What is SEO. SEO - what is it? And why is it needed? What is SEO promotion?

“Hello, Oksana! Despite the difficult situation with ranking algorithms (many sites that were promoted incorrectly were banned), we manage to maintain positions in the Top 10 of Yandex for 75% of queries and in Google for 77%.”

This is a quote from an email an SEO specialist sent to one of my clients.
In my opinion, this quote and this particular example very well demonstrate the situation as a whole that currently exists in Russia:

• this situation is unstable, the market is in a fever
• SEO specialist cannot control the situation
• the user who pays for this does not understand anything about SEO

Why did this situation arise? Recently, a lot has changed in matters of promotion on the Internet and in the work of search engines. Many users who use SEO state that previous promotion methods are no longer so effective. A Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization

Indeed, if earlier there were SEO specialists whom you could turn to and get results with a high degree of probability (even without dealing with content, but resorting to “black” methods of promotion - a whole market has been built around this), now many of these methods are simply does not work.

And as a business consultant, people often contact me with questions about what to do now to bring their sites (or other resources) to the top positions of search engines.

How do I see the solution to this problem? First of all, everyone who uses SEO promotion for their Internet resources should independently understand the question of what SEO is and what the mechanisms of its work are and use the information provided in this article.

I myself, when I began to understand the issues of SEO promotion, was faced with a lack of information, and it was mainly of an advertising nature.

Therefore, in this article I would like to structure the collected material and clarify the understanding of the issues of what SEO is, what are the historical background of the current situation, what is the current state of affairs and, of course, what effective methods of promotion exist.

This article will be interesting, I hope, both to Habrahabr users and to other users interested in website promotion on the Internet.

In this article, by search engines I will mean the main systems that most users use - Yandex and Google.

So, let's begin.

The query “what is SEO” will bring up a lot of information (mostly of an advertising nature) in search engines. Some resources, answering this question, quote each other, some give their own definitions of SEO, but this does not add clarity to the question.

What is especially interesting: some resources even write not “SEO” in English, but “SEO” in Russian, introducing some confusion in understanding the issue. This abbreviation cannot be deciphered in any way, since it is a spelling of an English letter combination in Russian letters, and accordingly it does not carry any meaning.

Wikipedia defines SEO as follows:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of measures for internal and external optimization to increase the site’s position in search engine results for certain user requests, in order to increase traffic (for information resources) and potential clients (for commercial resources) and subsequent monetization of this traffic.

I agree with this definition. But for an untrained user, information from Wikipedia may seem a little complex and confusing. Here is the definition I give when I explain this issue to my clients:

SEO is any action aimed at bringing your website or any other resource to the top positions of search engines to attract visitors.
Here I am expanding the concept of SEO. This is not only direct promotion of your website, but also indirectly attracting visitors to your website by posting your materials on other Internet resources.

So, I distinguish two types of SEO:

• Direct SEO is the direct promotion of your own website, when a search engine displays a link to this site in the results upon a visitor’s request.
• Indirect SEO is the promotion of your company by posting your materials on other Internet resources in order to subsequently attract visitors to your website. The search result in this case leads not to your own site, but to someone else’s, from where visitors, if they are interested in the information, can contact you.

If how direct SEO works is quite clear - the search engines themselves write about this in their manuals, and various specialists and companies offer direct SEO services, then additional explanations are needed regarding indirect SEO.

How does indirect SEO work:

1. You post an information article (specifically informational, not advertising) related to the product of your activity on any relevant Internet resource (forum, community, online publication).
2. Your article can reach the top positions in search results for certain queries.
3. A user visits this resource and reads your article.
4. If a visitor is interested in your information and you, he can become a visitor to your website (follow the link from the article to your website, if the online resource allows you to post links, either by company name, or by first and last name).

A living example is my article, which I posted on Habrahabr. It ranks second after Wikipedia in Google search results for the query “What is CRM” or simply “CRM”. Many of my clients found me thanks to this and other articles posted on Habrahabr, went to my website and contacted me personally. It's indirect SEO, but it's still SEO. I get search engine visitors, although not directly through my site.

Without history, nowhere

In order to better understand what SEO is and how the current situation has developed, we need to dive into the history of the issue. When search engines first appeared (Russian ones included Rambler, Mail, Yandex), the influence of sites on search results was great, since there were not as many sites as there are now, and the search engines themselves were not yet so developed.

What time was it? It was a time of experimentation. The Internet (in its modern sense) was just in its infancy. Accordingly, many practices have not yet been developed. Search engines were one of the sources of information back then. They were not so developed and did not yet dictate their terms to the market.

I also saw a time when sites were named by ear, or direct links were transmitted, and their names were entered directly into the address bar. Today, even if the name of the site is known, as a rule, it is still entered into a search engine. Some people today don’t even know what an address bar is, and in almost all browsers it is no longer just an address bar, but a search bar.

How did SERP ranking work in the past? The search engines took into account the following data:

• page structure (so-called meta tags, headings, keywords);
• number of links leading to the site.

The more links leading to the site and the more correctly the page was designed from a technical point of view, the more likely the site was to be in the top positions of the search results.

Why was this important in the past? Because search engines did not yet have such power as they do now, and such sophisticated ranking algorithms had not been invented. For example, Yandex search as of 1998 worked on only three computers.
Search engines were to some extent forced to “trust” website creators.

And that’s when the speculation and manipulation of search results began. Various “gray” and “black” promotion methods appeared (link exchanges and various tools for meta tags, etc.) It was possible to buy thousands of links on thousands of sites and end up in the top search results.

