SEO Basics

Set up GSC and Bing Webmaster tools

Setting up Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster Tools may seem like a daunting task, but it’s actually pretty simple.

GSC is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your website’s presence in Google Search results. You can use GSC to find out how often your site appears in Google search results, which keywords are associated with your site, and how well your site is doing in terms of click-through rate and organic traffic.

Bing Webmaster Tools is a free service offered by Bing that helps you monitor your website’s performance in Bing search results. Like GSC, you can use Bing Webmaster Tools to find out how often your site appears in Bing search results, which keywords are associated with your site, and how well your site is doing in terms of click-through rate and organic traffic.

To set up GSC, simply go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ and sign in with your Google account. Once you’re signed in, you’ll be prompted to add your website. Once you’ve added your website, you’ll be given a code to verify that you own the website. This verification process can be done either through DNS verification or HTML file upload. Choose whichever method is easiest for you and follow the instructions to verify ownership of your website.

To set up Bing Webmaster Tools, go to https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster/ and sign in with your Microsoft account. Once you’re signed in, click on the “Add a Site” button and enter the URL of your website. You’ll then be given a code to verify that you own the website. As with GSC, this verification process can be done either through DNS verification or HTML file upload; choose whichever method is easiest for you and follow the instructions to verify ownership of your website.

Set up Google Analytics

In order to track your website’s traffic and understand how users are interacting with your site, you need to set up Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free tool that provides detailed insights into your website’s traffic and performance.

To set up Google Analytics, you’ll need to create a Google account and then sign up for Analytics. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be given a tracking code that you can add to your website. This code will allow Analytics to collect data about your website’s traffic and users.

Once you’ve added the tracking code to your site, you can start exploring the wealth of data that Analytics provides. The platform offers insights into everything from the number of visitors to your site to the keywords they used to find it. You can use this data to improve your website’s SEO, content, and overall user experience.

Install and configure an SEO plugin (wordpress)

If you want to ensure your website is optimised for search engines, then you need to install and configure an SEO plugin. Depending on which platform your website is built on, there are a range of different plugins that you can use. If you have a WordPress website, then we recommend using the Yoast SEO plugin. In this article, we’ll show you how to install and configure the Yoast SEO plugin to optimise your WordPress website for search engines.

Keyword Research

Identify your competitors

When you’re starting your keyword research, it’s important to identify your main competitors—these are the businesses that are already ranking for the keywords you want to target.

To find your competitors, simply enter your main keywords into Google and see who shows up in the top results. These are the businesses you’ll need to beat in order to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Once you’ve identified your main competitors, take a look at their websites and see what keywords they’re targeting. You can use a tool like Spyfu to find out which keywords your competitors are bidding on in Google Ads, as well as how much they’re spending on each keyword. This information can give you a good idea of which keywords you should be targeting.

Conduct a keyword gap analysis

A keyword gap analysis is a useful tool for uncovering opportunities to improve your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). By comparing the keywords your website is already ranking for with those your competitors are ranking for, you can identify areas where your site could benefit from additional optimization.

To conduct a keyword gap analysis, start by creating a list of all the keywords you’re currently ranking for. You can use a tool like Google Search Console or Moz Keyword Explorer to do this. Once you have your list, compare it to the list of keywords your competitor’s websites are ranking for. Look for any gaps—those are the opportunities you want to focus on.

For each opportunity you identify, brainstorm potential ways to optimize your website for that keyword. This might involve adding new content, revamping existing content, or building new backlinks. Once you have a plan in place, implement it and track your results over time to see how well it works.

Find your main ‘money’ keywords

Your main ‘money’ keywords are the ones that are going to make you the most money from your website or blog. To find them, you need to do some keyword research.

There are a few different ways to do keyword research, but one of the easiest and most effective is to use a keyword research tool like Google AdWords Keyword Planner.

With this tool, you can enter in a seed keyword (e.g. ‘coffee’) and it will return a list of related keywords with estimated monthly search volumes.

From this list, you can then identify your main ‘money’ keywords – these are the ones with the highest search volumes and low competition levels.

Once you’ve identified your main ‘money’ keywords, you need to focus on optimizing your website or blog for these keywords. This means creating content that is relevant to these keywords and includes them in a way that is both natural and effective.

Technical SEO

Most readers won’t care about technical SEO.

Leverage “Inspect URL” feature in GSC

GSC’s “Inspect URL” feature lets you check whether a page on your website is indexed by Google, and if so, what information from the page is included in the index. This can be helpful when troubleshooting issues with pages not appearing in search results.

To use “Inspect URL”, simply enter the URL of the page you want to check into the search bar at the top of GSC and click “Inspect”. If the page is indexed, you will see a message reading “URL is on Google” along with information about when the page was last crawled and any indexedmeta tags. If the page is not indexed, you will see a message reading “URL is not on Google”.

Ensure your website is mobile-friendly

Mobile-friendliness is one of the most important ranking factors for search engines today. More and more people are using their mobile devices to search the web, and if your website isn’t designed to accommodate them, you could be missing out on a lot of traffic.

