SEO for dummies or What to do if you don’t know what SEO is? SEO promotion: what is it?

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. Today I want to talk about what is SEO, show with a specific example of your blog how SEO optimization (external and internal) can literally work wonders in website promotion and answer the question why you should never neglect Search Engine Optimization.

In fact, although this article is addressed primarily to novice webmasters, from my own experience I can judge that many established webmasters simply neglect SEO promotion and do not even try to understand its essence, as if embarrassed to look biased in the eyes of their readers. Nonsense. I'm in my first year didn't do Seo In general, I thought that was the way it should be.

There is a very hackneyed phrase that for some reason has become a dogma for many - write articles for people and success will not keep you waiting. Yes, it is certainly a fundamental pillar of the successful development of an Internet project, but it is far from the only one and certainly not sufficient. When I started doing internal optimization the summer before last, my blog traffic doubled in half a year (to about 5,000). Impressive, right?

SEO - what is it, how does it affect promotion?

But when at the beginning of this summer I seriously began building up link mass, the site’s traffic again doubled in six months (to about 10,000). Even I myself was impressed. Well, yes, I had to stain myself with SEO optimization of texts, buying links, etc. things, but there is a result. Do you think that all this is exaggerated and far-fetched? But no.

There is a solution, and it was proposed by search engine developers (read about it). They created platforms (something similar to exchanges) where the user could find resources that answered the question he asked. But this solution has some limitations. Only those resources that were able to get to its first page (the so-called Top 10). This means that sooner or later a squabble will begin for a place in the Top 10, and this squabble has begun.

The main weapon in the fight for a place in the sun has become the notorious Seo (from the English Search Engine Optimization). By and large, this is the art of getting on the first page of Yandex or Google for something you are interested in. Search engines still cannot offer any solution that allows sites that are in the search results significantly lower than the 10th position to receive at least a drop from the number of those visitors who enter a question of interest to them in the search engine.

In fact, it turns out that there is no life beyond the Top 10. Therefore, the fight is not a joke and any SEO optimization methods that can tip the balance in one’s favor must be used. In general, the situation is very similar to how it was depicted in the title picture in the article about:

Now about why search engines don't like SEO. Do you know? There are probably several reasons. If you have read the article about relevance and ranking, then you probably understand that optimizers, with their artificial boost, significantly distort and worsen the quality of search engine results. But at the very least, search engines have learned to deal with this problem using the behavioral factors I already mentioned at the beginning of the article (projects with bad content in the Top 10 can no longer stay in the Top 10, at least not for long).

But SEO is not only a technology, but also a huge business. Do you know how much the leading companies in this industry will earn? In total, I think, hundreds of millions of dollars, which is quite comparable to the income of Yandex. How, you didn’t know that search engines are extremely profitable and extremely profitable enterprises? Well, now you know. Yandex also makes money by displaying contextual advertising (and Adwords).

Who orders advertising from search engines? Most of them are owners of commercial resources to attract visitors. And the whole point is that both of these businesses (contextual advertising and the provision of SEO promotion services) are competitive with each other. Judge for yourself. If you are the owner of a commercial website, you can get to the first page of search engine results in two ways:

1. Order SEO optimization and promotion service, and then be among the ten most relevant resources to the request in search results (get into the Top 10 or, in other words, in organic results)
2. Pay money to Yandex or Google so that your ad is shown for the same request on the same first page of search results

If SEO technologies did not exist or they were not so effective, then search engines alone would receive all the profits, and so they lose on those clients who preferred promotion to the Top 10 of organic results over contextual advertising. Actually, I wrote about this in some detail in an article about, and gave a pretty clear screenshot there:

Those. you must understand that SEO really works and not using it would be a big mistake. Your potential readers who cannot find your wonderful website through Yandex or Google will not forgive you for this. It’s not enough to create a good project with unique and necessary content; it must be promoted to the Top 10 for at least a number of not very frequent queries in order to begin to attract the attention of readers.

SEO optimization and promotion - why is it necessary?

Do you think you can get by with the issue? attracting visitors without optimization? It is possible that for some queries you will get to the Top without effort, but for a huge mass of queries you will remain in the invisible zone for your potential readers (in the article about I talked about how to assess the visibility of your resource on the Internet), even no matter what your content will be good. Until search engines become perfect, you will lose potential audience by neglecting SEO technologies.

You can say that this is not the only way websites live. After all, there are also social Facebook networks, VKontakte, microblogging service Twitter, etc. things (thematic social networks, for example, or all the same). I hasten to disappoint you, because promotion in these social networks is not as easy as it seems at first glance, and also very expensive.

No, of course, there are ways to get traffic besides search traffic, and I have already written about this in some detail in the article. But all this works within very limited limits. You alone will not be able to create so many announcements and show such incredible activity to attract thousands of visitors in this way. You simply won’t have time to write quality articles.

See for yourself. When I maxed out all the non-SEO-related ways to attract visitors, I was only getting an increase of a few hundred people a day. Well, some will say that this is already a lot, but keep in mind that it took me a fair amount of time and got boring very quickly. Yes, you will curse everything after a couple of months of such a life.

What can I say in favor of SEO optimization and promotion? What can I say? Look at the sources from which visitors come to my blog. Let's first look at the traffic per day from search engines:

Quite a lot, even more than the 10,000 stated at the beginning of the article. As one would expect, the bulk of visitors come from two giants - Yandex and Google. Most of these visitors found my blog in search results only thanks to internal and external optimization.

While the total number of visitors to my blog during the same day amounted to a slightly larger figure:

Thus, if I neglected SEO promotion in general, it would only be five percent of the current one. Isn't this an argument in favor of search engine promotion and proof of its effectiveness? It seems to me that with beliefs about the need learn to please search engines You can finish and move on to specifics.

