In this SEO guide, you’ll discover everything a novice needs to know about Google SEO in 2024, from the basics to more advanced tactics for increasing high-intent search traffic. Let’s get started from what is Google SEO.
Quick View
- What exactly is Google SEO, and how does it work?
- What is the role of SEO in online marketing?
- What exactly is a search engine, and how does it work?
- Black hat SEO and white hat SEO
- Before you begin how to Google SEO, there are a few things you should know
- In 2024, how can you get Google to rate your material?
- On-page SEO techniques
- Off-page SEO strategies
- Technical SEO
What exactly is Google SEO, and how does it work?
The acronym SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It refers to the art of enhancing a website’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs). With tactics including keywords, meta tags, links, photos, blog entries, and more, SEO allows businesses to increase organic (unpaid) traffic from search engines like Google and Bing.
What is the role of SEO in online marketing?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial since search engines are large traffic sources. Every day, 2 trillion Google searches occur. Each of these queries represents a potential opportunity.
When people are looking for what is Google SEO and information about your company, you want them to discover you before anybody else. In a way, asking, “Why is SEO so crucial?” is similar to wondering why I should want my store on the main street in town.
When individuals discover you, they’re more inclined to enter your location. What is Google SEO methods assist you to get closer to Google’s main street — the top page of search engine results pages — so that others can see you.
Organic search traffic is low-cost in long term, and utilizing SEO approaches to win it is a cost-effective alternative. It’s not like search advertising, which has to be maintained over time.
Maintainability is important in SEO, and it can be difficult to keep track of all of the updates. Another benefit is that, unlike advertising, SEO can often improve results over time with little upkeep. This makes it a popular marketing technique among small businesses and organizations like yours.
What exactly is a search engine, and how does it work?
We use Google to answer questions such as what is Google SEO. We type in the question or word and then the search engine finds the answer. It’s quick, too!
Search engines search billions of pieces of content and compare them to each other. They try to find the best answer for your question.
All of this is done by search engines. They discover and catalog all accessible content on the Internet (web pages, PDFs, images, videos, etc.) using a technique known as “crawling and indexing” and then arrange it in order of how well it matches the query with “ranking.”
Crawling is the Google Search Engine’s method of obtaining information about sites on the internet. Indexing refers to Google’s storage and cataloging of these pages. When users submit a query into a search engine, ranking describes how Google ranks results according to relevance.
However, even with sophisticated algorithms and methods, Google may not be able to rank web pages effectively without the assistance of people. That’s why website owners, marketing firms, and professional search engine optimizers employ SEO specialists.
With some targeted SEO tactics, such firms may signal to Google that a page is worth presenting to a user when they search for a certain phrase. Fortunately, most of these methods aren’t very time-consuming. And they can have an immediate effect on your visibility.
Black hat SEO and white hat SEO
It is worth noting that people have tried to cheat Google’s ranking system. They tried this in the past and they failed. Today, Google is better at spotting cheats even faster than ever before. That’s why black hat SEO methods are “spammy SEO.”
If Google catches you cheating, they will make it harder for you to get good results. They will make your rankings lower and even take your website out of organic search results.
If you want to do SEO, use strategies that are approved by Google. These strategies are called “white hat SEO.” All the strategies we will share in this guide are white hat SEO. We as a professional Digital Marketing Agency only recommend this tactic.
Before you begin how to Google SEO, there are a few things you should know
Before we talk about how to rank on Google, there is one very important thing you need to know. Google ranks websites based on the best user experience. How to Google SEO so you can have good rank?
When people search for something on Google, they want to find the best information about what they are looking for. Google wants to show them this. That is why it is important to write content that is good and useful, not just for Google but also for your reader.
Search engine optimization is when you try to make your content more relevant for people. When you do this, it also sends a signal to Google that you have the best content for your users.
In 2024, how can you get Google to rate your material?
Today, Google evaluates material on more than 200 variables. The following are some of the most crucial things on how to google SEO:
High-quality, keyword-specific content with a purpose.
Backlinks should be included.
The search engine Rankbrain, which conducts more thorough analyses of user queries.
The main goal is to create a website that Google can crawl and index quickly.
Expertise (Do you have a company grasp on your subject area?).
Authority (Do you consider yourself a thought leader in your area of expertise?).
Trust (What sources have you used and how confident are you of their accuracy?).
Freshness and originality of content.
The click-through rate (CTR) of your search result is important because it tells you how many people engaged with the ad and went on to click on any links within it.
Site speed.
Many people have mobile phones. This makes it easier to design websites for them.
We can use three types of SEO to increase our organic search traffic.
On-page SEO: On-page SEO means making sure your website looks good. This includes images, text, and videos. But it also includes things that only search engines can see like HTML elements and image alt texts.
Off-page SEO: Off-page SEO is about improving signals that are not on your website. There are different ways to do this. For example, you can get other sites to link back to your site and get people who read those sites interested in what you have on your site.
Technical SEO: Technical SEO is about how search engines see your website. They look for things like the markup, how easy it is to crawl, and the page speed.
On-page SEO techniques
Most of your SEO efforts will be on the website. This is because it is the easiest to manage, but also because it has a big impact on how you are seen off-site. If people think your site is good, they will think you are also good off-site.
Material is anything you read, watch, or listen to. You can find blogs and videos on the internet. When Google crawls and indexes your site, it is reading and indexing these things. Without them, you would not be able to rank high in Google searches.
