The SEO Cookbook V1: Modern Ingredients for a sucessful SEO Strategy
Search algorithms have been evolving over the past two decades. Not only have they had to align, keep pace with and leverage technology but also deal with evaluating an ever growing number of websites to be able to deliver the most relevant results to user search queries faster and on the device of choice of the user. It is important to note that according to Statsfind, Siteefy states that approximately 252,000 new websites appear every day, each vying for their place in the Sun.
To ensure that the search platform remains relevant and effectively serves the user, the evaluation process to determine rankings is undergoing complex updates. This has made SEO a complex equation to crack.
So why SEO?, especially since we now have a variety of social media platforms which can be leveraged to market products and services, why should we make the effort to optimize websites for search engines?
SEO vs. Paid Social Media & Search Engine Marketing
Comparing SEO with paid Social Media and Search Engine marketing is like comparing Apples with Oranges.
Paid marketing allows you to target and engage a specific audience based on demographics and other preset preferences across various social media platforms. It is a push strategy where you pay to serve your ads on various online social networks and platforms being used by your target audience and which allows you to modify your marketing campaigns on the go.
SEO is a lot more complex because it’s based on effectively optimizing & leveraging a vast number of technical and organic components intrinsic to the digital landscape, moreover with SEO you are constantly competing to outrank competitors.
Then why should you opt for SEO?
Social Media is essentially not used by people as a platform to find and buy products and services, but Search Engines are! The organic traffic your website receives from search engines is more likely to have potential customers who are looking for products and services and therefore are more likely to convert as compared to social media traffic.
With Social Networks your audience targeting is limited to the network users whereas search engines have no such user limits.
Search Engine Optimization also delivers an extremely high ROI, not only because of the nature of organic traffic but also because you are not paying for impressions and clicks. With paid marketing the average business may end up with a negative ROI because you are paying for impression and clicks while serving ads to an audience which is not really looking to make a purchase therefore conversion rates are much lower.
With billions of searches being carried out across search engines on a daily basis if a business were to establish its presence in the top 10 search results, the traffic and growth it would experience could be phenomenal and the ROI off the roof.
With Search Algorithms undergoing a complex evolution how do we implement a successful SEO Strategy?
Let’s try to keep this simple. The only way you can deliver a successful SEO strategy today is by making sure that you identify & incorporate the current ranking factors as well as leverage current technologies in your SEO strategy which not only play a crucial role in determining rankings but can be instrumental in effectively leveraging the search engine landscape for your business.
So what are some of the most important ranking factors and technologies for SEO today?
Apart from optimizing the site structure, keywords (short tail, long tail), keyword mapping, page URLs, on page content (short form, long form), meta tags, site navigation, anchor text, sitemaps, back links and ensuring that the site is error free, some of the most important factors to be considered while delivering a successful SEO strategy today include:
Strategic Hosting for SEO
Why is Hosting important for SEO?
Hosting is an essential element to be considered as part of an SEO strategy for multiple reasons. If you are targeting an audience in a particular country or region you will be better served by hosting your website on a local server. Region specific hosting would give your website priority to be served for search queries made by users within the specific region over websites that are not hosted locally, considering your content meets search intent. Being on a local data center would enable your web pages to be served faster to your users.
Hosting is also important for optimizing crawl budgets. If you have a large and heavy website you may want to consider a dedicated hosting over shared hosting. This is because a shared hosting will host multiple websites and since the crawlers limit the number of requests they send to servers your website may not get the optimum crawl budget which could limit the number of pages indexed and also limit the crawl frequency or crawl demand.
Optimizing the Website UI & UX for SEO
The Website User Interface and User Experience have become essential elements for SEO because search algorithms evaluate the website experience from a human perspective. An optimized UI & UX enhances visual appeal, simplifies navigation and provides a seamless browsing experience all of which determine & impact user engagement metrics. These user engagement metrics become signals which are evaluated by search engines to determine the quality of the website from a user perspective and whether the site should feature in the top results or not.
The Mobile First Approach
A mobile first approach has become essential today because over the past few years Google searches on mobile devices have overtaken desktop search traffic. This is also because a vast majority of internet users are browsing on mobile devices as compared to desktops or laptops. Therefore irrespective of whether your target audience engages with your platform from mobile devices or not, you should build and optimize your website with a mobile first approach.