No, we need to talk a little more about how it happened that some manipulations with the site (internal SEO optimization) or placing links incoming from other resources (external) can influence the ranking. Well, everything is quite simple here.

Search engines process hundreds of millions of user requests a day and for each of them they must provide a relevant list of sites from the Internet. There is no way to do this manually, so this honorable duty is performed by robots (programs). Well, a robot can always be misled. Remember how Yandex explained the work of its Matrixnet using apples as an example?

The robot cannot taste apples, but it can evaluate them based on hundreds of other parameters. Apples are tasted by specially trained people - assessors. They give their verdict after trying not large number apples, and the robot comprehensively studies them and, based on the accumulated data, will then be able to distinguish the wheat from the chaff. And what does Seo have to do with it?

And optimizers are just trying to find those very points of influence, by pressing on which they can improve the ranking of their project (climb to the Top 10). If the ranking robot relies on several hundred parameters, then by influencing at least some of them, you can significantly improve the promotion of your site. This means moving towards the first place in search results for the desired query.

Once again, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that now there is practically no slag in the Top 10, or it does not stay there for a long time. But there are much more than 10 good sites and therefore there is a struggle for the Top, the main weapon in which is SEO in all its glory. If you do not participate in this struggle, then you will not get a place in the sun. I think this idea should be clear to you, at least for now.

What factors do modern SEO optimizers take into account?

Now let's get down to specifics. Typically, promotion methods are divided into three groups:

1. Internal optimization of text, headings, meta tags, removal of duplicate content, etc.
2. External SEO - getting incoming links to your website using free and paid methods
3. Usability and content quality - to obtain adequate user behavior on your resource and in search engine results, which will be typical for your topic

The first two groups of factors are aimed at attracting the maximum number of visitors from search engines (through promotion to the Top 10 necessary requests), but the third group of SEO factors is aimed at maintaining the gained positions.

In fact, it is the third that is the most labor-intensive to ensure. You need to have materials that are truly useful and interesting to the user, the creation of which will require you to spend a huge amount of your personal time. Remember that the only thing that matters now is unique content, but not at all. For this, search engines may impose sanctions in the form of a filter or a ban.

I have already written a lot and in detail on the topic of SEO, and therefore now I will try to systematize all this and provide links to detailed materials where these issues are covered with all the nuances and details:

1. In one of the articles I described. Be sure to read them, because this is the basis for understanding Search Engine Optimization. Here you also need to take into account that the words “promotion” and “ranking” have approximately equal meaning. For search engines, this is ranking, and for SEO optimizers, this is promotion.
2. In another publication I gave examples of those excesses in optimization, for which sanctions may be imposed by Yandex and Google -. I have already mentioned that Seo is not always white and fluffy, and the main thing here is to clearly see the line beyond which you cannot cross. Therefore, be sure to read these warnings.

It is also very important to understand that your site is evaluated by a robot, not a person (if your relatives like it, this does not mean that Yandex will like it). The robot sees him in a slightly different light ( HTML code, text, robots.txt directives, sitemap in xml format, etc.), but he can judge usability and beauty only by the behavior of users on your Internet project.

Your resource, in addition to good SEO optimization, should answer certain(duplicate pages, correct ones, etc.). Have you ever thought about the correct formation of addresses on your website? Have you configured it from WWW to without WWW (or vice versa)? monitor? Periodic unavailability can ruin all your efforts.

Be sure to add your site to the webmaster panel from and not only to monitor the success of your optimization, but also to immediately find out about any problems that arise technical problems on your website. remember to check? Are you all right? After all, this is now one of the many SEO factors that is taken into account when ranking.

Internal SEO. Do you create an approximate estimate before writing an article? "For what?" - you ask me. Probably, in order not to work blindly and not to write on a topic that is not interesting to anyone in RuNet. How can you find out what is interesting to RuNet users? Elementary! And it will help you with this.



Another very important factor in internal SEO optimization is the implementation of linking, not with plugins and extensions, but with contextual links from the body of articles (as, for example, in this publication). Do you know why it is needed? Yes, just this way you can save a lot on buying links.

3. There are also a number of events that can also be classified as SEO promotion. may be needed at the initial stage of project development, to speed up its discovery by these same search engines. When your project gains some weight and authority, you can try other trust directories, which can give some additional impetus to your project entering the Top ().
4. There are ones that have not yet been burned in public, but they are already worth money and there is a high probability that they will deceive you and slip you bullshit. At the link below you will find my offer, where everything is without deception and free.
5. Exchanging links with other resources can also bring you some benefit in SEO promotion, but you need to be careful here, because search engines do not approve of exchanges. I only exchanged backlinks from articles and only with a limited number of sites (a couple of dozen). Now my exchange limit has already been reached.
6. Next follow paid ways to improve off-page optimization, but simply - buying links. I don’t advise you to shop in Sapa and Blogun, because they are pure slag with rare inclusions of diamonds. It is better, in my opinion, to purchase eternal links for your project, for which you will pay once. In the long run they will be more profitable:
   • Miralinks— you offer webmasters a ready-made article in which you have added backlinks to the pages of your resource. The best, but rather expensive way of external SEO optimization, because in addition to posting an article, you will also have to pay for its writing (or spend time on it). Just above I provided a link to my article, where I shared the tricks for working with this exchange.
   • Gogetlinks- Maybe, the best way carrying out external SEO optimization. In the settings of this exchange, you can set placement only in new articles, thereby making such backlinks as natural as possible.
   • GetGoodLinks is practically the same as in the previous paragraph, but the sites there are selected based on their size, which are important for promotion in Google ( and ).
   • RotaPost— here I buy not only links from blogs, but also from . Read more about this in the article about.
7. There are also ways of external SEO optimization - running through directories, site grids, etc. I had a little experience with this, but, by and large, it’s better not to get involved.