Then search engines began to actively develop. And now the ranking algorithms of these search engines have improved so much that we can say that the number of links and page structure are not as important to them as before.

Google and Yandex in their recommendations say that there is no need to be puzzled by the internal structure of the site and how the page looks for search engines, you need to first of all think about how visitors will read it. Search engines began to look at sites from the visitor's point of view and move closer to human understanding of the content.

I want to clarify a few points. Just because page structure isn't that important to search engines these days doesn't mean you don't need to fill out titles, descriptions, etc. This must be done, but not from the point of view of the search engine, but from the point of view of the visitor. Search engines display site names and meta descriptions as search results, so they must be present on every page.

I would also like to draw attention to one nuance. Yes, meta tags are not so important for search engines now, but meta tags should not be confused with the description of other information. In addition to text, the page also contains various elements: photos, videos, etc. These are more complex formats for indexing. Search engines cannot yet figure out what is contained in a video or photo. They can only figure this out if we create a text description for this type of content. Therefore, it is mandatory to add such descriptions to the site (using alt text). This helps search engines better understand what images and videos are on your site, which in turn makes them more likely to appear in image and video search results.

Just like the page structure and the number of links, for search engines it does not matter what engine the site was created on. Some sources claim that the platform on which the site is created (whether it is a CMS platform or a website builder) is “SEO friendly”. Of course, these are marketing ploys of the CMS and designers themselves, who say that a site created on their basis will be ranked better by search engines than sites written on other systems. This is wrong. The website engine has virtually no effect on website promotion. Why? Because the search engine is not interested in what the site is written in, it may not even know it.

What is truly most important in a website platform from a search engine perspective:

• Speed ​​of website operation and page opening. The platform must provide high speed. The faster the site opens, the better it is for the user. And if you achieve speeds faster from some cumbersome CMS than some well-promoted framework, then the platform does not matter in any fundamental way.
• Mobile version of the site. We must not forget that mobile versions are now gaining momentum. Your website engine must either support a mobile version or use a responsive design.

Returning to the history of the issue, I will summarize: the ranking principles that were in effect before are no longer so effective. SEO should now be considered as part of a marketing strategy. Now, paradoxically, digital life is getting closer to reality. If previously sites had to report their content (using meta tags, etc.), now search engines have learned to do this themselves. They took on a lot of work themselves. This is why meta tags are no longer so important to search engines. And if earlier information about yourself was placed in a magazine, book, catalog - now the same thing is happening with regard to Internet resources - it is necessary that the content of the site be visually pleasing and informative, as in a real magazine. This is part of the marketing strategy.

SEO = search engines

You need to understand that SEO and search engines are inextricably linked. SEO without search engines simply does not exist. You do everything just so that search engines notice your material, understand it, rank it and show it in the first places in their search results based on visitors’ requests.

How does search work?

Let's look at how the search process is currently organized.
Search engines have so-called spiders, which follow links on a site in depth on each page.
These spiders index the site, that is, they save everything they “read” into an index in their database. And when a visitor enters a query in the search bar, the search engine looks for information in its database, and not on websites.
You need to know this: the search engine looks for information in its database.

Several conclusions follow from this:

1. If a search spider has not yet crawled through your site, it means that it has not saved information about your site in its database - accordingly, it will not return such a site as a result of a visitor’s request.
2. And vice versa, if a search engine has indexed your site, it means that it will display it in the search results. At what place is another question.
3. If, for example, your article that you just posted has not yet been indexed by a search spider, but someone copied it, and his site is indexed faster than yours, then this article for search engines will belong to the site that copied the content, not you. As a result, the competitor will be higher in the search results, and the original may not be included in it at all, since duplicates are simply ignored by the search engine. What needs to be done to protect against this is a separate issue, and we will not consider it within the scope of this article.

How does a search engine decide what to return to a visitor?

There is a lot of information about what the ranking algorithm is, there are many specialists who write books about how a search engine produces information upon request - but... these are just guesses. Why?

How a search engine provides information to a visitor upon request is a trade secret of every search engine. No one knows exactly what principle is used to produce results.

Google once joked that it hired pigeons to randomly select pages to rank pages.

Of course, the question arises, why don’t search engines tell you how to create such a page so that the search engine understands it very well. This is done so that it is not possible to manipulate the output. If users, specialists, and web developers know how a site is ranked and how a search engine works, then they will be able to adjust and manipulate the results, which is not in the interests of the search engine.

What can be done?

1. Firstly, you need to follow the recommendations for promoting the search engine in which you are promoting. Recommendations in different search engines are different, but in general they are similar.
2. Secondly, you simply need to create interesting content and create a lot of it. As I wrote above, you can create articles that must meet certain principles (which we will talk about below in the “Legal SEO” section)

What can't be done?

It is impossible to buy space from a search engine.
I have heard more than once about the presence of mythical acquaintances in the administration of some search engine, or that the company is so cool and large that it can buy a place in the search results - no, this is simply excluded.

Website promotion methods

Traditionally, white, gray and black optimization are distinguished, but I would still highlight the following promotion methods from the point of view of search engine rules:

• legal SEO - promotion methods aimed at ensuring that the resource meets the requirements of the search engine and ensuring that the visitor receives relevant information
• illegal SEO - methods that do not meet the requirements of the search engine and are aimed at manipulating search results.

