The What and How of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Jul 26

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a deep website strategy that involves every touch point of the website and every department that interacts with it. In short SEO makes it easier for people to find our website when they use popular search engines such as Google or Bing(just kidding... no one uses Bing). Through proper use of SEO we can better understand our customers as well. It will let us track how people use our website, learn where we can improve customer experience, and even help with traditional marketing through using link backs online and consistent brand imaging on print.

SEO is NOT PAID MARKETING! While paid ads certainly are a vital part of an overall online marketing strategy, you must continue to spend money to have any effect. Paid ads are nice because they work and they work fast. SEO on the other hand is a slow burn. It is a constant process of improving and maintaining the searchability of the website. Through the use of strong SEO tactics we can produce organic and free traffic to your website creating return customers and earning their trust and business for life. SEO is a long term strategic action.

SEO is not a simple process and has many moving parts. While every part of the strategy is important there is a “hierarchy of needs” for SEO implementation. Depending on your position within the organization you may have touch points with one or multiple stages along this model. The diagram below shows the foundation that each person should build upon allowing us to understand the order of precedent from where we should start (Essential to rankings) to where we want to get to (Improves competitiveness). After learning what each SEO strategy looks like in the following segments please come back and review the diagram below again to see how you can form your own plan for implementing SEO within your department or position.

Why is this important to you and your company?

Online retail has been growing considerably over the last several years and after the 2020 Pandemic online retail has become a mainstay of retail in general even for legacy brick and mortar brands. To this end you must prioritize being easy to find online for our customers and SEO is the basis of doing this. If your website is currently lacking adequate search engine optimization that means not only are you losing sales to the competition, but even more so that you are doing a disservice to your customers. We owe it to them to make it easy to find the products and services that improve their life!

This manual will cover the basics of SEO that can and should be implemented throughout development by anyone who works on your website. If you would like to learn more than what is covered in this paper or have RolinWild help with your SEO implementation, then please feel free to contact me here.

How to use this document

Each section of this document is designed to educate you about the basic strategies of SEO. They are not in any particular order so reading through each one and having an understanding of them is important to your overall understanding of SEO. The sections all have five subsections to explain the concept and are set up as follows:

Title (the name of the concept or technique)

What it is: A short description of the technique or concept.

Good practices:

Bullet points to follow in order to improve how you use this technique

Bad practices:

Things NOT TO DO. Common trip points that may damage the strategy.

Who will use this most?

Which department or position is most likely to utilize this technique as well as how it may be used by that department. This isn’t an exhaustive list and having a good understanding of all techniques on this list is important.

Common SEO Tools

URLs

What it is: A Universal Resource Locator is simply the website name that you would type into the top of the browser to find a specific page online. eg: RolinWild.com or RolinWild.com/contact-me

Good practices:

Include keywords and make it readable by humans when possible. Eg: RolinWild.com/videography
Add a FAVICON (tiny brand logo)
Organize the site in a logical hierarchy. www.atropia.us/collections/shirts

Bad practices:

Don’t use codes or random numbers eg: nope.com/59393_fkjf-9
Don’t use underscores _ in URLs. Instead use dashes -

Who will use this most?

Developers, website designers

Link descriptions

What it is: The extra data given within the link information that provides simple language explanations of what the link does. Here’s a link for more detailed examples: https://ualr.edu/disability/online-education/writing-good-link-descriptions/

Good practices:

Use plain language that explains what the link does

Bad practices:

Use phrases like “click here”

Who will use this most?

Bloggers, website designers, product page designers

Internal Links

What it is: While external links are the more loved sibling, internal links are still important and easy to implement. Hyperlinks that lead from one page on a website to another page on the same website. This will help to spread authority from one page to another, especially newer pages. A good resource to learn more: https://fatjoe.com/internal-linking/?gclid=CjwKCAjwov6hBhBsEiwAvrvN6Kr9nu1tfiDagxmIK9jVolFKh_k7ACm8v-UFoSO3DqVZ6YO5oY9CLBoCbI8QAvD_BwE

Good practices:

Do it! It is free and we can control the look and flow
Link to related content. This helps the user and helps the search engine see how the pages relate.

Keep the links relevant
Implement a “crawlable link structure”. Allow people to link back and forth in an intentional manner
Use detailed link descriptions/linking words or “anchor text”
Prioritize links to pages that are important to us long term such as a page to sign up for a newsletter
Link new pages to existing pages and vice versa immediately

Bad practices:

Using generic terms like “click here” or “learn more”
Don’t allow dead or broken links. Update them or remove them entirely.
Don’t use weak or unnecessary links

Who will use this most?

Product listers can reference blogs from their products that have information related and vice versa. “items you may need”
Blog writers can reference similar blogs as well as products that are referenced within the blog
Website copy writers can reference similar pages that may help customers find where they need to go

External Links (Backlinks)

What it is: The internet is just a web of links from one page or site to another. For SEO purposes the most powerful of these links are external links which are the more beloved, but younger, sibling to internal links. They are exactly what they sound like: links to external websites. This information is the basis of how search engines work and how they rank authority. Here is a resource with more information: https://www.semrush.com/blog/external-links/

Good practices:

Pay attention to “follow/nofollow” tags which will send authority to other pages. Sometimes we want to link to something, but not be associated with it.

Keep links relevant and make sure they add to the experience
Collect backlinks through use of blogs, press releases, listicles, etc. Try to aim for high authority websites and link to major new publishers
Use accurate and descriptive anchor text

Bad practices:

Don’t allow for toxic links or broken links

Don’t use the same anchor text all over the website. Keep it custom.

Who will use this most?