It seems like he told me everything. Good luck with your promotion and promotion. The main thing is not to overdo it.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site

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You might be interested

SEO terminology, acronyms and jargon
How keywords affect website promotion in search engines
Keywords in text and headings

Everyone who has ever started creating their own website has thought about SEO promotion of the site in search engines such as Yandex, Google, etc. How does it all work, what knowledge is needed for SEO optimization of a website, what subtleties exist. Many people consider SEO website promotion a complex process that is impossible to understand, but it is not as difficult as it seems. Yes, at the very beginning you will not become a professional in website optimization, but you may well be able to get some pages into the top 10.

In this article we will look in detail at how to promote a website and how to get it into the top 10. As soon as search engines appeared, there were immediately people who could adjust their position in organic results through their actions.

Stage 1. Terms

The terms presented in the table below are required to be studied. With their help, you can better understand how to carry out search engine optimization of a website.

General terms

Internal

passage; search robot; vital requests; wordstat; domain; host; organic results; affiliate; update; LF, HF, microLF; exact entry; key; relevance; request; Whois; traffic; frequency; behavioral factors; search engines; ranging

canonical page; mirror;
h1-h6; title; description; meta tags; semantic core;
admin; CNC; content; promoted page; usability; duplicate pages; CMS

link exchanges; doorway; cloaking;
PR/PageRank; tIC;
anchor;
donor;
acceptor;

List of articles that will help you understand in more detail the meaning of the terms from the table:

• Website promotion for priority requests, ranking in the top 10
• Using context and promotion together and separately
• Promotion to increase the company’s online sales. Industry restrictions

Stage 2. Compiling a semantic core

The semantic core is a list of queries for which the site is promoted in search engines. You can collect the semantic core in the following ways: free services, like wordstat.yandex, direct.yandex, metrica.yandex, adwoords.google, fastkeywordds.biz, megaindex.ru, tools, soovle, trends, google, Pastukhov database.

These online services require registration. It is worth dwelling in more detail on the methodology for compiling the semantic core.

At the very beginning, we compile a primary list of words and phrases related to the topic of the page being promoted. These could be:

1. variants of the name of a product, service, synonyms of these words, translation, transliteration;
2. abbreviated versions of words;
3. name options components goods or services;
4. brands associated with a product or service (that you sell) or popular words;
5. buyer options and problems that your product or service solves;
6. all kinds of epithets characterizing a product or service.

Once the initial list is ready, we begin to expand it by adding queries that are associated with your product or service. The list has become wider, now you need to go even deeper into the topic and find narrower concepts related to your product or service.

The list is ready, it is large and not sorted. You need to “clean up” queries that you don’t need or those that have low frequency (frequency for search engine Yandex can be checked in their free tool wordstat.yandex).

You can read more about the influence of keywords in document ranking and drawing up the correct semantic core in these articles:

• Stage 4. Optimization

  Website optimization can be internal and external, both are important for promotion. Let's start with understanding the search engine. When ranking Internet documents, the system takes into account external and internal factors. TO external factors include links from other Internet resources, the higher the authority of the linker to you, the greater the weight of the link, and in the future your page will have more weight.

  There are much more internal SEO factors of the site. These are texts, tags, pictures, internal links. Here are a few points that play a big role in ranking documents:

  • full occurrence of the query in the text of the document, that is, “quote” without changing the word form;
  • the weight of query keywords is the ratio of the number of times a word from a query is used to the total number of words on the page;
  • the content of keywords in the title, they should be in the first positions;
  • proximity of keywords to the top of the page;
  • the presence of keywords from the request in the headings;
  • the presence of keywords in text descriptions of pictures;
  • Internal link anchors should include an explanation of where the link leads.

  And now more about internal optimization. Since you have already completed the initial stage of work for promotion by collecting a semantic core, you can begin to compile title, description, h1-h6. Title is the title that is displayed in search engines; it can also be viewed either in the page code or by hovering the mouse over the tab with the page.

  When compiling the title, we pay attention to:

  • numbers;
  • dates;
  • length. Shorter titles are better understood by systems;
  • synonyms and variants;
  • call to action (for example, “buy”, “order”);
  • related keywords;
  • questions.
  
  

  Important rules for understanding the composition of headings for site optimization: the heading should be no more than 140 characters (this is the number that is displayed in search engines, the information after that simply will not be visible to users), the heading should contain the exact occurrence of the most frequent query for which you will promote the page, and this request should come at the beginning. In the title there is no dot at the end, and in general the dot is not used when composing the title; if you need to divide a passage, use a dash - “|”. Also, when composing headlines, conduct an analysis of the titles of competitors in the top 10, add those points that you do not have.

  Composing descriptions is almost the same as composing headlines, the only differences are that descriptions are much longer, they use full sentences, sentences not only with exact occurrences of search queries, but also with adjectives describing a product, service, article, etc. d.

  In h1-h6 most often they use the most high frequency request, which succinctly characterizes the information on the page.

  Internal SEO optimization also includes texts. Internal search engine optimization of a website is impossible without writing good texts. They should be easy to read, written in human language, unique, and contain accurate, inaccurate, and relevant occurrences of search queries. Yes, the text must contain both precise and relevant queries, but at the same time, the text must look natural, otherwise you are in danger of falling under the filter. An analysis of what queries, how many and where exactly should be placed can be carried out by viewing competitors from the top 10; the number of words in the text is determined in the same way.

