect users to alternative pages by flooding search engine indexes with results for specific terms.
49. How can bad links be removed from a website?
Toxic links to the site should be identified using a link checker tool, and they should be removed using the “Google Disavow” tool.
50. Describe rich snippets.
The featured text that comes first in organic search results is a “rich snippet.” The click-through rate for these excerpts is greater. Despite not being a component of SEO, they improve SERP results.
51. Explain Bounce Rate.
It is the proportion of website visitors that leave a page without acting, like clicking a link or filling out a form.
52. What connection exists between SEO and SEM?
Search engine marketing is often known as SEM and stands for search engine optimization. The main distinction between the two is that SEO is uncompensated while SEM is. Pay-per-click marketing and bought display ads are both included in SEM. Despite the two’s significant differences, they function best together.
53. Describe Off-Page SEO.
The list of tasks carried out outside of the website to raise its visibility and rating is known as off-page SEO.
54. What is submission to search engines?
To ensure that your website is scanned and indexed by major search engines, you must submit it to them. However, this procedure is no longer necessary because search engines are smarter now and can quickly identify and index your website without you having to manually submit it to them.
55. Explain Referral traffic.
The visitors you receive from other domains are referred to as referral traffic. By creating links with potential and pertinent websites or purchasing links from them, you can increase referral traffic.
56. What importance does body content have?
Body content relevance, also known as non-image text, describes text that appears on a web page but does not contain any images. It guarantees effective page optimization and aids in achieving a higher ranking in search engines.
57. Explain the model comparison tool.
The initial interaction, last interaction, time decay, and other types of attribution modeling are used by the model comparison tool to compare conversion metrics. You can compare three attribution models using model comparison tools.
58. What exactly is PageRank and why is it important?
PageRank is used to rank your pages and is all about credibility. The volume and caliber of material on the page, its age, and the number of inbound links all contribute to its credibility.
59. What is cloaking?
An example of a black hat SEO strategy is cloaking, in which the user sees different material or information than what is displayed to search engine crawlers. Better indexing is the goal of cloaking.
60. Describe what CTR is.
The CTR (Click-through Rate) in search engine optimization is computed by dividing the number of times a link appears on a search engine result page by the number of times users click on it. The CTR will increase as the number of clicks increases.
SEO
When you’re working to improve the SEO of your website, SEO is a long-term project. To ensure that your SEO efforts are as effective as possible and that your site is to truly benefit from your SEO efforts, you must conduct an SEO audit.
In this post, we’ll go over everything you need to know about SEO audits so that you can stay on track with your SEO strategy.
What is an SEO audit?
An SEO audit is a review of how your website ranks in search engine results. This assessment looks at various aspects of your website to see how they affect your rankings and if they need to be changed/improved, or if they are doing exactly what they should.
An SEO audit will assist you in identifying your website’s weak points as well as its strong, high-performing points. Audits help you determine what isn’t working and should be phased out, as well as which strategies are producing excellent results. SEO audits help you learn which areas of your website need to be prioritised and how to better allocate your resources.
There are many different opinions on what constitutes a good SEO audit, as you can find on the internet. Different sources will advise you on which tools, steps, and amount of time to devote to an SEO audit. All of this varying information can be overwhelming, but as long as you understand how to use each tool, what you’re doing/looking for during each step, and why you’re doing each step, you’ll be on the right track.
How long does it take to perform an SEO audit?
Depending on how in-depth you want to go with your SEO audit, it could take anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks to complete. Weeks, indeed. The duration of an SEO audit is determined by the size of your website and the scope of your audit.
Whatever time you devote to your SEO audit, one thing is certain: a good SEO audit cannot be rushed. It is preferable to overestimate the time required for an audit and reserve too much time in your calendar for this project than the opposite; rushing an SEO audit allows for errors and prevents you from devoting enough time to each step.
A hastily performed SEO audit is essentially pointless; it will not provide you with useful information. However, it is understandable that many website owners are unable to commit to a month-long audit. If you’re short on time and want to cut the number of hours required to complete an audit, choosing a specific type of SEO audit may be beneficial.
What are the different types of SEO audits?
Because there are so many components to a website that can be modified for SEO purposes, there are several types of SEO audits. If you’ve been focusing on a specific area or strategy for your website, conducting a tailored audit could save you time and provide you with more actionable results.
The most common types of SEO audits are as follows:
- Technical audit
- Content audit
- On-page audit
- Off-page audit
You’ll need a thorough understanding of the tools you’ll be using if you choose to conduct one of the above audits or a full SEO website audit.
Common SEO auditing tools
So, what are the most commonly used SEO auditing tools?
How do you conduct an SEO audit?
Now that we’ve covered what an SEO audit is and what tools you’ll need to perform your own, we can get down to business: how do you actually perform an SEO audit?
SEO audits are carried out by following a set of steps. Each step examines a different aspect of your website to determine how it can be improved.
