A Complete Guide to SEO

This article is a Complete Guide to SEO, that helps you to rank your website easily. Thankfully, this is the area where I feel the most comfortable. After all, I am an SEO Consultant!

SEO it’s nothing but turning any site into a more “search engine friendly” site.

You are meaning optimizing it by following a set of well-known rules, guidelines, and factors that will improve your site’s chances of being found and comply with what search engines expect from it.

What is the end price of having a fully SEO-optimized site?

Better rankings on the search results!

Think of Google as a real state manager with limited houses (each position on its ranking) to “rent” (the word “rent” is key here).

Have you ever wondered what determines what pages Google will display at the top of its results?

For example, let’s say you’re still targeting the keyword “Best Hosting Under $100”.

What pages should appear in #1 or #5 positions?

This is where SEO comes into place.

Unfortunately, this isn’t an exact science, and mastering SEO takes a lifetime. I’ve only been doing this for the past year or so, and even though I feel fully capable of ranking any site from any industry on the first page of Google with the right budget and time frame. I am aware I am light years ahead to call myself an SEO Expert.

Ok, so… What are the key areas I need to focus on to optimize my site for SEO fully?

TECHNICAL SEO

This is a beast on its own, and it requires a great deal of technical knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Unfortunately, these are areas I am learning myself at the moment.

But, this doesn’t mean I won’t be able to help you here.

Without getting into too much detail and to try and summarize technical SEO in its simplest form, we can safely assume it’s mostly about your site’s page loading speed.

Google has made it public that page loading speed is an official one of the three major ranking factors, and it makes perfect sense.

Why would Google favor a site targeting the keyword A, but that page takes over 5 seconds to load over another one targeting the same topic, but its page takes less than 2 seconds?

In the past couple of years, all recent significant updates made by Google aim to improve its users’ experience (UX). So, it makes sense we start focusing on that as well!

One thing you can do to make sure your sites load as fast as possible is:

Signup for a quality hosting service provider (For now, let’s stick to Bluehost as it is more than enough for this project).
Install one of the themes I mentioned previously.
Keep the number of installed plugins to a minimum.
Install WP Rocket and an Image optimization plugin (I recommend Imagify).

This should be enough to get any site you build within 2-4 seconds of full load time.

If you encounter some issues, feel free to write in the comments. I am more than happy to help!

ON-PAGE SEO

As the name implies, these optimizations have to do more with each page. We will mainly focus on articles.

These are the top on-page SEO variables you need to look out for:

Meta Title – This is the title we tell the search engine our article is about. Make sure to add the main keyword in the beginning, and it should be around 50 to 65 characters. When building titles, make sure:
- Add a number (List type of articles)
- Spike curiosity
- Use power words
- Add a word all in caps that draws attention between [ ] like 2020, UPDATED, NEWBIE FRIENDLY, GUIDE, etc.
Meta Description – This is a summary of what your article is about. Some of the best practices to get the most out of it is:
- Spike curiosity
- Briefly mention the benefits of reading your article.
Main Headline or H1 – This is the title visitors read when they land on your article
- Don’t repeat the same SEO title here. This is another opportunity to use more closely related keywords.
- Use the exact directions as in the SEO titles.
Sub-Headings or H2-H6 tags are perfect for breaking up the text and giving it structure and flow. Also, it’s an excellent opportunity to add more related keywords!
Images Optimization – To fully optimize an image for SEO, you need to:
- Compress them to make them weightless without sacrificing quality. My go-to tool for this is TinyPNG.
- Add the keyword to the file’s name.
- Add an Alt tag attribute inside the SEO plugin of your choice (I recommend Rank Math, but you can use another if you want – Like Yoast)
- Add an Image title
URL or slug – Make sure to use short and descriptive URLs.

KEYWORD RESEARCH

This is my strongest SEO area and perhaps the most sensitive one when it comes to SEO.

Why?

Well, think about it like this.

If you decide to target the wrong keyword for your business, you won’t be able to know this until like 3-6 months from now when you realize despite all your effort; your article won’t rank on the first page of Google!

What can we do to avoid this?

First and foremost, ALWAYS have your audience’s interest in mind whenever conducting keyword research.

From now on, EVERYTHING relies on that!