  We can talk about internal page optimization for a very long time, since it affects all external and internal components. The main points are the quality of the content, adjusting the html code and correcting errors in it, editing the design in terms of page loading speed in the user’s browser, “visibility” of the pages different browsers, compliance of the design style with the direction of the resource’s activity, improvement of usability: navigation is made as user-friendly as possible, organized general structure and principles of navigation for the entire resource, correct internal linking of pages: creating a cross-reference structure, with the help of this you can achieve visible results. The only thing that can be added here is that when doing internal SEO optimization of a website yourself, make convenient and high-quality pages for users.

  
  

  For a beginner, external SEO optimization is more difficult than internal SEO. Here you need to consciously carry out optimization work; the site being promoted can easily fall under filters Yandex systems and Google. External SEO optimization: citation (number of backlinks and their quality), behavioral factors (time spent on the page, bounce rate and return rate, number of page views, click-through rate (CTR) in search results), external links.

  Optimizing your site yourself by increasing the number of external links can increase your ranking in organic results. Links can be permanent or rented. They can be purchased on services such as sape, webeffector, rookee, gogetlinks, rotapost, feedsite, getgoodlinks. When purchasing links, you need to carefully analyze donors, check their indexing, the age of the resource, the quality of the content, and the number of links posted. You can read more about purchasing links for external SEO (CEO) promotion of a website yourself and their impact on ranking in the articles “Getting your optimized website to the top 10 pages using links” and “Promotion using link exchanges”.

  Stage 5. Yandex and Google filters

  Each search engine has its own filters with which it removes low-quality pages from the index.

  Main filters of the Yandex search system:

  Reasons for overlap

  Signs

  The “AGS” filter is its task of removing low-quality SEO optimized website pages from search results.

  Practically total loss SEO website traffic

  Reset the TCI - remove some of the links aimed at search engine optimization of the site, but if all the pages have dropped out of the index, you need to pay attention to independently eliminating all the reasons for imposing a filter for search engine optimization

  A sharp decline in rankings in search results and a drop in traffic

  You can remove it by reducing the number or completely removing external links

  Cheating behavioral factors

  For independently boosting behavioral factors for site optimization

  A sharp drop in positions and traffic of an optimized site, new pages are slowly entering the index

  Stop manipulation completely. You will have to wait several months for the filter to be canceled

  Affiliates - created to fight companies that make several sites and try to grab all the first places in the search results

  Identifies by the same contact information, similar topics, data in whois, structure, IP, CMS

  There is only one site left in the search results

  To exit, you need to change all the data by which Yandex can identify affiliates

  Adult content

  Complete exclusion from search results for queries that do not relate to 18+ topics

  Eliminate all factors that indicate adult content

  Nepot filter. Yandex does not recognize its existence

  SEO optimization - filter for exceeding it

  For too many keywords

  The filter will leave the pages in the index, but they will not receive high positions - there will be no traffic. A large number of keys, especially unnatural ones, should be avoided

  Reduce occurrences of key phrases

  Due to the use of teaser networks, which contain ads with so-called “shock content”

  Decreases in search results

  Link explosion

  For the sharp increase in the number of external links

  Losing positions

  Remove most of the link mass

  Baden-Baden

  For large or unformatted texts, overspam

  Decline in traffic, sharp decline in rankings. A notification appears in Y.Webmaster

  Make quality content. You can write texts for the site yourself, for free

  Basic filters of the Google search engine:

  Reasons for overlap

  Signs

  Optimization, website promotion with a large number of links from low-quality resources. It also punishes invisible links and spammy structures in anchors. Be more careful when promoting website pages yourself

  Decrease in rankings and traffic, new pages are indexed slowly

  A drop in traffic from Google, a drop in rankings, new pages are indexed slowly, SEO promotion and optimization will be invisible

Good afternoon, dear readers! Here is the 2nd and final part of my guide to creating, developing and promoting information websites and blogs. In this step-by-step instructions, you will learn how to carry out SEO optimization, search engine promotion, and website visibility assessment work yourself. Also in the guide you will find a list of the main mistakes of novice webmasters and bloggers, links to additional materials on my blog by topic.

In the first part of the guide you learned. We examined in detail all the stages and steps of this process, starting from the creation of a web resource and ending with the work of managing the project. Now it’s time for SEO optimization and search engine promotion.

But first let me remind you how to use this step by step manual. Here's a quick reminder.

How to use the instructions

I have prepared the following information on all stages of internal optimization, SEO promotion and visibility analysis:

• briefly disclosed the material for each step of this instruction;
• showed examples of the implementation of each stage;
• pointed out common errors that appear when performing work;
• offered a block of links to additional articles on my blog on topics.

In each section of this manual (optimization, promotion, evaluation and analysis), SEO cheat sheets are offered for regular subscribers. In them, I explained aspects of some of the work that relate to one of the stages of SEO-promotion of an information site (blog).

Internal optimization - preparatory work

All work on internal optimization of a web resource is divided into preparatory and permanent work. Let's consider each type of work separately.

When creating a brand new website, we think about how quickly we will build clear navigation, draw an interesting design, increase useful content and engage in SEO promotion. But all this work must be completed on a ready-made website, which already has its own code.

As a rule, our project can either be created independently with home-written code, or using various ready-made CMS. The first option is very complicated and requires the site owner to have a lot of knowledge in the field of website creation (programming).

Therefore, most novice boggers and webmasters use 100% already proven ones for their future projects. popular CMS(For example, free WordPress, Joomla or paid ones like 1C-Bitrix).

Having chosen your CMS, you can then come up with a new individual design (or with the help of a designer and programmer) or use someone else’s work (ready-made templates). The second option is also most often chosen, since it is less expensive.

In any case, whether the site is drawn from scratch or taken free template, its code must be ready for SEO promotion. To see this and, if necessary, correct it, preparatory work is required.

