What is SEO optimization? Understanding Google in 2024 can help more people Find You!

The main factors that affect the SEO of a website

Many people think that the selling point of SEO is ranking, and there is nothing wrong with that, but they pay too much attention to the results and ignore the process. From a literal point of view, everyone can understand that Search Engine Optimization emphasizes optimization, but optimization is not a one-step success, but a gradual meeting of Google’s various requirements. So, do you meet all of Google’s requirements to be ranked first? The answer is no! Even some of Google’s web pages are not 100% optimized, let alone other websites. There are too many factors that affect the SEO of the website, such as concise and accurate code, clear architecture, PC and mobile response, server settings, reasonable internal link building, website access speed, keyword layout, language settings, canonical settings, security certificates, sufficient social media exposure, high-quality external links, content marketing, and a fixed update frequency on the website. Content originality, user experience, visitor behavior, and more all affect Google’s ratings.

1 – What is SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a comprehensive score made by the search engine for the optimization of various indicators of the website. This score is calculated in real time and will affect the natural ranking results, so the search ranking of the website will fluctuate at any time. Getting a good ranking doesn’t mean you can do it once and for all. SEO is like a race with no end. Google is the referee between you and countless competitors. You may fall behind others in the first half, but as long as you continue to run according to the rules of the game, you will definitely have a chance to catch up from behind in the second half. In addition to technology, this game is also about explosive power and endurance.

To understand Google SEO optimization in the simplest terms: achieving good rankings on Google leads to good traffic, which can then be converted into sales and brand exposure.

There are many explanations of SEO on the Internet. There is no need to go into details here. This article only uses simple and easy-to-understand examples to deepen your understanding of SEO.

After more than ten years of transformation, Google has become more and more perfect, and those days of hiding things from Google are over. If you want to do a good job in SEO for your website, please honestly follow Google’s optimization guidelines to improve your website. As SEO teaching experts, we should not just throw Google’s optimization guide to our clients. How each of Google’s scoring factors is implemented is exactly the meaning of our existence.

Search Engine Optimization (Search Engine Optimization) includes on-site optimization and off-site optimization. After optimization, the website complies with the search engine’s operating rules, thereby gaining recognition and natural ranking. These two optimizations are the focus of SEO.

2 – With so many social media now, is it still necessary to do website SEO?

Mobile phone users should have noticed that the search terms they have used in apps will appear in your commonly used social media software from time to time. This is actually recommendation information issued by the media based on your search history. Even if you no longer pay attention to those search terms, the system will continue to recommend them for a period of time. In this social media marketing model, customers are passive and the quality of website traffic will not be very good. But SEO is just the opposite. It attracts customers to come to your website. What you have to do is to rank products and brands so that customers can fully understand product details and even customer reviews through search. Such website visitors are of high quality. Whether you are doing B2B or B2C, SEO is the best way to promote your business.

PPC is pay-per-click advertising, and you only need to spend money to get results in the short term. It is like a faucet. As long as it is turned on, the flow will continue, but as soon as the faucet is turned off, the water supply will stop immediately. Without certain strength, it will be difficult to withstand high bids; sometimes you will suffer losses due to malicious clicks, and the traffic will be relatively single.

SEO is not as immediate as PPC. It may take longer in the early stage and cost more. However, as long as the ranking is improved, you only need to do a good job in SEO updates and maintenance in the future, and pay attention to the latest changes in Google, and you can maintain your natural ranking for a long time. In addition to increasing brand revenue, SEO can also gain Google’s trust. In the long run, SEO costs are actually lower than PPC. If you have sufficient budget, you can also do PPC and SEO at the same time. In the early stage, PPC will be used as an assistant to drive website traffic. After SEO improves the website ranking, you can slowly reduce PPC expenses.

