SEO, search engine optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a subfield of online marketing and represents the measures to be taken in order to increase the visibility of one's own content in search engines.
What is the goal of SEO?
The goals are relatively easy to define:
- Appear on the first page of search results
- That users click on the website
- That users stay longer on the website and do not bounce off again
- That ideally users become customers, subscribers, permanent visitors, ...
How is SEO implemented?
Search engine optimization essentially consists of 2 segments that must be optimized. The OnPage measures, which are implemented within the website and the OffPage measures, which are located outside on external domains.
In detail, the measures in both segments look like this:
OnPage measures
Website structure
Website structure is about designing the structure of a website in such a way that the user can reach all pages with just a few clicks, if possible. This includes a well thought-out navigation and internal linking strategy.
HTML Headings and Title
HTML headings have SEO relevance, as they give structure and order to the website or its content. This is especially true for the main heading of a single page, the H1. It should contain the central keyword to show the user right at the beginning what kind of content the page contains and what it is about. Likewise, you should include the other headings (at least the H2 and H3).
The HTML measures also include the title tag. It should also contain the central keyword, but must not be the same as the h1 heading. In search engine snippets, it represents the headline of the web page.
The description should also contain keywords and be a short teaser. It briefly describes the contents of the page and gives the user a brief overview of the topic.
Meta elements
The meta elements are located in the head section of the HTML code. With the meta elements you can add more information to the web page.
An example would be the charset attribute, which is used to specify the important character encoding of a page.
Other SEO relevant meta tags are:
Meta Description
The meta description provides additional descriptive text in the snippets. You can see it in the small print directly below the headline.
The Meta Description has only an indirect ranking factor. It interacts with the title tag and influences the click-through rate to a web page. Therefore, it should also be keyword optimized.
Robots
The Robots element tells the search engine crawlers which information they should and should not take into account. This includes, for example, the NoFollow attribute, which states that the crawlers should not follow the links, or the NoIndex, which instructs the crawlers not to include information in the index.
Content
Content means the entire content of a web page, to which the text is added, as well as the multimedia elements such as images, graphics and video.
The text should be unique, easy to read, relevant to the topic and of high quality. It must also contain the relevant keyword and related terms. Good content is a high ranking factor.
The multimedia elements should be optimized according to the general SEO guidelines. Add keywords to alt and title elements, define image size via CSS with height and width, compress files, name files in a relevant way, use common file formats like PNG, GIF, JPG or SVG.
Keywords
Keywords are terms through which one wants to be found in the search engine. Here is to start a comprehensive keyword research in the SEO strategy.
This includes creating a list of keywords that could be considered, then comprehensive keyword analysis of search volume, competitors, conversion and weighting. Then you get the final list of relevant keywords.
Links
In OnPage optimization, internal links are meant by linking. Within a website, internal links are markers where you can link other areas within a text, for example, with hyperlinks. Internal links also represent a ranking factor, albeit a weaker one compared to external links (backlinks).
URL
With URL optimization, it is important to create so-called talking URLs. This includes the creation of a corresponding folder structure in the root directory.
Example: Subpage seo-strategy.html is located in the seo-marketing folder. URL would then look like this: https://name-der-startseite/seo-marketing/seo-strategie.html/ with which one would have created a speaking URL with the assignment of keywords.
Pagespeed
Pagespeed is an important ranking factor that measures the loading speed of a website.
Search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. consider pages that load particularly quickly as well-optimized pages and evaluate this with higher ranking placements.
OffPage SEO measures
OffPage measures refer to all measures that are not on your own website, but on external domains. This includes backlinks, which are among the strongest ranking factors in search engine optimization.
Backlinks
Backlinks are hyperlinks that refer from external websites to the content of your own website.
There are two variants here.
- Active link building: Create targeted guest articles or comments linking to your own website on other websites
- Passive link building: Focus on good content. Others then automatically link to your own page.
However, the active link building is limited by the search engines. Here you have to be careful not to be classified as link spam. This often results in penalties.
Other OffPage measures are the so-called Social Signs, i.e. signals that come from platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc..
What is the difference between SEO and SEA?
Even though both do the same thing at first glance, a second look separates the wheat from the chaff.
While SEO is concerned with placing websites high up in the organic search results, Search Engine Advertisting SEA is concerned with placing advertisements by booking individual keywords, for example via Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords).
Another area of SEA is display advertising with the placement of advertisements in the websites themselves.
In the search engines, paid advertisements are marked with the addition "ad" (on Google). These ads usually appear at the top of the results.
What are the other parts of SEO?
In addition to the classic SEO optimization still exist these areas:
Images SEO
Images SEO includes all the measures that need to be taken to optimize images for search engines.
YouTube SEO
YouTube SEO concerns all the measures that you need to implement for video optimization on YouTube.
Little info: YouTube is the largest search engine in the world after Google.
Bing SEO
Here, the optimizations apply in particular to websites that are also active in countries that have a higher market share of Bing, apart from the German market.
The search engine market share of Bing is much higher in the USA (approx. 12%) than in Germany or in Europe (approx. 2.5% market share). Therefore, one must take Bing into account here.
Local SEO
Here, the optimization measures apply especially to companies that aim for a strong local presence. Here, for example, one can further expand the SERP display via Google MyBusiness. These measures apply to a large extent to operators of restaurants, hair salons, boutiques, etc... ... i.e. small businesses that have a strong regional connection.
Conclusion:
If you want to expand your business in the online sector, or digitally expand your customer acquisition, you can't get around a shrewd SEO strategy. As SEO Agency in Munich we are at your disposal for further questions.