Building the page code structure

When a website page is displayed in a browser, it loads all parts of the document in a step-by-step order. That is, the header can load first, and then the sidebar of the blog. It is important that the code has a diagram that shows the content as quickly as possible. This means that the site header should come first, then the main content, and only then other elements of the resource (sidebars, footer, etc.).

Thus, when a search robot visits a page, it must first evaluate the beginning of the page and useful content, and only then everything else. You can do this yourself (if you understand HTML language and know the page structure) or with the help of specialists.

Here is an example of the page structure of an information site on the topic of cooking:

As you can see, first the header of the resource is drawn, then there is a culinary post (main content), and then additional sections of the site (sidebar, footer).

The presence of the h1 tag in one copy on the page

A very important tag for search engine promotion. It is the second after the title tag, showing the search engine the topic that is revealed in the document (the main topic for ranking).

Therefore, before you start maintaining your site, check the uniqueness of this tag. As a rule, many free and shareware templates (and most of them on the RuNet) often have one of the following two errors:

• there is more than one h1 tag in the document code;
• There is no h1 tag in the page code at all.

Most often, the h1 tag in information sites (blogs) is used as important element showing:

• title (title) of the site;
• title of the block section in the sidebar;
• title of the article (post) title.

It is the third option that is the most correct - the other ways of using the h1 tag are not correct (except for the option of using the tag as a resource name only on the main page!). Here is an example of a page that does not have an h1, but uses the h2 tag as the title of the promoted article:

Maintaining h2-h6 tag hierarchy

These tags can be used both in the body of the article (post) and in the titles of the sidebar and footer sections. As a rule, top tags (h2-h4) are taken to design subheadings of the main content of the page, since they can contain keywords from the semantic core.

This is why the hierarchy of these tags is so important. The higher the tag level, the stronger the significance of the request for page promotion. Therefore, you should not use h2-h4 tags to name sidebar and footer blocks. Like in this example:

The correct use of h2-h4 tags is discussed later in the article.

The title of the article (post) is not in the form of a link

Another mistake that should not be made when preparing your website for SEO promotion. As a rule, if the title of a post appears as a link, then it links to the same page. That is, by clicking on it, we will be taken to the same document. This creates a unit cycle, and such a link is called a cyclic link. Its use is inappropriate for SEO.

Here's an example where the page title is a link:

By the way, on the same page you can find other problems described above in the code (incorrect use of h1 and h2). Try to find them yourself in the page code (www.myrouble.ru/kak-i-gde-vesti-semejnyj-byudzhet/).

Other preparatory work

In addition to these issues, there are a number of less important, but also worthy of attention, work to prepare a site for SEO optimization. This includes installing a site map, creating a robots.txt file, bread crumbs, pagination, etc. It makes no sense to describe everything in this manual, you just need to remember these important little things. To help you - the search bar of Yandex or Google.

Also, for personal infoblogs and websites, you need to install a special plugin for SEO optimization and search engine promotion. Thanks to it, you can carry out general SEO settings for the resource, as well as individual promoted pages.

And one more thing important point— you definitely need to create a 404 page with individual content on it. It will increase the chances of the user staying from the search on your site, and not going back to the search results (and this is very important!!!). Therefore, I recommend making it a short navigation through the most important sections of your information site. You can even come up with something fun or super interesting.

SEO optimization - constant work

These are internal optimization works that are carried out every day. At least as often as publishing new posts. As a rule, these are accompanying works that are performed in all steps of the process of creating new content. Let's take a closer look at them.

Formation of SEO content

Let me clarify right away that by SEO content I mean useful, high-quality text with media material (pictures, videos, audio), which is served specifically for search engine users. There are no sickening stupid texts without meaning, but with cleverly inserted keys right up to the comma. This is the last century - forget about it. Otherwise, you won’t see search traffic!!! 🙂

In general, down with foot wrapping texts and chaos posts. All content should be clear, understandable and logical. This is necessary in order to search user was able to solve two important problems.

3 nuts for Cinderella (2 tasks for the user)!

When solving these problems, we have a 95% probability of leaving a search visitor on our pages (5% is an error due to probability theory 🙂).

So, a user from Yandex and Google came to your page without any problems (the 404 page did not open, there was no delay in opening it due to the fault of the hoster, etc.)

Task No. 1. Within 10-15 seconds, we must show the user that his question, for which he came to us from the search results, can be found on our page! Formatting elements are responsible for this.

Task No. 2. Next, we must persuade (push) the potential reader to study the material on our page. The correct structure of the text, font, distance between paragraphs, etc. are responsible for this. That is, everything that will allow him to easily and quickly study the provided material.

So, to solve these two problems, we need to consider the following rules and recommendations for creating traffic-generating content.

Using formatting elements . Formatting elements encourage the search user to decide to explore the content. They quickly make it clear that this page is in the top 10 for a reason. The elements are usually:

• subheadings h2-h4— used as content separators according to its plan, contain keywords;
• numeric and bulleted lists- are used to provide consistent or homogeneous information in the best possible way;
• tables- serve as an excellent display of numeric and/or logical elements of text for the reader to process content data;
• images— include two options for presenting information (text and visual), improves the perception of content;
• video— includes three options for presenting information (text, visual and auditory), improves the perception of content. For some topics, this formatting option is already a necessity rather than a pleasant bonus!
• tips for presenting content- these are ideologically created blocks of information that are easily visible and usually contain exclusive or additional material on the topic of the promoted page.

Readability of content . Believe me, no one needs to read a terrible text with an elaborate font, a bunch of sentences without formatting elements. I have already said that the modern search user is lazy by nature - he has no time for nonsense. After all, he is always in a hurry. And he always has a choice from a bunch of sites in the search results.