Google now crawls and indexes websites with a mobile first approach and if your website is not tailored to deliver a user friendly experience on a mobile device it would probably not perform well on desktop searches either.
What are the Core Web Vitals and why are they essential for SEO?
According to Google , Core Web Vital have been included in their core ranking metrics because they are a real time measure of a website’s loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability all of which impact user interactivity and experience.
The Core Web Vitals include the following elements:
Largest Contentful Paint: The LCP metric measures the time it takes for a website to load the largest content block on a web page and have it ready for user interaction. It is recommended that this should happen within the first 2.5 seconds from the time the page starts to load.
First Input Delay: The FID metric measures and tracks the time it takes for a user interaction to be processed by the browser. It is recommended to meet an FID metric of less than a 100 milliseconds. Google has announced that in March of 2024, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) will replace the FID metric.
Cumulative Layout Shift: The CLS Measures the visual stability of the web page, in other words, the time it takes for the entire page to with all its elements to be loaded and become visually stable for user interaction. It is recommended to have a CLS score of less than 0.1.
It is important to try and meet the recommended metrics especially when you compete for obtaining top rankings as the core web vitals could determine rank performance if we consider all other elements to be equally balanced between competing websites.
Schema Markup and Structured Data
What is the Schema Markup and why is it important for SEO?
Schema markup is structured data applied in semantic code format on your web pages that helps search engines better understand, characterize and categorize on page content. Having a better and clearer understanding of the on page content helps search engines better relate it with relevant search queries and search intent. This not only improves chances of the web page to rank better for relevant search queries but also for the content to appear in rich and featured snippets above organic search results.
The Schema markup also communicates to search engines on how the data should be displayed to users on the SERP's.
Types of Schema
There are three types of code formats which can be used to apply Schema Markups, these are Microdata, RDFa and JSON-LD, with JSON-LD being the favored code format. These code formats can be found on Schema.org which is an open source of different schemas in different encoding formats.
As per Semrush, Google understands 32 types of schema markups which include Logo Markup, Local Business Markup, Product & Offer Markup, Recipe Markup, Article Markup and Review Markup to name a few.
This Structured Data Markup also helps on page content appear in Rich and Featured Snippets on the SERP’s.
What are Rich Snippets?
A Rich Snippet is an organic search result which displays more information than just the title, meta description and page url. Rich Snippets can have different sizes and displays and can include information such as an image, rating, reviews and more.
What are Featured Snippets?
A featured snippet appears in question answer format above the organic search results. It attempts to provide specific information in relation to a search query with content pulled from a web page in the Google index.
Application of Schema markups have become an essential element for a successful SEO strategy for any website.
Accelerated Mobile Pages and the Content Delivery Network
What are Accelerated Mobile Pages?
The AMP is an open source HTML framework developed to create mobile friendly versions of web pages. The AMP limits the number of CSS and JavaScript elements required for a page to load. This enables the AMP version to load much faster on mobile devices irrespective of slow networks or network issues. The AMP technology is specifically created to improve the performance of web pages for mobile devices.
Why are Accelerated Mobile Pages important?
Considering that searches from mobile devices have overtaken desktops the AMP technology is definitely something to be considered as part of an overall SEO strategy depending upon the nature of business, the business goals and the website type.
What is the Content Delivery Network?
While deliberating the AMP technology for SEO, we must also consider the Content Delivery Network. The CDN is a network of proxy servers in different Geo locations around the world, which keeps a cache of the Accelerated Mobile Pages and delivers the pages to user from near the user’s location.
So both the AMP and CDN working together enable pages to load faster and be delivered more quickly to the user because they are served from near the user’s location.
Why should you consider the AMP and CDN Technology as part of your SEO strategy?
Leveraging the AMP and CDN technology is definitely something worth considering depending upon the nature of business and business goals. For example if there is an enterprise targeting a global audience it would be an extremely cumbersome process to host different websites all around the world instead utilizing the AMP and CDN technology becomes a very viable option. Likewise if the site is extremely heavy or is an ecommerce platform which serves people around the world the AMP and CDN would certainly be worth considering.