And so will your success!

Why is this so important?

Remember when I mentioned Google made public the top 3 ranking factors, one of which was page loading speed?

Well, one of the other two primary ranking factors is RELEVANCE!

What is the relevance?

As with any other business, Google wants to fulfill its customer in the best way possible. And the best way they can do this is by controlling and filtering what type of content they display in front of them based on what they are searching for.

Google is NOT stupid; they invest hundreds of millions of dollars in an AI-based algorithm that will serve their users more effectively.

That algorithm understands semantics, so Google serves the best possible results based on its user’s search intent.

For example, someone searching for “best hosting under $100” is most likely looking to purchase hosting, and, therefore, Google will serve that intention with the content that best fits that search intent.

Let’s see…

See how Google understands what I searched and displays the content that best suits my intent?

I never used the word “Cheap” and “shared” (which is the cheapest form of hosting), but when I search for “under $100,” Google understands what I am searching for.

How to come up with the best keywords for my niche site?

There are plenty of tools out there that can speed up the process for you.

My favorite of all is Ahrefs!

The problem with this tool is that it costs $99 per month.

There are other FREE keyword tool options available on the market. My top choices are:

Suppose you decide NOT to give Ahrefs a try (bad boy). It’s ok; I will still share other FREE and manual ways you can find keywords. Define the nature of your niche site/business and who is your target audience. Great practice for this is to write a short paragraph describing the problem you’re trying to solve or the interest/passion you’re trying to fulfill. Also, make sure to build a “Buyers Persona. ” This is a powerful thing to have, especially from the beginning. It makes the process a hell of a lot more accessible.

Search in niche-related forums– These are an incredible source of inspiration. Why? The people generating the content on these forums are YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE, and, they are pretty much posting issues, problems, inconveniences, etc., they have in their daily life. It’s pretty easy to get keywords from these, and, you know, these are current keywords people are searching for.

One great way to search for these forums is by searching on Google using these advanced search operators:

Keyword + inurl:”/forums/”

Keyword + “discussion board”

Keyword + inurl:”showtopic.php”

Q&A Platforms – This is pretty much the same situation as the niches. These are users generated content similar to forums. People come here to ask questions about stuff they don’t know, their problems, etc. Other users provide value by answering those questions. The best Q&A platforms are Quora, Reddit, and Yahoo Answers.

Make sure to check the year when the question was published. You don’t want to target a keyword from a question nobody is searching for anymore. Search on Google using an advanced search operator targeting the Q&A platform and then filtering the results by date to avoid this. Starting from the last 24 hours, last week, last month, and so on. This will guarantee your targeting of the most recent and fresh keywords.

Site:quora.com best hosting under $100

Niche Related Facebook Groups – Same as all the above!

You need to find communities where you think your target audience hangs out!

Once you have brainstormed a list of at least 15 or 20 keywords, it’s time to analyze their level of competition.

Again, you can use Ahrefs if you decide to go with paid tools or Ubersuggest if you choose to go for the FREE version.

Either way, I prefer you to do this process manually.

Why? If all the keyword tools provide a keyword difficulty score?

All SEO tools use a different approach to calculate this keyword difficulty score, and I don’t trust them! (Yes, not even Ahrefs).

This process won’t take much of your time, and once you gain practice, it will take you 10 to 15 seconds.

All you need to do is search for your keyword in Google and analyze the results.

First, make sure you create an account on Moz. It’s ok; it’s FREE!

Once you have your account set up, you need to install the Moz Chrome Toolbar extension.

After you do, start searching on Google for every one of the keywords you found. With the Moz Toolbar Chrome extension active, you should be able to see something like this…

Ignore the results with the “Ad.” Those are just advertisers paying their way into Google’s top-ranking positions. Instead, focus on the “organic” results. What are those below the ads and denote other sites like yours that work their way into the rankings?

Moz Chrome Toolbar extension will provide three key metrics to assess keyword difficulty.

Page Authority or PA – Page Authority measures the predictive ranking strength of a single page. It predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engine result pages (SERP). Page Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a more remarkable ability to rank. The more optimized your page is given all SEO ranking factors, the higher its PA will be.
Domain Authority or DA – A website’s domain authority describes its relevance for a specific subject area or industry. Pretty much, it takes into account each page PA.
Links – It shows the total number of links present on any page. Internal (a link placed on a page/article that redirects visitors to another page inside your site) and external (a link inside a page that redirects visitors to another site).

