As you begin learning the SEO ropes, you may feel like you’re learning a complex second language.

Don’t let that defeat you — you’ve got this, and SEO jargon doesn’t have to be a mystery. Use this glossary of SEO terminology to help orient yourself and understand the terms you need to know to succeed in search. 

Already a master of SEO lingo? Scroll down to the bottom for additional SEO resources, including a beginner’s and more advanced technical guides.

SEO Terms: A Glossary

A

Algorithm – A computer program used by search engines. This program allows them to retrieve data and deliver results for searches.

Algorithm Change – Refers to when search engines update or change the algorithms they use.

Authority – The signals search engines use to assess and “grade” sites and pages to determine rank in search engine results. 

B

Backlink – AKA inbound link. A link from another (3rd party) site to your site or one of your webpages.

Black Box – This term is used to describe Google’s esoteric programs. Google’s algorithm is a “black box” — we can observe it in action and see its effects, but can’t fully access the program itself or know everything about it. 

Black Hat SEO – Risky and ill-advised SEO tactics that Google frowns upon. These tactics are contrary to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Engaging in black hat SEO tactics can result in penalization or removal from search rankings. 

Competitor – Your competition in the market. Generally, they fall into two categories:

• Direct – they sell similar goods and services to a similar target audience.
• SEO – competitors who bid on the same keywords as you and increase competition for the same organic traffic. 

C

Crawler – The program(s) a search engine uses to crawl the web. AKA: Bot, Spider.

D

Domain – Your website’s name. It follows the ‘www.’ in the URL, and also what follows the @ symbol in an email address. For example, in ‘www.Domain.com’ the ‘Domain.com’ is the actual domain name.

G

Google – The most popular search engine. Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in September 1998. Google created a revolution in search — moving away from human-edited web directories and toward web crawling technology using an algorithm(s) to analyze and rank websites.

H

Heading – Also called H tags, they range from H1-H6. These tags designate sections of your content from the most important (H1) to the least (H6.) Heading tags, especially the H1, should always incorporate your target keywords.

Headline – An H1 tag. The most important of your headings, and should always include your keyword(s.)

Head Term – A keyword with high search volume (e.g. “email” with 1.2 million). Since head terms are popular search terms, it’s harder to rank for them. AKA: Head Keyword, Short-tail.

K

Keyword – The word or phrase you’re focusing on in your content. Keyword selection should be influenced by the terms your target audience is using in their online searches. Including keywords in your content helps search engines know what pages to surface in search results.

Keyword Research – A process of discovery. It helps you understand what keywords your audience uses in their searches and provides insight into the topics and themes most relevant to them. You also determine the keyword volume (frequency in search) and what competition exists for the term. All of this helps you determine the best keyword(s) to focus your efforts on.

Keyword Stuffing – Spam (Black hat SEO) tactic. It’s the practice of using a keyword too many times or using irrelevant keywords, in forced and unnatural ways. By doing this, spammers hope to rank higher in search results. It could result in page demotion or removal from search page rankings.

Knowledge Graph – Google’s database of knowledge. Contains data about keywords and search intent which is used to improve search results and surface relevant or related results. Displayed in a Knowledge Panel, or carousel, at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP.)

Knowledge Panel – A specific section of results in the SERP. Appears as a box at the top of the first page of Google’s search results (or right side of the page on desktop.)

L

Link – A connection between two sites or web pages that are created with HTML code. They’re integral to how sites and pages are graded by search engines and pivotal to site navigation.

Long-Tail Keyword – Multiple-word search terms. Usually highly specific. People who use long-tail keywords are known to display greater purchase intent. These keywords are less popular and it is normally easier to rank for them. E.g. “Email marketing” with 18k in search volume instead of “Email” with 1.2m in search volume.

M

Manual Action – The term Google uses to describe a penalty. This happens after a human reviewer manually reviews a site to verify whether or not it complies with Google’s Webmaster guidelines. If not, pages or sites can be demoted or entirely removed from search results.

Meta Description – The short blurb that describes what a search result is about that appears below the title and link on the SERP. It’s a tag added to the head section of an HTML document, it succinctly illustrates what the content on a webpage or site is all about. The more accurate and engaging your meta description, the better your Click Through Rate (CTR) will be. Include keywords.

O

Off-page SEO – SEO boosting activities and tactics that do not occur on your website. E.g. — brand awareness campaigns, social media marketing, offline marketing, and link building all help improve SEO without occurring on your actual website.

On-page SEO – The SEO boosting activities that occur on your website. This can include optimizing the HTML code across your site (heading tag, H tags, meta descriptions, etc.), publishing good content that targets the right audience and keyword(s), intuitive site navigation, and more.

Organic Search – AKA unpaid or natural search results. Organic search results are ranked and displayed in order of most helpful and relevant. The ranking is done in accord with search engine-specific algorithms. You do not and cannot pay for organic search result placement.

Outbound Link – Links that direct away from the domain they’re found on, these links direct visitors to other (3rd party) websites.

P

Pagerank – This algorithm measures the importance of a page based on not just the volume of links leading to it, but also the quality of those links. Google says, “Not all links are equal.”

Page Speed – How much time elapses before a webpage completely loads. This factor affects your search results ranking.

Paid Search – Search results whose position is paid for. These pay-per-click ads are marked “Ads” in Google search results and are placed above and sometimes below organic search results.

R

Rank – The placement of a specific webpage in organic search results concerning a specific query.

Ranking Factor – Ranking factors are the various things deemed important (or not) that all influence search engines’ respective algorithms. They help search engines understand where to place a webpage in search results. You can directly influence many ranking factors on your webpages and site.

S

Search Engine – Computer programs that index websites, webpages, and countless documents and files on the Internet. They make it possible for users to input queries and receive results from the search engine’s index. They’re created and updated over time using crawlers and the information and data therein are analyzed by algorithms.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The practice of optimizing a site and all of its content so that it’s highly visible and gets good placement in organic search results. Good SEO involves keyword research, understanding your audience, creating good and relevant content, and good website structure, navigation, and loading speed. A great SEO strategy addresses content and marketing, and technical elements, too.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP) – This page is full of the results provided by search engines after an online search is conducted. Results are sorted in order of relevance and helpfulness. SERPs normally include a list of no more than 10 links, but they can include other sections like:

• Ads
• Images
• Knowledge Panels
• Local Pack
• Shopping Results
• And more.

