I have written this guide for beginners because I believe that knowledge about SEO positioning in Google should be for everyone and not just for a few "experts". It is true that search engine optimization can be a bit confusing with certain words, methods and tools, but it is also true that with the most basic concepts you can achieve very good results .
🔹 What is SEO or search engine optimization?
SEO ( Search Engine Optimization or search engine optimization ) is optimizing a website to improve its position in the results shown by web search engines. That is, try to make your site appear first when users search Google for something related to the theme of your site, mainly. 😉
What is SEO for?
Well, the purpose of SEO or improving the web positioning of a site in search engines (such as Google) is to have more visibility to get more visits , which can mean more sales or more income in general.
That is why it is so important today, because it is a free and very powerful channel to attract users who can become your readers, subscribers, customers, etc. 👌
SEO example
Before, if you searched for “create a fashion blog” in Google, my tutorial to create a blog (in general) appeared in the 8th position. Well, one way to "optimize" the SEO of that tutorial so that it appeared higher in the results of that search (and more visits to the tutorial), was to update that tutorial with a specific section on how to create a fashion blog.
Then Google saw that it was indeed dealing with that specific topic and now the result appears among the top 5 positions of that search.
Well that's SEO. 😊
It is true that Google increasingly "understands" what users are looking for (it interprets our language), how they search for it (such as voice search ) and "reads" the sites on the Internet to offer answers to those searches. , but the basic and technical aspects of SEO that I am going to explain to you right now are still very important.
🔸 What is SEO On Page?
SEO On Page is the name given to the optimization that can be done directly on the pages of the website that you are trying to position in the results on Google, that is, everything you can change on your site to try to appear the first in Google searches.
🔸 What is SEO Off Page?
SEO Off Page is the name given to the optimization that is attempted from external sites to the site that is trying to position itself in Google results, that is, everything you can do "outside your website" to try to appear the first in Google searches (mainly getting incoming links or also called backlinks ).
🔹 How does Google work?
To know what to "touch" you first have to know how the Google search engine works when it comes to positioning your website or blog in searches, don't you think?
You have to understand that Google, basically, always wants to give the best answer (or the most accurate) for what a person is looking for in their search engine.
And to do so, it goes through a series of phases:
- Google constantly crawls websites (those that “allow” to be crawled, of course 😊) to find out what they have. This phase is also known as crawling .
- Then Google indexes all that information on its own servers to keep it well organized and to be able to access it later more easily. As if it were the index of a library in which you write down what you have found and relate it to terms, entities and keywords that identify it.
- When someone uses the search engine, Google goes through its index to see what it has stored in relation to that user's search intention and what it can give as an answer.
- Now is when Google's algorithms are in charge of ordering the information according to how they think it can best respond to the user's search and that it is more relevant to them.
- Finally, Google displays the information on the search results pages or SERPs ( Search Engine Result Pages ) depending on how it thinks it may be more useful to the user: with a simple box, a map, a list of sites, a carousel of videos, a table, etc.
And this is the process (very summarized) of what Google does.
With this I want you to see that SEO is not only in step 4), but that it starts from step 1) making things easy for Google to find and "understand" your site correctly, and hence the importance of following Google Webmaster Guidelines . 🙂
🔹 How can I optimize my website or blog?
Let's get to the point. There are many things to take into account when it comes to improving your web positioning, but I want to make clear to you some details that Google will take into account and that are basic but very important :
- It will check if your website works. Logical, right? Well, I advise you to choose the best hosting , because depending on who you contract it with, this may not be so logical and your website may not be working for longer than it is working...
- The loading speed of your website . As a general rule, websites that load faster "lose" fewer visits because the user is more comfortable with them, and Google will pay attention to that (and this also depends on having a good hosting, of course).
- If your site and its content is easily “crawlable”. That is why it is so important to add it to Search Console , Google's free tool with which you can make your work easier and also know how your site is performing in Google results.
- If your content is shared a lot . If your content is of quality and unique, and you also get a lot of shares, then you will receive more visits; this way Google will understand that people like it and will position it better.