For now, we will focus on PA and DA.

Ok, I have Moz Chrome Toolbar extension, and I have a pretty good idea of PA and DA…What now?

As stated above, you will search every one of the keywords you found on Google. Also, you will open an excel spreadsheet and keep notes of the following.

Large # of LOW authoritative sites in the top 10 results – For the sake of argument, we will define as an “authoritative” site any result with a PA (that’s right, I said PA and NOT DA) above 50. We’re looking for a large number of results with a PA below 50. The lower they are, the better our chances to rank higher in Google’s results.
- Why PA and NOT DA? Google ranks pages, not domains. When trying to outrank other articles, we need to focus on beating their PA.
YouTube videos
Subdomains / Web 2.0s
Forums threads
Q&A pages (Quora, Reddit, Yahoo Answers, etc.)
Article Submission sites (Medium, Engine, eHow, etc.)
Low # of SERP Features (Snippets, Search For, Videos, Etc.)
There are Google Ads

If you find a keyword that displays all these results, let me tell you… YOU JUST FOUND A GOLDEN GEM!

On the other hand…

There are many authoritative sites in the top 10
Not a single ad
Many SERP features

Just delete that keyword from the list and forget about it.

Once you finish with your list, you should be able to have a handful of keywords.

Congratulations!

Let’s move into the next step!

BLOG TOPIC IDEA GENERATION

When starting a niche site from scratch from a brand new domain, you need to focus on BUILDING TOPICAL RELEVANCE!

What is that?

Topical relevance is a process search engines use to determine a web page’s relevance to a user’s search query. The best way to accomplish this is by heavily focusing on a single topic before jumping to the next.

How does Google know what content is more relevant to a user’s search query?

In two words? SEARCH INTENT!

Search intent (or user intent, audience intent) is the term used to describe the purpose of an online search. It’s the reason why someone conducts a specific examination. After all, everyone who does an online search hopes to find something.

Search intent is the why behind a search query. In other words, why did the person do this search? Do they want to learn something? Are they looking to make a purchase? Or are they looking for a particular website?

This is how Google (and other search engines) try to provide users with the most relevant result for their query. This is also why it’s essential to focus on building topical relevance before anything else heavily.

How many different types of search intent are there?

There are two primary search intents we need to focus on…

Informational – How to, guides, infographics, methods, etc.
Commercial – Best, product comparison, reviews, buyer guides, etc.

[Some essential resources on this]

Becoming an authority and an expert in our chosen field/niche should be our top priority.

For this, I recommend publishing anywhere around 10-15 articles from a single topic before developing the next topic.

Also, among those 10-15 articles, we should aim to target at least 70%-75% of them based on informational articles.

Why?

Because these are the ones that will attract the most traffic to our website and, the most value to our audience on the different social media platforms.

So, if we go back to “Best Hosting under $100,” we must write 10-15 articles on topics heavily related to this one.

How can we do this?

Well, remember when we search “Best Hosting Under $100” on Google, and it displays results using words like “Cheap” or “Shared.” Well, that’s your first clue, Sherlock!

Google is already telling you what it considers a “related topic.”

I will brainstorm ten topics from our topic example of “Best Hosting Under $100,” to play along.

7 Best Hosting for a Blog Under $100 [2020]

9 Best Cheap Hosting Reviews [COMPARISON]

Cheap vs. Expensive Hosting: Pros & Cons

Are our Cheap Hosting Services Reliable?

What to Look for When Searching for a Cheap Hosting?

11 Consequences of Cheap Hosting

What is Shared Hosting, and How does it Work?

Best Shared Hosting Plans in 2020

5 Best Free Hosting Provider

VPS vs. Shared Hosting: In-Depth Comparisons

See my point?

Not to brag, but I came up with those topics in less than 30 minutes. If you take your time, you can come up with 15-20 of these keywords targeting the same topic.

This is how you build topical relevance!

Why is it important?

The reason behind building topical relevance is to gain authority in the eyes of Google in that particular niche.

