Sites that appear in the search engine results at the top positions have “earned” their place thanks to SEO. Let’s figure out what it is and how this tool works.
What is SEO for?
What is included in website promotion
Website promotion deadlines
What does the cost of website promotion depend on?
Advantages of website promotion technology
What SEO methods are outdated
Expert advice
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What is SEO for?
Table of Contents
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is translated as “search engine optimization”. For example, when a user searches in Yandex or Google for “what is SEO”, the search engine processes the request and returns a list of sites that answer this question. Depending on the request, the search results may contain from several hundred to several million sites. The better the site meets certain requirements – convenient, works quickly, meets visitors’ requests – the higher the likelihood that it will be shown on page 1-2 of the search engine, which means more users will learn about the company’s product or service. In simple terms, SEO is a set of works that help make the site convenient for users and attract even more visitors.
Unlike contextual advertising , in SEO you won’t be able to pay for impressions to attract users to the site. If the resource is inconvenient for users or its texts do not correspond to the site’s theme, it will not rank highly, that is, appear on the first pages of search results. Therefore, SEO is an important element of promotion, which is often used in combination with contextual and targeted advertising.
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What is included in website promotion
Each site may have different stages of promotion, everything depends on the initial state of the resource. The logic of the work consists of the following actions:
1. Conduct a site audit
For visitors who find a site through search engines, it is important that it loads quickly, opens on a laptop and smartphone, and the design does not interfere with navigation. An SEO specialist analyzes these indicators and evaluates other parameters: what position in the search results the site occupies, how many users come from the search, how it is filled from a technical point of view, whether there are critical errors that interfere with good indexing. After the site audit, a further action plan for SEO optimization is drawn up .
2. Collect the semantic core.
If a user searches for what SEO is and gets to a page about contextual advertising from the search, he will close it and go to another site. In order not to lose visitors, it is important to correctly collect the semantic core – select queries that exactly match the topic of the site. This stage of promotion is relevant for all sites, regardless of their initial state.
3. Conduct optimization work.
If a person finds it inconvenient to use the site, he will go to a competitor, and the company will lose a potential client. To prevent this from happening, an SEO specialist conducts optimization work. For example, it happens that some sections are removed from the site, but links to them remain. When a user follows such a link, he sees a 404 error message. To avoid losing visitors, links to non-existent pages are removed. Also at this stage, SEO specialists check the structure, texts, images, icons and other usability elements of the site .
4. Index the site.
To enable users to find the company’s site, its pages and all content are indexed: search robots “get acquainted” with the content and enter it into the database. An SEO specialist opens a page for indexing when it contains detailed information about a product or service, all buttons work, it opens on any device and corresponds to key queries. It happens that a buyer goes to a product page in an online store based on a search query. The order button is active and the buyer adds it to the cart. But during checkout, it turns out that the product is out of stock. The person gets nervous and goes to competitors.
5. Test different snippet elements.
After optimization, the SEO specialist analyzes the results and works to ensure that the resource is convenient not only internally, but also in the search results. For example, he tests different versions of site descriptions, meta tags, and other elements that are displayed in the snippet – a short description of what is on the page.
6. Analyze user behavior
to find out how much time visitors spend on the site, how satisfied they are with its convenience and quality of information. Most often, they act like this:
1.● To understand how effective a website is, an SEO optimizer can evaluate the conversion rate or indirect characteristics, such as the bounce rate or session duration.
2.● The specialist then selects one segment, such as transitions from search or a specific type of page, and within this segment compares landing pages by conversion or indirect characteristics.
3.● The comparison results help to understand where the site has fulfilled its task well, and where, on the contrary, it did not help the user. Based on them, the optimizer generates hypotheses about the reasons for failures and ways to fix the problems.
It is important to evaluate all these parameters in order to understand how much people like the site, how they interact with the resource. Also, metrics help the SEO specialist see how else the site can be improved during its optimization .