U

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) – This is the string of numbers and symbols located in the address bar at the top of your web browser, which includes all of the information your computer needs to find the right page, image, or document on a website. For example, “https://www.domain.com” is the URL for Domain.com.

Put these SEO terms to good use

It’s time now to build an SEO strategy that’ll help increase the visibility of your website and drive more traffic to it. As you do so, keep this glossary of SEO terms handy for use as a quick reference.

You don’t have to do it alone though. We’ve got the resources and tools you help you create that amazing SEO strategy of yours. 

SEO Resources

Check out these blog posts for more information, advice, and next steps:

A Guide to SEO Basics for Beginners

Achieving online success — whether that be launching a lucrative eCommerce business or hitting a milestone of 10k blog subscribers — is directly influenced by SEO. You can’t build a successful strategy on a shaky foundation, so start with this post if you’re new to search engine optimization. 

The Complete SEO Checklist for Blog Posts and Webpages

This helpful infographic lays out the 10 things you must have to achieve SEO perfection on your blog posts or webpages. Hang on to this one, you’ll come back to it as you create content for your site. 

For the Love of Your Business — SEO Strategies to Implement Now

When we wrote this post, we did so with your website’s best interests at heart. We consulted Mike, our resident SEO expert, and asked him for 10 elements that together, create an effective SEO strategy. Show your site how much you care about it by implementing the tactics covered here. 

SEO Audit Your Website in 2021 [Technical Guide]

Ready to level up your SEO game? This guide lays out your path. What does a website audit entail? What tools are available to you to conduct and track the audit? What should your goals be? We get into the minutiae in this post, but don’t let that deter you. Read this post, take action, and outperform your competitor in the SERPs.

How to Audit Your Online Presence in 2021

Not all SEO-boosting activities occur on your website (reference glossary above: Off-page SEO.) Not as technical as the previously mentioned resource, but just as thorough and equally as important. First, get your house in order with on-page SEO, and then, grow your off-site reputation with the strategies you learn about in this post. 

Keep this SEO Terms Glossary handy

Download this Glossary of SEO Terms to always have on-hand when you need it. 

SEO Checklist for Blog Posts

Do your keyword research.

It may feel tedious, but this is a game-changer. Aim for keywords that match the intent and lingo of your reader. 

There are many free keyword search tools available to help you choose the most targeted ones for your audience. 

Be smart about keyword usage.

Keyword stuffing is a no-no. Instead, work your keywords into your headlines, image alt tags, & meta description. 

A blog post stuffed with keywords reads awkwardly and can drive away your readers. Search engines will take note and won’t reward that behavior or tactic. 

Use supporting keywords too.

Throw some secondary keywords in too, like synonyms for your targeted keyword. Search engines pick up on this.

Include internal links.

Give visitors a chance to engage with other pages on your site by linking to them. This also signals to Google that people like your content.

Pro tip: Make sure those links are set to open in new tabs.

…and external links too.

Throw in some links to helpful content from other sites too. Search engines & visitors alike appreciate the nod to additional info that’s relevant.

Build relationships with other bloggers by giving them a heads up that you’ve linked to their site. You never know, they may reciprocate the favor.  

Keep it conversational.

Technical jargon can be uninviting and dissuade visitors from staying. Keep your writing at an 8th-grade reading level and use an active voice.

Use a tool like the Flesh-Kincaid reading scale to grade your writing’s reading level and adjust accordingly. 

Don’tcrowdyourwords.

Proper formatting can make or break you. Make use of white space, plus your H & title tags. The more skimmable your post, the better.

Nail your title.

Make sure to include your keywords and keep it under 60 characters so it isn’t truncated in search results. 

Finesse the URL.

Your URL should include your keywords, but don’t fill it with conjunctions, adjectives, and articles. Separate your words with dashes.

Update your meta descriptions.

And make ’em good. These short blurbs are often what capture a visitor’s attention. And of course, don’t forget to include your keyword!

Want to start a blog?

At Domain.com, we understand that you’re busy. That’s why we developed our AI-powered WebsiteBuilder. It’s here to help you get online fast without sacrificing quality. 

Prefer WordPress? We’ve got you covered with a great selection of curated, mobile-friendly themes and pre-installed plugins for optimal functionality. 

Let us help you find the perfect domain name and launch your blog to share your great ideas with the world. 

Do you want to make the most out of your website — increase your conversion rate, improve your SEO, and have the most engaging content? Because to do so you’ll need to audit your site on a regular basis.

In this post, we’re covering ways you can perform a review of your site so you know what’s working and what needs improvement.

How to Perform a Website Audit

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

In order to successfully audit your site, you need to know three things:

1. What a website audit entails.
2. Who your ideal audience is.
3. What your goals are.

The first because, well, how can you perform an audit without knowing what it is? And the second because your site should be designed with your ideal audience in mind. Any improvements you make to your site based on your audit should make life easier for them, not harder. Finally, you need to have identified your website goals. The improvements you make to your site should support your goals (e.g. – increase conversions by 5% month over month.)

Many people and online resources will tell you that a website audit has everything to do with SEO. While that is a large part of it, your site is more than just an SEO machine and we have to look at the bigger picture.

We appreciate BluLeadz’s definition of a website audit. They say that “a good website audit takes into account all the factors that can influence your website’s success: From your perspective, your customer’s, and Google’s.” Considering Google held 88.47 percent of the search engine market as of 2019, their perspective and opinion of your site is absolutely crucial to your success. Your customers’ perspective is essential, so part of your audit will revolve around reviewing the user experience of your website. And of course, your perspective is vital. Who knows your goals and motivations better than yourself? Now is the time to make sure your website is aligned to support them.

