SEO "cheat sheet"
As users, we expect search engines to show the most relevant search results as quickly as possible, and the algorithm of the given search engine is responsible for this to be fulfilled. In order to prevent this algorithm from being easily cheated and causing chaos, Google changes its operation almost daily, which is why no one knows exactly. Google does not annoy website owners for its own sake, but rather cooperates properly with the search engine for a common goal.
Even in the absence of precise knowledge, we have a few tips that will definitely help SEO!
Getting to know the basics of SEO
SEO is the abbreviation of "search engine optimization", in Hungarian it is search engine optimization, or search engine optimization for short. Currently, the world's most popular search engine is Google, but Bing and Yahoo! are also widely used. The algorithm of search engines is not a mind reader, so it can only work with the appropriate information that is available in the meta data of websites. Metadata means data about data that provides information about a particular piece of content, such as a book. In the bookstore, we see the title and the short summary of the book, and then we decide whether to buy and read the entire book. This happens in the same way on the Internet. We enter keywords in the search engine, which shows the related articles, whose title and short description we can see, based on which we decide whether to click on them to continue reading.
The first few results in the list of search results are more likely to be clicked on. The lower a result is on the list, the more the click through rate decreases. Most people don't even make it to the second page of search results. For this reason, it is important that the search engine optimization is as good as possible on a website, on the basis of which, for example, Google ranks our website first on the SERP, i.e. on the Search Engine Result Page. In general, the more relevant and high-quality a certain content is, the higher the search engine ranks it.
Therefore, our site must be structured in such a way that the search engine ranks us as high as possible when searching for a keyword related to the topic of our website. But how can we achieve this? We present it in the points below!
Completing meta data correctly
It is definitely worth entering the metadata for the main page, articles, and subpages.
The metadata consists of the following data:
- Title (meta title)
- Description (meta description)
- Image (meta image)
The title and description appear in the search results, as shown in the example below:
About 10-60 characters are ideal for titles, and 70-150 for meta descriptions. These should not be exceeded.
For example, the meta image appears when sharing a link to an article:
Any image can be uploaded as a meta image, but it must be at least 200x200 pixels in size and no larger than 8 MB.
Keywords
Another important factor is the use of keywords. Search engines rate it higher, so they list pages that are informative and contain a lot of keywords. It is worth going around a given topic in such a way as to use as many keywords as possible in meaningful sentences. For example, in an article about potatoes, you should not only use the name potato, but also refer to it as krumpli or kolomper, since many people know it by that name and will search for it that way. However, if we use too many keywords, the search engines will think of it as keyword stuffing and score it negatively. So, for example, if potatoes are sold on a website and only the word "potatoes" is found five hundred times on the main page, none of the search engines will reward it. Write meaningful, varied sentences and do not use the same keyword too many times, rather use synonyms for it.
Keyword density is used by search engines to determine whether the number of keywords on our website is adequate. keyword density is a ratio that shows the ratio of the selected keyword to all the words of the post on a given page of our website.
Organic traffic
Organic traffic, or "organic search traffic", means that without paid search traffic, visitors found our website naturally, for example from the SERP (Search Engine Result Page). However, they can find our website not only in the search engine results list, but also with the help of backlinks. A backlink means that a link from an external source points to our website, so it is not found on our own website, but a link from outside our website leads to us. This could mean, for example, a Facebook share or a link attribution in an article written by another website. The best way to get such backlinks from others is to have quality, informative and value-creating content on our website that can be useful to others. For example, this article was created to help you navigate. The higher the quality of the content, the more likely someone will share the content with their own community.
Useful content can be, for example, the creation of infographics, the publication of research results or expert insights. The result of this kind of strategic thinking can be an increase in referral traffic, greater social participation, an increase in brand awareness, and the generation of more sales.
Internal links can also help increase traffic. Internal linking means that we link to our own content within our website, similar to a Wikipedia article, in order to keep visitor traffic within our own website. You can see an example of this at the bottom of our article, which points to another interesting article of ours!
Preventing keyword cannibalization
By the keyword cannibalism, we mean if on our website e.g. two subpages also target a topic or keyword, with the result that our website competes not only with its competitors, but also with the two subpages themselves, so both of our subpages lose the possibility of a possible better position. Cannibalization can be helped by the use of landing pages, the variety of sub-page topics, the expansion of content or the rethinking of keywords.