Illegal SEO

From a search engine perspective, illegal SEO includes, for example, the use of doorways and cloaking. Doorways are web pages that are optimized for specific search queries and redirect users to other sites. This is inconvenient, since the first few search results may lead to identical pages or resources that are not of interest. Cloaking - the user is given one page, easy to read, and the search robot is given another, optimized for any queries.

In fact, illegal SEO is becoming a thing of the past now because anyone trying to fool a search engine can be easily detected. In addition, competitors who are also advancing through SEO are not asleep. If your competitors discover that you are promoting poorly, they can write a complaint to the support service, and the search engine will simply demote you in search results or ban you altogether.

Illegal promotion methods that search engines are now actively fighting include SEO exchanges and links to irrelevant pages. There are practically no such exchanges abroad; there are only a few left in Russia. They sell links on their sites to attract so-called link mass. But what the advertiser needs is not always needed by the site visitor. In other words, if I type in the search query “SEO,” I want to see information about SEO, and not the services of various companies and specialists.

Search engines are now quite successfully fighting this, because the level of trust in the search engine from visitors is falling due to irrelevant results.

Why is it still not recommended to use illegal promotion methods? If exposed in the use of “black” methods, even legal methods of promotion may go in vain, the site will be demoted in search results, or even banned altogether.

Legal SEO

What legal methods of promotion are there? I will give effective methods from my and my clients’ practice that meet the recommendations of Yandex and Google.

1. Create unique content. It is necessary to create content that will be useful and interesting to visitors. Articles must have informational value for the visitor and have a certain volume. These should not be small, but detailed, detailed articles of at least 7-8 thousand characters, which reveal the essence of the issue as deeply as possible.
2. Try to constantly add new content. This does not mean that you need to post blog entries every day, no, let it be once a week (or with other frequency), but let it be good, high-quality materials.
3. Post on relevant sites with moderation. Articles should be located on relevant resources that inspire trust among search engines. If I post an article on a technical topic on a cosmetics forum, no matter how good it is, it will never be indexed as well as if I posted it on Habrahabr. This needs to be understood.

In search engines, such a parameter as site trust is very important. Accordingly, if this site has moderation (like, for example, Habrahabr), there will be much more trust in this site. Accordingly, the material that will be posted on it will be ranked well by search engines.

Which promotion methods are questionable?

In my experience and the experience of my clients, some promotion methods that are presented as a panacea have dubious benefits.

Businessmen often resort to posting information about the company with a link to the site in hundreds of online directories. This doesn’t work because search engines have very low trust in these sites, this is irrelevant information, and simply placing a link in hundreds of directories means nothing to a search engine.

But there is one exception - this is when you post on your website information about the client company with whom you worked. This is a very important point. People who are looking for your client will go to your website. Let’s say if I work with the company “Vector” LLC and write a short review in the client’s description on the website, my site will appear in the search results when requesting “Vector” LLC. This helps increase traffic, albeit indirectly. Such a link will be quite competitive.

Advertising vs SEO

Many people are interested in the question: advertising versus SEO (Yandex Direct, Google Adwords versus SEO). What to choose: contextual advertising or SEO promotion. I will not recommend either of these types, as they are both effective when done correctly. I will just give you the advantages and disadvantages of both promotion methods.

Advertising. Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages:

• Speed ​​of placement - you place your advertisement, it undergoes moderation, and if approved and payment is available, it immediately goes to the top of search engines.
• Controllability - you can control the price and decide when and where to advertise.
• Targeting - search engines allow you to use settings such as negative words, region, etc.
• Predictability - You can definitely tell that your ad will appear if the search engine approves your ad. You can be sure that the search engine will show a specific number of ads. And if you spend more money, you get more applications.
• Free content - your advertising will appear regardless of the content on your site, so you will not have to change the site to promote it through contextual advertising.

Flaws:

• Contextual advertising leaves no trace - after you stop paying, no trace of your site remains in search results. Some people believe that paid advertising will help promote a website for subsequent SEO promotion, but this is a misconception.
• It's relatively expensive. Some will object to me that there are low-frequency queries. Entire courses and webinars are dedicated to this. But now there are fewer and fewer opportunities to advance through low-frequency, because if you work in a competitive market, then your competitors have the same thoughts as you.
• Such advertising is well “cut” with various advertising cutters, banner cutters, etc. For example, I practically don’t see advertising, because my AdBlock simply hides it.

SEO. Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages:

• AdBlock does not “cut”. No anti-advertising blocks will reduce the results of sites promoted using SEO. Search engines will always return such materials, and there is no way to hide them.
• High conversion due to trust. If you posted an article and it came up at the top of a search engine, then a visitor will be more inclined to click on it, read it and go to your site than if he clicks on an ad. In this case, the visitor will have a higher level of trust in you. It’s one thing when I click on an advertisement and understand that they can write anything they want, and another thing when I read the article, received valuable information, and the level of trust in such a site and such information is correspondingly higher.
• Long-term positions. No one can, of course, guarantee how long your material will remain in the top, but it will not disappear without a trace from the search results, even if its position decreases.

Flaws:

• Poor predictability. No one can definitely guarantee that your article will reach the top of search results. Of course, this can definitely be achieved if you follow some rules, but there are so many of them that it is very easy to lose something. In addition, the material must be very carefully prepared and placed on high-quality resources.
• High price. SEO has a very high price compared to advertising in Direct, for example. Good SEO costs a lot of money. To prepare a good article, good content, you need much more time than just posting a link in the same Direct.
• Usually a site redesign is required. Your site must meet certain requirements. If the site is inconvenient, then search engines will not rank it highly.
• And of course, such materials do not immediately appear in search results. For this to happen, time must pass; patience is required.