Website Review and Audit Tools

It’s difficult to determine where you should begin working on your site if you don’t have a solid understanding of how it’s currently performing. It’s best to first perform your audit and then plan your improvements based on the results.   

A good thing to do at the beginning of every website audit is use a tool built for that specific purpose. You can find both free and paid website audit tools by doing a quick Internet search. Many free tools require that you provide an email address in exchange for their services (it’s called lead generation), or you can pay for a tool to provide a more in-depth review of your site.  

Website Grader

HubSpot created a popular tool, Website Grader, that provides information on your site’s performance, mobile-friendliness, security, SEO, and more. Check out Domain.com’s grade below.

What isn’t pictured here is the plethora of information you’ll receive by starting your website audit with this beginner-friendly tool. You can use the insights from the audit to hone in on the areas where your site needs the most or immediate work. In fact, the last section, titled “What Should I Do Next?” lays it out for you.

Google’s Site Audit Tools

Google offers multiple tools to help you review and understand your website. Here are three of their resources that can best assist you with your audit.

PageSpeed Insights

The name, “PageSpeed Insights,” is pretty telling isn’t it? It’s a tool that “reports on the performance of a page on both mobile and desktop devices, and provides suggestions on how that page may be improved.”

Insights ranks your webpages using a numeric grade — 90+ is a fast page, 50-90 is middling, and anything below 50 is without a doubt a slow webpage.

Note that this tool only reviews the webpage URL that you supply, not your entire website at once. Depending on the size and complexity of your site, it may not be feasible to enter the unique URL for each and every one of your webpages.

Maximize the efficacy of this tool by identifying the most important pages on your site and reviewing those first. You can figure out what pages are most important and receive the most traffic by using heatmapping tools, or by utilizing the next Google tool in this list.

Google Analytics

Analytics provides an incredible amount of information and insight into your website. If you’ve never used it before, here’s a great beginner’s guide to Google Analytics to help you get started.

Now, some of you might be wondering why we’re focusing on this tool since it provides in-depth information on your site visitors’ behavior. But think about it: Your site visitors’ behavior, in large part, correlates to the quality and efficacy of your website and its content.

Have a slow loading site? You’re going to see some big bounce rates and small dwell times. People won’t hang around waiting for the page to load; instead, they’ll leave and find another faster loading website that suits their needs.

Google Analytics helps you identify your most popular and well-trafficked landing pages. These could be the pages that people are landing on from search results, other sites, etc. most often. Consider running these pages through the PageSpeed Insights tool to make them as good as can be before moving on to less trafficked pages.

Google Search Console

Once upon a time, Google Search Console was known as Google Webmaster Tools. We like the newer name, because it speaks to this tool’s purpose: to help you “…monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results.”

If you have a website, you can benefit from Search Console. It’ll tell you things like:

• How often your site appears in Google search results.
• What terms and queries people search by that lead to your site in the results.
• Indicate any issues you may be experiencing with indexing.
• And more!

Google provides instruction on getting started with Search Console here. The information and insights you gather from this tool will be instrumental in improving your website’s SEO and overall success.

Questions to Ask During a Website Audit

Going into things blindly isn’t a great plan. This is especially true for your website audit.

Before spending a lot of time with the resources we mentioned in the last section, make sure you know what questions they’re supposed to be helping you answer.

Auditing Your Website for the User Experience

Your website’s user experience is integral to its success.

When you create a user-friendly website, you’re really inviting those users to stay longer, interact more, and hopefully, convert (that just means they take the action you want for them to take — purchase, sign up for email, etc.) on your site.

To audit your site for user experience, ask yourself the questions below. (Bonus: Many of the improvements you’ll end up making for user experience will directly improve your SEO!)

• Do I know my target audience?
• Are my CTAs (call-to-actions) and content geared toward my audience?
  • Good CTAs are effective. They are clear and deliberate in telling someone what action to take.
• Is my marketing funnel optimized for these users?
• Is my site’s load time too slow or experiencing any issues? (If so, it could mean the answer to the following question is “Yes.”)
• Are my site visitors bouncing?
  • Follow up by looking into their dwell time.  
• Is my site mobile responsive?
  • If your site doesn’t display well on mobile devices, you’re missing out. As of the end of 2019 mobile devices drove the most website traffic, coming in at 52.6%.
  • This is also important for SEO because Google uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.
• Does your site navigation make sense?
  • Once someone lands on your site, will they be able to easily find what they’re looking for and move around?
  • Here’s an (admittedly extreme) example of a site with terrible navigation.

• Is your website design up to par?
  • If your site looks like it walked straight out of the 90s then you’re in trouble.
• Do you have a lot of broken links?
  • It’s a bad look, and your visitors won’t think of your site as reliable.
• Is your contact information easy to find?
  • We recommend making it available on every page, even if at the footer.
• Do you have any intrusive pop-up ads or is your site cluttered in ads?
  • Use a browser in incognito or private mode to get a sense of the ad experience for your visitors. 

Audit Your Website for Technical Issues

A technical audit helps get down to the nuts and bolts of your website: Are the systems and technologies working, or are they not?

• Is my website secure?
  • SSL is integral to the security of the information exchanged on your site.
    • Without SSL, information passed from an end-user (site visitor) to unsecure sites (like during a purchase or email sign up) and vice versa isn’t encrypted. This means it can be intercepted by lots of bad actors out there on the Internet.
  • Secure websites are favored by Google in search results.
  • Browsers display whether a site is secure or not, and that can make all the difference in a visitor’s trust (remember, they’re your potential customers.)
    • Below are examples of sites with and without SSL.

• Is your personal information protected from the Internet’s prying eyes with Domain Privacy + Protection?
  • Keep your site safe from both hackers and human error.
• How does your site display across the most popular browsers?
  • Test your site across all the major browsers so there are no surprises or bad experiences for your visitors. Make any necessary changes to improve how your site renders on these browsers.
  • Don’t forget to test the mobile versions of these browsers!
• Are you using a CMS (content management system) like WordPress?
  • If yes, are you using the most up-to-date and secure version?
  • Audit any plugins to make sure they’re running the newest versions and don’t pose security issues. Remove any no longer needed or used.  
• Is your site backed up?
  • Before making any big changes to your site, you should create a backup. Wouldn’t it be terrible if something went wrong while making updates to your site? Without a backup created of your site, that can equal lots of heartache, time, and lost revenue. 