Therefore, we must be sure that our content delivery will be not only interesting to the Yandex or Google user, but understandable and easy to learn. Therefore, you need to remember the following points:

• font readability— the letters should be straight and clearly visible to people who belong to your audience. (You should know your audience at the stage of topic analysis before creating the site);
• formatting paragraphs— paragraphs should not merge and should not contain a large number of sentences (the human eye should periodically rest when reading);
• uniform writing style- no experiments with fonts. You can use italic and/or bold lettering. The reason is that nothing should distract a person from studying his question;

Presence of structure in the article . Everyone knows what a plan is. What is a plan for writing an article - not many. But it is mandatory for high-quality content creation. To compile it, search queries and your knowledge on the topic of the future information document are used.

To form the structure, subheadings h2-h4 are used in the text itself. Here is a sample diagram basic structure information article:

Keyword Implementation . Information sites and blogs are promoted based on information requests. As a rule, there are a lot of them in almost every topic. Sometimes you just see a sea of ​​keywords that need to be used in articles. They need to be used wisely in writing an article.

How to do this can be found in the supplementary materials. And now I will give advice on the form in which information articles are formed from the point of view of using queries. This information awaits you in the following SEO cheat sheet:

Page optimization

Writing great SEO content is only half the battle. You still need to prepare it for successful ranking by search engines. And there you can already see the top. Here is the main list of works.

Formation of the page address . If the address of the news article contains the most important keywords or basics, then this will only strengthen the document and bring it closer to its cherished dream of getting into the top 10.

Image optimization . Images of an information site (blog) are very important for the quality presentation of the material. Words alone will not fill you up. Therefore, it is desirable that they be unique and contain exclusive content. One of the options for using such pictures is to include various infographics in articles (of course, preferably copyright ones).

What will this give us? Firstly, their optimization can bring a small increase in search traffic (1-2%). Secondly, they seriously improve the behavioral factors of the resource, thereby increasing its popularity and authority in the eyes of search engines (trust).

To optimize images, two image attributes are used - alt and title. They are formed taking into account the keywords of the promoted page. You also need to remember that the content of the alt attribute must be unique (not only on this page, but throughout the entire site)!

Filling title and h1 tags . Formation of title and h1 tags is one of the most important tasks in SEO content optimization. After all, approximately 60-80% of getting into the top 10 depends on their correct filling (they are taken into account by ranking factors and affect the clickability of the snippet in the search results). This, of course, takes into account the availability of useful and high-quality SEO content. Filled out according to special rules.

Formation of h2-h4 tags . These tags form the names of sections and subsections of an information article. Their task is to orient and guide the user through the text, to answer task No. 1. Of course, they must contain search queries and are formed according to their own SEO rules.

Filling out the Description meta tag . The content of the page description is used to generate a snippet in Google. This means its format and content also directly affect the click-through rate of an ad in the top. Often, an excellent snippet allows you to get more clicks from the top than sites higher in the search results can afford. Filled out according to special rules.

Creating a snippet sentence . In fact, this is another piece of jewelry that allows you to create a snippet in the top 10 of Yandex for information articles. It’s difficult to make, but it’s worth it - this offer directly affects the click-through rate of the snippet.

These are the basic ongoing work that needs to be done when creating each promoted page. information project. Everything seems so complicated, but in reality it’s not all that scary. But this is a responsible job and it is at this stage that most errors occur.

Yes, there are many optimization errors. Typically they are associated with:

• incorrect formation of the semantic core— a group of queries contains keywords of different topics;
• non-compliance uniform style formation of posts— crooked fonts begin to appear and clumsiness appears (variety of colors and formatting elements);
• incorrect creation of the title and/or h1 tag— the wrong search queries are selected to create them, the webmaster does not monitor their length and narrative (unreadable sentences);
• ignoring the formation of the snippet sentence- In this case, Yandex can show such a hodgepodge in the top 10 that you are amazed at the work of its logical circuits;
• illogicality of the material presented— sections can build an illogical narrative of the text, which does not increase the reader’s trust in the author of the site;
• problem of solving problems No. 1 and 2- and this is just a disaster, since the visitor immediately returns back to the search, which over time worsens the behavioral factors of the site. And this already smells of pessimization (lowering) of the achieved positions...

Well, I suppose with this block with frequent errors I have lowered your faith in independent search engine promotion? Now I’ll raise it - I offer you my checklist to help you permanent work on SEO optimization:

Do-it-yourself search engine promotion

SEO promotion can be internal or external. For information sites and blogs, the first is much more important than the second. As a rule, in most popular topics, if you correctly complete all the previous stages, internal promotion is enough to receive maximum search traffic.

Internal promotion - linking

The principle of internal linking is simple - we create transitions from one page to another, strengthening the promoted articles. Thus, they receive some increased significance (search engines see that many other resource documents link to such pages). As a result, it is easier for them to get a place in the sun on the first page of search results.

There are rules for correct internal linking (you will find them all in the additional materials). The most important rule— for an internal link to work (transfer weight), readers must click on it!

Now let's talk about how internal links are served. For an informational site, two options are used for creating internal links for interlinking:.

• First option – this is the placement of links in the article itself. Here you need to take into account both the text of the anchor itself and the text around it. The beauty of these links is that with proper formation of the anchor text, you can create transitions to almost any article on any topic.
• Second option – this is filling the additional linking block at the end of the article with links. As a rule, only those transitions are created in this block that either have a similar page theme or have the theme of the entire section. But as in the first option, you cannot put a link to any post here - there is a very high probability that it will not be clicked on.

Such blocks can be made either in the form of a list of regular links or in the form of pictures. Here are examples of these implementations:

And one more thing important question— anchor content. It must be unique and contain the keywords of the page it links to. Here is a small reminder on how you can easily create an anchor list using the semantic core:

Errors at this stage also happen quite often. But they are easy to fix. They are related to:

• repetition of anchors— this is caused by automatic linking options (for example, the Related Posts plugin for the WordPress CMS);
• not understanding the principle of linking— you just need to learn the necessary material and learn how to practically use it;
• with no clear linking plan— you definitely shouldn’t put anything anywhere!