Furthermore despite the fact that the AMP limits use of CSS and JavaScript elements it still retains features that can be optimized from an SEO perspective, however aligning this technology with SEO strategy will require a comprehensive assessment and analysis but it’s certainly worth considering.
Canonicalization: Optimize Crawl and Indexing
What is Canonicalization and why is it important for SEO?
Canonicalization is essential to address challenges presented by faceted navigation and pagination both of which can generate a number of URL & page variations, especially in the case of eCommerce websites and large portals. These page variations can be identified as duplicate content by search engines which in turn can affect website crawl, indexing and search engine performance.
Duplicate pages tend to impair the identification of unique content to be served for search queries. Canonicalization helps search engines identify the most relevant page among a group of pages which carry similar content & URLs. Canonicalization is implemented by placing canonical tag on the duplicate version of a web page.
How do you implement Canonical Tags?
Canonicalization is done by placing a canonical tag in the HTML code of the duplicate versions of a page, which links to the main version. It is also a mandatory element for establishing the validity of Accelerated Mobile Pages. The Canonical tag to be applied on the AMP version of a page should link back to the original Non AMP version.
According to Google you can apply the rel=“Canonical” element either in the HTML Head section or the HTTP header.
The Canonical Tag for HTML Head Section:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://......" />
The Canonical Tag for AMP version:
<link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)” href="https://........">
The Canonical Tag for HTTP Header:
Link: <https://www.example.com/downloads/white-paper.pdf>; rel="canonical"
By correctly leveraging the Canonical Tag to address page variations and duplicate content issues on your website, you can optimize the crawl and indexing of your website and its web pages by search engines ensuring that duplicate content does not impair the performance of your web pages being served for relevant search queries on the SERP’s.
The hreflang tag and its importance for SEO
The hreflang Tag is an HTML attribute which should be utilized on your website if you have multiple versions of pages in different languages for users in specific regions and countries or those speaking a specific language. The application of the hreflang attribute enables search engines to identify the correct version of a page to serve to users for language based search queries from different regions and countries.
The hreflang tag requires and supports two letter language codes and country & region codes.
Where do you apply the hreflang tag?
The hreflang tag can be applied in the HTML head section, the HTTP header for non HTML files and in the XML sitemap.
It is applied on both, the original page which has been translated into a different language, where the hreflang tag would point to the URL of the translated page, and on the translated page which would carry a reciprocating hreflang tag pointing back to the original version of the page.
A self-referencing hreflang Tag would also be applied as a best practice recommended by Google in its Guidelines.
The hreflang tag to be placed in HTML is structured as follows:
<link rel="alternate" href="url_of the_lang_specific_page" hreflang="lang_code" />
The hreflang tag explained:
Link rel="alternate": signifies that the URL in the tag is the alternate version of the page
href="url_of the_lang_specific_page": this is where you place the URL of the language specific version of the page
hreflang="lang_code": is where you place the language code.
Application of the hreflang tag:
Now let’s say you have a web page in English which is translated into German and now you have a new German version of the original page on your website. The hreflang tag pointing the German Version would be applied on the original English version of the page and a reciprocating hreflang Tag would be applied on the German version pointing back to the English version.
The hreflang tags placed on the original English language page would be:
<link rel="alternate" href="https://original.com/" hreflang="en" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://original.com/de/" hreflang="de" />
The hreflang tags placed on the German language page would be:
<link rel="alternate" href="https://original.com/de/" hreflang="de"/>
<link rel="alternate" href="https://original.com/" hreflang="en" />
If you are translating a page into multiple languages thereby creating multiple versions of a page, each in a different language, then you will need to apply multiple hreflang Tags for each of the page/language versions.
Hreflang tags for HTML with Language and Country Codes:
The hreflang Tag can also be applied with both language and country codes for Geo location targeting of users. So let’s say you wanted to serve content in German to users in Germany and Austria since German is spoken both countries. In this scenario The hreflang tags placed on the original English version of the page would be structured as follows:
Self-referencing: <link rel="alternate" href="https://original.com/" hreflang="en" />
For Germany: <link rel="alternate" href="https://original.com/de/" hreflang="de-de" />
For Austria: <link rel="alternate" href="https://original.com/at/" hreflang="de-at" />
The hreflang=”-” element in this scenario would be modified to also include the country code. So it is structured as: “hreflang=”lang_code-country_code”
Reciprocating Hreflang tags pointing to the original would also be applied on both the German and Austria page versions.