Audit Your Website for SEO.

An SEO audit helps you optimize your website so that it performs well and ranks higher in SERPs, search engine result pages.

• Do you have a sitemap created so that Google and other search engines can easily crawl and index your site?
• Is your robots.txt file accurate?
• Are all the pages on your site optimized according to the various SEO ranking factors?
  • Moz provides a run-down of different On-Page SEO ranking factors here.
• Are you using appropriate and relevant SEO keywords across your site and content?
• Do all your pages have title tags and meta descriptions?
  • Title tags and meta descriptions are HTML elements that appear in the header on a web page. When a page shows as a search result, its title tag and meta description normally display right along with it on the SERP (search engine results page.) This is important because it can influence whether someone clicks through to your site from the SERPs.
• Is your website accessible?
  • Do your images have alt text?
• Do you have any broken or misdirected links?
  • Domain.com’s resident SEO expert, Mike, thinks SEO Minion, a free 3^rd party SEO tool, is good for checking broken links. Please note, this is not a Domain.com product or resource.
• How many backlinks do you have?
  • Backlinks are links created when one website links to another. You may also hear them referred to as “inbound links.”
  • Are they quality backlinks?
  • Moz created Link Explorer, a free tool to help you identify your backlinks and provide other link metrics, but it does require that you sign up for a free Moz account.
  • SEOquake is another 3^rd party tool (free plugin) that offers great insights into your SEO.
• Is your URL structure optimized?
  • URL structure matters to both search engines and the people visiting your site.
  • Here’s Search Engine Journal’s guide to an SEO-friendly URL structure.

Wrapping up Your Website Audit

Auditing your website can seem overwhelming at first. If that’s the case, break it out into smaller sections and complete them one by one. It could take a few days or a few weeks, but either way, audits are necessary for the success of your site.

You should plan on auditing your website at least a couple of times each year. For more complex websites, consider auditing them more frequently.

Reviewing and auditing your site will give you a leg up with search engines, your customers, and your competitors.

Did you have any other tips or recommendations for auditing sites? Let us know in the comments!

If so, you need to learn a thing or two about SEO, or search engine optimization. SEO is made up of various strategies and best practices that exist to improve your position in search engine results.

Google, the dominant search engine, relies on different SEO ranking signals to determine what websites or pages are the best results for different search queries. These ranking signals consist of things like: a secure website (SSL enabled), appropriate keywords, a site’s mobile friendliness, and quality of links. When your site is optimized for SEO, you have a better chance of ranking higher in SERPs, or search engine result pages. This is vitally important considering “75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines.”

There are two kinds of SEO: On-page and Off-page, though we’ll mostly focus on the former in this post. So without further ado, let’s look at some SEO strategies that can help boost your business in search results.

SEO Strategies for Your Business

We asked our resident SEO expert, Mike, what strategies and tactics he recommends as the most impactful that you should implement ASAP. He’s developed successful SEO plans for small businesses, agencies, and large corporations, so he’s well-versed in what helps a website rank higher in search results.

Here’s what he had to say.

Understand Users and Their Intent

Remember when typing three keywords into Google would still give you decent, relevant results? That doesn’t cut it anymore. Now, people are searching the Internet using more complex, natural speech patterns. Considering how voice search is on the rise, this trend doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere. To make the most of it, you need to know a thing or two about your users.

How well do you know your audience and user base? Understanding them will give you a leg up in search results.

Are you wondering how that’s possible?

Search engines value content and sites that users themselves find valuable. So how does Google know what content and sites users find valuable? They use information like bounce rates and dwell time to determine whether someone is staying on your page, consuming relevant content, or bouncing away because your site doesn’t meet their needs or answer their query.

You can use Google Analytics to help you understand who your users are. You can figure out how they’re reaching your site, where they’re landing, and more information to help you refine the user experience of your site.

Google BERT (one of Google’s newer search algorithms released in October 2019) supports your need for a user-focused site. BERT, “is Google’s neural network-based technique for natural language processing (NLP)…” and “in short, BERT can help computers understand language a bit more like humans do.”

Optimizing Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Page titles and meta descriptions are some of the first things users and search engines see and they influence how your page is understood.  

Page titles are the clickable titles that display in SERPs, like you see in the example below, circled in red. Depending on the browser you’re using, you may also see page titles in your tabs.

Meta descriptions are little snippets of HTML content that describe the content on a page. Optimizing them for SEO is crucial. You can see Domain.com’s homepage meta description circled in blue below.

Page Title Optimization

Your page title is one of the most important on-page SEO ranking factors. To make the most of it, keep these tips in mind:

• It should be no more than 65 characters in length (including spaces.)
• Your most important keyword should feature in your page title.
  • Don’t stuff it full of keywords. That’s ineffective and search engines see right through it.

Meta Description Optimization

Meta descriptions are brief snippets created to describe a page or site. Good meta descriptions increase the click-through rate from search results to your site. Create effective meta descriptions by:

• Including a CTA (call-to-action) in your meta description.
• Keeping your description between 50-160 characters, including spaces.
  • While you can write longer meta descriptions, Google tends to truncate them if they’re too wordy.
• Including keywords is important, but don’t keyword-stuff for the sake of keyword-stuffing.  

Create and Write Longer, Better Content  

Articles and pages that appear on the first page of Google search results tend to average ~1890 words. If you’re still writing 500-word fluff and puff pieces, your SEO is in trouble.

Let’s hearken back to the first SEO strategy Mike suggested, understanding your audience. If you can find out why people are coming to your site, you can cater your content to them.