Conclusion

What conclusions can be drawn from all of the above? The time when it was possible to manipulate search engine results is gone. Now search engines have begun to change their algorithms, they are becoming more and more smart. Accordingly, it is becoming more and more difficult to deceive them, and it is also becoming more and more difficult to adapt to them. Therefore, it is better to follow the path of least resistance, legally promote your resources and follow the recommendations of search engines.

If previously sites had to be technically correct to appear in search results and it was possible not to take into account the consumer and his interests, now search engines encourage site creators and owners to think like a site visitor. This may sound trivial, but this is where you should start. It is necessary to create content specifically for users, not for search engines.
UPD After the release of the article, I was asked several times why I didn’t write about the technical side of SEO. You can read about the semantic core, internal page optimization, snippets and much more by following the links

Optimization - search engine promotion and optimization or, in short, SEO. This is the process by which resources are promoted in search results. Accordingly, more users see them, and the site receives more profit. What is SEO and how can an unenlightened resource manager promote his website? We will consider these questions today.

SEO Metrics

SEO promotion is a system of actions aimed at increasing the position of a resource in search engine results. Website promotion directly depends on the following indicators:

• TIC - thematic citation index.
• PR - Google Page Rank.
• Trust, or trust, of the site.

To be honest, search engines are not able to assess how useful and important an article is to the user. The robot is simply not able to read the post and understand its meaning. That is why it is necessary to carry out special SEO optimization procedures that will help the search engine understand the importance of the content and show the site in the search results list.

How is optimization useful?

Now SEO promotion has ceased to be just a technical phenomenon. It transformed into a kind of analytical-mathematical-psychological action, which:

1. Helps protect resources from search engine filters.
2. Increases the target audience.
3. Attracts visitors based on low-frequency queries.
4. Increases sales and increases conversion.
5. Guarantees high page output for the most important queries for the user.

It is worth noting that SEO promotion is not a one-time procedure. Search engine algorithms are constantly changing, so you cannot be sure of the stability of your resource’s position. It often happens that in the evening a site is in the top three for the main query, and the next morning it is already 20th in the list of search results. But this is not so scary; you can regain your previous positions thanks to competently carried out internal and external SEO promotion.

Internal optimization

The basis of each SEO promotion is internal resource optimization, which is considered the main one. It is due to this that the likelihood of automatically displaying a resource on the first page of search results increases significantly.

In general, internal optimization consists of the following activities:

• SEO analysis of the resource regarding compliance with technical requirements. At this stage, webmasters must carry out the so-called error correction. The first thing search robots pay attention to is the quality of the resource. Unoptimized sites with many flaws are immediately downgraded in the rankings.
• If errors are discovered, they must be corrected immediately.
• After correcting technical errors, you need a resource, that is, select a list of words and phrases that most accurately describe the theme of the site. Recently, there has been a tendency for search engines to become more human-oriented, so it is necessary not only to automatically generate sets of phrases, but to formulate them as if a real person was asking.
• Analyze and select keywords.
• Based on the previously created semantics, write meta tags, Keywords, Title and Description.
• Adapt menu items and create internal linking.
• Optimize content according to the requirements of search engines and the wishes of visitors.

Full list

To conduct a full-fledged internal SEO promotion of a website, you need to work on the following positions:

1. Doubles.
2. Tags
3. Site map.
4. Set up the robots.txt file.
5. Create high-quality and unique SEO texts.
6. Make proper linking.
7. Work with microformats, microdata, usability and interface.

Each of these points should be considered in detail to have a complete understanding of what SEO is.

Takes and tags

The first thing to start promoting is checking the resource for duplicates. The fact is that some website engines create several versions of one web page, and they can be reached from several addresses.

For example, the home page of a particular site may be accessible at the following addresses:

• http://site.ru/index.php
• http://site.ru/index.html
• http://site.ru/index.htm
• http://site.ru/main
• http://site.ru/index.php
• http://site.ru/index.html
• http://site.ru/index.htm
• http://site.ru/main

You can check whether site pages have duplicates yourself by adding index.html or index.php in the address bar. If pages open upon request, then you need to look for and delete duplicates, but if the resource throws a 404 error, then everything is fine.

It is necessary to place meta tags H1 - H6 in the text, they will also serve as subheadings. Don't forget about the alt tag, which is applied to images. This need is due to the fact that search engines have not yet learned to recognize images, so they need to be given a brief description. This will not only raise the site in search results, but will also attract new users from image searches.

Title and Description tags are of particular importance when setting up SEO. The title tag gives the title to the document and appears in the title bar of the browser window. In the Description tag, you need to create a brief description of the page content by entering 1-2 key queries into it.

To index or not to index?

Also, every self-respecting resource should have a site map. It may be generated automatically, but if not, then you should create it yourself.

Sitemap.xml is a list of all resource page addresses that tell you where to index. In contrast to this map, there is such a file. like robots.txt, it contains addresses of pages that do not need to be indexed.

This file is not a prerequisite for promotion, but if the resource contains pages that can negatively affect promotion, then it is better to enter their addresses in robots.txt.

Content as a means of promotion

Technical work on a resource plays an important role, but skillful SEO copywriting should not be discounted. High-quality content increases the relevance of the text in the eyes of the search engine and reduces the resource’s dependence on changes in search engine algorithms.

Uniqueness, the presence of keywords and the absence of errors do not guarantee that the search engine will like the text. Recently, the requirements for texts have become somewhat stricter. Based on the wishes of the average user, the text should be logical, informative and have a clear structure (subheadings, lists, etc.).