There are hundreds of different step-by-step guides on the internet that claim to have the right list, but there is no single perfect way to conduct an SEO audit.
The best SEO audits include the steps that are most applicable to your website.
We looked at some of the most popular SEO audit guides on the web and combined the information with our own SEO knowledge at DigitalCrave to create our own step-by-step guide for a fairly comprehensive SEO audit. While this list does not include every component you could consider for your website, we chose the steps that have been shown to have the greatest impact on our organic traffic.
Check out our SEO checklist if you’re looking for a list of quick hits. You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking for a comprehensive set of steps.
We’ve divided our list into three sections to make it easier to understand which category of SEO each step belongs to to keep related steps close together Benchmarking, Technical SEO, and Content are the three components.
DigitalCrave SEO audit step-by-step guide
Section 1: Benchmarking
1: Get checked that Google indexes only one version of your website
Google may have multiple versions of your site, believe it or not. This is not an SEO best practice you should always show the correct version of your website to users.
The good news is that this is a simple and quick fix. To see which versions of your website Google has indexed, enter the following URL formats into your browser’s address bar:
If any of these formats returns a version that isn’t your most recent website, simply add a 301 redirect to resolve the issue.
Now that we know everyone on Google is posted somewhere, we can concentrate on auditing that location!
2: Begin a website crawl.
Using a website crawling tool to get a preliminary assessment of the health of your website is a good place to start.
Many online tools are available to check for the specific things we’ll be looking at later in this guide, such as broken links, indexability, crawl ability, and duplicate content.
Website crawlers will not replace the manual SEO audit described in this guide, but they can certainly supplement and guide you while you conduct one.
3: Perform a competitor analysis
Finding out how your competitor’s websites are performing and what their best practices are is just as important as knowing how your website’s SEO is doing.
We recommend conducting a competitive analysis as a “sidequest” to your SEO audit. We have our own set of tools to assist you in completing one quickly.
In summary, conducting a competitor analysis consists of four steps:
Determine your competitors.
When it comes to SEO, your competitors are the sites that rank on Google for your target terms. Determine the target terms you want to rank for and see who consistently ranks for them.
Examine their search results.
Enter site:yourcompetitor.com into Google and examine the number of pages they have indexed, whether there are any pages they should not have indexed, and their content strategy.
Examining the following characteristics on each page of their website:
- Titles
- Meta description tags
- Meta keywords tags
- H1 headings
- URL structure
- Content and keywords
Analyze the links
Some of the most popular tools for analyzing your competitor’s backlink profile are Ahrefs and SemRush.
Examine their website
Use a web crawling tool on your competitors’ sites, just as you did on your own, to see how their results compare to yours.
4: Identify and resolve indexing issues
This procedure necessitates the use of the Google Search Console. The “Index Coverage Report” will give you a list of pages that the search engine is unable to index for various reasons.
You should also refer to the data discovered by the web crawling tool you used; these tools can sometimes provide context that Google cannot.
From here, you can ensure that Google indexes the correct pages, including blocking pages that you don’t want Google to index.
You can prevent Google from indexing a page by adding a noindex tag to it.
The number of pages indexed by Google from your site may surprise you, and many of them may be less traffic web pages.
They’ve earned this moniker because they’re “living dead” pages—they don’t add value to your site, receive little to no traffic, and rarely appear on the SERP. However, these pages will have an impact on your search rankings, so you must deal with them accordingly. Here are some examples of less traffic web pages.
- Content overlapping
- Press releases Outdated
- Search result pages with little content
- Pages from the archive
The list goes on and on. When a page is identified as a less traffic page, it should be deleted. After all, more isn’t always better in Google’s eyes, and if your website has fewer pages, you’ll have fewer to keep track of and manage.
5: Examine your organic traffic
We’ll be using Google Analytics from now.
To find your organic search traffic, open Google Analytics, go to Acquisition, and then select Channels from the All Traffic dropdown. Select Organic Search once you’ve arrived.
You can change the time periods displayed to see how many people visited your site in the previous month, six months, year, and so on.
This will assist you in determining where your website stands in terms of traffic, and it will assist you in setting reasonable goals once your audit is completed.
6: Determine where you rank for your brand name.
It’s time to see what happens when people try to find your brand using Google. Enter the name of your company into the Google search bar to see where you rank on the SERP.
Ideally, you want your website to be the first result. Furthermore, you want your homepage to be the first result that users see.
If your website is a few results down on the results page, it means you have some brand building to do. This can be accomplished primarily through link building—we’ll discuss how to get more backlinks later.
It could also mean that your brand name is too generic, and Google is returning results that are completely unrelated to your business but use the same wording. If this is the case, you may want to consider rebranding to make your company and website names more unique and distinguishable.
If you cannot find your website on the SERP, this indicates that there are serious issues at hand. In Step 4, you should have identified and corrected any indexing issues, but it is possible that your website is subject to algorithmic or manual penalties. Checking Google Search Console can assist you in getting to the bottom of this.