Writing good content takes time, but it’s worth it because the quality of your content matters. Good content is:

• Engaging. It keeps people on your site longer.
• Shareable. If your content is good and trustworthy, others are more likely to share it and that gains you backlinks (a form of Off-page SEO.)
• Editable. Good content needs to be tweaked. Google likes “fresh” content, so be sure to revise your content to include updated keywords, newer facts, or reflect changes in user-behavior.

Remember, search engines want to display the best results for search queries. If your page has the best, most comprehensive content that answers a question, naturally, it’ll rank higher over time.

Secure Pages

Having a secure website is essential to your success. You might think you can get away without SSL if you’re not running an e–commerce website or asking for user’s personal information (like via an email sign up form), but you’d be mistaken.

SSL isn’t just vital for site security; it also matters for appearances’ sake — never discount the power of perception. We’ll explain below.

Since Google introduced security as a ranking signal in 2014, SSL has been a must-have. SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer” and it protects and encrypts the information passed between an end user (site visitor) and your site, and vice versa. It keeps information safe ranging from credit card details to email addresses. Without SSL, hackers and bad guys can intercept, read, and alter that information.

Remember how we said perception matters? Consider this: Sites with SSL enabled have a visual indicator in the URL bar that signals the site as safe and secure.

Sites without SSL, or not secure sites, show up with an ugly indicator, like you see below, that can cause site visitors to lose trust and confidence in you.

Don’t push your site visitors away before they’ve had a chance to peruse your pages. Enable SSL on your site and reap the benefits of increased customer trust and the secure exchange of information on your site.

Use Your SEO Tools

If you’re working on SEO, it makes sense to use SEO tools designed specifically to help! As an added bonus, many of them are free. Let’s look at two resources created by Google that are indispensable to your SEO efforts.

Google Analytics

Use this tool to understand basic KPIs (key performance indicators) and benchmark performance. With Analytics you can:

• Understand your audience.
• Gain insight into performance fluctuations.
• Visualize user behavior.
• Create reports.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console has one main purpose: to help you understand how GoogleBot has interacted with your site.

What’s GoogleBot? It’s Google’s Search Engine Bot that crawls webpages. It uses sitemaps and links to catalogue sites on the Internet. Google stores this information in their index, which is like a massive repository of sites that exist online.

GoogleBot crawls sites using different SEO ranking factors and looks for things like broken links or updated content. When it finds these things, it updates and makes note of them in the larger index.

When using Search Console, don’t forget to look at your Index Coverage Report (ICR). Your ICR:

• Lists both the pages you’ve submitted to Google (like via a sitemap) and all the pages Google has discovered on its own.
  • Each page displayed in the report will fall into one of the following four buckets.
    • Valid
    • Valid with warnings
    • Error
    • Excluded

Use the status of your pages to make any necessary changes to your site. For example, if you find a webpage that’s excluded from search results that shouldn’t be, you’ll need to correct it.

Search Console also lets you see the queries people made to find your site! Neat, right? This is incredibly insightful information that allows you to:

• Improve your keywords, and therefore, your content.
• Understand your most valuable organic keywords.
• Gauge and monitor keyword movement to see what you should be targeting.

Technical SEO

Have you ever completed a technical audit of your site? If not, now’s the time to start. As a best practice, you should audit your site at least once a year (more if you have a complex site.)

Technical site audits help you understand various things about your site, like:

Are You Searchable?

• When people make search queries, are your pages surfacing as results?
• Help you understand what “noindex” tags exist on your site that shouldn’t be there.
• Check the validity of your webpages (especially by using Google Search Console in your audit.)

Clean up Your Redirects

• When you click on a specific URL, but the page that loads has a different URL, it means you’ve encountered a redirect. Redirects are ways of getting people from one webpage to another.
  • Here’s an example of how it could work. Let’s say you used to sell tons of Product A because people just loved it. But you discovered Product B, something far superior, and stopped carrying the other one.  If someone has the old page for Product A bookmarked, you can use a redirect to get them to Product B’s page instead of seeing an error.  
• Over time, your redirect chains can get longer and longer and that can dilute your SEO equity.
  • This also adds load time to your pages.
• Check for temporary redirects and make sure they stay that way, temporary! They shouldn’t be used as long-term solutions.
• If you need a permanent redirect, make it a 301. We repeat, 301 redirects are permanent, but they transfer the SEO equity of your old page to your new one, unlike a temporary redirect.

Evaluate Site Traffic

• To evaluate your site traffic you’ll need to use either Google Analytics or Google Search Console.
  • For Google Analytics:
    • Click on Acquisitions > All Traffic > Channels > Organic Search (under default channel groupings) and select your time frame.
    • We recommend choosing a longer time frame to really get a sense of any patterns or issues.
    • Use this information to identify landing pages with irregular performances.
    • Evaluate these pages individually looking for potential errors.
  • For Google Search Console:
    • Navigate to Performance > Search Results > Change date to “Compare.”
    • Sort results by significant differences in your KPIs to identify and evaluate your site performance trends.
    • Seeing a big gap in click and impression data? Bridge them by identifying the keywords you’d like to strengthen and then focus on those terms within that page(s).

Update Your Robots.txt File

Robots.txt files are made to communicate with web crawling robots (like GoogleBot.) These files tell the bots what webpages they can and can’t access for crawling on your site. It’s a file that creates “rules” around your domain.  

• Robots.txt files
  • Make sure no important elements from your site are being blocked from crawlers and therefore, search engines.
  • Block elements of your site (of your choosing) from crawlers and search engines.
• You should always check your Robots.txt file.
  • You can view its real-time performance from within Google Search Console, just look for the Index Coverage Report we mentioned earlier.
  • For example, anything that results in “valid, but with warnings” means your Robots.txt file should’ve prevented those URLs from being crawled, but they’ve surfaced anyway. If this happens, make sure your Robots.txt file is set up appropriately.
  • You could also see things marked as “excluded.” This means those URLs are appropriately and correctly blocked from SERPs by the robots.txt file.
    • We recommend giving anything an “excluded” status a once-over to make sure you haven’t accidentally blocked any pages that should be crawlable.