You can reference more information on the Hreflang Tags on Semrush, including tag formats for HTTP header and XML Sitemaps.
The hreflang tag is an essential attribute for websites which have web pages in different languages for different regions and countries and would like to appear for language based user search queries.
Optimize your Crawl Budget
What is a Crawl Budget?
The Crawl budget of a website refers to the number of pages a search engine crawler will crawl on a website within a specific time-frame. Because search engines have to crawl & index millions of websites and do not have unlimited resources they assign specific crawl budgets to websites to optimize their crawling resources. The crawl budget for a website is calculated and assigned based on the crawl limit and crawl demand.
What is Crawl Limit?
The Crawl limit is determined by how often crawlers can crawl a website without experiencing or causing issues, the amount of crawling a website can handle and the crawl rate preferences which can be modified by the owner. Google allows you to limit the crawl rate for root level sites though it is not recommended unless the Googlebot hits are causing server load problems.
It is important to note that Crawlers limit server requests to prevent impacting the performance of a server by overloading it with requests.
What is Crawl Demand?
The Crawl demand is determined by factors which impact the crawl frequency or re-crawl of web pages. These factors include the link popularity of the web pages and how often a page is being updated. The link popularity is determined by the quality and number of inbound links pointing to a page. If a page has more high inbound links it will have a higher crawl demand. Likewise if a page is being updated more frequently with relevant content it will register a higher crawl demand.
Important Factors which impact Crawl Limit, Crawl Demand and the Crawl Budget assigned to your website include:
Hosting: Since the crawl limit is determined on a host level, it is important for you to consider hosting preferences. If you have a large website which is updated regularly with new pages you may want to go with dedicated hosting over a shared hosting. Shared hosting platforms will have hundreds of websites on the server which would automatically limit the crawl limit assigned to your site by the crawler.
Client and Server Errors: If crawler requests return URL time outs, client and server errors, it would reflect poorly on the quality of the platform and negatively impact the crawl limit of your website.
Page Variations & Duplicate Content: Such pages on your website can waste your crawl limit, impact your crawl demand and eat into your crawl budget. So make sure that you attempt to make them inaccessible to the crawler.
Redirecting and Broken links: Long redirect chains and broken links in your website reflect poorly on site quality & performance, impact user browsing experience and waste your crawl budget because these are dead weight. Make sure that your link structure is free of dead links and long redirect chains.
Page Load & Page Speed: Heavy pages load slowly and are prone to returning timeouts which results in fewer pages being crawled on your website within the assigned crawl budget. Moreover this also impacts user interaction and experience with your website. So make sure that your page load and page speed are optimized to meet recommended guidelines.
The XML Sitemap: XML sitemaps are essential to ensure a comprehensive crawl of your website. Search engines rely heavily on referencing XML sitemaps for crawl and indexing especially for large websites. Make sure that your sitemap is populated with index-able URLs and not links which are broken or redirecting. You should also not include internal pages which are not relevant for search engines.
How does Website Crawl and Indexing affect SEO performance?
If your website is not crawled properly it could result in relevant web pages not being indexed by the search engines in their database and if they are not indexed they would not be served in the search result for relevant user queries. This is even more crucial for large portals and ecommerce platforms which not only have a large number of pages but are constantly being updated with new content.
Therefore it becomes essential ensure that you have addressed and optimized the important factors which can impact the Crawl Budget.
Delivering Successful SEO Strategies is an Art
Delivering a successful SEO strategy is a art and the digital landscape its canvas. This blog details some of the key ranking factors evaluated by search engines in determining rankings today, as well as technologies, elements and attributes like the Accelerated Mobile Pages & Content Delivery Network, hreflang tags & canonicalization, which can be instrumental in effectively leveraging the search engine landscape for your business. As a best practice make sure you hire the services of a seasoned SEO strategist who can deliver a successful SEO strategy tailored to meet the SEO goals of your business.
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