7: Perform a keyword optimization scan and set up keyword rank tracking.
A significant part of participating in Organic search involves ensuring that your website and its pages are keywords optimised.
To determine how well your website is performing in terms of keywords, you should first conduct keyword research to identify a list of keywords to target.
Then, work on incorporating keywords into the following areas of your website:
- URL
- Title and H1 tag
- H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 subheadings
- Meta title and meta description
- Body copy – keywords should be included in moderation throughout the post
You can then use another online tool to set up rank tracking for the keywords that are important to you.
Section 2: SEO Techniques
8: Examine the architecture of your website and fix them
Website architecture is an unseen force that has a significant impact on SEO; it not only helps search engines find and index the pages on your website, but it also tells them which pages are the most important.
The general rule of thumb is that the closer a page is to the homepage, the more important it is.
A well-designed website. What exactly do we mean by that? From your homepage, you should be able to navigate to any page in three clicks or less. This means that each page has a clear path to and from the homepage and that no pages are buried deep within the website.
Having a good website’s navigation should not be a predator hunt for users; it should be logical, simple, and natural!
Modifying your website’s architecture could be as simple as improving internal linking or, in more extreme cases, enlisting the help of a web developer.
When you are analysing the architecture of your website, look for orphan pages. Orphan pages are those that are not linked to anywhere else on your site and exist on their own.
Once you come across an orphan page, you should first evaluate its purpose and performance. Then you can choose whether to create internal links to that page or simply delete it.
Even if it requires significant changes to your website’s structure, flattening its architecture will undoubtedly benefit your site’s user experience.
9: Optimize your website for mobile use.
The following three steps are also heavily centered on the user experience.
It’s 2022, Almost everyone does at least some of their internet browsing on mobile devices. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re losing a lot of potential traffic and leads.
How can you make your website look good on a mobile device?
10: Check the speed of your website.
People’s attention spans are extremely short in 2022. Probably because of all that mobile device usage we discussed in the previous step.
This means that site speed is critical for the user experience, and Google has repeatedly confirmed that site speed is a ranking factor.
We recommend the following activities to improve the speed at which your website loads:
- Clean up the HTML code on your most important website pages.
- Run a speed test using an online tool and address any bottlenecks that are discovered.
- Large images should be compressed.
- Use Google PageSpeed Insights to get suggestions for future improvements.
11: Locate and repair broken links.
Surprisingly, broken links have no direct impact on how a search engine ranks your site. However, encountering “Page Not Found” errors on your website creates a terrible and irritating user experience.
You can find broken links using the site audit tool from Point 1 or the Index Report in Google Search Console.
Once you’ve determined which links are broken, you can go through them and decide whether or not to repair them. If a link is still relevant and helpful to your users, you should fix it; if it is outdated or useless to your users, you should delete it.
12: Examine your backlinks and look for opportunities to build links.
One of the top ranking factors for search engines is the number of quality backlinks your site has, so pay close attention to this step.
Online tools can tell you how many backlinks your website has as well as its domain authority. Domain authority is determined by the trustworthiness of the sites that link to you.
You want as many backlinks as possible, but only if they are all high-quality!
If you notice a lot of links from spammy or fake websites, you should disavow those links. Look for links originating from link directories, non-indexed sites, or sites with a high number of mirror pages.
You want to build links from trustworthy sites so that your site can have a trustworthy reputation as well. To identify link-building opportunities, locate websites and people who fit these criteria, and devise an outreach strategy:
- Journalists who write about your industry
- Blogs that produce content related to your industry or nice
- Companies with similar but non-competing products
- Thought leaders and influencers in the industry
13: Conduct on-page SEO audits.
Now that we’re all on the same page about what on-page SEO is, we can go through your website’s most important pages and perform a manual on-page SEO audit.
To determine which pages of your website will be visited the most frequently, use the following list of questions:
- To begin, is the title well-crafted and clickable? Is your desired keyword present?
- Is the H1 tag only used once on the page? Is it optimised and does it contain a keyword?
- Is your meta description tailored to entice users and explain the purpose of your page?
- Is it the correct length to avoid being cut off by the search engine?
- Is it stuffed with target keywords?
- Are you correctly utilising subheaders on your page to break up text and make your post more readable and navigable?
- Are targeted keywords included in the first 100 words of the post? Is there a use of LSI keywords throughout the body copy?
- Do you have five or more internal links?
- Do you have five or more external links?
14: Metadata Optimisation
We touched on this briefly in the previous step, but you’ll want to pay attention to the page’s metadata and make sure it’s working for you.
Check that your meta tags and meta description have been optimised for SEO.
Meta descriptions should be under 300 words, include a call to action, target keywords, and have a unique draw for your target audience that distinguishes the page from the results.