Once that happens, our site’s PA and DA will increase, and, as a result, it will be a hell of more accessible ranking new content.

This is the bottom line of this!

Is there anything else I should focus on when building blog topic ideas?

HELL YEAH!

Crafting an appealing and “CLICK-WORTHY” title makes the whole world!

Getting Google to rank our content higher on its SERP means more people will click our results and, therefore, more visitors will come to our site.

So, How do we induce people to click on our results?

By improving our title’s click-through rate (CTR)!

What is CTR?

CTR is a metric that shows the percentage of people that, after seeing our result (impressions), decide to click on it and visit our site.

So, when 1,000 people search for “Best Hosting Under $100” and Google displays our page to those 1,000 people, but only 100 decide to click on it and visit our site, the CTR for that particular result is 10%.

How can we increase our title’s CTR?

These are some standard practices:

Write compelling meta descriptions
Use descriptive URLs
Focus on “Listicle” topics (8 Best, Top 9, 7 ways, etc.)
Use “power-words “!
Create curiosity
Get emotional

CONTENT OPTIMIZATION

Content optimization based on SEO starts and finishes by offering users/visitors a better user experience (UX) than the competition…PLAIN AND SIMPLE!

The way we will accomplish this is by tackling the following variables:

Readability Score – Remember to aim for a readability score of at least 70 or a readability grade of 8.
Scannability – Make your text as scannable as possible. This means allowing your visitors to read your content without having to read it all. I hope this makes sense? We will achieve this by using “text-breakers,” remember those?
Inbound links – These are the links that redirect visitors to other related articles inside your site. Make sure to read and learn everything you can about SILOing.
Outbound links– These are links that redirect visitors to external sites. Make sure these are high authoritative and relevant sites.
- Make sure to set these links to open in a new tab. You want to add external links to tell Google what your content is about and for “facts checking,” but you don’t want to redirect your visitors OUT your site.
Table of content – This is like a menu or an index inside your article.
Social Sharing Buttons – This is another essential element to improve visitors’ UX.
SideBar – This is a column that is generally placed on the right of your site. It allows us to display more meaningful and relevant info to our visitors, and, more importantly, it helps get them to browse more time inside our site. You can also place banner ads there as well as a monetization option.

LINKBUILDING

Also referred to as, Off-Page SEO!

Linkbuilding is the process of making other site owners place a link that will redirect their visitors to our site.

Remember when I mentioned Google made public its top 3 ranking factors? One was page loading speed; the second was fulfilling its user’s search intent (relevance)?

Well, link building is the 3rd more crucial ranking factor!

Gaining authority through link building It’s like a popularity contest in the eyes of Google. When more sites link to yours, they’re telling Google your site is relevant and, therefore, Google will award you with more authority on your topic.

How do you build links the “RIGHT” way?

There are always shady ways to do things in any business, and link building is NOT the exception.

I won’t waste anybody’s time explaining these “black hat” link-building techniques. I believe they are a waste of time, money, and other resources (at least in the long run).

Instead, I will focus on offering you the safest and most Google-approved way to gain links naturally and organically.

Below are the best secondary “white hat” link-building techniques still effective today…

So, these are the secondary link-building tactics? What is the primary, then?

CONTENT-BASED!

I can’t stress this enough!

This should be your primary focus as this is Google’s view of how link building MUST be approached. By building what is called LINKABLE ASSETS/CONTENT!

These are basically pieces of content that are soo good other sites will use our content as a reference by adding a link in their content to our article.

How do I make other sites link to my site through content creation?

These are the type of content you should be focusing on…

Data-Driven Content
News or Trending Topics
Resource Content
Actionable Advice
Industry Insight
Case studies

Lastly, another critical aspect of Off-Page SEO is SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING!

We will refer to social media marketing to build a social media presence for your site for this guide.

That’s it!

To make things a bit easier, we will just focus on these social media platforms…

Facebook – We will create, build, and grow a Fan Page and regularly post our articles there.
Instagram – Same here! Remember, consistency is key to gaining engagement with our audience.
Pinterest – Same! Pinterest is a bit different than all the other social media platforms. We need to create and design our PINS and do a little marketing here to drive traffic.

A Complete Guide to SEO – Things that you need to know