Loading speed
It may come as a surprise, but when setting up SERP rankings, search engines also look at how fast certain websites load on desktop and mobile devices, or how responsive they are. Search engines prefer websites that load quickly and can also be used on mobile devices due to the responsiveness of the content and the readability of the texts, since small letters are difficult to see on mobile devices. The loading speed can also depend on the speed of the server, so it is worth looking for a server that is fast and reliable even on a busy day. Our website can also be slowed down if the code written by the developers is not optimal, for example JavaScript and CSS codes are not compressed. The most important codes should be loaded first with the page, and the secondary codes should be delayed, thereby speeding up the loading of the main codes. Uploading images that are too large will also affect page loading. For example, it is worth uploading a reduced, web-optimized version of photos instead of the original image, so that the approx. Instead of 20 MB photos, the visitor has to upload images of less than 1 MB. For example, if the visitor only has to load a 500 KB version instead of a 20 MB photo, it does not cause a perceptible deterioration in quality, but it helps a lot in speeding up the loading speed, which improves the user experience.
Responsiveness
Today, almost everyone has a mobile phone and it has become an essential part of our daily life. As a result, we have to take into account that people can find our website through an ad on social media, for example, and open it from their mobile device. For this reason, we need to prepare the design of our website to be compatible with both desktop browsers and mobile devices. Search engines deduct points if the website is not properly displayed on mobile, so it will be ranked worse in the search results list than a website that is also responsive on mobile. Moreover, this is not only scored by search engines, but also by our visitors! The worse the experience they spend on a website, the less likely they are to recommend it to a friend, so our organic traffic will not increase either.
I use the contact section on our website as an example of responsiveness, where you can clearly see the transition between the desktop and mobile layout. The column of the map and the text would no longer fit next to each other on a mobile phone, so they collapse under each other, forming a single column. If we were to reduce the size of the content, perhaps the two columns would fit next to each other on a mobile phone, but it would become unreadable due to the too small letters and this would be noticed by the search engine and the visitor. Responsiveness is not the same as reducing the size of a given piece of content, but requires careful thought and planning to ensure that the design is logical, comfortable and clearly visible on mobile.
Even if we follow all the points listed in our article, we may not find returning, permanent users. The appearance of our website may frighten visitors, which could be helped by a facelift!
You can read more about good design in our articles below:
SEO "cheat sheet"
As users, we expect search engines to show the most relevant search results as quickly as possible, and the algorithm of the given search engine is responsible for this to be fulfilled. In order to prevent this algorithm from being easily cheated and causing chaos, Google changes its operation almost daily, which is why no one knows exactly. Google does not annoy website owners for its own sake, but rather cooperates properly with the search engine for a common goal.
Even in the absence of precise knowledge, we have a few tips that will definitely help SEO!
Getting to know the basics of SEO
SEO is the abbreviation of "search engine optimization", in Hungarian it is search engine optimization, or search engine optimization for short. Currently, the world's most popular search engine is Google, but Bing and Yahoo! are also widely used. The algorithm of search engines is not a mind reader, so it can only work with the appropriate information that is available in the meta data of websites. Metadata means data about data that provides information about a particular piece of content, such as a book. In the bookstore, we see the title and the short summary of the book, and then we decide whether to buy and read the entire book. This happens in the same way on the Internet. We enter keywords in the search engine, which shows the related articles, whose title and short description we can see, based on which we decide whether to click on them to continue reading.
The first few results in the list of search results are more likely to be clicked on. The lower a result is on the list, the more the click through rate decreases. Most people don't even make it to the second page of search results. For this reason, it is important that the search engine optimization is as good as possible on a website, on the basis of which, for example, Google ranks our website first on the SERP, i.e. on the Search Engine Result Page. In general, the more relevant and high-quality a certain content is, the higher the search engine ranks it.
Therefore, our site must be structured in such a way that the search engine ranks us as high as possible when searching for a keyword related to the topic of our website. But how can we achieve this? We present it in the points below!
Completing meta data correctly
It is definitely worth entering the metadata for the main page, articles, and subpages.
The metadata consists of the following data:
- Title (meta title)
- Description (meta description)
- Image (meta image)
The title and description appear in the search results, as shown in the example below:
About 10-60 characters are ideal for titles, and 70-150 for meta descriptions. These should not be exceeded.
For example, the meta image appears when sharing a link to an article:
Any image can be uploaded as a meta image, but it must be at least 200x200 pixels in size and no larger than 8 MB.
