A Sensible Definition For SEO
A sensible way of defining SEO, by revealing its main points of reference as a marketing discipline, could be put simply as the practice of optimally integrating a website with all its public sub-directories and landing pages into existing search engine results pages (SERPs) in a manner that allows the right content to be served to the right user at the right time. Giving due consideration to all three aspects can be beneficial in adopting a state of mind that allows for clear prioritisation based on what is available on the website, what is happening in the market and the degree of sustainability of the potential impact.
How Search Engines Work
Search engines crawl billions of pages on the World Wide Web using web crawlers (also known as spiders or bots) following links from page to page. The discovered pages are then added to an index that search engines pull results from for particular search queries. In other words, search engines are searchable databases of web content, made up of two main parts:
- Search index: A digital library of information about webpages.
- Search algorithms: Computer programs tasked with matching results from the search index with search queries
Every search engine aims to provide the best, most relevant search results to its users and they make money by providing paid search results. Each time someone clicks a paid search result, the advertiser pays the search engine. This is known as pay per click (PPC) advertising. More users translate into more ad clicks and more revenue for the search engines.
However, SEO is primarily concerned with the free listings (also called organic) that appear in the search results, this being the reason why it is important to understand how search engines work.
Each search engine has its own process for building a search index.
The discovery process begins with a known list of URLs and search engines can discover these in several ways:
From backlinks: Search engines have indexes of billions of webpages. When someone links to a new page from a known page, search engines can find it from these backlinks.
From sitemaps: Sitemaps tell search engines which web pages and files website owners want to be crawled. This is another method that enables search engines to discover URLs.
From URL submissions: Search Engines let site owners request crawling of individual URLs from within their proprietary Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools.
Rendering is when search engines try to understand and extract key information from the crawled pages. In order to do this, they have to run the page’s code to understand how it looks to users.
Few people outside of the search engines’ teams themselves know too many details about this process. But all that is required at this stage is to know is that it involves extracting links and storing content for indexing.
Indexing is when processed information from crawled pages gets added to a search index.
The search index is what one searches when he/she uses a search engine. That’s why getting indexed in the major search engines such as Google is so important for business. Users can’t find businesses unless they’re in the index.
Crawling, Rendering and Indexing content only make up the first piece of the puzzle. Search engines also need a way to rank matching results when billions of users perform online searches. This is where the search engine algorithms come in. Search Engine Algorithms are formulas that match and rank relevant results from the index.
Few people know every search engine ranking factor not only because they vary across search engines but also because they do not publicly disclose them. Nonetheless, search engines including Google have in fact mentioned to the public using some key rankings factors, which were widely absorbed by the SEO community.
Some of the key ranking factors are backlinks, content relevance and freshness, page loading speeds and mobile-friendliness. It’s worth noting that users may see different results depending on their location, the language set on their browsers and their search history.
SEO Methodology
To this day, SEO remains in the shadows of a virtually overnight industry called digital, spiralling out in every direction, continually fragmenting itself and feeding into increasingly abstract, creative and technical disciplines. Without a doubt, collating together the right parts of what was discovered, revealed and entertained over the years requires a keen eye for what is applicable in what scenarios.
This, however, becomes easier to tackle by looking at SEO’s roots, which put simply, originated as targeted efforts to market a website through Search Engines, which places SEO at the intersection of the marketing discipline and the organic medium. Thus, drawing from both frameworks of thinking, and allowing consideration for areas through which the practice of SEO can be understood and carried out, a rough methodology of SEO can be outlined as follows.
The SEO process starts with Research in order to establish an understanding of the organic search market, users and technology implications within its wider SERP environment.
It begins with Keyword-Research, focused on the visibility aspect of the website in SERPs, intrinsically linked as much to search volumes as well as the website rankings, defining the performance of its’ inbound acquisition.
Following is Web-Analytics that considers factors directly linked to the website’s acquisition channels, onsite user behaviour and conversion, different in that all measurement is carried directly on the website.
Placed in the context of business strategy, the insights form the website’s Organic intelligence which stands for a website’s ability to advance its longterm interests in organic search, accounting for the competitive landscape.
The insights gathered in the research phase then fuel the practice of Onsite Optimisation which targets both content and technical areas for improvement on the website at hand.
The Onsite Optimisation efforts are directed first and foremost to its Content Marketing which relates to all the semantic elements on the website and the contextual relationships between them.
The Technical Audit is aimed at understanding the factors that make the content accessible to both users and search bots in the most seamless way possible and the control over these to the website’s benefit.