Reviews always come to the same conclusion: they are necessary for users to find a resource for basic key queries. It is equally important to create links between the pages of the site. You can place several keywords in one text; the main thing when writing content is to adhere to the following principles:

1. Long texts appeal to search engines, but not to users, so they must provide information in an interesting, concise, and concise manner.
2. The uniqueness and literacy of the text is paramount.
3. Keywords should appear no more than 1-2 times per 100 words. And the first and last paragraph must contain exact entries.

Usability and microformat

An important condition for internal optimization is the presence of microformats - special tags that mark up the page and help search engines understand what the page is about.

As for usability, the site should have a simple, intuitive interface so that the user can quickly go to the page with the necessary information. The level of sales, registrations and other behavioral characteristics depends on the ease of use of the resource.

No less important is the loading speed. If the pages are “heavy”, then it will be much easier for the user to close this site and move on to another, where he will not have to wait long. To increase loading speed, you first need to choose a high-quality hosting, reduce the size and quality of images, and remove unnecessary resource requests.

External optimization

In addition to internal SEO promotion aimed at improving content and navigation, there is such a thing as external optimization. Its key point is to create a good reputation for the site among other resources. This is achieved by increasing the link mass. Simply put, a database of sites with similar topics is created that link to the main resource. This increases the level of trust in the site and, accordingly, increases its position in search results.

External optimization is a rather labor-intensive process, because it consists not only of selecting good resources to create a link base, but also of compiling link anchors for each key query.

Tasks and goals

The main tasks of external optimization are considered to be promotion for high-frequency and low-frequency queries. At the initial stage, external SEO promotion actively cooperates with internal SEO. It depends on the selection of keywords and the creation of a semantic core. The task of external optimization is to use links from other resources to help these keywords get to the first positions in search results.

Methods, processes, analytics

Each experienced SEO specialist has his own optimization methods, but often for external promotion they simply buy links on the relevant exchanges. Each purchased link is placed on the anchor. That is, the webmaster installs the purchased link to the keyword. Thus, the user can click on a keyword and go to a page on another resource.

It is important to pay attention to the speed of link building. Of course, you can purchase the required number of links once and not be distracted by this anymore. But it’s better to do everything gradually, smoothly and use different ones (perpetual and rented). If you quickly provide a resource with link mass, it may fall under search engine penalties; such actions will be regarded as black hat optimization.

Promotion for low-frequency queries

As practice shows, without large investments it is almost impossible to get to the top of search results for high-frequency queries, but if you play around with low-frequency queries, you can get your place in the sun. Correctly setting up SEO in compatibility with low frequency promotion will allow you to:

• Receive a high percentage of the target audience.
• Save budget on promotion.
• Ensure high positions in search engine results.

With such prospects, it is worth understanding that optimizing a resource for low-frequency queries is a labor-intensive process, and if you make mistakes due to inexperience, you can lose some visitors. This type of SEO promotion consists of several stages:

1. First you need to select relevant pages with suitable low-frequency queries.
2. Carry out their technical optimization for further promotion.
3. Perform internal linking.
4. Select sites for purchasing links.

In general, this procedure is also relevant for high-frequency queries, but there are two problems. Firstly, in the second case there is higher competition and it is very difficult to get to the top. Secondly, you will have to spend a large amount of resources on purchasing external links, but no one can guarantee that the resource will remain in the first positions of the search results for a long time. That's what SEO is - a real war between webmasters for the best positions.

Help from a friend

Now it becomes clear what SEO is. There is only one question left to decide: do this complex process yourself or entrust the matter to professionals?

To promote websites, they often use the services of various resources. For example, Seo-Mix. According to the managers, this is a unique project that not only helps with promotion, but also provides an opportunity to earn money. Its essence is simple: the site owner orders advertising, and the resource promotes it. Due to its low prices, this project is very popular among advertisers. As for earnings, for each visit to the resource once every 20 minutes, a registered user can receive up to 5 rubles, which can be withdrawn to an online wallet.

The Seo-Sprint project promotes websites using similar methods. Customers want to improve the behavioral characteristics of resources and pay the managers of this project. Those, in turn, attract performers who, for a modest fee, watch advertisements, visit pages, write comments, etc.

That's all the secrets of website promotion. You can study the basics of SEO promotion on your own, you can order promotion from professionals, or you can combine these two processes by creating good content yourself, increasing your link mass and purchasing several weeks of favorable behavioral characteristics. In any case, the choice always remains with the webmaster.

Today there will be a very interesting post for beginners, from it you will learn what SEO is. Many people are horrified when they hear this terrible word “SEO”, perhaps you are one of these people. But I will hasten to console you, because in this article I will talk about SEO in simple words. And I hope that after reading this you will no longer be bothered by this question.

What is SEO? SEO is search engine optimization, the English version sounds like this (Search Engine Optimization), and in simple words, it is a method to promote your page for any request. In other words, make some page relevant to the request.

But that’s right – an optimized page does not guarantee reaching the TOP of search engines. TOP is the top ten in the search results. When you type a query into the search bar of your browser, Google or Yandex gives you 10 answers, plus millions of other pages, these first 10 answers are the TOP - the top of the search results.

People who engage in SEO promotion are divided into 2 types.

1) Optimizers who promote their pages by any means, regardless of the quality and needs of users. Scientifically – black SEO.

2) These are ordinary webmasters and optimizers who naturally develop their resources and try to make them more accessible to search engines in order to ultimately benefit people. Scientifically - white SEO.

