How to optimize a site and how much it costs.
Everything that relates to optimizing a site for search queries is called SEO (search engine optimization). In this article, let’s analyze in detail: how to please a search engine, does every site need SEO, how to get to the top, how to implement SEO into your site, how much does it cost and how to distinguish between high-quality and mediocre optimization.
What is SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) is an action that raises a site in search results for certain queries. The higher the quality of SEO, the higher the position of the site. The higher the position of the site, the more organic traffic it receives – more payments and registrations.
Working with SEO is working with search engine algorithms. To give the user the most relevant results, algorithms compare sites on many parameters. For example, they evaluate the site’s loading speed and user behavior on the page, and look at the content of the articles.
Search engines have help for site optimization. There are fairly basic guidelines – they may help the site rank better, but for competitive queries, it’s not enough to make it to the top.
How search engine algorithms work is not known. It is kept secret so that fraudsters cannot use this data for their own purposes.
In addition, search engines evolve. Hardened SEO-specialists know about the many subtleties that affect the issuance. The more experienced a SEO specialist is, the more predictable SEO works for him.
SEO refers to marketing and has a similar goal – to get targeted traffic and monetize it into potential clients. But unlike other areas of marketing, SEO has a great emphasis on technical specifics, because a SEO specialist works with search engine algorithms, which are numbers and analytics. But there is nothing without creativity: page re-linking, designing the site, adding the necessary sections – all this design and creativity of the platform and processes.
SEO has another global goal – to better understand the audience. Search terms are the key to what people are interested in. It’s like surveys, only more authentic – in a search engine user does not hide their tastes and is not shy about them.
Why any site needs SEO
Any site is built for some kind of audience. Even a nonprofit project is interested in traffic – to organize fundraisers or inform about ways to get in touch. Without visitors, the site is meaningless.
Visitors to the site will not come out of nowhere, you need to invest in its promotion. SEO is the only source of free traffic, which, once set up, can work for years and passively bring visitors.
At Unisender, for example, SEO brings in an average of 70% of monthly users. We have articles that rank well for certain search queries and bring in many new users year after year. Some of them become clients or newsletter subscribers.
However, SEO has its own peculiarities:
- The first 3 results of the output get 75.1% of all clicks.
- Only 0.44% of users go to the second page of Google.
This means that if a site is not on the first page of a search, then specifically for this query, as if it does not exist. Therefore, SEO should be done so that the site was at least in the top ten by keywords.
The more competitive the niche, the more seriously SEO is needed. The site in the search engine is struggling with competitors – the better prepared, the better off it is at the top.
What affects a site’s position in search results
Search engines check user queries with content on the pages of sites, but their position in extradition is influenced by many factors. For search engines, the most important thing is that the page was useful, convenient and answered the user’s query – the algorithms determine this quite accurately. Therefore, SEO includes:
Working with the technical part of the site. For example, a high speed of page loading and adaptability. For search engines, this is an indicator of convenience.
The hygiene of the site. Broken links, duplicate pages negatively affect SEO.
Text optimization. SEO-keys, which are used by search engines to determine which queries suits a particular page. As well as uniqueness, structure, literacy and even the presence of prohibited and stop words.
The behavior of the user on the page. The more a user is on the site and is active, the better. So searchers are convinced of the usefulness of the page. Therefore, videos and interactive mechanics have a positive effect on SEO.
External optimization. Links and references from other authoritative domains. So the search engine understands that the site is reliable and useful.
Each of the points – is equally important and this is a large layer of work.
Technical part
The site should open quickly and look good on smartphones and desktops. Fast and convenient sites are liked by search engine crawlers and are pleasant for users.
Adaptability is rarely a problem. Usually the entire website development team is initially working on this. All website builders (such as Tilda) have adaptive blocks – you design for the desktop, but actually even for smartphones. Even letter builders have adaptive blocks.
And with the speed of the site is not so clear. Of course, if the page takes a minute to load, then it’s unlikely that anyone will stay on the site. But according to a study by neipatel, 40% of users close the site if the loading speed of the page is more than 3 seconds.
But let’s say the main site loads for about 2 seconds – everything seems fine. But in fact, competitors’ sites may open twice as fast: the user is unlikely to notice it, but the search robots – for sure. For this reason alone can fly far down in the search engine results. And vice versa – loading speed at the level of competitors (or slightly higher) will give a solid increase in the ranking.
Site hygiene
Removing broken links. Broken links lead to pages that don’t exist. A few broken links will not affect ranking, but if they crowded the domain, it may throw the site off the prize.
Work with redirects. A redirect is a redirect to another page. Typically, redirects are used to redirect from deleted irrelevant articles to updated content.
It’s a useful tool, but only if you monitor it. Without monitoring , redirects can redirect to other redirects. This slows down the site, hurts SEO and slows down surfing around the site.
Pictures, videos, headers, formatting. Their presence, on the contrary, insignificant, but positive effect on the issuance. Search engine robots are distrustful of web pages with a single text. It is important to treat it from the standpoint of usefulness to the user – add pictures and videos, where appropriate.
If possible, format the text – use numbered and bulleted lists, nested structure with H2 and H3. Under certain circumstances, the search engine may pull up the listings in the quick answer box. This will attract users to the site.
Comment monitoring. At Unisender, we encounter comment bots all the time. This way of promotion is chosen by low-quality sites, the link to which from your domain negatively affects your SEO. You can set so that the comments were, but the links from them the search engine to other sites – so SEO is not spoiled. And you can simply leave out comments with links – here it is up to your taste.
Email prevention. Search engines have their own email services. There is a lot of spam in the mail and the mailers have many cunning algorithms to calculate them. For example, each sender has a reputation: if a company buys a subscriber base, its mailing list is often complained about, its reputation becomes low and emails are highly likely to end up in “Spam”.
A low reputation in mailers can also negatively affect SEO. “May” because it’s only a hypothesis, there are no absolute facts of the connection. However, systems are improving and even if now it does not matter, in the future the picture may change.
A good reputation with mailers can’t hurt: and letters won’t get into spam, and one cloudy day a SEO specialist won’t come with the hypothesis that SEO suffers because of a low reputation in the mail.