Comparison of website traffic source channels

3-Important factors affecting website Google SEO

3.0.1 – Clean and accurate code

In order to build websites quickly and at low cost, current website building companies often consider e-commerce customers such as shopify, wix, shopline, weebly, ueshop… this kind of SaaS visual self-service website building platform. For websites that require secondary development of backend source code, most websites use open source website building platforms such as wordpress, Magento, Woocommerce, Opencart… For example, some corporate official websites that tend to provide service technologies or solutions generally develop their own websites, that is, they do not rely on any website building platform and develop their own back-end and front-end code. There is a situation where the html code is missing on the website, the most common ones are h tags and p tags. As shown below:

3.0.2 – Clear Architecture

3.0.3 – Responsive Website

A responsive website means that the same URL is readable under different browsing settings. The website structure will not be deformed due to the enlargement or reduction of the browser window, and the text content will not become small and difficult to read. Unclear text.

3.0.4 – Server Stability and Settings

If the website’s server frequently shuts down or loads slowly, on the one hand, the search engine will not be able to access or will be delayed, which will directly affect the authority of the website. On the other hand, when visitors are unable to access or the website is slow to open and the chance of closing the page increases, the bounce rate of the website increases. Both reasons will prompt Google to determine that it is not a popular website, thereby affecting SEO rankings.

One week after the website page is submitted to Google Search Console, after excluding the noindex tag and the disallow in robots that prevent indexing, if there is still an obvious problem with the index, for example, the TD of the web page is completely different from the TD indexed by Google or something. If the submission cannot be indexed, it may be caused by improper server settings or conflicts between multiple set conditions, thus affecting SEO rankings.

3.0.5 – Logical relationship of internal link construction

Although we will make a sitemap for the website, it does not mean that the website can be woven into a beautiful network that is conducive to capturing search engines. The main menu of the website is the easiest for search engines to crawl, so whether the main menu can serve as a good bridge for key SEO pages requires optimization. In the planning of internal links, we must prevent search engines from entering dead ends and crossing single-plank bridges, as shown in Figure A below. If the SEO page selects page A under the directory on the third page of the show case, then we will try to think of the path for search engines to enter page A. What is it like? How many roads are there? From the picture below, it is easy to see that the search engine will crawl to its directory page page1 through the first-level menu show case, then enter Page 3, and finally enter the SEO page.

Figure A

This path is extremely narrow and is not conducive to Google ranking optimization. Although it is better to select a page in Page 1 as an SEO page than to select a page in Page 3 as an SEO page, once our showcase directory updates articles, the new articles will be at the top, and the old articles will go to the top. Press back until you exit Page 1 and go to Page 2 or Page 3, so this method is not a long-term solution. A better way is to use other pages to build a path for the SEO page to guide the search engine in (see Figure B below). Use related articles and popular categories to associate articles.

Picture B

3.0.6 – Website access speed

What is the best website response speed? This is a relatively stupid question, just like asking how beautiful a woman who loves beauty should be. The answer cannot be quantified. The response time of the website has a great impact on SEO. It is the first impression of the website by visitors. A Financial Times researcher tested this by gradually increasing the latency of media websites and observing changes in the number of articles read by visitors. and got the following result:

Add 1 second, and the number of article reads decreases by 4.9%

Add 3 seconds, and the number of article reads decreases by 7.9%

Other research tests show that mall-type websites have the same experience:

When the Walmart webpage loads in 2.4 seconds, the conversion rate is 1.9%, and when the loading speed is 3.3 seconds, the conversion rate is 1.5%

For every 100 milliseconds of delay in Amazon’s web page loading speed, sales drop by 1%.

It can be seen that if a web page has a high bounce rate or a short dwell time due to delay, it will inevitably cause Google to re-examine its value and thus reduce the SEO ranking.

3.0.7 – Keyword Layout

What are keywords (seo keywords)?

Keywords are words that visitors type into a search engine to find search results. The search engine uses the search keywords as instructions to match relevant results in a very short time and recommend them to the searcher. The search engine recommends based on the possible motivations of the word you are searching for and the results you may want to see. Regarding this, Google is The best, so it is the most popular among all search engines, because the results recommended by Google are always more in line with searchers’ needs.

How should the keywords of the website be laid out?

