SEO Definition
SEO, an acronym for Search Engine Optimization -in Spanish search engine optimization-, are the set of actions and techniques that are used to improve the positioning (visibility) in search engines of a website on the Internet, within the organic results in search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo.
To do this, search engines collect the list of pages on the web and order it based on their algorithm. These algorithms are updated from time to time to try to offer the user the results that most closely match the search they have made and that among the top of the list there is no manipulated text or spam.
For example, the latest updates made and announced by Google in its algorithms are those made in ‘Panda’ (2011), which penalizes those websites that contain duplicate content from other sites and sources; that of ‘Penguin’ (2012), whose objective is to penalize sites that use manipulative techniques, such as SEO Spam or Web Spam, to improve their rankings; and the one carried out in ‘Colibri’ (2013), which can interpret the questions asked by users and, therefore, goes beyond the simple analysis of the words that make it up.
Search engines rely on more than 200 factors to position a web page. These factors can be internal or external. The external ones would be those that cannot be controlled and that depend mainly on the behavior that users have on that website, such as whether it is a site that is shared or not on social networks, such as the number of quality links that it has linked, the number of visits it receives, the bounce rate…
The internal ones are those that do depend on the person in charge of the web, such as the loading speed, the authority of the domain, the publication of quality content that corresponds to the keywords, the architecture or structure of the web, the HTML code, write URLs with the necessary information, etc.
Users perform searches on the Internet, both written and voice, either by asking questions or simply with words. Search engines are responsible for showing you a list of websites that contain information about the search you have made. The same website will receive visits from different profiles, so logically some will be satisfied with what they find there and others will not. There are many techniques and SEO strategies to position a website in the first positions, among them:
The content. The content must provide an answer to the user’s search, but searches are not always very specific. Searching for ‘restaurant in Madrid’ is not the same as searching for ‘Italian restaurant in Madrid in the Chamberí area that opens at night’. To be indexed by search engine robots, websites have to offer clear content that includes several keywords.
If the content is going to be prepared for more detailed or professional searches, such as the texts that are written for a blog, they must have certain characteristics such as being original, providing information, having a minimum length and written without mistakes. orthography. To write these contents you have to be very clear about the target you are addressing.
One of the most effective ways to get quality links is with useful and interesting content, as other websites will link to it and mention it in their articles.
The creation of infographics and visual resources is also an effective technique to get other websites that deal with the same topic to link to it, since users prefer this type of content.
Mobile search optimization. Search engines like Google give preference to those pages that are Mobile Friendly or that are based on the characteristics of the responsive web; that is, they offer the best response regardless of the device from which the query is made. Mobile Friendly sites are those that use text so that it is readable on a mobile without using the zoom and that it is not necessary to scroll horizontally to read it, those that place links with enough distance from each other so that the user can touch the correct one, and those that avoid software that are not common on mobile devices, such as Flash.
Site speed. A page that takes more than five seconds to load causes a high number of bounces.
The factors that most influence the loading speed of a website are: Hosting, which is where the server is located, the network and programming.
To achieve good speed, you must take into account that the hosting is of quality, if possible in the same country to which the web is directed, with sufficient characteristics and preferably dedicated. The network where the server is connected must also be of quality, although this does not mean that the network to which the users connect is and, therefore, the loading time of the web may be slower. In terms of programming, the web must be optimized, especially in terms of design and database queries.
HTML. There are a series of meta tags that favor SEO, and, for this, the HTML must be validated, that is, it must meet the standards of the World Wide Web Consortium.
The first two meta tags are the ones that provide the information that search engines use to display in their search results:
Title tag: After the page content itself, the Title tag is the second most important piece of content on a page. It is the first piece of code that the search engine reads when it arrives at the web page. It will also be the title that is displayed when sharing the content on social networks and, generally, the title that search engines show in their search results.
Title tags that start with the keyword tend to influence ranking more than those that contain the keyword at the end.
H1 tag: acts as a second Title tag and corresponds to the description that usually appears below the title.
Other important meta tags for SEO are:
The Robots meta tag, with which search robots are instructed to index the web page and follow the links on it.
Canonical meta tag, which is used to indicate the address or URL of the main or canonicalized page when the same page can be accessed from two different URLs.
Lang meta tag, which is used to show search robots in which language a web page is written
User experience. The average visit time of the users, the bounce rate, the recurring traffic, the number of comments, the clicks on the links of an article… are factors that also determine if the content offered on that site is of quality and users like.
Presence in Social Networks. An active presence on social media helps us reach all of our users, as we don’t all use the same sites or apps to search. But, in addition, there are certain actions that search engines take into account, such as the number of times a page is shared on Facebook or the ‘likes’ it has, the number of tweets from an account or the authority of the account. Twitter (the tweets that come from old accounts with many followers and a lot of activity do not have the same weight as those that come from new accounts with little influence), the pins on Pinterest, the authority of the Google+ account, etc.
Facebook Comments
Disqus