If you are a beginner in blogging, it is common to struggle with website ranking. It looks like ranking is only reserved for high authoritative websites. So it is very frustrating to wait a long time for your page’s ranking. SEO is the most difficult and confusing part of blogging. That is because the practice takes time to learn and apply appropriately.

There are somewhat conflicting tips from experienced bloggers on SEO. For instance, one expert presenter in the SEO mastery summit says that quality content is enough to rank higher in search results. Income school state backlinks are not important for ranking and they do not use them.

While Ahrefs and Moz many others recommend SEO practice for improving ranking. After making research on several aspects of SEO practices, the following is my intake on the topic. I hope it helps some that are beginners in the practice.

How does Google work?

The first step Google undertakes is to crawl and index before the web pages are ranked for search queries. The process of Crawling involves crawlers or Google bots that discover new pages and then Google indexes them if appropriate. Google checks first if the pages are canonical or representative before indexing. That is because Google hates duplicate pages. After the web pages are crawled and indexed, the information is sorted and ranked according to the relevancy and quality of the content.

What is website ranking?

Google’s ranking is precedence the googles algorithm awards to web pages and websites depending on many factors such as

-Website domain authority(DA)

-Pages authority (PA)

-Backlinks

-Quality of content

-Search engine optimization

-User’s experience

Hence, all these factors contribute to website ranking and that is why it is not easy to quickly rank in search engines. Of those contributing factors the most important and that involves much work is search engine optimization. So let’s look at what search engine optimizations are about in a simple way.

But Let’s keep in mind, however, that the traffic may not be dependent on the page’s rank. According to SEO Mastery, the traffic is more dependent on the number of pages published but keeping in mind they have high quality.

Search engine optimization

This is the major factor that decides for ranking higher in search engines. It is the act of optimization of web pages to make them easily discovered when a user searches in search engines. 

Why is SEO important?

First SEO enables a website to get free or organic traffic and the traffic can also be evergreen depending on the type of content. This is helpful because other types of traffic like ads incur more cost and social media marketing needs continuous engagement with users which means more work.

SEO also offers a great opportunity for passive income because once quality content is up the rewards can span a long time without additional work or updates.

Search engine optimization(SEO) is dependent on various attributes of pages, content, and website design. Therefore, there are 3 different types of SEO depending on where and how the optimization is done. Namely, they are off-page SEO, on-page SEO, and Technical SEO. Let’s look closer at each type of SEO

On-page SEO

This is the search optimization for adjusting the content to the search keyword, phrases, or sentences users input into search engines to look for information about something. On-page SEO can be dubbed the bedrock of SEO because that determines whether your content will be discovered by users or not.

So unless your websites have the intention of hobby or personal satisfaction if the content is not discovered by many, it will be unsuccessful because it will not be profitable. Sooner or later so SEO is decisive for the success of the website because only with SEO is a website accessible or will have long-term lasting organic traffic.

That is very helpful because 50% of organic traffic comes from Google which dominates about 92% of global searches according to Bluehost and 4 billion internet users are googlers. 

With that being clear, How can On-page SEO be applied to my website? First, we need to find out which words, phrases, or sentences users use to inquire about information in search engines.  This is called keyword search. Keyword search is the process of finding out the search queries users apply when searching on Google. 

However, it is not enough to only know about the search keywords, but, it is necessary also to make sure that the keywords satisfy the intention of the user’s inquiry in all respects.

That means the right keyword searching is necessary otherwise the keyword will not serve the intended purpose. Hence keyword research depends on several factors to optimize a website for increasing traffic to a blog post or commercial store or press release. 

As per Ahrefs very informative Seo tips, there are 4 important factors that must be looked into in keyword research.

1. Keyword volume

This means the number of times a keyword appears in search results. The keywords that have higher volumes have the potential to attract more traffic, therefore it is necessary to select those with higher volumes.

However, keyword volume is not the same as traffic. For instance, a keyword may have high search volume but no traffic. I may search for the meter to the yard calculator but if there is a google calculator there, it means I will not have traffic even if I have written about it.

2. Keyword difficulty

Keyword difficulty or also called competition determines how hard is for a keyword to rank in searches. A keyword with high competition or difficulty is very hard to rank at top of searches for new blogs. Hence, new blogs should choose a keyword with low competition.