Review Your 404 pages

• 404 errors surface across pages that have been removed, deleted, or are otherwise categorized as “Bad Requests.”
  • Do you have any 404 pages that have actually gained significant value for your site?
    • This could be because they’ve generated a lot of backlinks, have great keyword ranking, bring in decent traffic, revenue, or a variety of other reasons.
    • If yes, you should consider redirecting those pages (remember, 301 redirects maintain all the SEO equity that a page has built) or reconfiguring them so they’re still relevant.
• View your 404s with a web crawl or with Google Search Console.
  • In Search Console, go to your Index Coverage Report and then navigate to the “Errors” section. This will display all the 404 errors that came from your sitemap.xml file.
  • In that same report, navigate to the “Excluded” section.
  • This will report on any pages with a 404 crawl anomaly or any pages throwing soft 404 errors.

Implementing These SEO Strategies and Tips Will Boost Your Business

We want your business to succeed as much as you do. That’s why we’ve compiled these SEO strategies and hope that you implement them on your website.

SEO is crucial to surviving and thriving online, so don’t let your website and business get behind. If you’ve never worked on your SEO before, consider starting with this beginner’s guide to SEO.

If you have any questions, or other SEO strategies you’d like to suggest, let us know in the comments.

Domain Names and Voice Search

Search engines are evolving at a constant pace making their user experience as simple and hassle-free as possible. The introduction of voice search has, in many cases, eliminated the need to type your queries. Every phone and computer is now powered by a voice assistant (such as Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana, and more). The presence of voice-first devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home are now highly common.

Voice search is all set to be the next big thing, and for good reason. Conducting a search through voice takes a lot less time than typing out a query and it even offers faster results. A user doesn’t even need to look at the phone or the device in order to get the answer.

A revolution in the way people use search engines also requires a revamp of SEO strategies. In fact, Comscore predicts that more than 50% of all searches will be done by voice in 2020, with Gartner predicting that 30% of all searches will be done on a device without a screen. Since users are asking questions differently, experts need to find better ways to be able to give what search engines will see as the best possible answer. Apart from SEO, there’s also a need for Voice Search Optimization.

What is Voice Search Optimization (VSO)?

Voice Search Optimization is essentially the process of optimizing your webpage content, business listings, and brand information in order to improve your ranking in the search results. VSO is, in a lot of ways, similar to SEO. Users are widely using search engines to find on-the-go answers for everything from “Best restaurants that serve sushi” to “Will there be snow tomorrow?”.

You may think that it’s too early to get into voice search but this is the perfect time to prepare for it. In fact, the sooner you get your VSO right, the better its benefits will be for your business.

How can voice search benefit your business?

Voice search optimization is a phenomenal way for small and medium businesses to attract potential customers to their website. According to Google, 39% of voice searches center around finding out more information about businesses. This is especially true for local businesses. The more you strengthen your brand presence locally, the better you’ll fare in voice search. A lot of voice search queries are local such as “Where can I get the best burrito in Los Angeles?” Or “Best hair salons near Sunset Boulevard.”

Therefore, highlighting the details of your local business such as the location, office hours, pictures, etc. can help increase the number of visits to your local store, office or working space.

By properly implementing voice search optimization, both B2B and B2C businesses can enjoy a variety of business benefits. Some of those are:

●      More website traffic.

●      Better brand awareness and visibility.

●      More foot traffic to your stores.

●      Stronger, more relevant connection with the users.

●      Enhanced user engagement.

●      Better chances of conversion and sales.

How can your domain name help you win at voice search?

A meaningful keyword-rich domain name can go a long way in ensuring that you win at voice search. Mentioned below are a few tips that can help you get the right domain name that is a perfect fit for this new search era.

1. Get voice-search-friendly domain names

The right domain name can be a huge aid in performing well in voice search results. A domain name that is clear in its intent and incorporates the right keywords can enhance the chances of your website being picked up by the voice search assistant.

To ensure you have the most voice search-friendly domain name, ensure it has the following characteristics:

●      It is short and simple.

●      It is devoid of hyphens, numbers, or creative and incorrect spellings.

●      It is keyword-rich.

For example, let’s assume someone wants to visit your website. Between www.gothicskullz-stuff.com and www.gothicstuff.store, which website do you think will be more easily comprehended by a voice search assistant?

A domain name can be your secret weapon in fighting the competition and ranking well in voice search. In fact, the use of new domain extensions such as .tech, .store, .online, .space, and more is on the rise and for good reason. They help optimize your domain name voice search.

2. Use natural speech patterns

Text based searches are very different from voice searches. When people type their search query, they prefer to use as few words as possible. However, when they use voice search, they will phrase their query as if they were asking another person. On average, people can only type around 40 words per minute, but they can talk at 150 wpm. Longer tailed queries are more natural for speech, so make sure your content is suited for this.

Let’s imagine that you’re using voice search to look for websites that sell Batman posters. Here, a domain name such as www.batmanposters.online has a stronger chance to beat the other competing websites. That’s the benefit of having keyword-rich domain names. Just remember, instead of only using single, to-the-point keywords that sound robotic, ensure that the sentences and phrases used on your site and in your content are more conversational.

According to a study by Backlinko, Google tends to answer voice search queries with short, 29-word results. This means that it is important that you keep your answers short, simple, and crisp and avoid any super technical jargon.

3. Optimize for local searches

According to research, 58% of consumers use voice search to find local business information. Just think about the number of times you’ve searched for things that include the words “near me”.

While the content on your website plays a crucial role in optimizing for local searches, your domain name can also be of great help. Domain names such as www.miamioxfordshirts.store or www.floridatacos.online are direct and to the point; they’re optimized for city-based voice search queries such as “Order tacos in Florida” or “Buy oxford shirts in Miami”.

Localized searches are no longer just about the city or state, but also about particular neighborhoods or localities. Local businesses would do well to factor this into their decision making process when choosing a domain name. For example, www.queensapparel.store is a good, local VSO-optimized domain name for anyone looking for apparel in Queens, New York.

With relevant domain extensions such as .store, .tech, .online, .press, and others, you can pick a short and definitive name that clearly highlights the nature of your business and where you are located.