The layout of keywords in the website is a focus of SEO optimization ranking. In order to attract the attention of visitors, it is usually placed in a more conspicuous place. The correlation between the keyword and the web page content should be high, the number of times it appears on a page, and what content to write, you can use the top-ranked web pages as a reference. In order to highlight keywords in the layout, the h tag is essential. It can help the search engine identify which text is the focus of the web page, so that it can calculate and recommend search results to visitors. It is worth noting that we cannot deliberately stuff keywords. This will be considered by search engines as malicious manipulation of ranking intentions and will be punished. It is best for us to treat the search engine as a visitor, and if you want to persuade visitors to stay on your page for a long time, you need to stand firmly from the visitor’s perspective and think about what content they want to see when they come in, and whether you There is content that attracts them. If you are obviously buying jeans, and in order to attract users who are buying skirts, you deceive the visitors that you are buying skirts, the result can be imagined, they will definitely wear them. When customers enter your store and find that there are no jeans, they will feel cheated. If you are cheated, you will close the web page (i.e. jump out of the website). When the bounce rate of the web page is higher than that of other websites, the search engine will judge based on people’s reaction to this page that the web page may be suspected of deceiving customers, or your website cannot provide Visitors want to see what they want to see, so they will demote you or lower your ranking. Therefore, the layout of keywords must be natural and prepared with good planning. We can arrange the content in the form of questions and answers, such as 5 questions with keywords and 5 replies with keywords to form several paragraphs. article.

3.0.8 – Language Settings

If our target market is several different countries, then our website needs to have different corresponding language versions for each country. This allows users to choose the language they are familiar with when visiting and quickly obtain the consultation they need to know. But after we solve the problem for users, we still need to consider from the perspective of Google, a search engine, how to facilitate Google in different countries to identify which language version it should crawl according to the guidelines. This is what we need Hreflang Tag to tell Google.

What is Hreflang tag?

The Hreflang tag is an identification instruction launched by Google for multi-language websites. When a website has different language versions, Google from different countries needs an instruction to navigate which language version it should crawl after entering the website. This is the Hreflang tag. effect. Without this tag, Google will lose its way. For example: when you are on google.co.jp, you hope that the Japanese version of your page will be ranked, but it may backfire, and the Chinese version of the page will be ranked. Countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia all use English as their native language. We can use the English versions of Google-designated websites in these countries as the targets for its crawling. Hong Kong and Taiwan will regard Traditional Chinese as their native language. We use Traditional Chinese as the crawling object of Hong Kong Google google.com.hk and Taiwan Google google.com.tw, ​​so that the ranked ones can be specified language versions.

Language code reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes

Country code reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2

But it should be noted that our website does not have a language version for all countries, but needs to be added according to its own market, because each new language version requires a lot of translation work, and Google does not like machines. Although we can use other translation tools to avoid the suspicion of Google, we should not underestimate Google’s IQ. After years of improvement, Google is very smart in judging the quality of articles. Human translation can use emotional, vivid and rich language to describe, and can show the beauty and charm of language, while machine translation can only be more accurate for declarative sentences, and the translated articles with descriptive sentences will not be fluent and have obvious problems. Google will definitely know the grammatical errors, and it will give people a very inferior feeling, which will greatly reduce the impression of the website.

3.0.9 – Mirror page Canonical label settings

What is the Canonial label? What is it used for? Does it have any impact on SEO?

The Canonical tag (eg) is used to tell search engines to use the specified page as the canonical version of its corresponding duplicate page. The purpose of using Canonial is to effectively prevent websites from being penalized by Google for duplicate content. It has a positive impact on SEO, stating the guidelines for duplicate pages to Google, and reducing Google’s crawling and calculation work for duplicate pages. Sometimes our website will automatically add some tags, causing one page to automatically generate URLs with multiple paths. Sometimes we don’t even know how many pages are generated. In this case, we need to add the page that generates multiple URLs to one page. The same canonial tag solves one problem.

3.1.0 – SSL Security Credentials

What is SSL security certificate? What does it do?

 

An SSL security certificate is an encryption protection protocol that provides communication security and data integrity when a website interacts with a server. Its function is to prevent the browser’s data from being intercepted or eavesdropped during the request to the server. For example: when a person logs in to online banking, when he fills in his account and password in the login form of the website and clicks submit, this process is transmitting data to the server. If the website is equipped with SSL, it will process the login data. Encryption prevents criminals from deciphering encrypted content and ensures that your account and password cannot be seen or obtained by others.

How SSL certificates work

1. Browser connects to SSL-protected website

2. The browser requests the Web server identification

3. The web server responds by sending a copy of the SSL certificate to the browser

4. The browser checks if it is a trusted SSL certificate, and if so, proceeds to send a signal to the server

5. The web server returns a digital signature to confirm the activation of the SSL encryption package

How to know if a website has SSL certification?

Check whether the website has a small lock icon on the left side of the address bar. If there is, it means that the website you are visiting is protected by SSL.

3.1.1 – Brand social media exposure

What are the benefits of brand social media exposure? Does it help Google ranking?

Brand social media exposure can enhance your brand image and help people get to know you from other channels. This is in line with how people consider a brand. When people want to learn about a brand, in addition to learning about you from the official website, they will also look at other people’s evaluations of you from some social platforms. Through various platform information Collect, and finally draw a comprehensive conclusion to decide whether to buy or not. Google’s awareness of a brand will also be obtained from various channels, such as: Facebook, Youtube, Linkedin, Integram, Twitter… If a brand intentionally operates these social media platforms and has certain interactions with visitors, it will continue to be in the social media. If the group platform remains active, then Google will win your trust based on the positive effect of the brand on the Internet, and then give some blessings to the brand’s official website, that is, it will give certain bonus points to the SEO of the website.

3.1.2 – Content Marketing

Content marketing is to use graphic messages to tell people the story of your brand and products. This is very important to Google. Whether your products or services are presented well depends on whether you know how Google judges them. We should Look at Google as a person. In fact, Google is much smarter than you think. Why do people nowadays only ask to be the homepage of Google? Because the results recommended on Google’s homepage can fully meet the needs of searchers, many people don’t have to turn to the second or third page to find the results they want. Google knows very well what you want to see when searching for a word, and it will accurately recommend to you the destination webpage that best matches you. For example: you are a water dispenser manufacturer or wholesaler. Then your customer base should be B-end customers. If you want to use this word as the SEO word of your website, it won’t work, because Google will treat people who search for “water dispenser” as C-end customers, which means when When someone searches for this word, it guesses that this person probably wants to buy a water dispenser, rather than buying water dispensers in bulk, so Google will recommend a shopping mall website to the searcher. If you are a wholesale production website, you should do the same. The matching words, such as manufacturer, supplier, factory…, although the search volume is low, it must be accurate. Only by understanding Google’s underlying logic can you lock in your customer base. Back on the topic of content marketing, the biggest problem with our client’s website is that the product description is too simple. They only put some product parameter tables. I think this is enough. I think their product content is for people who understand their industry, so There is no need to treat visitors as novices, this is a big mistake. We might as well look at the top-ranked sites on Google to confirm whether the results are the same as what you think. Youyiyu has been doing Google seo for more than ten years (17 years as of 2022). What we know about Google I am more willing to lower my profile and get to know you from the basics, rather than treating myself as an industry expert. Except for shopping mall websites, the text information of those pages that can be listed on the Google homepage results is about 1,500 words on average. Most of the text content on the page is nothing more than the following:

Home/About content suggestions include:

1. Who we are (Who we are)

2. What we offer (what products or services we provide)

3. High lights (highlight moment)

4. Hot products/services

5. Work flow

6. Meet the experts

7. Business partner

8. Our story (development story)

9. Patent / Certificate (Certificate of Honor)

10. Why Choose Us (Why Choose Us)

11. How to order (How to place an order)

12. Latest Blog /New (latest news)

13. Comments from customer (customers’ evaluation of us)

14. Factory & Facilities

Product description content should include:

1. What is, product application (meaning of the product word, what scope the product is used for)

2. Material / type (material / type)

3. How does it work (how the product works)

4. Industry information (industrial development, current situation and pain points)

5. Examples of products/services (representative cases, which industries this product can be used in)

6. Benefit of products/service (the benefits of the product/service, list style)

7. Data report; figure/graphic (relevant experimental data report or graphic proof and advantages)

8. FAQ (questions others may ask about this product)

……

Case Study content recommendations include:

1. Customer’s Backstory

2. What problems did the customer encounter?

3. How did you help customers solve their problems?

4. Customer satisfaction with you

……

In addition, blog pages are also the preferred SEO pages because they can be expressed in large text, which is easier for Google to understand the information. The marketing effect of blog content is no less than that of product pages. It is recommended to present your products to people in the form of questions such as What, Why, Which, How… and it is recommended to use positioning forms for each small topic so that people can quickly locate their feelings. Topics of interest.