Meta titles must strike a careful balance between including target keywords and becoming overcrowded and losing coherence. Meta tags/titles are visible to both indexers and search users, so make sure they are appropriate appealing title containing 1-2 target keywords/terms.
Section 3: Content
15: Bulk up thin content and remove duplicates
Have you ever clicked on a link expecting to find exactly what you’re looking for, only to be let down when the page loaded? Instead of the juicy, valuable information you require on the subject, you only find a few sentences that barely scratch the surface.
You’ve just become a victim of poor content. Thin content is any page that offers little to no value to users, and it can take several forms. Thin content can be defined as short, ambiguous, unoriginal, or low-value affiliate content.
Duplicate content is just as bad. Especially if the content has been copied from other websites. You are able to use online tools to find similar pages on the internet to your own, and then differentiate your pages from there.
To identify thin content issues, go through your pages and identify those that “just aren’t doing it” for users. You can then either improve or delete these posts by adding valuable information and content.
16: Create a list of potential page updates.
“Freshness” is a factor that Google considers when ranking pages. It’s also something that users care about, and it’s very easy for users to tell when a page hasn’t been updated in a long time, or when it’s completely out of date.
To boost your rankings and appear hip to the kids, make a list of pages that could benefit from a page update.
You can then go through those pages and ensure that the information on them is still correct and relevant to the target audience. You should include any significant developments in the topic since the page was last updated.
Create pages that you know your audience will want to read right now.
17. Find pages that rank 5-10 for high-volume keywords.
This is about improving your existing high-performing content. A search engine result page ranking of 5 is nothing to sneeze at, but the truth is that organic traffic grows exponentially with each ranking above that.
So go through your website and look for content that ranks anywhere from their high-volume target keyword, they rank fifth to tenth on Google.
Then, look at the content that ranks above your page and tailor it to be even more valuable than the content that ranks higher.
This will put your SEO content development skills to the test, as it’s difficult to improve on a good post. You’ll need to get a little creative and into the SEO weeds, but the extra time spent putting the icing on the cake will pay off when you see your rankings slowly but steadily rise.
18. Optimize your content for user experience signals.
UX is an abbreviation for user experience. This step focuses on designing your posts with the user experience in mind. How do you go about doing this?
The most important thing is to match your content to the search intent of the user. Check out our post here for a more in-depth look at search intent.
Consider why the user is performing a specific search query and what they hope to find when they type that query. Then, make sure your post is exactly what they are looking for.
To optimise your content, look for pages that aren’t performing well and investigate why the content isn’t resonating with users. Examining how the competition responds to that query may aid in bringing the issues to the surface as well.
You may need to stick with the same topic but change the purpose, angle, or style of the content you’ve created around it.
Examine every detail in the piece and ask yourself, “Who is this really going to help, and how?” If you’re having difficulty answering these questions, it’s time to make a change.
19. Find your website’s “content gaps.”
This step will require some creativity as well as some snooping.
Topics for which your target users want to find content on your website but for which you currently do not have any pages are referred to as content gaps.
It can also refer to keywords that your competitors rank for but you do not.
To address this, look at which keywords your competitors are targeting and which ones you’ve included in your content strategy. If there are discrepancies, you should account for them and begin incorporating keywords that were previously absent from your content plan.
Your content gaps do not have to be filled by your competitors. You can also keep up with the latest industry news, developments, and trends to identify keywords that your users are definitely using right now.
20: Start a relevant posting content
This is the final step of our SEO audit for a reason; it will assist Google in processing all of the changes and improvements you made throughout your SEO audit Faster
This step is completed in two parts. First, you must create content optimised for a target keyword that is significantly stronger than the content currently ranked for that keyword.
Following that, you will heavily promote the post. This can be accomplished by sharing the content on various social media platforms, mentioning the post in an email newsletter, and so on.
When word spreads about your post and traffic begins to flow in, Google will be notified and send search bots to your site.
When you add new content to your website, the number of pages crawled per day increases. They’ll be able to look around once the bots have arrived for the high content post and see what else is new—exactly what you want following an SEO audit.
What should I include in my SEO audit for my website?
While all of these steps are important and can improve your website’s SEO, we recognise that there are a lot of them. Start looking at aspects of your website that you’ve never studied before when conducting your first SEO audit—this is where you might find the juiciest and most drastic changes.
Conclusion
If you’ve read this far, you’ve realised that an SEO audit is more of a marathon than a sprint. We hope that this guide teaches you how to be intentional about your SEO improvements and demonstrates just how dissimilar SEO activities can be from one another.
SEO
SEO is not a one-and-done endeavor. Sure, some fundamentals can be learned, but good SEOs are not born SEO geniuses. Effective SEO is simply a matter of developing good SEO habits. You will become proficient at SEO and be able to create content and websites that rank on Google after practicing good SEO habits for days, weeks, and years. I know this firsthand because I learned SEO and taught it in our group and one-on-one coaching programs.