A relevant domain name coupled with your business listings on search engines will make it easier for customers to find you.

Conclusion

In many ways, the era of voice search is already upon us. Marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs must identify this enormous opportunity to power such searches and take the necessary steps to optimize their content for a voice-first future.

Author Bio

Alisha is a Senior Content Marketing & Communication Specialist at Radix, the registry behind some of the most successful new domain extensions, including .STORE and .TECH. You can connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

If that’s what you’re thinking, we’re delighted to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth.

If you have a website, you’ve likely heard of SEO, and with good reason — it isn’t going anywhere. Understanding and implementing SEO fundamentals directly contributes to increased digital and business success, so it’s time you learned what SEO means and how it works.

In this guide, we’re covering the SEO basics you need to know to help optimize your website. We’ll discuss:

• What is SEO?
• Why does SEO matter? How will SEO help me?
• The anatomy of a SERP.
• How to track your progress.
• Simple SEO strategies you can start today.
• What not to do with SEO.
• Where can I learn more on SEO?

Let’s jump in, shall we?

What does SEO mean?

SEO is an abbreviation that stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the practice of positively influencing your search engine result rankings, thereby increasing the quantity and quality of your website traffic. To put it simply, SEO gets your website in front of more people on search engines (like Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo) without needing to pay for ads.

Although search engine optimization sounds like you’d be making changes to the search engines themselves, the enhancements you’ll be making will be to your website, blog, or content.

Why does SEO matter, does it affect my business?

Need more convincing as to why you should implement a SEO strategy? Consider these facts gathered from Search Engine Journal:

• 91.5 percent: The average traffic share generated by the sites listed on the first Google search results page.
• 51 percent of all website traffic comes from organic search, 10 percent from paid search, 5 percent for social, and 34 percent from all other sources.
  • Over half of all website traffic comes from organic search — this is website traffic you AREN’T paying for, so refining your SEO strategy can save you money.
• 4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information.
• ~2 trillion: The estimated number of searches Google is handling per year worldwide. That breaks down to 63,000 searches per second; 3.8 million searches per minute; 228 million searches per hour; 5.5 billion searches per day; and 167 billion searches per month.
• ~20: The number of times SEO has more traffic opportunity than PPC (Pay-Per-Click) on both mobile and desktop.

Does SEO affect your business? Without question, yes. But exactly how much it affects your business is up to you. If you don’t do anything to optimize and edit your website and content for SEO then it can’t work for you. But if you take a few minutes to optimize your website, you’ll reap the benefits of SEO — an increase in the quantity and quality of traffic to your site due to improved search result rankings.

SEO is uniquely different from other forms of digital marketing in that, with SEO, people are already searching for you. They need your services or products and they’re going to a search engine to figure out where they can get them. With SEO, you aren’t paying for ads in an attempt to woo fickle prospects back to your site — these people are already interested in what you’re selling, so help them find you by implementing an SEO strategy before your competitor does.

The anatomy of a SERP

What happens after you click “Search” on a search engine?

You’re taken to the SERP, or Search Engine Results Page.

(We’ve pulled the following SERP examples from Google because they dominate the search engine market worldwide with a 90.46% market share.) Depending on your search terms your SERP could include different types of results; however, there are some components on the results page that don’t change. Here’s what’s always included:

• Paid Ads (or PPC, Pay Per Click): These results appear first because the businesses they advertise have paid money for their top placements.
• Organic Search Results: Organic, or owned, search results aren’t paid for; instead, these results appear further up or down on the page depending on how well they’re optimized for SEO.

Both paid and organic results can also display as:

• Basic search results
  • These results display as links with metadata (the description under the URL.) Basic results don’t include images, graphs, or shopping suggestions on the main SERP.

Pro tip: If you do decide to pay for ads, avoid clicking on those search results yourself. You’ll cost yourself money since you’re charged per click on those results.

• Enriched search results
  • This is the most common SERP you’ll see, although it won’t always look the same. Enriched search results can include paid ads, organic results, sponsored links, local packs (local businesses that meet your search criteria), product carousels, and more. Google is always making updates and changes to its SEO algorithms to display the most relevant search results, so enriched search results won’t always show the same things.  

If you click on a local search result it will take you to a page where you can find out more about those businesses. It looks like this:

Pro tip: If you have a business, claim your “Google My Business” listing so you can control and edit information displayed about your business. “Add missing information” isn’t a good look when trying to attract visitors to your site.

Before we continue, when was the last time you performed an online search to see how your business or website ranks? If you haven’t done that in a while, we recommend doing so. It’s a good idea to know where you stand in search rankings so you can better gauge your SEO efforts and improvements.

Can I measure my SEO efforts?

You certainly can! And with Google Search Console — it’s free.

Google Search Console gives you deep insight into your website. You can discover how people are getting to your site — where they’re coming from, what device they’re using — and what the most popular, or heavily trafficked, pages of your website are. The Search Console allows you to submit your sitemap or individual URLs for search engine crawling, alerts you to issues with your site, and more.

If you haven’t used it before, don’t fret. Click this link to get to the Search Console. Then, click “Start now.” On the next page you’ll need to input your Domain(s) and/or URL Prefix(es.) If you choose the Domain option, you will have to verify your pages using DNS to prove that you’re the owner of the domain and all its subdomains.Verifying your site and pages is for your security. Google Search Console provides great insight into your website and that’s information only you should have. By requiring verification, Google ensures a competitor won’t have access to your website data. If you choose the URL Prefixes method, you’ll have a few options to verify your account; you can upload an HTML file (a bit more advanced, and requires access to a site’s root directory), or if you already have Google Analytics set up you can verify your site on Search Console that way. This beginner’s guide to Google Search Console by Moz walks you through all the ways you can verify your site.

What SEO tactics can I implement now?

Here are three ways you can vastly improve your SEO.