3.1.3 – Fixed update frequency

The determination of website content update frequency should be based on a comprehensive consideration of multiple factors to ensure that it meets the requirements of search engines while maintaining the quality and depth of content. Here’s a summary of strategies for website content update frequency:

1. Quality first: Always prioritize content quality, ensuring that every piece published provides value to readers.

2. Audience needs: Understand audience expectations and preferences through user feedback and data analysis.

3. Resource assessment: Determine the amount of content that can be consistently produced based on team resources and capabilities.

4. Industry observation: Reference update frequencies and audience responses of other successful websites in the same industry.

5. Search engine behavior: Use tools to analyze search engine crawler behavior and understand their response to website updates.

6. Gradual increase: For new sites, gradually increase update frequency to cultivate search engine crawling habits.

7. Content diversification: Enrich website content through various forms such as articles, videos, images, podcasts, etc.

8. Long-term planning: Develop and follow a long-term content strategy and publishing schedule to ensure continuity and planning of content publication.

9. Moderate frequency: Avoid excessive updates; find a suitable frequency for your website to prevent affecting content quality and sustainability.

10. Effect monitoring: Regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the update strategy and make adjustments based on website performance and user behavior.

Remember, search engine optimization is a long-term process, and the key is to consistently provide high-quality content rather than simply pursuing update frequency.

3.1.4 – User experience

In pursuit of excellent user experience, a website should have the following key points: intuitive interface design for easy navigation, fast loading speed to reduce waiting, responsive layout to adapt to various devices, powerful search functionality for quick information location, and personalized recommendations to increase user satisfaction. Additionally, security protects user data, accessibility ensures all users can access the site, clear information architecture helps users understand the website structure, and effective feedback mechanisms promote website improvement. Multilingual support broadens the user base, community and customer support provide assistance, transparency lets users understand data usage, interactivity increases user engagement, and reliability guarantees stable website operation.

3.1.5 – Visitor behavior

Does your website have visitor tracking set up?

Visitor behavior refers to the activities and actions of visitors on your webpage, such as clicking buttons, filling out forms, downloading files, copying emails, and so on. By setting up a trigger event (Browser Trigger) in Google Tag Manager (GTM) for certain pages using unique div IDs or classes, and then setting up a Goal name for these triggers in the Google Analytics (GA) backend, you can analyze customer intentions through Goal data over a period of time. This is a key focus of SEO data analysis.

For example, if a merchant selling women’s shoes wants to track sales of different shoe categories, they can assign a unique div ID or class name to the purchase buttons for each shoe type. Then, in the GTM backend, they can set up a trigger event (Browser Trigger). When someone purchases shoes by clicking this buy button, it will generate a trigger event. For instance, if I want to track the purchasing behavior for women’s high heels, I might set up a goal name called “fashion shoes” in the GA backend. After setting up this goal, I can obtain all purchase data for fashion shoes over a period of time.

4 – What is the process of doing SEO?

4.0.1 – Determine KPIs

1. Have a basic understanding of the overall situation of the website.

2. Know your budget. The budget determines the intensity of on-site optimization and the corresponding costs required for the number of keywords to be promoted.

3. Based on the above weight of your own website, evaluate what SEO words can be used within the budget, and set reasonable KPIs.

4.0.2 – Website specific analysis

1. Use Google Search Console to view the website’s performance report, such as: the number of impressions and clicks of traffic keywords, the website’s effective index pages, error pages, website external links, mobile device support status, etc.

Google search console background

2. Check the current status of the website as follows:

3. After the inspection report comes out, set optimization projects and evaluate the impact of optimization projects that cannot be done on Google SEO. You don’t need to complete all content optimization before doing Google SEO, and optimization is not a one-step process. Whether some optimization is necessary depends on the performance during the promotion process.