It is the second option that you should focus on if you are running a website for people and want to keep it going for a long time.

Below, I will give examples that will make it easier to promote, gain a foothold in search results, and receive good targeted traffic. Of course, we will not analyze the algorithms and formulas; firstly, I don’t know them myself, and secondly, they change several times a day. We will be guided, so to speak, by logic and people’s perceptions.

What is SEO, simple SEO?

So let's get started. You always need to put yourself in the shoes of an ordinary user and think through what he would do in a given situation if he visited your resource.

Consider what people might be looking for when typing this or that query in order to save them on your site.

The simplest example. Often, people ask the search engine questions of interest, enter phrases, phrases, and do not just open the search engine to have fun and enter unknown things into it. Although, this also happens: Kommersant

If a site has the answer to their query, then most likely they will like the site and want to bookmark it.

This is the first step of simple SEO, try to create quality material that will help people, answer their questions and solve their problems.

After landing on your page, the visitor should understand from the first seconds that this page is about the “word” that he is thinking about.

An easy example. Let's say you. When you surf the Internet and look for the information you need, you don’t re-read everything from cover to cover, right? You filter information into what is needed and what is not.

Ordinary visitors do this too. They come to the site, quickly scroll through the article, pay attention to key points, headings, highlighted words, and if it doesn’t suit him, then he closes the page and goes far away, or goes to another page or even closes the browser.

For this purpose, search engines have developed such an algorithm that if in an article keywords are highlighted in bold, italics, underlining, and H1-H6 tags, then this page is most relevant to this request.

The keyword should be: in the title of the page, that is, in the (Title), heading, simply in the text.

The title is written in the all in one seo pack plugin for each article, and the title must contain the keyword in the exact word form, for example, I promote this page by request “ ", and this is what is written in my settings.

Any of the headings H1 to H6 must also contain a CS. Search robots give more preference to tags H1-H3, then H4-H6; they have less importance compared to the previous options.

Just in the text, you don’t need to highlight each keyword in bold, italics, underlining, etc., it will be enough to highlight these keywords once and it is imperative that this word appears like regular text - “what is SEO”, without any highlighting.

And here attention, using these three rules, we can say that you know SEO. Using this knowledge, you can already optimize your pages. Let's look at the headings in a little more detail.

Use the tag "H1" for headings, "H2" for subheadings and "H3" for sub-subheadings, etc.

Many beginners make this mistake: they use the H1 tag several times on the page, this should not be done. Remember once and for all, the first level heading should appear only 1 time on the page.

To make a word stand out on the page, start one of the first paragraphs with it.

This is such a little secret, many people don’t use it, and I myself sometimes forget about it. You need to start the paragraph with a keyword in the exact word form, and the higher it is, the better. But keep in mind that it does not need to be highlighted in bold, italics, etc., just plain text.

Remember what I mentioned above about visual and mental perception?

Again I want to touch on the TOP search results and talk about the Title tag, because it is the most important element in promotion, so it needs to be given enough attention.

And again, you need to pretend to be an ordinary user to make it clearer. Let’s say I’m an ordinary Internet user, and I’m interested in the question “?”. I open any search engine and enter this query, in response they give me 10 options.

How to create a blog
How to create a blog

And in the third option it will be like this: How to create a blog | Spin it | And make money on it

The third option has a much greater chance of getting a potential user, or even a client.

And what is it all about? Due to the correct composition of the Title. Visually, it stands out among others and attracts the user.

This is what I’m getting at, your headlines should be catchy and visually stand out from others, then, even if you are not in the first positions, but for example in 7-10, the likelihood that the user will come to you increases several times!

Below, I will give you some examples that will make you stand out from others.

1. Use vertical bar | to separate words, this will attract the visitor's attention and distinguish you from others. Here you also need to be careful not to overdo it.

2. Use quotation marks. Our subconscious perceives quotation marks as something important, so show the user clearly that your title is important and worth attention.

3. Use highlighting where appropriate.

How to promote a site? – Fast, FREE, from scratch

This is where I’ll probably end my advice to you:

Get into the atmosphere of an ordinary user, think about what and how it should be, it’s better to write 1 high-quality article that will work for you for years than 10 blunders...

And finally, a few tips:

- do not make grammatical errors in headings;

— don’t just list keywords in titles;

- do not make titles too long, try to fit them into 65 characters;

- make a headline that inspires confidence;

— make the visitor want to click.

From this article, did you understand what SEO is? I look forward to your comments and questions.

When you learn to write optimized articles, you may need to promote them in search engines with links. I will write more about how to do this correctly so as not to harm the site, subscribe to blog updates so as not to miss them.

Best regards, Mikhed Alexander.

If you are reading this article, then my SEO is working :) Sooner or later, any blogger is faced with the terrible word SEO. My first thought is that if I don’t know what SEO is, then I shouldn’t pay attention to it, this beast is tough only for the most seasoned “website promoters”! But the more often the word SEO flashes before your eyes, the faster the realization comes that if you don’t start SEO-optimizing your texts right now, then your dear and such a cool blog will NEVER be able to even look at the first page of Yandex search results. And you start looking for the “SEO for Dummies” instructions.

I looked for her too, to no avail! The Internet offers mostly paid SEO promotion services, and “budget bloggers” can only collect precious information bit by bit. Today I will share with you sacred knowledge and tell you how to SEO optimize your texts if you don’t even know what SEO is.

What is SEO?

SEO - Search Engine Optimization - search engine optimization.