There are a few things you can do to make sure your website is mobile-friendly:

• Use responsive design: Responsive design is a type of web design that makes your website look good on all devices, from small screens to large screens. You can learn more about responsive design here.
• Use mobile-friendly themes: If you’re using a content management system like WordPress, there are many mobile-friendly themes available that you can use to make your site look great on mobile devices.
• Use mobile-friendly plugins: If you’re using a plugin-based system like WordPress, there are many mobile-friendly plugins available that can help improve the usability of your site on mobile devices.
  Check your site’s loading speed

Load time is the amount of time it takes for a page to load. Page speed is how fast a page loads for a visitor. Page speed is important because it influences:
-How long visitors stay on your site
-How many pages they view
-How likely they are to convert or buy from you
-How well your site ranks in search engines

There are many factors that affect your site’s loading speed, including:
-The size and number of files on your site
-The code used to build your site
-The hosting company you use
-Your site’s content management system (CMS)
-The plugins and applications you use on your site

On-page and Content

As we all know SEO is process of optimizing a website for Google and other search engines so that the site can rank higher for certain keywords. This can be done in many ways but the most important part is on-page SEO and content.

Fix duplicate, missing, and truncated title tags

If you’re noticing that your website’s title tags are missing, duplicate, or truncated, there are a few potential causes. Here are some tips to help you fix the problem:

Check your title tag template:
If you’re using a content management system (CMS) or blog platform, check to see if you have a title tag template. This template will typically include code that automatically generates your title tags based on the page’s title or other metadata. If this template is configured incorrectly, it can result in missing, duplicate, or truncated title tags.

Verify that your titles are being generated correctly:
Once you’ve located your title tag template, check to see if the title tags are being generated correctly. This can usually be done by previewing a page on your website. If the preview shows the correct title tag, then the problem is likely with how the titles are being displayed on your live site. If the preview does not show the correct title tag, then the problem is likely with how the titles are being generated.

Check for errors in your CMS or blog platform:
If you’re still having trouble after checking your title tag template and verifying that your titles are being generated correctly, there may be an error in your CMS or blog platform. Try contacting the support team for your CMS or blog platform to see if they can help you troubleshoot the issue.

Find and fix duplicate or missing meta descriptions

This program can help you find and fix duplicate or missing meta descriptions on your website. A meta description is a short summary of a page’s content, usually appearing in the search results.

Dupedorix is a free program that can help you find and fix duplicate or missing meta descriptions on your website. It’s quick and easy to use, and it can help you improve your SEO.

Find and fix multiple H1 tags

It is common for WordPress themes to have more than one H1 tag on a page. This can cause confusion for search engines when trying to understand the content on a page. It is important to find and fix all instances of multiple H1 tags on a page to help improve your SEO.

Here are some tips on how to find and fix multiple H1 tags:

-Use a search engine such as Google or Bing to search for your keyword + “H1 tag”
-Check the source code of your pages to see if there are multiple H1 tags
-If you find multiple H1 tags, revise your content so that each page has only one H1 tag

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is the process of optimizing a website for higher search engine rankings through external means. This means that the website itself is not directly optimized, but rather off-site factors are used to improve its ranking. This can be done through link building, social media engagement, and other similar methods.

Analyze your competitor’s link profile

Off-page SEO is all about building relationships. The goal is to create content that is so valuable that other people are compelled to link to it.

One of the best ways to do this is to analyze your competitor’s link profile. This will give you an idea of the kind of content that is working well for them and what you can do to improve upon it.

To get started, you’ll need a tool like Moz’s Open Site Explorer. This will allow you to see all of the inbound links pointing to your competitor’s site.

Once you have a list of their links, take a close look at each one. What kind of content is it? Is it informative? Entertaining? Provocative?

You should also take note of the anchor text being used. This is the text that appears between the HTML tags . It’s what people will see when they hover over a link. The anchor text can be a great indicator of what kind of relationship your competitor has with the site they’re linking to.

Finally, take a look at the PageRank (PR) of each site that’s linking to your competitor. PR is a metric developed by Google that gives an idea of how important a site is. The higher the PR, the more valuable the link will be for SEO purposes.

Conduct a link intersect analysis

Link intersect is a great way to find new link opportunities. Basically, you find the intersection of sites that link to your competitors, but not to you. Here’s how you conduct a link intersect analysis:

1) Choose your competitors. Make sure they’re in the same niche as you and have a similar backlink profile.

2) Use a link analysis tool like Majestic or Ahrefs to get a list of sites that link to your competitors.

3) Cross-reference those sites with a list of sites that link to you. The intersection will give you a list of potential new link opportunities.

4) Reach out to those sites and pitch them on writing about you or linking to your site.

Target your competitors’ broken backlinks

While most quality websites will have earned their backlinks through solid content marketing and an active link building outreach program, it’s not uncommon for even the best websites to have some bad links.

What are bad links? They’re links from low-quality websites, or websites that are not relevant to your industry. They can also be links that were once relevant but are now broken (meaning the website they link to no longer exists).

There are a few different ways you can target your competitor’s broken backlinks:

1. Use a tool like BuzzSumo to find content that’s been shared a lot, but is no longer available. This could be because the website it was on has been deleted, or the URL has been changed.
2. Use a tool like Moz’s Open Site Explorer to find competitors with a high number of broken links. This could be an indication that they’re not actively maintaining their website, which could mean there are opportunities for you to overtake them in the search rankings.
3. Use Google Search Console to find errors on your competitor’s website. This could be anything from 404 errors (pages that can’t be found) to 500 errors (internal server errors). These could all be indicative of problems with their website that you could exploit.