Website promotion from scratch

If you have a website, or you just want to create it, then it must be great. Both for the user, so that everyone can find something useful on it, and for search robots who still need to prove that your site is valuable. And if everything works out, then you will rise to the top of search results and get a lot of free traffic from organic search.

If you do not know how to do this and there are no funds to turn to professionals, then you can learn how to do it yourself with the help of this article. In it we will tell you about the basics of SEO website promotion for beginners and just business owners.

Before we start

SEO or search engine optimization is responsible for promoting the site up the search results. It is a combination of strategies that aim to increase the visibility of a website and improve its positioning in search engines.

Let’s clarify the situation. SEO cannot be learned once and for all. Today some strategies work, and tomorrow search engine algorithms will change and other methods will start working. Therefore, those who want to learn something from now on will often have to update their knowledge.

Still determined to get into this business? Then let’s get down to the basics.

Where to begin

The learning process here is no different from studying at school or university. First, you work hard to learn the basics, then gradually move on to practice. And learning the basics of SEO optimization for beginners is better to start with terminology.

All terms that you need to familiarize yourself with can be divided into 3 groups:

1. General terms / analytics. Here everything related to the process of creating a website (choosing a hosting, domain name, databases, traffic, programming languages, site engines, etc.). And everything related to assessing the effectiveness of your resource (Y. Metrica, Google Analytics, counters, KPI, CPO, CPC, CTR, CR and much more).
2. Internal optimization. Here everything is about creating and filling site pages. How to make it easier to find and make it useful for the visitor. The terms that will have to be studied here: robots, sitemap, redirects, 404 page, semantic core, url, CNC, text volume, percentage of occurrence, highlighting in the search results, filling in the title and more.
3. External optimization. Its main goal is to build up the link mass and, as a result, the trust (trust from the search engine) of the site. Terms to study: anchor, link exchange, inbound and outbound links, directories and more.

Semantic core

Now that you are comfortable with the terms, it’s time to move on to the next step. This is the collection of the semantic core. Note that this stage is the most important of all, for it lays the foundation. Why is the semantic core so important?

The fact is that the CL is a set of queries for which your customers are looking for your product or service on the Internet. Depending on the subject of the business, this can be several tens of words or several hundred thousand search queries. The entire success of search engine optimization depends on the quality and completeness of the keyword base.

The main tool for selecting keywords is the Yandex.Wordstat service. And your brain is also useful. Open https://wordstat.yandex.ru/ (it’s free) and enter the query you are interested in (do you know what you sell or what services do you provide?). In the window that opens, you will receive statistics on the number of impressions per month. Please note that the numbers opposite the request do not mean that this request was entered by exactly that many people. This means that this request has been entered so many times. And how many times each person entered any query is impossible to say.

Now that you have statistics, select all queries related to your topic. Have they taken away? Great! Save them to Excelku. Now click through each selected request and save the ones that haven’t been there yet.

If you get very few options, then use the KeyCollector program. She will be able to help you and find non-obvious options for promotion.

When you have collected in the database from 50 to 150 queries (in each topic in its own way), you can start filtering. You need to remove non-target keys from the database. You should remove words that characterize services on your topic, but those that you do not deal with or products from your area, but those that you do not sell. Eliminate the GEO you do not work in (if location plays a role in your business).

Distribution of requests

Now that the semantics are in your hands, it’s time to distribute them across the pages of the site. Each topic has a page. If you sell motorcycles in Moscow, then make sections with custom bikes, sports, road, motocross and any others that you sell. And for each page, group the query cluster from your query base by region.

Internal seo optimization

Internal page SEO covers many aspects, so let’s break it down.

Content.

Content is king on your site. With the right presentation, of course. You need to make sure that users stay on your resource as long as possible. To do this, write long and informative texts.
Pay attention to creating good content:

• Headings. Use original headlines with numbers, facts, or intrigue. Don’t forget to add your keywords.
• Keys in the text. Distribute the collected keywords across the pages of the site. This is how you help people find you in their search. But don’t overdo it.
• Quality. Publish quality and original content. Originality over 90% and compliance with seo metrics (nausea, key density, etc.) will provide you with the favor of search robots.
• Freshness and frequency of updates. Regularly post new materials on the site – this encourages search engine robots to visit you more and more and revise your position in the SERP (if everything is done correctly, then for the better).

site menu

The site menu is one of the first in the list of important elements on the site. If you put the menu in the header of the site, then the user can easily navigate, and search engines will notice it.

Download speed

Another important parameter. When the page load speed exceeds 3 seconds, there is a sharp churn of users who did not wait until the end. This is a very important factor in search engine ranking. How to reduce loading times? There are several ways:

• Choose a more powerful hosting.
• Optimize images and videos for web publishing.
• Disable unnecessary animation of site elements.
• Manually clean up the html code of the page. The latter is relevant if you are building a website using a constructor.