• Write good content
  • Good content pays off when it comes to search engine results rankings. What makes for good content?
    • It’s linkable. Search engines like content that can be linked to from other pages. If you create content, but have it gated (i.e. – you can only access it once you’re logged in or completed a similar action) then search engines won’t rank it as highly. They’re in the business of providing information to those who are seeking it, so make your content discoverable and linkable.
    • Aim for at least 1000 words. Search engines reward robust content, so that 300-word blog post you’re hoping rises to the top of the search results? — that needs to be fleshed out, and with relevant, valuable content.
    • Valuable, informative content drives demand. Search engines reward in-demand content with improved search result rankings. So if all you’ve done is write 1000+ words that no one cares to read, and doesn’t address your audience’s needs, you’ve wasted your time as it won’t rank highly in. You can figure out what your audience wants to know and what’s in demand by looking at keyword research.

Use WordPress? There are many free SEO tools and plugins that can help you and provide suggestions as you work, like Yoast or ThirstyAffiliates.

• Keyword research
  • Why is keyword research important? If you know what your desired audience is searching for, you know what words and terms to include in your content — thereby giving yourself a boost in results ranking.
  • There are a variety of free tools that exist to help you identify trending keywords, like Google Trends. This tool allows you to search keywords and terms (and compare them against one another) to discover how well-searched those terms are. This information can influence what keywords you use in your content. If there’s a term that’s searched a lot and relates to your content, use it. Here’s a list of 10 free keyword research tools put together by Ahref, many of which provide an even deeper level of insight into the keywords you should use.
• On-page SEO
  • Moz describes On-page SEO as “… the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines.”
  • So what are the optimizable components of your individual webpages?
    • Content, which we touched upon earlier.
    • Title Tag

• Title tags are important because they dictate the display title on SERPs (search engine results pages). It’s likely the first thing people will see when they scan their search results, so a good title tag can draw them in and get them to click on the result.
• Trying to write a good title tag? Avoid ALL CAPS, don’t stuff as many keywords as possible into it, and keep it under 60 characters. Some characters take up more space than others, so you can use free title tag preview tools to help visualize what your title tag will really look like.
  • URL structure
  • It’s easy to make sure your URLs are working for you on search engines instead of against you. How’s that? Make sure your URLs display page hierarchy. By doing so, your URL is easily read by search engines and explains where the content or page can be found on your site.
  • What does a good URL look like?
  • www.domain.com/domains/transfer and here’s the breakdown of the page hierarchy:

• Now, imagine if the URL listed above looked something like “www.domain.com/int489/trans74087.” What does that tell the search engines? Not a whole lot, and definitely not where the page resides on your site.

For more information on On-page SEO ranking factors, take a look here.

What should I avoid when getting started with SEO?

For every piece of good SEO advice out there, there are a few bad pieces floating around. No matter whose friend’s cousin’s uncle tells you it’s a good idea, avoid the following practices.

• Keyword stuffing
  • Search engines are constantly improving and refining their algorithms to make sure the most valuable content is surfaced first. You can’t fool them by stuffing your content full of keywords and calling it a day.
• Duplicate content
  • When the same piece of content appears on the internet in various places using different URLs, it’s considered duplicate content. It may seem like having your content available in more places, with different URLs, is a good idea — more ways for people to find you, right? — it isn’t. Duplicate content confuses search engines. Which URL is the primary or correct one for the content? Should they split the results and show half the searchers one URL and the other half another? What page, or URL, ends up getting the credit for the traffic? Instead of dealing with all of that, chances are you’ll suffer a loss of traffic because the search engine won’t surface all of the duplicates.
• Writing for search engines instead of people
  • Search engines are in the business of getting the correct and best information to the people who need it, or search for it. If you’re writing choppy, keyword-stuffed sentences they’ll be pretty painful for a human to read, so they won’t. If you don’t have people reading or interested in your content, there’s no demand. No demand = poor search result rankings.
• Thin content
  • You should never create content for the sake of creating content. Make sure it’s quality content — relevant to your audience and at least 1000 words long — so search engines are more likely to surface it higher on SERPs.

Where can I learn more about SEO?

This introduction to SEO serves to get you acquainted with search engine optimization and lay down the groundwork, but don’t forget, the more you invest in SEO the better off your website will be. Once you’re familiar with the topics we’ve discussed here, challenge yourself to take it to the next level with these topics.

White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO

You know how in movies the bad guys are normally in dark, depressed colors while the good guys wear bright, or white colors? You can think of white hat and black hat SEO in the same way.

Black hat SEO tactics may seem to pay off at first, but just like with bad guys, what you do will come back to haunt you (like getting blacklisted from search engines!) Google, for instance, is constantly updating and refining its search algorithms. If it notices questionable behavior (like keyword stuffing) they’ll penalize those behaviors in their updates — so that “hack” you discovered that allows you to rank on page 1 of search results? That won’t work once the algorithm is changed, and you’ll lose your authority. Good SEO habits, or white hat SEO, won’t put you at risk of being penalized by search engines, so your authority will continue to climb.

Off-page SEO

Unlike on-page SEO, off-page SEO (or off-site SEO) consists of tactics to improve your search engine result rankings that aren’t done on your site. There are a variety of things you can do, but link-building is the most well-known. The more links that exist to your site and content, the better (within reason, if you spam every website you can think of with your links in comments that’s not ok.) Link building happens a variety of ways; naturally, when someone finds your content to be relevant and links to it in one of their posts or pages, manually, when you deliberately work to increase the number of links that exist for your site, say by asking clients or associates to link to your content, and self-created. Self-created links, including links to your site or content on random social media posts and blog comments, can be good in moderation. Too many spammy posts or comments ventures into black hat SEO territory, so tread carefully.

Putting it all together

If you work on improving your SEO tactics, your website and business will thank you. A good SEO strategy increases the likelihood of your content and pages displaying higher in search engine results. When your content shows up sooner in search results you get more website traffic and better quality website traffic, after all, those are people already searching for what you have to offer.

As you dive into SEO, remember to take stock of where your pages and content show up in SERPs today so you can gauge your progress and SEO results tomorrow. Use this introduction to SEO to help you write better content, create informative URL structures, and understand the SEO tactics to avoid.