Onpage Optimisation is a mixture of Content and Technical optimisation efforts, with limited scope for disassociation considered in the SEO context of a particular landing page on the website.
Lastly, the Offsite or Link Building efforts are directed towards establishing awareness, authority and trust within the industry at large with the purpose of reinforcing the efforts behind onsite optimisation and content marketing at large.
The Offsite Strategy stands for envisioning content of unique value to influence the propensity of other industry players to refer to the website at hand as a relevant, authoritative and trustworthy source of information.
The Outreach practice is aimed at finding the right referring sources in order to cultivate meaningful lasting business relationships that lead into natural conversions of advocating the website at hand to the wider web.
The Off-Page Optimisation stands for the efforts behind managing referring sources in a manner that benefits the website and its users by automating the alignment of user expectations with what the website has to offer.
It is not an overstatement to say that the key to a successful SEO implementation is rooted in thorough market research. In turn, this is enhanced by a systematic understanding of the search engine ranking factors. When put in the context of the website’s business strategy, the insights on these aspects will guide the wider onsite and offsite optimisation efforts as well as the setup and maintenance of appropriate tracking, reporting and constant refinement of the SEO strategy.
SEO for Digital Acquisition
Within a digital acquisition context, SEO considers the search queries and the intent behind them, how search engines work, and the wider SERP landscape. When aligned with the wider purpose of the website, the insights on these aspects are what affords the optimisation efforts to take place, aiming to uplift the website’s ability to solve the relevant search queries and the effectiveness of this practice over time and at scale.
The effectiveness of SEO can be tracked through the use of SEO metrics. Although most SEO key performance indicators (KPIs) are based on primary SEO metrics, it is the increasingly relevant context adopted by secondary and tertiary metrics that allows a perspective on SEO effectiveness that can be linked back to business verticals, objectives and optimisation efforts.
Primary metrics are counts of interaction and tend to be definitive in their nature. On their own, they show limited insight on overall SEO performance, but they make up the core of the ones that do, the secondary and tertiary metrics.
Secondary metrics are compound of relationships between select primary metrics and contexts relevant to the business. These sets of metrics afford a historical insight on SEO opportunities in a competitive context.
Tertiary metrics are likely to be determined in-house for the particular purpose of understanding the SEO impact on the website’s measurable business goals, in a competitive context as part of a changing industry.
There are likely as many ways of structuring and/or defining SEO metrics based on characteristics as there are individual metrics. The aim of such a simplistic approach to clustering individual SEO metrics is to define the extent to which they can be used to add value across the entire organisation, as opposed to the SEO function in isolation.
One instance of primary metrics is any of the Keyword Metrics including Keyword Search Volume, Keyword Difficulty, Organic Traffic Potential*, and Paid Advertising Cost per Click. Another instance of primary metrics could be considered any of the Web Analytics metrics, including the Acquisition Metrics, Engagement Metrics as well as Conversion Metrics.
Some examples of Acquisition Metrics can be the number of Organic Sessions, the number of Organic Users, and the Click-Through Rate to the website or landing page. Similarly, some examples of Engagement Metrics are Bounce Rate or Google Analytics’ newly introduced Percentage of Engaged Sessions, Average Time per Session, and Average Pages per Session. Lastly two examples of Conversion Metrics are simply the number of Conversions and the Conversion Rate.
Things get significantly more complicated with Secondary Metrics but in simple terms, these are merely Primary Metrics viewed through an additional layer of context. For instance, in the case of Keyword Metrics, how did the Search Volume change Month-over-Month or Year-over-Year? Or in the case of Web Analytics Metrics, how did the number of Organic Sessions change or the Percentage of Engaged Sessions for that matter? Simply adding an extra layer of context, like in this case a timeframe comparison turns a primary metric (which can provide limited context on its own) into a Secondary Metric.
Tertiary Metrics are the metrics that simply put can show the value of SEO beyond the SEO department. Namely, things like Return on Investment are but a single Tertiary Metric that can estimate the inputs and outputs of, for instance, a Content Marketing strategy over the period of a year, putting the monetary investment against the monetary gain over the one-year period. Tertiary Metrics are rather difficult to implement in technical terms but are rather important in large-scale organisations.
The value that can be extracted from the SEO metrics is conditional on the quality of the relationship between the metrics and the context to which its users apply it.
SEO Advantages
In digital marketing, SEO has a number of advantages over alternative channels.