Keywords
Another important factor is the use of keywords. Search engines rate it higher, so they list pages that are informative and contain a lot of keywords. It is worth going around a given topic in such a way as to use as many keywords as possible in meaningful sentences. For example, in an article about potatoes, you should not only use the name potato, but also refer to it as krumpli or kolomper, since many people know it by that name and will search for it that way. However, if we use too many keywords, the search engines will think of it as keyword stuffing and score it negatively. So, for example, if potatoes are sold on a website and only the word "potatoes" is found five hundred times on the main page, none of the search engines will reward it. Write meaningful, varied sentences and do not use the same keyword too many times, rather use synonyms for it.
Keyword density is used by search engines to determine whether the number of keywords on our website is adequate. keyword density is a ratio that shows the ratio of the selected keyword to all the words of the post on a given page of our website.
Organic traffic
Organic traffic, or "organic search traffic", means that without paid search traffic, visitors found our website naturally, for example from the SERP (Search Engine Result Page). However, they can find our website not only in the search engine results list, but also with the help of backlinks. A backlink means that a link from an external source points to our website, so it is not found on our own website, but a link from outside our website leads to us. This could mean, for example, a Facebook share or a link attribution in an article written by another website. The best way to get such backlinks from others is to have quality, informative and value-creating content on our website that can be useful to others. For example, this article was created to help you navigate. The higher the quality of the content, the more likely someone will share the content with their own community.
Useful content can be, for example, the creation of infographics, the publication of research results or expert insights. The result of this kind of strategic thinking can be an increase in referral traffic, greater social participation, an increase in brand awareness, and the generation of more sales.
Internal links can also help increase traffic. Internal linking means that we link to our own content within our website, similar to a Wikipedia article, in order to keep visitor traffic within our own website. You can see an example of this at the bottom of our article, which points to another interesting article of ours!
Preventing keyword cannibalization
By the keyword cannibalism, we mean if on our website e.g. two subpages also target a topic or keyword, with the result that our website competes not only with its competitors, but also with the two subpages themselves, so both of our subpages lose the possibility of a possible better position. Cannibalization can be helped by the use of landing pages, the variety of sub-page topics, the expansion of content or the rethinking of keywords.
Loading speed
It may come as a surprise, but when setting up SERP rankings, search engines also look at how fast certain websites load on desktop and mobile devices, or how responsive they are. Search engines prefer websites that load quickly and can also be used on mobile devices due to the responsiveness of the content and the readability of the texts, since small letters are difficult to see on mobile devices. The loading speed can also depend on the speed of the server, so it is worth looking for a server that is fast and reliable even on a busy day. Our website can also be slowed down if the code written by the developers is not optimal, for example JavaScript and CSS codes are not compressed. The most important codes should be loaded first with the page, and the secondary codes should be delayed, thereby speeding up the loading of the main codes. Uploading images that are too large will also affect page loading. For example, it is worth uploading a reduced, web-optimized version of photos instead of the original image, so that the approx. Instead of 20 MB photos, the visitor has to upload images of less than 1 MB. For example, if the visitor only has to load a 500 KB version instead of a 20 MB photo, it does not cause a perceptible deterioration in quality, but it helps a lot in speeding up the loading speed, which improves the user experience.
Responsiveness
Today, almost everyone has a mobile phone and it has become an essential part of our daily life. As a result, we have to take into account that people can find our website through an ad on social media, for example, and open it from their mobile device. For this reason, we need to prepare the design of our website to be compatible with both desktop browsers and mobile devices. Search engines deduct points if the website is not properly displayed on mobile, so it will be ranked worse in the search results list than a website that is also responsive on mobile. Moreover, this is not only scored by search engines, but also by our visitors! The worse the experience they spend on a website, the less likely they are to recommend it to a friend, so our organic traffic will not increase either.
I use the contact section on our website as an example of responsiveness, where you can clearly see the transition between the desktop and mobile layout. The column of the map and the text would no longer fit next to each other on a mobile phone, so they collapse under each other, forming a single column. If we were to reduce the size of the content, perhaps the two columns would fit next to each other on a mobile phone, but it would become unreadable due to the too small letters and this would be noticed by the search engine and the visitor. Responsiveness is not the same as reducing the size of a given piece of content, but requires careful thought and planning to ensure that the design is logical, comfortable and clearly visible on mobile.
Even if we follow all the points listed in our article, we may not find returning, permanent users. The appearance of our website may frighten visitors, which could be helped by a facelift!
You can read more about good design in our articles below:
