What is SEO?

High website positions in Google search results are one of the main factors for business success in the 21st century. According to research Smart Insights shows that the click-through rate (CTR) for the first position in search results is 39.8%, for the second – 18.7%, and for the third – 10.2%. The tenth position yields only a 1.6% CTR. And this is clearly not enough.

Clearly, the goal of a modern business is to reach the top of search results and maintain high rankings, outperforming competitors. But how can this be achieved? This is where SEO (or search engine optimization) comes in.

What is SEO website promotion?

‌SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — is a set of measures aimed at improving a website's position in search results, which includes technical optimization, improving page structure, creating high-quality and optimized content, building link mass, and other activities.

We'll discuss the steps involved in search engine optimization a little later. First, it's important to understand how Google and other search engines' crawlers work. And in reality, not everything is obvious here.

How do search robots work?

So, let's say you already have a working website and you create a new page (for example, a product page). At first, it's in a kind of "vacuum"—search engines don't see it, and therefore, it doesn't appear in Google search results. But then search robots (web crawlers) take over, and they work as follows:

1. They visit web pages they already know and follow internal links to find new or updated pages. A webmaster can help web crawlers by adding a sitemap, which contains a list of all the site's pages.
2. Search robots analyze the page, its content, meta tags, and structure. Information about the content is stored in the search engine's database, or index.
3. When a user searches for information in a search engine, the system analyzes their query, compares it with indexed pages, and generates search results for them, which will include your page.

At first glance, it seems simple enough. But in practice, achieving top search results for relevant keywords requires considerable effort and time, especially in highly competitive niches.

Advantages of SEO over other types of promotion

Comprehensive SEO promotion is a complex, time-consuming, and quite expensive process, which, moreover, does not provide instant results. However, it does offer a number of important advantages that other promotion formats lack:

• Attracting organic traffic. You can attract a large number of interested customers who are looking specifically for your products or services.
• Long-term effect. Even if you completely stop SEO efforts at some point, your site will continue to maintain its rankings for some time, unlike contextual or targeted advertising.
• Relatively small investments. You might say we're contradicting ourselves, but that's not true. SEO can indeed require significant financial investment at first, but over time, maintaining high rankings can be done relatively inexpensively.

It's important to understand that search engine optimization is a long-term strategy. If you need results "here and now," it's better to consider contextual advertising or social media targeting. However, don't view them as an alternative to SEO. Rather, consider them as a complement to your promotion strategy for faster results.

What does SEO include?

As stated at the outset, SEO is a complex, multi-layered process that requires a serious approach at all stages of promotion. It includes technical optimization, collecting and systematizing the semantic core (keywords), on-page and off-page optimization, UX/UI improvements, content creation and updating, and more.

While some SEO steps can be easily accomplished by a website owner independently, others require specialist assistance. Let's take a closer look at these steps.

Stages of website search engine promotion

Let's imagine you're just planning to launch your own website and want to quickly reach the top search results for relevant keywords. First, in this case, we always recommend ordering a service. SEO at the development stage This will simplify and reduce the cost of subsequent activities. Secondly, you will need to complete nine fundamental steps for effective search engine optimization. More details on each of these are below.

Niche analysis and competitor audit

Before taking any SEO actions, you need to thoroughly analyze your niche and competitors, clearly determine what market segment you operate in, who you will be competing with, and what strategies they are using.

Preliminary research necessarily includes keyword analysis, an analysis of competitors' content strategies, their off-site promotion methods, and other factors. This way, you can identify the SEO strengths and weaknesses of other companies in your niche, find optimal promotion strategies, and avoid the same mistakes.

Technical audit of the website

If you already have a website, it's necessary to conduct a thorough audit to identify and fix technical errors that hinder indexing or negatively impact rankings. This step typically includes checking page load speed, 404 errors, setting up sitemaps and robots.txt files, optimizing for different devices, duplicate content, and other aspects that impact SEO.

Compilation of a semantic core

A semantic core is a list of keywords and phrases (search queries) that potential customers will use to find your website in search results. At this stage, SEO specialists collect a pool of keywords, systematize them, and distribute them across the website pages to achieve maximum relevance. It's important that the keywords reflect your website's topic, have sufficient potential to attract target audiences, and serve as the basis for further optimization of the website's content and structure.

Working on the website structure

A clear and understandable structure is important not only for visitors but also for search engines. As we mentioned earlier, web crawlers don't analyze the entire site, but rather navigate between pages, much like a normal person. Therefore, for effective SEO, it's crucial to build logical and intuitive navigation, organize pages, maintain a proper hierarchy, and ensure all necessary sections are present. A well-organized structure helps improve indexing and user experience.

Filling pages with content

High-quality, unique, and optimized content is one of the fundamental ranking factors. With each new search algorithm update, Google is becoming increasingly demanding of content quality. It's crucial that your texts don't just contain relevant keywords. They must be unique, provide value to the reader, and engage them. The days of low-quality, spammy texts from the early 2000s are long gone. Today, they can only cause harm.

Micro-markup

Microdata is a special type of website markup that helps search bots better understand your content. It highlights the most important elements of a page, such as products, services, reviews, and so on. Implementing microdata improves your website's visibility in search results and helps display rich snippets in search results, attracting more user attention.

Internal linking

Internal linking is a network of links between website pages that helps distribute page weight, speeds up indexing, and simplifies page navigation for visitors.

It's crucial that your website doesn't have so-called "orphan pages." These are pages that aren't linked to other pages or sections. They rank poorly, and users have virtually no chance of reaching them.