One of the primary advantages of SEO is that the organic traffic is free of charge. In other words, it can take a substantial investment of time and effort to get started and some patience to see a return on investment (ROI). However, once you start ranking, you’ll receive free traffic at no additional cost per click. Unlike paid advertising which is seen as a tap because you can switch the spending and subsequently the traffic on and off, SEO is a waterfall because it brings in new traffic consistently over the long term.
Another advantage is the sustainability of organic traffic. Once you start ranking through SEO, the rewards are often there to stay without the need for continuous spending and reinvestment. Building a sustainable stream of highly targeted organic traffic to your website could be the difference between your business surviving or seeing a downfall in times of economic uncertainties. In other words, while in the case of PPC, you may be forced to switch off the tap on ad spending, with SEO you may find yourself in a position where a decrease in spending won’t necessarily bring traffic drops.
Unlike more traditional channels SEO is Highly Targeted and has the capacity to target users in various stages of the decision-making funnel. Results served via organic search are inherently relevant to the search query that is entered by the user, allowing you to target potential customers looking for your products or services. SEO Managers can target different Search Intents by creating types of content that suit user needs determined by the keywords they are searching for at different stages in their decision-making cycle of buying a product or service.
SEO can also reinforce your brand-building and traditional advertising initiatives. You can use SEO to reinforce your brand at different stages in the decision-making cycle, and namely Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. You may also use SEO to reinforce your traditional marketing initiatives by encouraging users to search for your Brand, as opposed to asking them to visit a website.
SEO and Paid Search can have synergies, providing the perfect opportunity for sharing resources considering in both cases customers use keywords to find products or services and the measurability is tracked using click through rate (CTR) and Conversion Rates (CR). As previously stated SEO requires time while Paid Search is instant, which is why it’s so important to align the strategies and the reporting of the two. Successful PPC campaigns can also indirectly have a positive impact on SEO as they may be responsible for bringing backlinks.
Considering search engines’ algorithms have gotten so advanced and look to reward high-quality websites that provide a good user experience to their users, in modern SEO, your User Experience (UX) team and SEO Team should be more aligned than ever. Some of the UX factors that affect SEO are mobile optimisation, page loading speed, website security via SSL certification, lack of intrusive interstitials and website structure.
Given the importance of backlinks for SEO, Public relations (PR) can have a significant influence on the overall SEO performance. So much so that SEO Managers have designed an entirely new discipline called digital PR, a spin-off of traditional PR designed to focus on building backlinks and getting mentions from reputable sources on the web for the purpose of building brand awareness.
As you can see SEO provides a number of advantages in the form of traffic that is free of charge, sustainable and highly targeted. SEO can also work hand in hand with your Paid Search strategy, your User Experience (UX) function as well as Public Relations (PR) in order to leverage compounding returns.
SEO Implementation in WordPress
Starting with WordPress’ default configurations and going all the way up to using plugins for various SEO purposes, this website is a one-stop resource you need to get your WordPress SEO right. Let’s start with the fact that WordPress is a goldmine for SEO, no other platform is as SEO-savvy as WordPress is and you need very limited programming knowledge, if any, to get started.
First, before even getting to install WordPress, one major decision you’ll have to make is choosing a hosting provider and a hosting plan. Depending on your website needs, but also your budget, you will find a range of options available. Although there’s plenty of options on the market, since the beginning of Nurdic and to the point in time of writing this sentence, there is only one hosting provider I can recommend and that is BlueHost.
There’s many reasons for choosing BlueHost as your preferred hosting provider among which are the fact that it’s big enough to allow for economies of scale, being in a position to offer competitive prices, but also a whole range of hosting plans depending on your needs and budget. But most importantly you want to choose a hosting provider that offers adequate customer service, that is able to get back to you within a reasonable amount of time, which I found to be true for BlueHost over the last few years.
If you don’t expect an absurd amount of traffic right from the beginning and you have a limited budget, I would recommend going for Shared hosting, which is the most basic and cheapest of the hosting tiers which allows you to rent space on a shared hosting server. As you start getting increasingly more traffic and become more versatile with Technical SEO, you may choose to upgrade your hosting plan.
The reasons behind this is that these servers host other websites on the same server alongside your website and provide the least performace, security and flexibility. Hence the reason why it often has trouble keeping up with high levels of traffic, so it isn’t best for high-traffic websites. Depending on your level of traffic and budget you will have to choose between a Virtual Private Server (VPS), a dedicated server or a cloud server to keep up with increase in demand for your website.