While there will undoubtedly be large-scale projects that you will work on as an SEO, things like:
- Website optimization
- Building a strategy
- Link building campaigns
- Content audits
The good habits you develop will lead to real, long-term SEO results. These building blocks are what will set you apart from your competitors on Google and allow you to eventually outrank and outsmart them. To assist you on your journey, I’ll break down the essential SEO habits I’ve observed or developed over the years that will put you on the fast track to SEO success.
SEO practices
Whether you work on a marketing team of two, twenty, or one hundred people, these general SEO habits will serve you well in your job and career. SEO is only effective if your suggestions are implemented; otherwise, it is just talking. These habits will assist you in developing positive relationships within your organisation and getting things done. Spend time with your website designers. Unless you’re a one-man show, you’re probably working with a web developer or development team.
Make them your friends. It’s as simple as that. Making it simple and easy for Google to find and index your content is a critical component of getting results from SEO. Prioritizing crawl ability, sitemap structure, and site speed will help your strategy succeed.
Ignoring those things risks squandering all of your efforts.
Having a good relationship with your development team allows you to prioritise those items. Schedule time with them, have coffee with them, and perhaps host a team lunch (in person or virtually)—do whatever it takes to get to know them and form a bond so that you can work together rather than bringing them a list of demands.
Set aside time on a regular basis, alongside your other priorities, to review and address the technical aspects of your website if you are also a web developer. It’s critical to track and stay ahead of tech debt, just like a product development team.
This is something that far too few SEOs do. It’s tempting to isolate yourself with a keyword database and a call that research, but you’re overlooking an important ingredient: the customer.
SEO is concerned with answering two questions:
- Who is doing the searching?
- What are they searching for?
A spreadsheet cannot provide an answer to that question. You must speak with people or listen to recordings/read transcripts of people who have done so. That is the most effective and efficient way to understand your company’s target customers and the questions they ask. Request that Sales or Customer Success listen in on calls so you can get a better sense of what your customer is trying to accomplish, their goals, and their challenges. This can then be supplemented with traditional keyword research tools (we constantly do it with our keyword research tools).
Spend time with the other members of the marketing team.
If you’re only one member of a larger market ting team, try to look beyond SEO and understand your team’s overall goals. If you’re a one-person marketing team, talk to the CEO and the sales team (sometimes the same thing).
This broadens your horizons beyond the specifics of search engine optimization. SEO is not the only goal. It is a tool used to achieve a business goal, such as increasing the number of customers for a product line or beta participants. As an SEO, you’re on a mission to help your company thrive, so you should understand what that entails.
The more you understand your company’s and organization’s goals, the better your SEO efforts will align with and support those goals, making your work much more effective.
Keep the end goal in mind at all times. It is critical to review your goals on a regular basis and assess your progress toward them. None of us SEOs can predict how Google will react to the changes we propose. We’re sometimes wrong, and sometimes we’re right. It’s critical to track your progress against your objectives to ensure you’re on the right track and to correct course as needed.
Never stop learning.
The best SEOs I know are always curious and hungry for more. Constantly inquire. A natural sense of curiosity will serve you well in any profession. If you ever think you have all the answers or are bored, stop and find someone you admire and talk to them about what they are working on in 5 minutes, you’ll realise how far you still have to go.
Subscribe to blogs, listen to podcasts, participate in Slack conversations… whatever it takes to keep your mind and skills sharp. Although there is a strong temptation in SEO to always be correct, I prefer to be proven wrong. We only learn when we are proven incorrect; otherwise, we are not being challenged.
Writing SEO habits
Before you start writing, go over the search results. It used to be that you could get SEO results simply by publishing a blog post. Now? Not at all. It’s not that blogging is ineffective. It’s just that there are probably hundreds or thousands of pieces of content similar to yours and only ten spots on Google’s first page.
Yeah, those odds bother me as well. You can gain an advantage by researching what already ranks for the question you want to rank and asking what you can do to improve on the existing content. Google will not rank your content simply because it exists; it must be better than what is already there.
Better does not necessarily imply longer; better could be longer/more in-depth, but it is best to focus on the intent behind the keyword you are targeting and ask how you can better match it.
While each piece of content should be designed to answer a single question, chances are your reader has a few more. Examine the search results and search features to get an idea of what follow-up questions your reader might have that you can answer.
This is a great way to establish authority in your content while also making it as comprehensive as possible. It’s also a great way to simply write some great content that helps your reader solve problems and make better purchasing decisions.
While writing, keep the buyer’s journey in mind.
One of the most common reasons people say blogging “doesn’t work” is that they envision two-dimensional content that does nothing more than scratch the surface and move on. That content, of course, will not work—no one enjoys reading it, and it does nothing to move a reader further down your funnel.
