What is SEO Website Promotion: the Basics of SEO

What is SEO website promotion?

The abbreviation stands for Search Engine Optimization. In simple words, SEO means a set of actions for internal and external website optimization aimed at increasing the position of a site in search results.

SEO is suitable for everyone who is going to or is already selling products on the Internet, looking for clients, customers, partners, etc. It makes sense to do website promotion if:

• your product is in demand among a wide audience;
• your company has online competitors;
• the goods are allowed for sale at the legislative level;
• you are ready to wait for the results for at least a few months;
• you are looking for a relatively inexpensive, but effective and reliable way to constantly attract traffic;
• you are ready to invest time and finances in your website, constantly develop and improve it;
• you plan to stay in the market within your niche or expand over time.

To achieve a quick effect, SEO promotion techniques won't help. Optimization for search engines is designed for a long-lasting effect. You can see the first results after starting working on search engine optimization no earlier than in 2-3 months.

How to start SEO website promotion

First of all, determine the purpose of SEO optimization and how its effectiveness will be measured. For example, SEO promotion can have the following goals:

• getting the site to the top results by certain keywords;
• increasing the traffic to the website;
• increasing conversion;
• improving the site's rankings in search results compared to competitors' projects.

Also, when you are going to conduct a SEO promotion of your website, you should identify the categories and web pages that are the most relevant and important. If you prioritize them, your website will start generating revenue faster. Make an action plan with a list of all the necessary tasks and their priority:

• the order of website pages optimization;
• the order of adding content to the website;
• websites where you can post links to your project.
• tools to improve user engagement, such as website widgets software. It helps you increase interaction on key pages, which supports SEO goals like lower bounce rates and higher dwell time.

Why do you need SEO website promotion?

SEO promotion is aimed at improving the website's rankings in the SERP for specific search queries. The goal of improving the website's position is to increase website traffic, increase the popularity of the project, and increase the number of sales and leads.

Without search engine optimization, your project will be lost among hundreds or thousands of other projects of the same topic present on the web and users will never be able to find it using search engines.

The higher your site ranks, the more visitors you receive. Some of the traffic will come from contextual advertising, but most users choose sites from the top of organic search results. Therefore, it is very important to work on improving your site's positions regularly and not to stop when you reach the top, or otherwise, you may be pushed out by competitors.

Why SEO website promotion is cost effective

Investing in SEO promotion is a more profitable type of investment than ordering contextual advertising, as contextual ads require regular budget top-ups of significant amounts. When you use SEO after reaching the top of SERP, you can reduce promotion costs by creating new high-quality content on a regular basis.

Search engine optimization has the following advantages:

• low cost of the attracted customer;
• long-lasting effect even after the promotion work is completed;
• higher trust of customers, who may believe that lower-quality websites need contextual advertising more than those that naturally took the top positions;
• large audience, etc.

What SEO includes

Search engine optimization and website promotion are constantly evolving. The ranking algorithms are being improved, new analytics and tracking services are being developed.

For example, a few years ago, building up external link mass was considered the most important step. It is worth focusing on internal optimization, and for external carefully selecting donors on the principle of "better less, but better."

The quality of donor sites is essential nowadays as it influences your ranks on SERP. The optimization for search engines includes three key areas: external, internal optimization, and analytics. Each direction consists of different actions that need to be performed in a certain sequence.

Stages of promotion

Analysis of a field and audit of competitors

It is necessary to study websites of similar subjects, which rank high. Pay attention to the structure, usability, number of donors, traffic, age, promotion in social networks. At this stage, you will learn which optimization methods are effective among your main competitors.

It is also important to analyze the niche as a whole. Where should we expect maximum traffic, what additional channels should I use? To analyze competitors, you can use Serpstat, Similarweb, and similar services.

Competitor analysis

Technical website audit

If the resource already exists, you need to check its current status and evaluate the progress for the past period. If there is no optimization history, connect the site to web analytics tools (Google Analytics, Google Search Console).

At this stage, you should analyze the current position of the site, the number of key phrases used, traffic sources (if any).

It is also necessary to check the site for technical errors, determine the page loading speed, find out from which search engine traffic comes from, whether there are gross violations that can slow down the promotion.

To check your site for technical issues quickly, use Site Audit module. The tool will detect issues and give recommendations on how to fix them.

Technical website audit

Keyword research

Selecting the maximum number of relevant keywords helps to increase the number of visitors to your site (traffic). There is no optimal number of keywords; for each project, they are selected individually.

You can collect keywords using Serpstat and similar services.

Serpstat also allows you to monitor traffic dynamics, website visibility dynamics, and the number of keywords for which your site is ranking. 

Get insights about abrupt changes of visibility, traffic, and keywords data in the right menu when you click on the profile photo → Events. Promptly analyze events to amend your SEO strategy.

To get insights notifications about dynamics, the website must be added to your projects list.

Development of the site structure

Depending on the collected keywords, you need to create or update an existing structure. In this regard, new sections and directory pages may be added.

The Clustering tool can help you create a website structure. It will divide the collected keywords into clusters for separate pages, categories, and sections. All you have to do is a quick edit to clean up the result.

Filling pages with content

It should be unique and as useful as possible for visitors. Moreover, each page should be targeted for a specific keyword or group of requests.

It's also important to add Title, Description meta tags, H1 – H6 headings to each page, and create attractive snippets. To do this, it is better to use structured data.

Internal linking

If you have a text and graphic content, you must add links leading to the internal pages of the site in order to increase the time spent by the user on the site and the depth of viewing.

External optimization

At this stage, you need to draw up a plan for gradually obtaining links from donor sites that are pre-checked for authority.

Nowadays, the rule "the more external links, the better" does not apply. In terms of external optimization, it is necessary to indicate the names of sources, a near-reference text, and the number of links required for promotion on a monthly basis.

You can find out the best donors using competitor analysis. It is also recommended to use directories of companies and sites, forums and aggregators as free sources.

You can analyze competitors' link building strategies using Serpstat's Backlink Analysis feature. Find relevant sites and try to get backlinks from them.

Promotion on social networks

Creating groups and profiles, a video channel increases the recognition of your website, brand, product, and indirectly helps in search engine promotion.

At the same time, it's important to monitor new trends in promotion, learn new tools, find out news in a thematic niche, and monitor competitors. Regularly compile reports and track the trend of the site. It is allowed to conduct experiments, tests, surveys among visitors.

The percentage distribution of optimization actions looks something like this:

To learn the SEO basics, read the official search engine guidelines, recommendations from authoritative sources, posts on popular blogs, and news.

For a successful start of the promotion, it is recommended to take SEO courses that will help you better understand the terminology, learn the basic steps, and the necessary actions.

Conclusion

Website optimization for search engines consists of several stages. Most are carried out internally, but it is also important to attract traffic from external sources.

It is necessary to analyze the already completed actions and plan future tasks on promotion. Search engine algorithms are constantly being improved and updated. Therefore, it is important to follow the news and trends of SEO optimization.

You can promote any site that sells goods, services or provides useful information to users.

Before starting to work on increasing positions in the results, it is necessary to conduct a thorough SEO analysis of the site, as well as examine competitors, their niche topic. Any actions must occur according to plan.

To learn more about the basics of search engine optimization, it is recommended that you go through SEO training.