Back in 2014 Google stated that HTTPS is a SEO ranking factor, so having this on the list can go a long way in improving your SEO. It is also considered a trust signal among users, meaning internet users are more likely to trust and interact with websites that are secured using HTTPS. If you want to take advantage of a secure connection via HTTPS, you need an SSL certificate on your site.
Thankfully, if you’re using WordPress and a reliable hosting provider like BlueHost, deploying an SSL certificate is usually pretty easy, and many hosting providers can help you get it done correctly. Bluehost, our recommended Hosting Provider now provides free SSL certificates for all assigned and parked domain names set up in your account. In most cases, the SSL will automatically assign and install itself to your new and existing domains; however, some of you may need to enable the certificate manually. There’s also alternative ways of installing your SSL certificate and thus make your connection secure via HTTPS.
After you install a SLL certificate, what you need to do is ensure you have 301 redirects in place from the HTTP to the HTTPS versions of your pages. Fortunately, there are a few plugins like ‘SSL Insecure Content Fixer‘ and ‘Really Simple SSL‘ that tackle these issues.
Once, you update your website URL to HTTPS, you need to update your settings on Google Analytics too if you use it for traffic analysis of your website. Installing an SSL certificate can look like a daunting task in the beginning, but it is not that difficult to make your website secure. You must enhance your website’s security with SSL, especially because you can install it for free. It can save you from a large number of hacking attacks and keep sensitive information protected. Besides enhancing your website’s security, an SSL certificate also builds trust for your site and improves your site value for search engines.
As it happens SEO is rarely the priority when a new website is built, which eventually turns into a pretty costly endeavour. Choosing a SEO-friendly theme can go a long way in saving you the optimisation efforts later down the line.
Some practical things to look at when choosing an SEO friendly theme are:
- Clean and fast code: With a clean code structure, you can decrease the load of time on pages and increase the crawlability of your pages.
- CSS and Javascript files: With Google, less is more, and having a limited number of CSS and Javascript files will help. Plus, you won’t have to worry about minifying them later.
- Simple layout: A simple design will make it easy for users to navigate from page to page.
- Responsive: As we know Google gives an edge to responsive sites in searches from mobile devices so choosing a WordPress theme that is responsive will give you an overall better user experience.
- Schema Markups: Schema Markups tell search engines where the most relevant content is on your theme.
If there is one test you need to perform to check if a WordPress theme is worth using, it is the Google Pgae Speed Insights test. However, some other things to look for are compatibility with WordPress plugins; GDPR-compatibility; Woocommerce and Translation support.
The preferred domain (canonical domain) specifies the version of the preferred domain (www or non-www) that precedes the domain name. To be technically accurate the www version of a website actually means the website will be placed on the www subdomain. Although there is no set preference by search engines for either one of these options, only one single version should be used across all the URLs on the website for consistency purposes.
In cases when the preferred version is not clearly specified, search engines may treat the two versions of the same page as references to separate pages, resulting in duplication issues. Although search engines do not give preference to any one version over the other, one argument against the www version is that it serves no functional purpose, while the non-www version makes for a shorter URL, allowing more space for what may, in fact, be important.
When you set your preferred domain, you’re telling search engines which domain you want to be crawled and indexed. You also need to make sure your redirects from www to non-www are working properly. Otherwise you end up with duplicate content as well as issues surrounding the consolidation of your backlink profile. With 301 redirects to the preferred domain, you won’t lose backlinks that are pointing to the previous wrong domain, which happens more often than you would think. So, the link juice is carried over to the preferred one.
Check your website visibility settings: To ensure that your website is indexable and search engines are not discouraged from indexing your website, navigate to WordPress > Reading. Here you want to make sure that the checkbox is not ticked if you want search engines to be able to discover content on your website.
Change Your Permalinks: Keeping a clean and SEO-friendly URL structure may have a significant impact on your SEO, which is why it is a good idea to set your preferences right for the permalinks. In order to do this navigate in WordPress to Settings > Permalinks. Then, select Post Name as the option. Post Name typically works for most sites. However, as you’re advancing in SEO you may end up implementing a custom structure depending on your preferences.
When it comes to SEO, plugins should always be installed with caution, as every plugin may negatively affect your SEO. This is because when you start overloading your WordPress website with plugins, you bring all their baggage with them. Too many plugins can cause unnecessary code bloat, heavy markup, and non-semantic code that can cause a drop in page speed. So, when it comes to choosing SEO-friendly plugins for WordPress, keep it simple.