External promotion - strengthening the link mass

As a rule, this polishing stage is resorted to only when the positions of the information site are firmly stuck in the top, but in low positions. Typically, this only happens in those topics and for those requests where there are strong competitors - sites with a lot of trust. But you shouldn’t think that purchasing links (no matter how) will help solve the problem - it’s very, very difficult to overtake trust providers.

To purchase links there is different methods— from article promotion to crowd marketing. In any case, the rules are the same:

• donor sites must have their own traffic (at least social or direct);
• pages where links are purchased must be indexed;
• the donor site should not have a bad history (filters, ban);
• external links should be placed only from thematic pages;
• and most importantly, there should be natural transitions from the purchased link.

Important note!Don’t look at donor sites for all sorts of tits and other things - just ask the owner for 5 minutes of access to his Yandex Metrica and everything will become clear to you - whether you need to take his resource as a platform or wave your hand. 🙂

By the way, a few words about a new way of obtaining link mass - crowd marketing. I used this method when it didn’t even have such a name. And then these external links worked. There were thematic forums, platforms that allowed you to put excellent anchor texts and different types links (anchor and non-anchor). Now it has been turned into a way to make a profit and therefore a lot of leftism has appeared. As a result, the crowd began to turn into spam and soon it will give up.

The main mistake here is to purchase links in bulk without carefully filtering donors. If done incorrectly, you can easily get Minusinsk. It’s better to do a targeted search for reverse transitions and only from high-quality resources. Perpetual links can help with this.

Site visibility assessment

Any website requires constant maintenance. In fact, there is a lot to do - collecting SYNOPSIS for new topics, thinking through the promotion of the resource, supplementing it with new content. But this is all work for the further development of the site. It is growing, and its traffic is growing.

But there are also jobs that are also performed very often and allow you to evaluate the traffic received from search. It’s the same as for a car enthusiast - he bought a car, learned to drive it, made a couple of upgrades to it, and wipes it with a cloth. But also periodic inspection at a service station good driver always does too.

In order to evaluate search traffic, you must first notice it, view it, and then analyze everything you see. And then the actions follow - the patient is more likely alive or dead (just kidding, though!!! 🙂).

Checking the positions of a web resource yourself

To see how traffic changes there, there is a periodic check of positions. It allows you to notice the growth or decline of traffic, and get the dynamics of the development of an information site. Without this step, it is useless to do anything further to evaluate the website’s progress!

To check, there is a special technique for this type of SEO work (described in one of the additional materials). According to it, there are two types of viewing resource positions - point and planned:

• Spot check . Designed to obtain occupied places or new pages, or recently redesigned ones for all keywords of a group of queries. Typically done manually on demand.
• Scheduled check . Allows you to see the dynamics of growth/decline of positions information resource over time. It is carried out periodically and is performed automatically.

To work with positions, there are various SEO tools - plugins, programs and online services. In order for the verification task to be completed 100%, the necessary tool should be selected according to the following criteria:

• there is confirmation that the tool verification algorithm works as expected (no failures, no serious discrepancies in the data provided);
• the product interface is intuitive and simple, all its reports and tables are easy to interpret, and it is possible to export the received data;
• The tool has a variety of functionality that allows you to see not only the positions occupied, but also the entire dynamics as a whole.

In additional materials for this stage, I provided material about various tools for checking positions.

I myself have been using the Topvisor service for a long time. Here are detailed instructions on how I view positions in it:

Search traffic analysis and evaluation

After clarifying the dynamics of positions, it is necessary to analyze those articles that have sharply changed their positions in the top. Of course, most often you have to look for a problem due to the site falling in the top.

To solve this SEO problem, a web analytics service is used. Currently there are two most best tool— Yandex Metrica and Google Analytics. One does an excellent job of analyzing traffic from Yandex, the other from Google.

To get the right answers on traffic decline/growth, you need a good knowledge of these tools, as well as an understanding of what and where to look in them.

There are also errors at this stage. There are few of them, but they can be critical. All of them are related to:

• reluctance to evaluate and analyze data— those who do not have information lose a car of traffic. And period!
• erroneous conclusions from the analysis of traffic metrics— you may end up doing something on your website that is not what you need, which can have a very negative impact.

As additional materials on assessing and analyzing website visibility, I offer the following articles.

Promoting a website on your own - examples

All stages of the step-by-step instructions for SEO optimization and promotion of an information site have been completed. As you can see, the work ahead of novice webmasters and bloggers is very serious. But the prize is also valuable - almost eternal search traffic!

Search engine promotion is, first of all, a complex of works. Here we need a clear system for carrying out all the steps of internal optimization, promotion itself, and periodic work to assess the site’s visibility.

Of course, just take it all at once and do it SEO promotion on your own is unrealistic. In this case, I offer you articles to help you that already reveal the essence of all the above steps in action!

This completes the step-by-step instructions! I am sure that you will be able to find answers to many questions in it. Good luck in your independent search engine promotion!

Sincerely, Your Maxim Dovzhenko

P.S. In my opinion, this is my most serious post on my blog in 3.5 years of its existence! Therefore, I will be glad and grateful to all readers who will share the address of this post with their friends!

Thank you!

Today I want to talk about what SEO is, whether you need it and how it really works. There is enough information on the Internet on this issue, but there is a lot of water and myths that confuse and give rise to new myths.

Do you need SEO?

CertainlyNo

This material will contain all the information you need. The material is updated and updated. It will be useful to both practitioners and website owners who work with SEO contractors. You can ask all questions in the comments.