When you’re about to write a piece of content, consider where your reader is in the buyer’s journey. Do they appear at the top of your funnel? If that’s the case, how about at the bottom of the funnel? This is an excellent opportunity to assist them in making a more informed purchasing decision by purchasing from you. You could direct them to a demo page, a free trial, or a consultation. High-value conversion assets work well here as well. Not only will this content better match the reader’s intent, but it will also better serve your business goals.
Content review SEO habits
One side of the coin is content creation. However, once you’ve published your content, that’s not the end of the story. To constantly improve your content, you can and should test and iterate on it. Your website’s content is a living component that should be treated as a product that can be tweaked and optimised.
Regularly review top-performing content
Depending on the topic’s search volume, you could have hundreds to thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of visitors to your website each month. What a pity if they all bounced off that piece of content and never returned.
Take the time to review your top-ranking content in order to improve your conversion opportunities and turn it into a conversion machine for your company.
Regularly evaluate underperforming content.
- On the other hand, I like to review my worst-performing content at least once a month.
- If your content isn’t ranking, it’s time to investigate why.
- Is it not listed?
- Is it difficult for Google to locate this page?
- Is the content insufficiently authoritative or comprehensive?
- Could it be more in line with the intent?
- Could you make any changes to the structure?
There are numerous ways to improve your content to see if it will perform better; otherwise, it may be time to retire the content and redirect it to another page. Keep an eye out for high-ranking, low-converting content. You’re probably passing up some excellent traffic opportunities.
Just because a piece of content isn’t getting much traffic doesn’t mean it’s not ranking. In fact, there are probably pages on your website that rank on pages 1-2 but receive little traffic. This is what I call high-ranking low-converting content; it ranks but isn’t clicked on for whatever reason.
What is the solution? Exercise your copywriting muscles.
Experiment with different titles and meta descriptions to see what will catch your readers’ attention and entice them to click. This is the quickest and most straightforward way to increase traffic to your site and establish the authority of your high-ranking content. Iterate on your content on a regular basis. Your content is not complete once it is published.
You’re not writing a book or making art to sit on a shelf. Your website’s content is a living, evolving entity that should be reviewed and updated on a regular basis. You should view your website as a product that needs to be reviewed and evolved over time, just as you never stop working on and evolving your product or business. This keeps your content current and relevant, and Google favors fresh content, so it’s a win-win for both SEO and your readers.
Analysis of SEO
We touched on analytics briefly, but there are a few more SEO analytics habits I try to develop that will be beneficial to you. Because you’re probably already checking your traffic and search console reports, let’s go beyond the obvious. When it comes to SEO strategy, you must make deliberate decisions about the content you will create and the keywords you will target.
Examine the target page and query performance on a regular basis. If you stick to your strategy, you’ll need a way to see if the content you’re creating is having an impact. I do this by reviewing how my target pages and target keywords are performing on a regular basis.
The key metrics to monitor for target pages are:
- Organic visits
- Bounce rate
- Conversions/events if applicable
For target keywords, it’s:
- Impressions on Google
- Clicks
- Click-through rate
- Position
First, ensure that Google indexes it. If Google does not see and index your content, it has no chance of ranking. It’s now time to track its progress in search:
- Is the content being shown in search results?
- What keywords is your content ranking for?
- What keywords is it getting clicks for?
- How do impressions, position, and traffic change over time
All of these are critical questions to ask yourself with each new piece of content you create.
Technical SEO practices
Without a few technical components, no SEO strategy would be complete. Again, make friends with your developer(s), as they will be your best ally in ensuring that your website is in good technical shape and that your strategy is well-executed.
Keep your site coverage up to date. f your content is not being indexed, it will not appear in search results. Fortunately, Google Search Console includes a handy coverage report that shows how much of your website has been crawled and indexed, as well as which pages have been missed. Monitor site speed and Core Web Vitals on a regular basis. Google is becoming more concerned with website speed and page experience.
It all makes sense. Google is on a mission to provide the best answer to every question, and its dominance as a search engine is based on the quality of the content they provide. This is applicable to any search engine. Aside from the obvious, slow loading times, popups, and other poor user experiences are easy ways to degrade your quality.
Fast content is not guaranteed to rank, but it will provide a better experience than slow content, which will struggle to compete with similar quality content. I’m not obsessed with page speed, but I do pay attention to it on occasion.
Avoiding bad SEO habits
I’ll leave you with some bad SEO habits to avoid because you’ve got a nice, healthy list of good SEO habits. These are things I see many people new to SEO do, as well as things perpetuated by outdated advice.
- Concerned about keyword density
- Concerned about domain authority
- Overreliance on SEO tools and the data they provide Obsession with a “focus keyword”
- Concerned about domain authority and other fabricated metrics
- Obsession with hyperlinks
- In relation to the preceding, spamming people for links (seriously, please stop)
- Overemphasis on word count
These are some of the most common “bad” SEO practices I see.
They are not toxic or will harm your rankings; they are simply less productive than the ones listed above. They may feel like a bag of chips in the short term, but they aren’t doing much for you in the long run.