Website promotion deadlines
It happens that the owner of the company thinks: “Let’s start search engine promotion of the site, in three months we’ll get to the top of the search results and stop SEO – why continue paying if there is already a result.”
In practice, it is difficult to determine the exact timeframes for website optimization and promotion. They depend on the initial state of the resource, its volume, budget, and contractor. For example, the initial stage of promotion of a small online store to the top may take from one to three months. During this time, it will be possible to conduct an audit, analyze the target audience of the business, collect a semantic core, prepare content, and perform optimization work.
If you stop SEO promotion after the first results, the site will still occupy high positions in the search results for some time. But the company has competitors, site management tools are being improved, so it is important to track the development trends of search engines and maintain the resource in an up-to-date technical condition.
What does the cost of website promotion depend on?
The cost of website promotion is influenced by various factors:
● Business area.
If a company operates in a highly competitive area, SEO optimization of a website requires more time and resources, which means that the cost of promotion will be higher. For example, optimization of a medical clinic website in Moscow will cost more than promotion of a rehabilitation doctor’s page who has a private practice in Tambov.
● The state of the site at the start.
The loading speed, design, and user-friendliness of the site affect the positions in the search results. If some indicators are poor, you first need to fix the problems: expenses indirectly affect the cost of SEO promotion.
● Contractor qualifications.
A company can order website promotion from a freelance specialist, contact an agency, or hire an optimizer on staff. If a company decides to cooperate with a freelancer or agency, it is worth looking at the portfolio or cases and results of promotion in a similar niche.
Advantages of website promotion technology
Like any promotion method, SEO optimization has its pros and cons. The main advantages of the method include:
● Low cost.
SEO is a conditionally free promotion channel. Usually, a company invests only in the services of an SEO specialist and developers. When users open sites in organic search results, the company does not pay the search engine for clicks. In marketing, there is a concept of CAC (customer acquisition cost) – the amount spent on attracting one client. In SEO, this indicator will usually be lower than in other channels.
● “Hot” traffic.
Unlike advertising banners, organic search results are generated based on a specific user request in the search. This means that it most accurately matches the intentions of visitors, so “hot” customers interested in making a purchase go to the promoted site.
● Increased brand awareness.
If a site ranks high in search results, users see it more often and remember it. In addition, search algorithms work in such a way that the first places are occupied by trustworthy pages: sites with convenient navigation, clear structure, useful content and functionality.
● Improving the technical condition of the site.
Search engines do not bring to the top inconvenient sites, pages that open slowly or contain irrelevant information. In order for customers to visit the site more often, the company’s Internet marketer must constantly work to make it attractive to users.
● Long-term effect
The first results of SEO optimization are noticeable after 3-6 months of work by a specialist. Usually, the most important and resource-intensive work is performed at the very beginning: collecting the semantic core, preparing pages, checking the site for critical errors. After that, the “maintenance mode” is turned on: monitoring the range of goods or the relevance of articles, analyzing user behavior, if necessary, improving usability, creating new pages.
This advantage is also a disadvantage: SEO takes time to work. You won’t get results in a week or two, like in contextual advertising.
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What SEO methods are outdated
To ensure that users interact with interesting and useful content, search engines periodically change ranking algorithms. Website promotion methods that worked 20 years ago can lead to resource blocking today:
● Keyword abuse.
When search engines rank websites, they use semantic analysis, understand synonyms and word forms. This means that key phrases like “men’s jeans price” or “buy a refrigerator in Moscow” should not be used in texts: Yandex and Google recognize living Russian.
● Purchasing external links.
Several years ago, a large number of links to a site helped promote it. To quickly promote a site, unscrupulous SEO specialists purchased links on “junk” resources, that is, on dubious, untrustworthy sites. Today, this method does not work. A convenient site with useful content will still be at the top of the search results, despite a small number of links.
● Cheating behavioral metrics.
To promote a site to the top, some SEO optimizers imitate user behavior using services or real visitors found on special exchanges. This method is considered “black” promotion and can lead to the site being blocked.