Topics of the material

What is SEO? Terms and definition

The term SEO can be defined as follows:

• SEO in a general sense is a comprehensive process of working on a website to increase the number of responses associated with the pages of your website in search results for keywords and attracting visitors to them;
• SEO in the professional sense is the optimization of a collection of documents (website pages) to increase visits to the site by users from search engines and/or raise positions on queries for the landing page;
• SEO is an acquisition channel target audience from search engines;
• SEO is a way to influence the formation of search results for certain search queries.

SEO or contextual advertising?

Let's figure out which is more profitable. Let me make a reservation right away that these are two different channels that have both pros and cons. It is most effective to use them together.

There is no clear answer which is better. It depends on your topic and resources. If you have a sufficient budget, then it is advisable to combine 2 channels at once. Especially on initial stages, when there is no tangible traffic from organic search results yet. Over time, it will be necessary to conduct an analysis to determine the effectiveness and return on investment of each channel. Based on the data obtained, conclude what works best for you.

You can analyze the results and study competitors’ websites to determine whether SEO promotion is right for you. If there is appropriate search demand (which means there is traffic), as well as competitors in organic search results that match your type, you can use the SEO channel. The logic is simple: if someone is already receiving traffic using this tool, then there is nothing stopping you from attracting this audience.

There are pitfalls in both contextual advertising and SEO optimization. For example, a specialist may incorrectly configure contextual advertising and drain the budget. Likewise, the optimizer may not achieve results in 6-12-18 months due to low qualifications, outdated knowledge and lack of experience.

The screenshot below shows an engineering plumbing store, for which I am involved in SEO promotion:

The graph shows that SEO provided several times more targeted traffic than context. As a result, the client abandoned paid advertising and organic traffic was enough for him. Although, perhaps due to the refusal of traffic from another channel, he lost some clients. That is why I recommend using all channels as much as possible, if they are effective and the cost of attracting a client suits you.

What should you pay attention to?

I have written detailed step-by-step instructions for SEO website promotion. Study it, follow all the steps and get the result.

In short, the stages of work can be divided as follows:

• Preparatory stage
  • competitor analysis;
• Internal website optimization
  • formation of title, description, headings h1-h6;
  • content work + copywriting;
  • linking the site to distribute the internal weight of the site;
• External website optimization
  • work with reference mass;
  • social signals, etc.

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments. The material is updated as necessary.

How much does SEO website promotion cost?

The entire budget for website promotion can be divided into 2 general groups: temporary work costs and direct project costs. And the first group takes up a significant part of the budget, especially when it comes to SEO in the Russian market.

If we consider in detail, we get:

• A project manager is a person who is responsible for the entire project. Can control not only the work of the SEO channel, but also others.
• Analytics - constant analysis of results;
• Development - entering the assigned technical tasks to optimize the site;
• Automation and tools - doing everything manually is very time-consuming, expensive and difficult. Must be able to work with various tools;
• Optimization is the work of an SEO specialist to draw up technical specifications, work with reference mass, semantic core, etc.
• Content is not only texts and pictures, but also working with product cards, posting prices and many other expenses.

You can do EVERYTHING on your own, you can delegate something, or you can combine several stages in one person. But even if you did it all yourself (and I already gave you a link to the instructions above), then you will have time costs. Let's talk about them separately.

Temporary work expenses

This is the main investment in the project. As in any field, you can find very, very cheap, medium and expensive SEO specialists here. And this does not mean that an expensive optimizer will not let you down. People either know how to work and do it well, or they don’t.

But, as in any field, a good specialist knows his worth! If he is well-versed (practically, theoretically, instrumentally) and sees a solution to your problem (or at least is ready to find it), the services will be expensive. This happens due to SEO features:

• There are still many unscrupulous specialists on the market. Clients get burned several times until they come to a decision: either abandon this channel; or allocate a significant budget for an expert.
• The result is not stable and depends on the search engine. It is too difficult to predict and there are practically no guarantees. No matter how anyone tries to give them to you, this is not a 100% guarantee of getting places in organic search results or receiving traffic from search engines.
• The amount of work depends very much on the site. While certain topics have their own standard hours, it is impossible to determine them in SEO. For example, in a car service we can set a certain amount of time for various jobs: changing oil, tires, wheels and so on. And in SEO it is impossible to determine this indicator even for collecting the semantic core. On one site it will take 5 hours, on another it can last weeks or months.

Even working with the semantic core, which needs to be compiled correctly and correctly, requires a qualified specialist. You can find guys who work cheap per hour, but the number of hours to complete the same task will differ significantly. Some will do it in a week, others in a year. And it’s not a fact that the quality of the latter is better.

Should you hire a specialist or hire a contractor (remote worker or company)?

I come across this question all the time. Some clients believe that it is much more profitable to hire a specialist who will work only on their project. It's more profitable and cheaper. Usually these conversations come not from the business owner, but from hired managers who do not see the whole picture.

Let's figure it out:

• The salary in Moscow for a good SEO optimizer is about 100,000 rubles. In other cities there are smaller numbers, but sooner or later a specialist will demand a promotion or find a job remotely in Moscow;
• a person needs to organize workplace— these are expenses for renting premises, equipment, furniture, etc.;
• tax and pension contributions;
• You also need to invest your money and time in the development and control of an employee;
• payment of sick leave and vacations;
• and another expense item is spending on projects: the budget for working with links, content, and so on.

It is profitable to build your own SEO department if you are a large company. Otherwise, the costs will be many times more expensive than cooperation with a remote specialist or company.

In addition, an optimizer that works only on your project does not develop. He will start to lag behind and will not be able to apply new features from other areas that your competitors don’t even think about.

Do you need SEO and what format of work is up to you to choose.