Correction of technical errors

The indexing of a site by search engines is influenced by such parameters as:

• Availability and correct configuration of the robots.txt file;
• Sitemap or sitemap.xml file;
• Customized redirects;
• Getting rid of all kinds of duplicate pages on the site;
• Closing external links on the site;
• Setting up a 404 page;
• The presence of micro-markup and much more.

Adaptive layout

Check how your site is displayed on different mobile devices. You can do this here – https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly. It’s free and ad-free, unlike most similar third-party services. Why is it important?

The fact is that the share of mobile traffic is growing every day. This is due to the fact that more and more people on the planet use smartphones. And it’s silly to miss out on such a channel (after all, phone users are more likely to shop online). If you don’t optimize for mobile devices, the same effect is observed as with long loading times – user churn.

External optimization

We have already said that this is due to the building of link mass and trust from the search engine. How do I get links to my site? There are several ways:

• Content. Again about him – darling. Tell me, what will you do if you see a cool article on web design? We think that you will send it to a familiar web designer. In the same way, you share memes with cats or pictures “about childhood in the USSR”. You saw the content that interested you and shared it. This is how you helped the site spread links to it.

  Do the same. Write high-quality texts, and users will share them (do not forget to ask them about this – remember the magic of call to action).

• Guest posts. You can find people online who sell the same products as you, or provide similar services. Offer to write material for them and ask them to leave a link to you. Offer this to 10 people and 2-3 will agree on a reciprocal basis. Is it a good deal.
• Comments. Come to forums where your target audience sits and participate in discussions. Help and advise – become your own on the board. Those who will see your activity will want to get to know better and will definitely visit your site (just leave a link to it in your profile on the forum :)).
• Social networks. Place a link to the site in a special section in your profile.
• Buying links. We do not recommend this method for you in the first six months or a year of your site’s life. The fact is that if you immediately buy 1000-10000 links to a new site, then this will not escape the attention of the search engine and you will immediately fall under the sanctions of search engines. You will get out of them for a very long time.

Behavioral factors

They play a huge role in ranking because they are based on the user experience of your site visitors. Do not neglect them, but we will now tell you how to improve them:

• You already know about the “time spent on the site” factor and how to work with it. We remind you that you can “delay” the user by offering him long and high-quality texts for reading. You can also make linking (it increases the time spent on the site by 30%). The optimal time is from 40 seconds.
• Relinking affects one more parameter – viewing depth. This is the number of pages viewed per session. The more there are, the more interesting the site is.
• Bounce rate. “Refusals” are those sessions where the user spent less than 15 seconds on the page. You can reduce this percentage in the following ways: improving content, reducing page load time, revising the pricing policy, improving the design.
• Interaction with the site. If on your site they often click on the “buy”, “sign up” or “call” button, then the search robot is happy and promotes your site). This also applies to interactions with the buttons “share on social networks”. If people are actively sharing, then this is a good signal regarding the quality of your site.
• The number of direct transitions. Direct clicks are the number of users who clicked from bookmarks in their browser or manually entered the site’s URL. The more there are, the more high-quality the web resource looks in the eyes of search engines.

Commercial ranking factors

The characteristics that affect the convenience of making a purchase or ordering a service, and the buyer’s confidence are called commercial ranking factors. Here are some important ones:

• Categorization. This is especially true for online stores. With categories and subcategories, the user will find it easier to navigate the site, and the search for the desired group of products will take him less time.
• Contact Information. It is imperative that the visitor has a telephone in front of his eyes to contact you. It is important that the phone should be written in text, and not inserted with an image. The most trustworthy are telephones of the type (8-800). Add the ability to contact you through instant messengers or social networks. Inserting an active link will take a few seconds, and will provide an opportunity to contact you in a convenient way for the client.
  For commercial companies that conduct their activities officially, it is important to post their details. There must be legal information and the official name of the company. Moreover, the requisites are not sculpted into a string, but given in a list.
  Feedback form and an offer to leave a request or order a call. Because it is important to bring a potential client to contact in any way.
• Product cards. It is important to add product descriptions, photographs from all angles, cost, reviews, delivery times, payment methods and much more to the cards.

Conclusion

In this article, we managed to tell you in some detail about the basics of SEO for beginners. It will take a lot of time to promote a site in search results higher than it is now, or to do it from scratch. Work on the creation and promotion can last from six months to a year, and this is only the lower limit.

Remember the basic elements that cannot be neglected. This is unique content, work on improving the site interface, building the link mass, working with behavioral and commercial ranking factors.

If you take the time to promote the site from scratch and do it efficiently, then the result will exceed all your expectations.