Choosing an All-In-One SEO Plugin: One of the first decisions you will have to make when install an all-in-one SEO plugin is choose between a number of options. You will find that the most used SEO plugin in the industry is Yoast SEO, but there’s a number of other options on the market including Rank Math SEO and All in One SEO.
I have to admit that I am biased towards the Rank Math SEO plugin, as it offers the most user-friendly interface and is the one that has the least bugs and the best support. At this time it as fairly unpopular opinion as Yoast is used by far more users, especially in the US, however this website is powered exclusively by RankMath and will continue to be so.
Some of the steps you will have to go through to successfully control all your SEO efforts through the RankMath plugin will be configuration, ownership verification with Google Search Console, onapge SEO that allows you to edit all essential metadata for every page and post, controls for content optimisation and readability, content AI optimisation, the optional use of breadcrumbs navigation, the settings around XML sitemaps, and lastly social media integration.
There is no doubt that SEO implementation is one of the hardest parts of SEO and you may end up in situations where some technical knowledge is required to come up with a fix. However, one of the main benefits of WordPress is that it is so widespread across the web. This translates into the possibility of getting an answer to virtually any issue you might have with the content management system (CMS) as well as finding the necessary talent to work with you in cases where you’re not able to fix the issue yourself.
SEO Measurability
So how long does it take to show results from SEO? Like with most things in SEO, the answer is – it depends. One study from Ahrefs that took into account the opinion of over 4 thousand SEO Managers proves that there is no definitive time frame. However, it must be noted that almost half of SEO Managers believe it will take at least 3 to 6 months for SEO efforts to show some results. That means that how long SEO takes to “work” depends on a number of factors.
SEO Measurability Study by Ahrefs
As you can see there is some consensus on how long it takes for SEO to show results, but to put this in context, there are a number of factors that dictate how long SEO will actually take.
Firstly, it depends on whether you’re working with a new or an established website. Generally speaking, since older websites have been around for longer, they tend to have a stronger backlink profile, more content, as well as already established rankings for keywords. As you would expect in this case you’re likely to see results in a relatively shorter amount of time. On the other hand, newer websites need more effort and resources to get off the ground, that come especially in the form of new content and backlinks. So if you’re working on a new website, it may take longer for SEO to show results.
Next is the competitive framework. If the keywords you’re targeting are highly competitive, it will take more effort and most importantly a longer time to outrank your competition.
Thirdly, it all depends on your internal and external resources. The more resources you can dedicate to SEO the faster your results will show. For instance, you could hire more content writers to create new content, allocate human resources to link building to build backlinks or invest in SEO tools to make your work easier, faster, and more efficient.
Lastly, it all depends on your SEO strategy because a nailed-down strategy on how you will tackle your target keywords can lead to a higher chance of climbing in organic SERPs. More specifically, if you have a strategy that targets a group of highly competitive keywords, you will find that no matter your efforts it may take years before you will be able to establish first-page organic rankings. While using alternative methods by targeting low volume and low competition keywords first may bring in results faster and reinforce your efforts for ranking for shorttail keywords in the long run.
As a general rule, you should aim for 3 to 6 months to see results from your SEO, however, these factors added up may raise the time frame significantly. Still, it’s very important to have realistic expectations when it comes to SEO, as it is easy to get discouraged. It’s much harder to anticipate how long it will actually take you to rank.
The Wider Context of Measurability
Recognising the wider context of SEO measurability early in the process helps to eliminate ambiguity at a later stage by prioritising the right metrics, keeping the expectations closely tied to the optimisation efforts, and encouraging educated decisions on business goals. Namely, the 3 most important aspects that provide context to measurability are the historical development, the competitive landscape and the SERP landscape.
The historical development reflects the evolution of organic visibility, rankings and performance over time. By exploring these clusters of metrics at two or more points in time, inline with changes in the market, changing user behaviour, SERP fluctuations, and optimisation efforts carried on the website, SEOs can establish hypotheses to guide further actions.
The competitive landscape stands for the abstract understanding of the website’s organic competing domains within the boundaries of the website’s organic search visibility at large, as well as competing pages within specific SERPs. This can extend to direct competitors just as much as to websites that may follow divergent commercial interests but compete for the same keywords.
The SERP landscape stands for the aggregated collection of SERP factors manifested across all the SERPs the website is visible under. SERPs change and evolve over time, with a constantly increasing and decreasing number of features competing for user attention which has direct implications for the click-through-rate, organic traffic and measurement at large.