4.0.3 – Select Keywords

1. Determine key keywords based on the existing products of the website.

2. Use Google Adwords recommendations to get expansion words for key words.

Google ads keyword search volume query

3. Use tools to query keywords made by competitors. Available tools include semrush, ahrefs and similarweb.

SEM Rush Competitor Comparison

4. Search engine drop-down menu to expand keywords

Google search pull down list

5. Keywords searched by others

Google search Pople also ask

6. Related search keywords

Google search related searches

4.0.4 – Select a landing page

The number of keywords depends on whether the existing website has enough pages and whether there are corresponding pages. It is generally recommended to have 1-3 keywords per page. Be careful before choosing keywords. Don’t choose a bunch of keywords for your products and then find that the website page is not enough.

4.0.5 – Select keywords for implantation

Optimizing the website and selecting keywords can be done simultaneously, because keywords can be implanted during the optimization process to speed up the progress of on-site optimization. After the optimization is completed, please remember to use Google SEO tools to detect whether it meets the promotion standards. Not all website optimization projects are completed independently by Google SEO companies. If you want to achieve good Google SEO results, you also need to cooperate with Google SEO companies to update the content of the website.

4.0.6 – Create high-quality external links

External links are external links. Literally means connecting from outside websites, that is, cross-domain links. Why do we need external links? Just like if a country wants to enter the international market, it must first build multiple international routes. The more lines there are, the more diversified market bridges can be built. When making external links, avoid pornographic, gambling website external links and junk external links. After the external link page is indexed by Google, it means that a road has been successfully opened and an effective external link has been added. However, high-quality external links cannot be explained clearly in a few words. If you want to know more, please continue to pay attention to the Google SEO academic area. We will share some Google SEO courses in the future.

About website optimization

Optimizing the website and selecting keywords can be done simultaneously, because keywords can be implanted during the optimization process to speed up the progress of on-site optimization. After optimization is completed, please remember to use SEO tools to detect whether it meets the promotion standards. Not all website optimization projects are completed independently by SEO companies. If you want to achieve good SEO results, you also need to cooperate with the SEO company to update the content of the website.

External links are external links. Literally means linking in from an external website, that is, a cross-domain link. Why do we need external links? This is just like if a country wants to enter the international market, it must first build multiple international routes. The more lines there are, the more diversified market bridges can be built. When making external links, avoid pornographic, gambling website external links and junk external links. After the external link page is indexed by Google, it means that a road has been successfully opened and an effective external link has been added. However, high-quality external links cannot be explained clearly in a few words. If you want to know more, please continue to pay attention to the SEO academic area, and we will share some SEO courses in the future.

Follow other topics in the SEO industry :

How to use Google SEO optimization to develop overseas markets for corporate websites

How to optimize content during Google SEO optimization and promotion process

Google SEO optimization off-site traffic strategy to bring more traffic to your foreign trade website

Google SEO Ranking Optimization Guide: It’s difficult to do a good job in 3 ranking points even if you don’t think well.

A must-see for Google SEO! Google will no longer include PC websites that are not mobile-friendly

A large collection of SEO tools:

Keyword Tool:

Semrush:https://www.semrush.com/

Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/

Google Adwords: https://ads.google.com/

Website architecture and code detection

Screaming Frog: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

Google responsive detection tool:

https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly?utm_source=mft&utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=mft-redirect

The latest news from Google: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/

Google Beginner’s Guide: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.cn/zh-CN/cn/intl/zh-TW/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide-zh -tw.pdf

Google Search Console: https://search.google.com/search-console/about

Google Analytics: https://analytics.google.com/

Google Tag Manager: https://tagmanager.google.com/

Google YouTube：

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWf2ZlNsCGDS89VBF_awNvA/?sub_confirmation=1

Google structured testing tool: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/?hl=zh-TW

Website access speed tool Speed ​​Insight :

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?hl=zh-TW

Picture editing tools:

https://www.fotojet.com/tw/apps/?entry=edit

https://www.canva.com/

https://snappa.com/

Background image removal tool: https://www.remove.bg/

Remove video background tool: https://www.unscreen.com/?ref=removebgupload