Search engines are robots. They don't know how to read texts, and it's difficult for them to appreciate your high-quality writing style. Therefore, you should optimize your texts in such a way that search engines (in the Russian market this is mainly Yandex) understand what you wrote about and decide whether to display your article in search results or not.

Many people think that SEO is just about keyword selection. But in reality, keywords are only one piece of the pie. In general SEO text optimization- these are keywords + competent writing and design of text + image settings + high-quality content.

If something is missing, the pie is no longer full. And who will display the bitten pie in the window? So search robots don’t want to.

If we are talking about SEO optimization of the entire blog, then in addition to text optimization we must also add internal and external optimization of the entire site. And this includes loading speed, eliminating all internal errors in the operation of the site, increasing the number of links to your site from other resources, and various other things.

But don't be scared! Let's eat the elephant piece by piece :) Today I'll tell you straight away about SEO for texts, it's not that difficult, and then we'll think further.

Keywords

Well, yes, you can’t do without them. Whatever one may say, your article can be shown to a potential visitor to your blog only if Yandex understands that it matches the user’s request. And he can understand this solely by keywords.

The key words are mathematics. Under no circumstances should you invent anything or assume what users might be searching for on the Internet. Users type specific queries into search engines, and search engines keep records of these queries.

The yandex.wordstat.ru service will help you find the right keywords. Yandex is not an evil guy who wants to drown your site in an avalanche of competitors. This is a very friendly resource that shares information to help you get to the first page of search results.

Example.

You run a literary blog and want to write an article about what to read from modern authors. Before writing a text, you should go to Wordstat and enter the query “modern authors” into the search bar.

What you need to pay attention to:

How many times a month do users generally enter the query “contemporary authors”? This is the first line. In our case, we see the figure of 22,368 people. This request is quite popular, and serious literary portals (online stores) that use paid means of promotion are probably in the top for this request. We shouldn’t compete with them; we’ll go the other way and find similar, but less popular queries.

In our case, less popular queries are “authors of contemporary novels” or “contemporary Russian authors.” There are only 1-3 thousand people recruiting them, so here you can already try your luck.

As we can see, there are even less popular queries here, which nevertheless fully correspond to our topic. For example, “modern novels by Russian authors” - 663 people. Using this query, it will be even easier to move to the top.

Well, to ensure that the top becomes ours, we will detail the request even more. I scrolled down the page and saw this:

These queries can be used as the main keyword (it’s very easy to advance using them), or as additional keys that will help you advance through several unpopular queries at once.

Why do we need to promote for unpopular queries? Because the chicken pecks every grain! By optimizing your article for several unpopular queries, you can quickly and surely rise to the top using them and attract several dozen visitors per month. And if your site has at least 100 properly optimized articles, then you can receive several thousand new readers every month.

What to do with requests?

First of all, from all the unpopular queries, we need to choose the one that will become our main key. In our example, I would take the request “Modern novels by Russian authors” or something from this “weight category”. We also need to select several additional queries and write this whole thing down on a separate piece of paper.

The next step is to go to regular Yandex and enter our queries into the search bar, paying attention to the hints that Yandex gives. For example, if you start entering the query “modern authors” into the search bar, Yandex will offer a ready-made continuation of the phrase: and their works, fiction, detective stories, etc. This information can be used both as ideas for revealing the topic and as additional keywords, because in essence, these are nothing more than frequent user requests.

Having chosen as many keywords as possible in this way, you can sit down to write an article.

Your task is to:

• use the main request UNCHANGED in the title of the article, in the first and last paragraph of the article, organically (!) incorporating it into the sentences.
• Use additional queries in any form, in any case, anywhere in the text.

What if I am a creative person and cannot write according to a query plan?

I'm the same too. Therefore, I first come up with the topic of the article, then I select the main query, then I write the text as my creative nature requires.

When the first draft of the text is ready, I sit down to edit it and, where possible, insert my keywords. Yes, selecting synonyms is not exactly what a novice blogger dreams of, but that’s SEO, baby :) What’s more important to you: that your masterpiece remains gathering dust on the outskirts of the Internet, or that your cool article is put on the first shelf in Yandex?

No matter how hard you try to select the right keywords, your article will never get to the TOP if it is useless. Today, to become popular, you need to be a professional in your field.

You should:

• carefully select article topics, they should be of interest to your readers (it is better to have a plan for articles a couple of months in advance)
• fully disclose the topic
• write long articles of 3000 characters or more (the number of characters can be checked in the regular Word editor, Reviewing tab, Statistics section).
• give readers more than they expect to read
• write detailed instructions, share experiences, contacts, useful resources, etc.

Try to be interesting to your readers. After all, the longer a visitor stays on your blog, the higher Yandex will raise you next time. Yes, he tracks that too :)

Formatting text on SEO

When our cool article is written and crammed with keywords (organically included in the text!), we proceed to editing errors and formatting.

If your literacy suffers, it is better to check the text for errors on one of the relevant online services. It's free and that's important! Only the most correct articles should be in the top, and not those where all the commas are “author’s”.

The text should also be easy to read, that is, you should:

• break the text into paragraphs (try to keep each paragraph no more than 3-4 lines)
• space between paragraphs
• use lists and tables
• use subheadings
• insert links to other articles on your blog into the text (this is called linking, it can be done using a special plugin Inline Related PRO)

What not to do:

• highlight all your keywords in bold and italics - Yandex may count this as over-optimization and lower your site in search results,
• You shouldn’t use many different fonts and text colors - this makes it difficult to read.