Finally, I hope this (somewhat) exhaustive list has been helpful.
I understand that the last thing anyone wants is more work. Isn’t SEO already a lot of work? If you’re not sure where to go next or how to advance as an SEO, this list is a good place to start.
Try implementing one or two of these habits at a time. Keep in mind that you are what you do. By implementing these core habits, you will develop the same natural instincts as the best SEOs. It’s simply a matter of repetition and sustained focus.
SEO
What SEO Techniques to Avoid?
SEO has always been a popular and valuable practice for any website owner to engage in to ensure their site is found and ranked well on Google. However, the search engine algorithm has changed dramatically in recent years.
Nonetheless, Google continues to add new techniques and techniques to its algorithm. This article will provide you with information on outdated tactics and what you should do instead. If you’re wondering which SEO techniques you should avoid, the list below should help:
Stuffing keywords
The fundamentals of SEO are to ensure that your site contains relevant content that people are looking for. Including keywords in your content can help, but only if done correctly.
Using a high density of keywords in your content may appear to be keyword stuffing, which will almost certainly result in a Google penalty and a drop in rankings. Instead, use your keywords naturally throughout the article rather than cramming them all into one large block of text.
Hidden Text
This used to be a great way to get your keywords to rank in search engines, but it is no longer the case. Google now penalises sites that they believe are attempting to manipulate their rankings, so make sure your SEO techniques are legitimate and there for no other reason than to add quality content.
Paid Links
Paid links used to be a great way to boost SEO, but Google has changed its algorithm, so they are no longer as effective as they once were. Google now prioritises sites that use specific link-building techniques, such as buying links or offering them in exchange for promotion elsewhere on the web. These links will eventually be penalised by Google, and your site will suffer as a result.
Cloaking
Cloaking occurs when a website owner creates the same page in two different styles, one for search engines and one for humans. This used to be a great way to get around web spam filters, but it no longer works as well as it used to, and so many sites have been penalised for using cloaking that Google has now outright banned it.
Open Site Explorer
Using this site to determine which of your pages are ranking high for a specific keyword is no longer recommended. The site is constantly changing and updating, frequently adding new techniques that have already been banned.
Noindex Banners
There was once a significant benefit to using a no-index tag on an on-page element, but Google now considers these to be spammy and harms your overall ranking. Instead, use rel=”no-follow” on any links you believe are critical to your rankings.
Keyword Density
If you use an article with a high keyword density, Google will consider this keyword stuffing and will penalise your site. Instead, try to use more descriptive keywords in your content that the average person is more likely to search for.
Flash Movies
Using Flash movies on your website used to be a great way to ensure that your site was visible on both desktop and mobile devices, but this is no longer the case. Google no longer allows flash sites on their engine, so if you used flash videos on your site, you will have lost a lot of money.
Blog Networks
Blog networks are now obsolete and ineffective, especially if you have recently purchased links to promote your blogs. This is because over-optimization will result in a penalty, and your site will suffer as a result. If you decide to do something like this in the future, be cautious of buying links and only from reputable sources.
301 Redirects
When you have a new domain, Google may take some time to crawl the site, but 301 redirects can help with a faster crawl and improve search engine rankings. However, in recent years, Google has made it so that using a 301 redirect too frequently in a short period of time can have the opposite effect and negatively affect your rankings. Instead, try to avoid doing this as much as possible and only use it when absolutely necessary.
Page Titles
Using keywords in your page titles can help with rankings in some ways, but Google’s algorithm has changed, so this is no longer the case. Instead, try to keep your titles descriptive so that users can distinguish between pages without using any keywords.
As you can see, many of the techniques used to get a website ranked high in search engines are now obsolete. Instead, concentrate on producing high-quality content for your target audience and only include keywords when it feels natural and necessary.
If you follow this advice, your website will eventually begin to rank highly without any negative Google penalties as a result of the work you have put into it.
digital marketing
What are Directory Submission Websites?
If you know what a phone directory does, you can easily understand what these sites do. Instead of phone numbers, directory submission sites have a plethora of website links and information. This information is organised in various directories based on the niche or section to which it belongs.
The main advantage of these websites is that they raise the search engine ranking, which increases traffic. The primary function of web directories is to allow website owners to submit information about their websites to the web directory.
Directory Submission Types
There are three major types of directory submissions:
- Basic Directory Submission– A single description and various titles are submitted to distinct categories via this single URL.
- Manual Directory Submission– Several descriptions are written for multiple titles and one URL in this program.
- Multiple Directory Submission– This involves submitting multiple internal URLs of the same website with different titles and descriptions.
The Benefits of Web Directory Submission in SEO Directory submission is one of the most effective SEO strategies. It has numerous advantages, which is why bloggers and SEO experts use it.
