SEO in 2022 - Whitehat SEO Guide for Beginners

SEO in 2022 – Whitehat SEO Guide for Beginners

Search engine optimization is used to increase the quality of content and quantity of traffic on your website through organic traffic.

SEO is Important because

content is not the only thing you need
page speed is very important in terms of user experience, slower loading pages annoy users hence less dwell time on your page
links are very important
algorithm is more sophisticated now; higher keywords may backfire your content now
buying google ads does not help you gain organic web traffic
more pages of websites do not necessarily help in web traffic- quality over quantity

ON Page SEO- any change you make on your website- such as updating the title tag on your page; changing the H1 tag; editing meta description of a page
Consists of 3 Kings- Google extension to check the availability of 3 Kings in a blog/ website is SEO Meta in 1 Click
- URL- most effective tool for ON Page SEO
- SEO title tag
- Page title

Start keyword research
Use the keyword with the greatest number of searches. E.g. yoga clothes
Good URL: website.com/yoga-clothes
Bad URL: website.com/yoga-clothes-men-women-children
Always go for a shorter URL
Avoid word repetition in the URL. E.g if the website name is yoga.com then a good URL would be yoga.com/clothes
Never change the URL of your high ranking page- may lower site traffic hence lower ranking

OFF Page SEO- any change you make off your website, such as building a link to your website; getting business listed on an external directory; optimizing social profiles
Backlink- it is the mention of your site on an external website- your site kind of receives a vote of confidence this way- helps in google ranking
Anchor text- a clickable text that links one page to the other
- Should be relevant to the page you are linking it with
- Google looks at anchor texts while ranking pages
There are five types of anchor texts
- Exact match- you write the page name of the page you are linking to as anchor text
- Partial match- a variation of keyword is used
- Brand- brand name is used
- URL- URL is used as anchor text
- Miscellaneous- generic terms such as click here

Do follow link: the more the links to a page the more points you receive to enter in Google’s high ranking- Google’s Page Rank ranks websites; the more a website is authoritative i.e. BBC, TIMES, the more link juice is transferred to your website i.e. boost to your site- <a href= https://twitter.com>
No follow links: links that do not count as something in the page’s favor- does not boost page rank- <a href= https://twitter.com rel= “no follow”>

SEOQuack is the most important SEO extension.

Keyword is a search phrase e.g. chocolate cake
Should be the main thing your website offers
Keyword intent- user’s purpose behind using a particular keyword
Short tail keyword- general search by user- 1 to 2 words e.g. yoga mat
Long tail keyword- 3 to 5 or more words- they are more direct; to the point; have less competition for e.g. non- slip yoga mat
How to find keywords?
- Google auto suggest
- Search options at the end of the page
- Keyword Tool

Google aims to provide relevant and useful content to user- algorithm presents websites that best answer user queries
High quality content makes up to the higher rank in Google’s search engine
How to come up with content ideas?
- Review your competitor’s content- page 1 websites
- Subscribe to industry related blogs, e.g. Top 10 baking blogs- they will give you many ideas
What to avoid while creating content?
- Text wall- an overload of text on your website- avoid this- instead use headings, subheadings, pictures- consumers prefer websites that are more engaging, hence increasing dwell time on site
How long should your content be? Avoid guess work and go with what is currently there i.e. what competitors are doing
- Take the average of the total words of the top 3 blogs/ websites
- Add in 10% more words

An algorithm is a complex system that retrieves data and instantly delivers the best possible result to user query
So far, Google have pushed 3 major Algorithms updates
- Panda- rewards high quality websites and decreases the presence of low quality ones in Google’s organic search- pages that suffered the most had the following type of content:
  - Thin content
  - Plagiarized content
  - Lack of authority/trustworthy content
  - Content mismatching search query
  - More ads than content
  - So many sites were penalized and a sudden drop was observed in site traffic and google rank.
- Penguin- rewarded high quality content and decreased sites that had manipulative links (backlinks that had no connection with content; an attempt to become artificially popular) and large number of keywords.
- Hummingbird- responds to user’s search intent behind keywords