How to properly format subheadings

This point is very important because the subheading is not just the title of the section in bold.

Yandex can only determine the title of an article and subheadings if you tell it where they are.

When you decide to format some text as a subheading, you should place the cursor on the corresponding text and find the “paragraph” section on the toolbar and select, for example, HEADING 2 inside.

Accordingly, if within one heading you need to divide the text into even smaller parts, you should use Heading 3 and so on. Heading 1 in the text can only be used 1 time!

It is also highly advisable to use keywords in subheadings, then Yandex will understand exactly what you are writing about.

SEO image optimization

Pictures are another component of SEO promotion. It is highly desirable that the images on your website/blog are not heavy (up to 100 kb, otherwise the site will take a long time to load, and this is bad for SEO) and unique, and not downloaded from the Internet. Where can I find so many pictures:

• try to use your own photos more often
• in accordance with the topic of the text, you can use screenshots (photos of the screen) instead of pictures. For example, in this article all the pictures are screenshots of my control panel
• you can find an interesting video on the Internet and pause it in the right place and take a screenshot - this way you will get a unique picture :)
• use the online editor canva.com - this resource offers a large number of free modern templates for designing pictures and photographs for blogs, social networks, etc. Uploaded images become unique. Try it, you won't regret it.

Once you've selected an image and uploaded it to your blog, you should add a title and alt attribute to it. It is not difficult:)

1. We write the title of the picture, preferably in Latin letters. It's entirely acceptable for this to be your keyword.
2. We write the alt attribute - this is a unique description of our picture on the site, here you must write the main keyword with the addition of a photo, picture, etc. It can be written in Russian.

Install the Yoast SEO plugin

It will help you correctly write the description and title of your article.

Explanation:

1. Unless you have an online store, the SEO title can always match the title of your article. It is very important to use your keyword unchanged in the title.
2. A snippet is what your post looks like in search results (photo below)
3. A shortcut is what appears in the search bar when a user lands on a page with an article. The label must be written in English letters. You can automate the process of writing a shortcut using the Rus-to-Lat plugin. It is better if your keyword is used in the label.
4. Meta Description – A description of what your article is about. It is extremely important to use your keyword unchanged in this description, preferably closer to the beginning of the description.

1. SEO title
2. Label
3. Meta description

All together = snippet. My keyword for this article: “marry an Egyptian”

Summary

Despite the fact that the article turned out to be long, SEO for texts is not scary. Here are the main points to pay attention to:

1. quality and usefulness of content
2. selection and correct use of keywords
3. correct text formatting (errors, paragraphs, subheadings)
4. linking in the text
5. correct design of images (uniqueness, title and alt attribute)
6. Snippet design.

I didn’t talk about this above, but I think you set thumbnails and add tags for your articles without my reminders.

By the way, if you do everything correctly, then your article will definitely rise to the top, but not right away. The duration of the path to the top depends on several factors - how quickly search engines index your articles, how useful content you publish, how you are doing with internal and external blog optimization and how many competitors you have for this request. On average, you can start checking for an article on the first page of search results 3-6 weeks after publication.

I hope that my article helped you understand a little about what SEO is. If you still have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments! And stay tuned to my blog, sometimes in between articles about hot countries I will tell you about blogging :)

We wish you high positions in Yandex search results!

Good afternoon, readers of my blog. Many of you have already realized that I based my blog on five pillars, one of which is SEO optimization and website promotion. But if you are a beginner and have never encountered this concept before, it will be difficult to immediately grasp what I have written. Therefore, I decided to start this section from the very basics. In this article, we will define what SEO is, what SEO is for a young blogger, and how to improve a site’s position in search engines using SEO optimization.

We recommend reading:

So let's start with the definition. SEO is an abbreviation for the English word Search Engine Optimization. Those who speak English have already been able to understand the meaning of the phrase, but for everyone else I will say that in translation it means optimization for search engines, or search engine optimization.

There are many definitions of SEO. I am sure that every web master and optimizer will somehow be able to interpret this concept in their own way, make their contribution and their understanding.

What does Wikipedia tell us about this? There you can find this definition:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of measures to increase the site’s position in search engine results for certain user requests in order to promote the site.

We recommend reading:

The definition of SEO can be found in articles by popular bloggers, on SEO forums, and in various encyclopedias. They will all be different, but at the same time the same. To summarize, we can say that SEO is a specific process that includes a number of measures to work with the site, its internal optimization, improving content, optimizing code, working with external factors that affect rankings and positions in search engines.

Why do you need SEO?

After reading the definitions of search engine optimization, you might have already guessed that it is very important for your website. If your plans are not just to create a website, but to develop it, fill it with interesting and useful content that will attract visitors, then for maximum effect you need a SEO. Interesting articles, beautiful design, easy site navigation - this is good, but not enough. If the site is not optimized, the articles are not formatted correctly, then getting to the TOP of search results will be almost impossible. Some will ask: “Why do I need this TOP?” When you look for information in a search engine, do you often look at pages 2, 3 or 4? I'm sure everything ends in the first 10 links, or even less. So, according to statistics, only 15% of users look at sites that are on the 2nd page, and only 5% on the 3rd. From this we can understand that 85% of people view exclusively the TOP10 sites.

We recommend reading:

If you want your site to have a lot of users, then you need to get into this TOP, and the higher the better.

But what to do if you don’t understand anything about SEO, and your website needs to be developed? There are two options:

1. Contact optimizers who, for a certain amount, will put your site in order and give recommendations for further development of the resource

Outbound links – good or bad?