Search Engine Optimization

Google is known for penalizing websites that violate their Webmaster Guidelines. The two common types of penalties include:

• Manual actions penalties
  
• Algorithmic penalties (Re-adjustments).

Technically, re-adjustments (algorithmic) are not entirely penalties. Algorithmic penalties result from a website’s ranking since the algorithm filters the site after identifying a possible manipulation.

The algorithmic filtering is a fully automated part of Google’s ranking algorithm. Google has a set of algorithms and software that detect “manipulations” on your site. The algorithms will then filter your site accordingly. A site owner rarely receives any notification of a change in site ranking due to Google’s algorithmic filtering.

On the other hand, manual actions are human-induced processes. The penalty follows an intensive reviewing process after which the decision is made.

The answer to this question has always been relative and dependent upon several factors. Previously, individuals would launch a site, optimize title tags, and be lucky to rank in a few weeks. Unfortunately, you can no longer expect to launch a website today and expect it to rank for competitive search keywords overnight.

The process of ranking takes time. It will be long until your site can perform organically. This is because Google gives ranking priorities to relevant sites with built-up authority.

Generally, expect to rank between six months to a year, which is entirely dependent upon your efforts. You have to strive to earn Google’s trust as an authority in your niche. To do this, invest in top-quality resources. You also need to match or surpass your competition and sites battling to answer the same questions you are answering.

It may take a few months to rank for a local term—for example, local electrician in (_location_). On the other hand, it could take longer than that (up to years) to rank for a generic term—for example, smartphone. Generally, it could also take you up to a year to figure out where a new website should rank. As such, you should expect fluctuations during this period.

Both SEO and PPC are crucial to a business’s success. They both provide unique functionality, which often makes it harder to determine which is the better option. Without SEO, you cannot establish domain authority, a solid online presence, and an organic brand affinity. On the other hand, without Pay-Per-Click, it may be impossible to target prospects by demographics, behavior, or keywords. Regardless, if you are considering a financial advantage, SEO tends to be cheaper than PPC. On the other hand, PPC shows limited-time results faster than SEO’s long-term slow results.

Ideally, keyword research helps a site owner determine the keywords for optimizing the site pages. Keyword research is a brilliant way of determining which queries (keyword phrases) searchers are keying into search engines. Based on the results of this research, you can then tweak your content with detailed answers to their queries.

Simply put, on-page SEO are techniques you implement on or within a webpage to help it rank higher. On-page SEO includes optimizing your content accordingly and the HTML source code of a page—for instance, Schema markup, keyword optimization, image optimization, among others. However, on-page SEO does not include external signals or external links.

SEO meta-tags are very crucial, except not all. The common types of meta tags include:

• Meta Keywords Attribute. This is a series of keywords that a website owner finds relevant to the page on the spotlight
• Title Tag. It is essentially your page’s title
• Meta Description Attribute. It is a brief description of the webpage
• Meta Robots Attribute. This is an indication or rather the instructions you give the search engine crawlers on what to do with the webpage.

However, you need not worry about the meta keyword attribute since it is outdated. On the other hand, the meta robot attribute is probably set to “index/follow.”

You should only worry about your title tag and meta description. These two provide more information to search engines about your site details. As such, you ought to pay proper attention to your title tag and meta description.

The common SEO techniques you need to implement for SEO success include:

• Site audits
• Link building
• Keyword research
• On-page SEO. (and partly off-page SEO)
• Updating pages for relevance.

All the techniques are vital for any site owner to enjoy SEO benefits.

There are a few reasons why your website could not be ranking on Google. If you suspect your site is not indexed, your first instinct should be to do a quick site:search for your website on Google. For example, “site:storyagency.co.” If your site’s web pages are listed, it means that Google has indexed your website.

Some of the reasons why Google may not have ranked your website include:

• The site is still new and lacks the adequate authority that can rank it for competitive search queries. Do not expect to launch your site and rank for the searched keywords overnight. In most cases, Google often needs to be convinced that your site deserves to rank.
• Don’t expect your site to rank if your content lacks comprehensive analysis and doesn’t match the searcher’s expectations. Moreover, if your content lacks quality compared to the pages and sites that rank for the same searched keyword, chances are you won’t rank. Strive to ensure you put up quality and comprehensive content that comes close to rivaling your ranked competitors.

Moreover, if any of your website pages are not listed on Google, chances are Google hasn’t indexed them. Some of the reasons leading to this include:

• The site could be blocking search engines from crawling it—typically located in the robots.txt file). Alternatively, your site could be instructing the same search engines not to index it—mostly with non-index tags. Once you resolve these blocks, your website will be indexed.
• The site could also not be indexed if you have not submitted it to Google or linked to it anywhere. To override this, set up Google Search Console and request indexing.
• There is also a high probability that your site has been penalized for violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines—a rare occurrence. You are most likely to receive a sitewide manual penalty if you are found using black-hat SEO tactics.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of optimizing your site to rank higher on search engines.

Currently, Google uses over 200 ranking factors. These factors allow the various search engines’ algorithms to find and rank sites based on the authority and relevance of the pages searched for. As commonly noted, Google constantly strives to recommend the highly relevant answers from the most trustworthy and authoritative sources in a highly appropriate format for the users.

Achieving SEO success is as simple as creating and optimizing your content to be the most relevant result for the specific user keywords and queries. Moreover, your site should come across as a trustworthy and high-authority source. You can find guides online teaching beginners SEO fundamentals.

Almost every business currently needs SEO. Unlike the traditional advertising method where companies pay per click, SEO improves users’ visibility and traffic. In Pay-Per-Click, you will have to pay for every click that comes to your site via the chosen channel.

On the other hand, if your site ranks organically on search engines, you incur no cost since the traffic is free. However, unlike CPPs, ranking organically on SERPs takes time, skills, and resources, making it an ideal long-term investment.

If your website ranks top in the Search Engine Results Pages, you will access lots of PPC-free traffic forever. Ranking organically guarantees your visibility 24/7. Unfortunately, for PPCs, your visibility and access to traffic once you don’t pay and your ads are switched off.

It is worth noting that organic search is majorly responsible for total website traffic. Unfortunately, if you ignore SEO, your competitors take up access to this traffic.

Whether you are a local business, global company, or online vendor, you cannot ignore the role of SEO in guaranteeing business growth. You need to pay attention to your SEO strategy to notice its benefits.

Your first initial step is to determine your progress. Ask yourself what and how much you have done. Whichever answer you come up with, use a practical SEO tool to conduct in-depth site analysis. Some of the things to look out for during a site audit include broken or missing links, website usability (user experience), web page load speeds, and ensuring all your meta tags are in order.

One of the practical and essential SEO tools to use includes Search Crawl, which efficiently crawls your site for potential errors.

Once you have done a site audit and rectified all errors, start your keyword research, and embark on creating awesome content on your site.