- User behavior on your website or blog. Google also knows if the user has found your site from the search engine and if it has served him for what he was looking for... 😊
In addition to these tips, there are some basic notions that many "gurus" take for granted and end up not taking into account. But these simple aspects are the foundations of SEO on your website and on the most expensive and beautiful website you have ever seen.
Shall I tell you? Well here they are:
🔸 Friendly URLs
The URLs of your website or blog must be "friendly", that is, they must be simple and suggest the content of the page .
In WordPress, this can be changed from the Settings > Permalinks menu , where you can choose from several options. Some are NOT friendly at all , some are friendly , and some are (at least to me) the friendliest . 🙂
👀 Be careful, if your website or blog has been using a URL pattern for a long time, don't change it like crazy .
Think that those URLs will already be positioned in Google and other sites may be linking to them. If you change them, you have to make sure to redirect URLs with the old pattern to their corresponding new pattern.
Take a look at this post on 301 redirects to see how it is done, and if you still have doubts, it is best to have someone who knows how to do it 100% do it for you.
So now you know, it doesn't matter if you decide to create a blog on your own, on Blogger, WordPress, Joomla or any other platform; don't forget to make your URLs "friendly".
🔸 Titles
The titles of your pages and articles are very important, because it is one of the first things Google will look at to see if your content is related to what the user is looking for .
It will also be the first thing seen in the search results, so:
- Be clear and direct ; choose a title that defines well the content of the page.
- Create unique titles for the different pages of your website or blog.
- Write a title that does not exceed 70 characters , otherwise Google will cut it off in search results.
- Try to write the most important and descriptive word at the beginning of the title.
- If you are going to separate specific words or phrases, use symbols such as the hyphen “-“ or the slash “|” .
🔸 Descriptions
Like the titles, it is very important to put descriptions on all the pages and articles of your website or blog.
In fact, all the recommendations that I have mentioned for the title are also valid for the description, although in this case the character limit that is later shown in Google results may change depending on the search made by the user.
Normally the limit for the descriptions was up to 156 characters , but with the changes that Google made in its day it can now be up to 320 characters .
My advice is that you make a description of 1 or 2 short and clear sentences starting from the title itself , then over time you check if Google shows them or puts another description, and with Search Console you analyze if people click on your result or if you think you can better adapt the description to the search for the one that suits you best.
As you can see, in my descriptions I also usually add emojis and other symbols to try to capture the user attention.
🔸 Header Tags
Google doesn't just look at your links, titles, and descriptions; it also looks for the header tags that your pages and articles contain.
These are the titles and subtitles that you use when writing to organize your content and that you will recognize in HTML with the tags h1, h2, h3... up to
.
The h1 tag is the largest and makes the text much larger, while the h6 tag is the smallest and has the smallest text. Since larger tags are often used to put the most important things, Google will pay more attention to these tags to know what your content is about:
SEO guide for beginners
<h1> SEO guide for beginners </h1>SEO guide for beginners
<h2> SEO guide for beginners </h2>SEO guide for beginners
<h3> SEO guide for beginners </h3>SEO guide for beginners
<h4> SEO guide for beginners </h4>SEO guide for beginners
<h5> SEO guide for beginners </h5>SEO guide for beginners
<h6> SEO guide for beginners </h6>
My advice is do n't abuse the most important tags . Just organize your text with logic and common sense :
- h1: use it as if it were the title of your content, so putting it once is more than enough.
- h2: keep this in mind to divide your page or article into the most important sections. Surely you do not need more than 4 or 5. It is recommended to use them with long tail keywords .
- h3: if the content of each section is very extensive, try dividing it into sub-sections with this tag. If this is your case, I don't think you need to use it more than 10 times. Here you can use long-long tails.
- h4 to h6: Unless you are writing a doctoral thesis or a book, I think that reaching this level of organization can be counterproductive. You can use it sometimes in very specific cases, but honestly, if your content is not very extensive, I don't think you need them.
🔸 Keywords
The “keywords” or keywords are those with which you want the user to find your content when searching on Google. To do this, you have to choose the ones that best suit the topic you are writing about, look for others related to the same topic that may be of interest, and use them wisely in your content.
It is also 100% recommended that you use them in the sections that I have explained before ( URLs, titles, descriptions, headers... ) so that Google finds it better. In this way, when someone searches for that topic and uses any of those keywords, Google will take into account whether your website has them or not.