External marketing dept, bloggers, social media writers, web designers, product listers

Meta Keywords

What it is: Keywords are similar to the concept of hashtags in social media. The concept is that you tell the search engine what a page is all about with keywords that real people may put into a search engine. They used to be critical but now are a bit controversial with most search engines totally excluding them in their algorithm. At one point Bing even penalized keywords as spam. Still, there are reasons to use them. Here’s a good resource to learn more: https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-meta-tags/

Good practices:

Use relevant keywords or phrases
Apply on every image and page
Use long end keywords and phrases (eg. “The Best Haircut in San Juan Puerto Rico” instead of “best haircut”

Bad practices:

Overuse words on every page unless relevant (using “RolinWild” on every page makes sense, but “Jordan” may not”)
Use words that are not relevant to the page (keyword stuffing)

Who will use this most?

Buyers, Photographers, bloggers, CMS, web designers, marketing dept

Meta Descriptions

What it is: These are the short descriptions that will show in the result on Google. It is under the title and gives more information to the viewer before they decide to click. While it is not used directly in search engine rankings it is used by the meat computer that is actually clicking on your link... so it is pretty darn important. Here is a useful resource to learn more: https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-meta-tags/

Good practices:

Write a unique description for each page
KEEP UNDER 160 CHARACTERS!!!
Keep it relevant to your page and intent

Bad practices:

Don’t use more than one description per page
Don’t use the same description on more than one page

Who will use this most?

Bloggers, CMS, web designers, marketing dept

Meta Titles

What it is: Meta titles are what you see as a result title when your page turns up as a result on a search engine results page (SERP). Basically it is what people see when they find you on Google. Here’s a good resource to learn more: https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-meta-tags/

Good practices:

Make each page unique and accurate
Keep them short and precise
KEEP UNDER 60 CHARACTERS!
No special characters

Bad practices:

Don’t use generic titles (eg. “RolinWild” on a page about SEO)
Don’t use clickbait style titles
Don’t use multiple meta titles on a single page

Who will use this most?

Bloggers, CMS, web designers, marketing dept

Heading Levels

What it is: Headings are the titles we use for different levels of information. Think of it like an essay where you would have the title (H1), the main topics (H2), and each subtopic getting more specific and usually smaller (H3-H6). It allows search engines to categorize the purpose of the page it is looking at. Here’s a good resource to learn more: https://www.contentkingapp.com/academy/headings/#:~:text=Headings%20come%20in%20six%20levels,because%20they%20indicate%20sub%2Dlevels.

Good practices:

Have ONLY one H1 per page, usually at the top.
H1 should best describe the entire page just like a title would describe a paper
Use subsequent H# tags to break up the sections like a wire frame

Bad practices:

Don’t use H# tags for paragraphs or large amounts of information

Don’t use the same tag level for everything. Plan what is important
Don’t use generaic titles like “step 1, 2, 3 etc”. Instead use descriptive text as if the only thing the person could see were the header structure.

Who will use this most?

Blog writers
Page developers

ADA Compliance

What it is: The Americans with Disabilities Act was created to allow useability and accessibility of public places for those with disabilities. While not strictly SEO, ADA compliance is very important and most of it involves the same best practices as SEO and allows our customers with disabilities to better navigate the website. A comprehensive list of best practices can be found here: https://www.ada.gov/resources/web-guidance/

Good practices:

ALTTEXT and descriptions for links, images, videos
Describe the media in a way it would be understood if you were to explain it to someone else
Include Accessibility Policy page on any primary domain (the main website for a brand)
Tag menus, search form elements, and links

Use a consistent hierarchy for titles (H1, H2, H3, etc.)

Bad practices:

Don’t use plain descriptions such as “click here” or “image”
Don’t hide files in code if you don’t want them found. Compliance readers will see them and so will search engines
Don’t use small fonts

Don’t use non-contrasting colors next to each other. Colorblind readers may not be able to tell the difference between them
Don’t take anything for granted. Think about how you would interact with the website with your eyes closed or with the sound on mute, etc.

Who will use this most?

Everyone! All the time!

Technical SEO Terms

Most people won’t use these mid-level SEO concepts, but they are still good to have an understanding of. While most of these things must be done by a developer or web designer, anyone can find these errors and push a help ticket (or even a quick message) to see if they can get corrected.

Robots.txt files

Tells search engines what to search and not to search in order to better crawl your site for what is important

Canonical Tag

Short piece of code that describes a page as the main version, a duplicate, or a near duplicate. Helps to point the search engine to the most relevant page.

Protocols

HTTP vs. HTTPS

Found at the beginning of the URL, but often times cut off in the browser. For example: https://www.RolinWild.com/
May be marked as “not trustworthy” on search engines. Always use HTTPS if possible.

Requires valid SSL certificate

Redirect

Page not found/dead link.
This is an easy fix and should be a priority to report. Destroys both SEO and user experience.

301 vs 302

Permanant. 301 Passes “ranking power” from one page to another. Preferred.
302 is temporary and should only be used while a page is under construction and the redirect will be removed soon.

Hreflang Identifier

Tells search engines what language and region the page is intended for. We may have an option for en-us (English, USA) and also sp-us (Spanish, USA) so that user language preferences are automatically sorted.

If not, then use the “x” identifier. This means the page doesn’t have a region or language preference or is non-applicable.

Load Time

More fasterer is more betterer
Quickest way is to reduce image file size and make image exact pixel count/dimensions needed
Especially helpful for mobile searches

Google is prioritizing mobile
Use Google Mobile friendly test

And that’s it for now! I know, that was a long one, but hopefully you got some useful info out of it. Ready to start your SEO recovery? Reach out here on our contact form, or see what SEO services we offer here.

Want something lighter to read? Here’s an article about exploring the world famous Citadel in Jordan.