Here are some of its main advantages:
- Increase link popularity: Directory submission has become an essential SEO practice for generating high-quality backlinks. Backlinks are important to search engines, and these sites can help you get quality backlinks for your website. It is a tried and tested method for SEO ranking and link diversity.
- Improved search engine ranking: Listing your website in top directories will provide your website with the necessary exposure. According to experts, it is the best way to boost search engine rankings and build links.
- Page indexing and blog posts: With directory submission, search engines will almost certainly give you page indexing. Following the submission, the search engine will begin locating your website through backlinks created by another website.
- Traffic generation: It goes without saying that using the right keywords can help your Directory submission get listed in search engines. Despite having a high search engine ranking, it automatically directs the target audience to your website.
Directory Submission Site Types
There are various types of directory submission sites that can help you obtain high-quality backlinks for your website. There are eight different types of submissions; please describe them in detail:
- Sites for Free Directory Submission: These sites offer free directory submission, but there is no guarantee that the administrator will approve your link submission. The disadvantage of free sites is that they take a long time to produce results.
- Paid Directory Submission: Choosing a paid listing can help you generate backlinks quickly. You must pay a fee to the site administrator in order to submit your business information here. These websites charge an annual or lifetime fee to provide Directory Submission services.
- Automated Directory Submission: There are a variety of online tools and software that can be used to submit these directories.
- Manual Directory Submission: This is a slightly time-consuming and difficult method because you must complete the entire task on your own.
- Nofollow Directory Submission: This method has not been very successful because people have not received the desired results. You would have to make a calculated move if you had submitted the link in this Directory Submission.
- Dofollow Directory Submission: If you want to improve your blog’s ranking, use this method. This method is used by many bloggers to increase organic traffic to their blogs.
- Niche Directory Submission: In its functional domain, this unique method includes RSS feeds, script and software, blogs, Web designers, Web hosting companies, SEO companies, and other online businesses. Every specialty directory You would find submission trades with a specific subject in the category under a general directory list.
- Submission to a Reciprocal Directory: When you enable the directory connection, you should also submit a link. After the directory administrator approves this link, you will receive backlinks.
These are the various types of directory submission sites; you can select one based on your company’s needs and usage. The next important thing to understand is how to make a directory submission.
How Do You Submit Your Website to a Directory Submission Site?
- The first step is to choose the best directory submission website from the list.
- Choose the website to which you want to submit your website or blog.
- Next, select the category that corresponds to your blog’s niche.
- After selecting a category, click the submit link button, and your blog will be added to the directory.
- There are still a few steps to go. When you click the submit link button, you will be presented with a number of options to help you narrow down your options.
- The final step is to click the add article button. Following that, you must include information such as a title, description, and URL.
List of 800+ Directory Submission Sites (2022)
Here is a list of free and paid high-quality directory submission sites to choose from.
Directory Submission Site Dos and Don’ts
When submitting your site to directories, you should be aware of their do’s and don’ts:
Do’s
- Submit your website to well-known directories to boost traffic. Also, the quality of the backlinks should be high because they, too, contribute to the website’s optimization process.
- Select carefully for your anchor text and avoid spammy usage. Do not use the same anchor text against each link. Choose different keywords for each link and change the description.
- Check that the directory you choose has a distinct category structure that will aid in the organisation of information when you submit your website into categories. This facilitates the quick retrieval of the required information.
- Remember to check the directory’s domain authority.
- The title and description you choose should be relevant and appropriate. Remember to include the main keyword in the title of the anchor text.
- Check the directory to see if the website is not already listed. It would save you a significant amount of time.
- When building links, always keep quality in mind. Rather than a slew of low-quality links, one high-quality link is preferable. As a result the links from high PR directories aid in increasing traffic to your website.
- Avoid paying for links and instead opt for one-way links via directory submission.
- Keep track of your submissions and check your approval status on a regular basis. Many free directory submission sites may approve your site immediately, while others may charge you to submit your site to a few top sites.
- It is critical to document your work in order to track performance. Documentation will allow you to determine whether your SEO strategies are effective.
Don’ts
- Remember that the directory that uses the’rel=no follow’ technique for your link is useless because it contributes nothing to your optimization campaign. That link to your site is not followed by search engines. Redirects are sometimes ignored by search engines when it comes to backlinks.
- Avoid link farms, bad neighborhoods, and free-for-all (FFA) link exchange sites as they may cause harm to your site
- If you notice that the directory is not approving the site without manually reviewing it, do not submit it there. They do it with the help of some automated scripts.
- Do not submit mirror sites because they contain the same content but have different URLs.
- Many directories will not accept sites that were submitted within the same month. They may display the error “Domain already exists.” However, if you have not yet listed it, select a more relevant category and then submit it.
- It is not considered good practice to submit the same URL more than once. Choose a site that does not redirect to another address.
- Before submitting, wait for the site to be finished It is as simple as this: Do not submit sites to such a directory if you see an under construction notice or if the site is incomplete.
