FAQs
General SEO Questions
SEO has so much information that any website owner needs to know. The scope covers a broad range of topics from more in-depth, specific tactics to broad questions. This breakdown only covers those questions that most people ask.
The abbreviation SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It refers to the practice of ranking websites on search engines to enhance their visibility whenever users are searching for relevant queries and keywords.
When the ranking of your website increases across a broad range of keywords, it will increase the organic traffic that it receives. Such traffic comes from the natural listings of Google and not paid ads. It is one of the top elements that you need for your website to show top in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
SEO helps search engines to understand your brand and what you offer. It will also convince visitors your brand is the most credible option that they have. The best SEO practices will make your web content deliverable. Remember, search engines rank results based on the best-fit for the queries that are being searched. You can learn more about SEO by talking to us.
SEO is critical for any forward-looking business because it allows you to increase your web traffic without having to pay for each and every click. The challenge of running PPC ads is that you will have to pay for all the clicks that you get through it. However, if you manage to successfully rank your website organically on search engines, you will get more traffic at no cost. However, you need to be patient because it takes time to invest in the necessary resource and skills for the website to rank on the SERPs.
SEO does not stop when you turn off ads hence allowing you to rank organically and enjoy visibility 24/7. Organic search averagely accounts for 53% of the total website traffic. Therefore, if your ignore SEO, competitors will use it to beat you. It is a critical success factor whether you sell online, are a local business or global enterprise.
SEO optimizes your site to rank high in the search engines. Google applies more than 200 ranking factors that allow the algorithm if the search engine to rank web pages on the basis of their authority and relevance.
Google strives to recommend the most relevant answers from highly trustworthy sources in a format that is most appropriate to the users. For SEO efforts to succeed your content should be the most relevant result for particular search queries and Google should see your website as the most trustworthy source.
You can never jump into SEO strategies blindly. You should know what users search for on Google to get products or services that your business offers and optimize your website for these phrases.
Examples of tools to use for keyword search include SEMrush keyword Magic or Google's Keyword Planner. The insights you get from these tools will help you understand what your target audience are searching online and inform your SEO strategy.
Several factors can make your website not to rank on Google.
A few reasons can make your website not to rank on Google. The first thing you need to do is run to Google and search for your website. If the web pages of your site are listed, you will know that the website is indexed.
The first reason for not ranking is when your website is new and has not built enough authority to help it rank for competitive search queries. You cannot launch a website today and expect it to start ranking for the target queries the following day. The site has to demonstrate to Google that it deserves a high ranking.
The website will also fail to rank of your content lacks quality or in-depth analysis in comparison to your competitor's pages or when it lacks the searcher's intent. Make sure your pages are good or better than what is already ranking.
Your website could also be blocking the search engines from getting crawled or it could be instructing them through the noindex tags not to index it. You need to resolve such blocking and the site will get indexed.
Next, you could have launched your website within a few days and you haven't linked it from anywhere or submitted it to Google which means it is not yet indexed. The solution is to set up Google Search Console and then request for indexing.
Lastly, your website could have attracted the sitewide manual penalty after violation the Webmaster's guidelines from Google. Even though this is unlikely to happen and rare, you should have employed seriously black-hat-SEO techniques.
To start with, confirm whether the organic search of your website dropped gradually over time or it did so suddenly. If it happened suddenly, check whether there was an accidental addition of no-index tags to your website. It may happen when your developer movers your website from a test to the live environment and then forget to remove the no-index tags.
You also need to check with Google Search Console because malware could have removed your website from the SERPs. If Google tells you that your website may be harmful to users, as this happens once in a while, your site could be hacked.
The other likelihood is that a manual action could have impacted your website. Check through the Google search console for the manual actions. If you come across a listed issue, it could be the reason behind the drop in traffic. If there is no reason, you can be sure that it isn't the problem.
If the drop in traffic happens gradually, Google could have introduced a core algorithm update that see other websites get more traffic and rank better than yours. Get to understand the requirements from Google and make sure you comply accordingly.
Besides, your competitors could be employing more aggressive SEO tactics hence overtaking your organic visibility. Closely analyze the strategies that your competitors are using and see what needs improvement. Some of the tools that can help you do this include the Backlink Gap Tool or SEMrush keyword Gap tool.
If a website violates Google's webmaster guidelines, it will be penalized. There are two types of penalties; algorithmic penalties or adjustments and manual action penalties.
Manual actions are human-driven processes where a Google employee reviews the case and imposes a penalty. On the other hand, algorithmic adjustments are fully automated and are part of the ranking algorithm. Google has a set of algorithms and software that can detect some manipulations on web pages and filter them accordingly. You will not receive any alert or message if your website loses its position due to algorithmic filtering. If your website is penalized, you need to use appropriate means to recover it.
The best answer for this question is that it depends. Since Google ranks relevant websites that have built authority, it will take time for you to rank organically. Therefore, don't imagine that you will launch a website, optimize the title tags, and rank in a few weeks.
If you do everything well, it will take about six month to one year to get to the top search engine result pages. However, it depends on the number of resources that you allocate to your SEO strategy, competition level, and the efforts that the other people who are competing for the same keywords are doing. Local terms may take a few months to ranks but general ones can take years. However, expect fluctuations during this period before Google figures out where to place your website.
In 2016, Google confirmed that its main ranking factors include RankBrain, content, and links. To optimize these factors, you should create great content so that other websites will want to link to your website as this makes Google to know that it is the best result for similar search queries. The other crucial ranking factors include followed backlinks, content length, total referring domains, time on site, and many more.
Most entrepreneurs' wonder whether they should invest in PPC, SEO, or both. In the modern world, businesses should balance several marketing channels so that they don't over-rely on one source of traffic. Small businesses have a challenge with budget which calls for efficient allocation of resources. Whatever the case, it is wise to employ a long term SEO strategy with a small, targeted PPC campaign.