3. Traffic

If traffic does not come to a page that means there is no conversion or income. Hence, the traffic to a keyword needs to be checked in order that the blog becomes profitable.

4. Search intent

It is necessary to know the intention for a search of a keyword. For instance, the intention could be commercial or informative.

The intention of a search can be identified by searching the keyword in google and if many e-commerce websites come up, it is commercial. If the search results consist of informative websites the intention is for looking for some information. 

5. Profitability

A keyword must be profitable if the purpose of the website is for getting income. Particularly, when selecting niches the keyword must have good income potential.

If the keyword has no income potential in terms of the affiliate, lead generation, or ads income, the continuous hard work will run out of gas ultimately.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO Is also termed Backlinking. Backlinks are used by Google algorithms as a vote of confidence for trusting the pages or websites and establishing authority. Hence, there are many kinds of building backlinks such as guest posting and others.

Technical SEO

Google gives higher ranks to sites that fulfill certain technical criteria. The website’s ranking depends on such criteria as website loading speed, mobile responsiveness, and provision of SSL sockets. Setting up the sitemap and robots.txt file also helps Google discover and index pages faster.

Additional tips from SEO Pros

User’s experience

At last let’s close by covering the importance of user experience. Currently, the focus of Google is to ascertain that the content is user-focused.

If the content is not answering the users’ questions the users will not stay for a long time. Hence, many reports that Google ranks higher the content that answers users’ questions more than any other feature of the content.

Google’s algorithm can not read pages but uses UX metrics of users’ experience and backlinks to rank websites.

According to SEO mastery, there are 4 UX matrix parameters used by Google.

-Bounce rate

-Time on site

-Pages visited

-Conversions

-Referral traffic

-Backlinks

Conclusion

Search engine optimization (SEO) aim is to be discoverable for the user that searches on Google. There are three main categories of SEO, i.e. On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, and Technical SEO.

It is recommended to apply SEO practices to improve ranking and get more traffic. As many SEO pros are recommending prioritizing quality content, it is a very wise choice to focus on content that is attractive and answers users’ questions.

Backlinking is recommended if the type of content is highly dependent on votes of confidence.

FAQ

What must one do to rank their website?

SEO mastery has grown Ahref’s website from 100K to 1 M monthly searches. This agency states they do not make backlinks for ranking purposes. They do not practice Backlink practices such as LSI, LDI, TF-IDF, entities, etc. However, they have grown their traffic over and over.

The secret sauce that they recommend is simple

-Nailing the search intent for a given query

-Deep understanding of the topic and unique ideas

-Good readability and grammar

-Proper formatting and designing visuals

So No effort for actively backlinking!! Except for some health-related websites where backlinks can be crucial to boosting authority.

What are the 11 deadly sins of search engine optimization? 

1. To stuff keywords
2. Creating duplicate content
3. Manipulation of backlinks
4. Lack of optimization of meta descriptions
5. Giving more weight to SEO than users
6. Black hat SEO
7. Lack of Mobile responsiveness
8. An unbalanced focus on traffic than conversion
9. Content that serves SEO than the customers
10. Cloaking
11. Low Pagespeed

Are there free SEO tools?

Yes, the best free tool is Google keyword planner and you can use it for free. However, it gives search volume ranges and the competition level is related only to how many advertisers are advertising the keyword. As a rough rule of thumb, use lower volumes and the competition can be checked by the forecast traffic volume of the planned keyword. However, one good way of finding keywords is by searching for the keyword in the Google search and watching for the search keywords populated in the search. It is possible also to get other ideas from the related search at the bottom. 

How to know the intention of the keyword research ideas?

The intention of the search keyword can be found by searching for the keyword in Google and observing what type of information comes as a result. Are the sites e-commerce, informative, or comparing sites. Hence, if any of the websites are e-commerce and say Buy, the intention is commercial.

Do I need to have backlinks to have more traffic?

No. According to SEO mastery and income school, you do not need to have backlinks for increased traffic. If you have quality content, that is going to drive traffic.

What do I need to easily rank in Google searches?

Choose keywords with little competition and if you use keyword ideas from other competitive sites, the site’s domain authority (DA) should be lower than yours.

What is Amarillo search engine optimization?

This is a special type of search engine optimization that is targeted at businesses.