The most efficient thing your content can do is give the searcher what they want. It should also be engaging, informative, and original. And to meet one of Google’s most important ranking criteria – expertise – it must be relevant to your regular type of material. Here’s why:
When you write about something related, Google will think you know more about it. It can show your expertise in a certain area.
When you’re creating content, there are a few SEO-related methods to consider; satisfy search intent, conduct comprehensive keyword research, optimize internal connections, make sure your HTML is descriptive, create a click-worthy title tag that encourages people to go through the page and learn more about it’s subject.
Off-page SEO strategies
Off-page SEO is when factors outside of your website affect where it ranks. This could be links to other websites or social media.
Off-page SEO, like on-page SEO, may be handled effectively with the appropriate techniques. Off-page activities range from developing a website to promoting it on social media. The following are some of the most important off-page SEO practices:
Backlinks from reliable sources are a must. Google crawls your content to see if it’s a suitable match for the user’s query and to verify your trustworthiness. Backlinks are one of the ways that Google assesses your trustworthiness.
When people link to your material from other websites, Google thinks they’re vouching for you. And the more times this occurs, the more reputable you appear.
Content marketing that is of a higher quality
High-quality content generates backlinks. The greatest thing you can do to encourage people to read, watch, and discuss your material is to make it as high-quality as possible. Always aim for originality, comprehensiveness, and consider the user’s goal in mind when creating content. What are they looking for?
Guest posting is a clever way for you to get discovered
Google has also stated that guest blogging solely for the purpose of gaining backlinks is a spam practice that you should avoid. That’s only because many individuals produce uninteresting, ineffective material just to obtain a backlink to their website.
Guest blogging may be a perfectly acceptable approach to gain authoritative backlinks as long as you treat a guest blog as an extension of your own.
The nofollow technique, while controversial, is one that has often been effective for blogs. Google has stated that crawlers link to nofollow links and might have SEO significance, although others argue that the method is ineffective because many websites tag guest links nofollow (to tell Google to devalue the link).
Link building
There’s a category of many other strategies that involve manually creating links to your material. It’s also known as link building.
Link building strategies are ways to get other people to put links on their websites that point to your website. You can do this by finding old links between sites, or you can do it by creating something new and asking people if they will put a link on their site so people will see it.
Social media marketing
High-quality content marketing is aided by social media marketing. People of all ages and backgrounds flock to social media sites looking for material to like, read, watch, and share. You make it more likely that someone will read your material and share it with their audience or a friend/colleague by actively promoting it on social media — posting your content while engaging with other businesses.
Influencer marketing
Influencers are individuals with a large following. Working with these people might give you access to their audience, network, or a link back to your site.
Technical SEO
On-page SEO, you can do it yourself. Off-page SEO, you can do it yourself with a little self-education. Technical SEO is a little more difficult and requires help from a development team or professional SEO. There are some top technical SEO strategies that you should know:
Schemas are used to structure your data and provide descriptive labels. Schema markup serves as a language for classifying items. This type of code adds to the search engine’s understanding of the content on your site, which improves its crawling capabilities. It boosts crawl speeds, efficiency, and accuracy.
For the search engine, there’s less guessing and manual work. Furthermore, schema markup may also aid in the addition of snippets to your search engine result, such as reviews, carousels, and more.
For duplicate content, use canonicalization
Search engines have a tough time deciding which page to index when there is duplicate or comparable material on several web pages. When that happens, search engines aren’t sure which page to include in their indexes.
Even though a website owner will not be penalized for duplicate content, Google will only display one of that content in search engine results. And it may not be the one you want.
The canonical tag is a meta tag that can be used to tell the search engine which page should be indexed. Duplicate content can be a pain, but there are plugins that may help you with it. Yoast is one of them, as it allows users to choose a default page for the material they wish to duplicate. It will take care of the canonicalization for you.
Make mobile search a top priority
You should not just focus on mobile search optimization, but also give it importance.
Mobile-first indexing is a Google program that promises to put your mobile version of your website first during indexing. It can have a significant effect on the rankings of your search engine if you don’t have one.
When you do not prepare your content for a mobile device, it is difficult to read and find things. It also damages the user’s experience.
Your content and design should now be able to support users on their preferred device. If this isn’t the case, making your site mobile responsive should be a top priority.
Improve the speed of your website
The file size of your page is the most important thing to bear in mind when optimizing it for mobile devices. The more data you load onto a page, the slower it loads and appears on the screen.
Google wants users to be able to get to a search result as soon as possible. As a result, it’s critical that your website load quickly.
Ensure that all audiences have a positive user experience
Remember that Google’s top goal is to provide the most relevant experiences to users. Search engines need to know if your website provides content in more than one language and you have a version in multiple languages.
Submit an XML sitemap to Google
An XML sitemap is a file that webmasters may submit to Google in order to improve their crawling performance. It’s essentially a list of your website’s URLs. Normally Google crawls through all of the pages on your website to index them. But if a page does not have a link to it, or is not linked from another page, then Google might miss it. This means that the page will not show up in search engine results.
Create URLs that are search engine friendly
For a URL to be search engine optimized, it should be easy for people to find and understand. Keep your URL short and simple. Put your keywords in it. If you have the option, put a folder in the URL instead of a subdomain so that Google will see it as one website.
Hopefully, with this article you could understand more about what is Google SEO and how to google SEO in the right way. If you find difficulties on applying Google SEO, consider SATUVISION for your business inquiries. We are a strategy-first digital agency in Bali, Indonesia and will be glad to assist you.
Hopefully, we’ve given you all information about what is Google SEO and the starter guide to building in 2024. For more advanced Google SEO strategies and services, please contact SATUVISION.