External optimization

Off-page SEO is a set of website promotion activities performed outside of the website itself. The primary goal of this type of optimization is to attract incoming links to your site from other authoritative and relevant resources. The more sites that link to you, the more authoritative your site appears in the eyes of search algorithms. This also positively impacts your brand reputation.

External optimization may include guest posting, paid placement of texts on third-party resources, creating your own PBN network, expert publications in online publications, crowd marketing And so on. It's important to remember that quality, not quantity, is what matters. One incoming link from a popular and authoritative site can be far more effective than ten links from less authoritative ones.

Social media promotion

SMM promotion helps increase brand awareness, attract targeted traffic to your website, and improve engagement with your audience. Audience engagement can be achieved in a variety of ways: by creating and publishing engaging content, running contests, actively interacting with subscribers, and running targeted advertising. Social media activity is also a powerful social signal, which also influences website rankings.

Technical aspects of SEO

We won't go into detail about every technical aspect of SEO, as each is the subject of a separate, larger article. But we'll at least cover the basics:

• Website loading speed. The faster your website pages load, the better. The optimal load time is 1-3 seconds. The longer a page takes to load, the higher the bounce rate, which in turn negatively impacts rankings. To speed up loading, you can optimize your code, use file compression, leverage a CDN, etc.

• Mobile optimization. In 2016, the number of website visits from mobile devices exceeded 501,000. In 2021, it reached 681,000. And by 2024, the figure is approaching 751,000. Therefore, website responsiveness and optimization for mobile devices is a critical aspect of modern SEO.
• HTTPS protocol. HTTPS is a secure connection protocol that has replaced the now-obsolete HTTP. It's an important ranking factor—sites using HTTP have virtually no chance of appearing in search results.

• XML sitemap. An XML sitemap helps search engines index your website's pages faster and more thoroughly. It should be as complete and up-to-date as possible. Therefore, it should be updated regularly.
• Robots.txt file. As mentioned earlier, this file controls search engine robots' access to website pages and improves indexing. It can also be used to completely exclude unnecessary objects from the index, such as duplicate content in the footer or header, technical sections, and so on.
• URL structure. URLs should be clear, readable, and reasonably short. Preferably, they should use keywords relevant to the given page.
• Internal linking. We've already discussed this before. Just a reminder that a website shouldn't have "orphaned" pages that aren't linked to other pages or sections.
• Meta tags (title, description). The title is a short, descriptive page title that reflects the page's essence and content. It can be up to 60 characters long. The description is an extended page description of up to 160 characters. They should be unique for different pages and include keywords to increase click-through rate (CTR) in search results.

• Semantic markup (Schema.org). It helps search engines better understand the page content and can improve the display of snippets in search results.
• Image optimization. Image compression helps speed up page loading, and alt attributes with keywords improve rankings. We recommend using your own unique images or those purchased from photo stocks. Please remember that graphic content is subject to copyright.

In fact, there are many more technical aspects to SEO. We've only mentioned a few of the most important ones.

Website page indexing algorithm

Indexing consists of three main stages:

• Crawling. Search robots visit your website's pages and analyze them.

• Indexing. Bots analyze page content, including text, images, videos, meta tags, and more, and store the resulting information in an index to subsequently provide this information to search engine users in organic search results.

• Updating the index. Search robots regularly review already indexed pages, update data, and keep them up-to-date to ultimately provide users with more relevant information.

Accordingly, to maintain high rankings, it's important not only to create high-quality content but also to regularly update and keep it relevant. Otherwise, pages will gradually lose rankings, and competitors' sites will take their place in search results. This once again proves that search engine optimization is an ongoing process that requires a comprehensive approach.

Types of SEO optimization

If you've already studied SEO, you've probably encountered the terms "white hat," "gray hat," and "black hat" SEO. But what's the difference between them, and why should you only use white hat SEO methods? Let's find out.

White, gray and black schemes

So what are these schemes?

• White hat SEO schemes — these are the promotion methods and tactics recommended by Google. Essentially, everything we've listed above is considered white hat promotion methods. These include high-quality content, keyword optimization, and on-page and off-page optimization.
• Gray-hat SEO schemes These are practices that border on the permissible and may violate some search engine guidelines. For example, buying incoming links to build a site's link mass, content farming (creating large amounts of low-quality content), and using PBNs (Private Blog Networks)—networks of sites that link to each other to artificially boost authority. While not directly prohibited by Google, such practices can still lead to unpredictable results and penalties from search engines.
• Black hat SEO schemes These are promotion methods that are strictly discouraged by search engines. These include excessive keyword use, hidden text or links, automated link generation, bulk purchase of external links, copying other people's content, and so on. While this approach may eventually help you quickly and inexpensively reach the top of search results, it's more likely to result in penalties, including complete removal of the site from search results.

We strongly advise against using gray-hat or, especially, black-hat SEO methods. The risks are too high.

Factors for successful website optimization

Finally, here's a basic website optimization checklist you can follow:

• Technical aspects: Increasing loading speed, adapting for mobile devices, using a secure HTTPS connection protocol and an SSL certificate, improving the URL structure, configuring Robots.txt and Sitemap files.
• Internal optimization: creating unique Title and Description for pages, using headings of different levels (H1, H2, H3, etc.), using keywords, creating high-quality and unique content, internal linking, and implementing micro-markup.
• External optimization: obtaining incoming links from authoritative external resources, online reputation management, social media promotion, and strengthening social signals.
• Local optimization: creating a Google My Business profile, using geo-referenced keywords (city, region), collecting and managing reviews, encouraging customers to share reviews and recommendations.
• Analytics and monitoring: using Google Analytics and other analytics tools, regularly analyzing traffic and user behavior, monitoring positions and keywords, constantly studying competitors, their strategies and positions in search results.