For example, if you are writing an article to recommend the best WordPress hosting , a good tip might be to use the keywords “best” and “hosting”.
And it is logical to think that people search for “the best hosting for wordpress” , “what is the best hosting” , “hosting for wordpress” , etc.
My advice is don't get obsessed with keywords . There are analyzers, tools, density meters, word counters… And they come in handy, but only if used with common sense.
It is clear that you have to use keywords and related concepts so that Google knows what your content is about, but is it not logical that you end up using all these keywords when writing about a specific topic?
Well that.
The best thing you can do is keyword research and then write your content naturally , without thinking about keywords.
Check it out when you're done, and then yes, you can SEO that content.
Replace words or phrases with your keywords , define titles and subtitles with those keywords, answer specific questions, etc; but beware, take care that the sentence or paragraph does not lose the meaning you wanted to give it.
If you want to know how I do all this on my blog, take a look at this article where I explain what keyword research is and how to do it , and above all, how I apply it to content . 👌
🔸 Profile Links
Today links ( link building ) are vital for web positioning, because it is the best way for Google to "understand" that if other websites link to a website, it is because in a way they give it a vote of confidence. , they believe that it has interesting information or can help its users in something.
That is why the link profile (or link profile ) of a site tells Google a lot about the quality that site may have; if relevant sites in the same sector link to it, if “important” and trusted sites link to it, etc. So now you know, always try to look for quality links .
And you also have to pay special attention to the anchor text or anchor text that is used to link to your site or its pages, because it also helps Google to better understand what searches it could be interesting to position yourself for.
🔸 SEO Contests
It is far from essential, but a good way to learn SEO almost all at once is to participate in SEO contests that come out from time to time to promote tools, brands of companies related to SEO, etc.
The normal thing is that they ask for positions in searches or "rare" keywords that have never been searched for but that are related to what the contest organizer promotes.
For example, very recently I was "lucky" to win this SEO contest as a team with other friends and fellow SEOs where the prize was €5,000 , and precisely during the weeks that the contest lasted we learned a lot of things that work every day today to position, such as sending a lot of traffic from other websites that link to you. 😊
Be careful, it does not matter if you do not win it, the interesting thing is to see how your site is positioned in invented searches “fighting” with other sites that are also trying to position themselves. Analyze and learn what strategies the rest of the competitors carry out, which one works for them (if they go up positions), if they do SEO on page, if they do link building, etc.
Try it!
🔸 Other important details
To finish, I am going to indicate 5 very simple details that can be just as or more important than the previous ones if you want to carry out a good SEO:
- Use images: images improve your web positioning and attract many more visits to your website. Do not forget something as simple as giving your images a good name or giving them an alternative text (“alt” attribute).
- Write unique and quality content: it can be the key to improve your web positioning. All this sounds very nice, but it is a truth like a temple. Google loves content that is useful, original, and ideally complete and well-designed .
- Choose a good design: one that attracts visitors, that allows you to see your website from tablets and smartphones and that facilitates navigation through your website . Try to make the user "at ease" and want to stay.
- Promote your content: share your pages and articles on social networks (including posting ads on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.), create a list of subscribers and participate in communities related to your website, etc. Let them know you!
- Audit your content: when you have a minimum of content created and that has been published for at least 1 year, it is interesting to do an SEO content audit , to see if that content performs well and to know what to do with it if it does not.
There really aren't many more "secrets" than keeping all these things in mind.
When you get used to writing on your website or blog using the details that I have explained to you, you will see that your web positioning will improve considerably . Then you will realize that many times we believe that SEO is complicated and difficult, when in truth it is about common sense, making the effort and dedicating time to it. 👍
If in your case you don't feel like it , much less time to throw it out, the best thing you can do is let someone with experience do an SEO audit for you and help you position your site. There are consultants who have been working in the sector for years, as in the case of Joel Perez who is an SEO consultant in Barcelona or Josma who is an SEO consultant in Zaragoza, and sometimes it is better that they take care of everything, that is why they are specialists. It's up to you.
But remember:
A basic and simple SEO can put you in the first positions
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