SEO Basics Guide

In this guide, you'll learn the basics of SEO and get a basic understanding of what SEO is, how it works, what it involves and why it's important.

If you're new to SEO and want to understand the basics and fundamental SEO concepts, then this guide is for you.

The guide to SEO basics consists of questions that every SEO beginner has, with to-the-point answers.

What is SEO and how does it work?

SEO means optimizing your website so that it ranks better on search engine results pages when someone searches for specific keywords. This makes your content more popular so that people become aware of your brand.

SEO has a huge impact on your website traffic. If you get a lot of free Traffic you need to invest some time and effort in SEO. In return, you can attract more customers who are already searching for brands like yours and looking for deals like the ones you offer.

There are hundreds of elements and factors that influence SEO. That's why it's not possible to cover them all in an SEO guide as long as the one you're reading right now.

Why is SEO important?

SEO is important because it brings visitors to your website who are really interested in what you have to offer. These are the visitors who are looking for information about the exact topic of your website.

PRO INSIGHT: Did you know that Google receives around 65,000 search queries every second? That means that all your current and potential customers are on Google. And you should be there too.

More and more transactions and purchases are being made online every day. This is especially true in 2022 and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. More and more companies are now going online and it is mainly Google where customers are looking for what they need.

What is the difference between SEO and SEM?

SEM stands for Search engine marketing and means that paid strategies are used to become visible in search engines. This means that you pay for ads that appear directly in the SERPs (search engine results pages) and look similar to the organic search results.

The biggest difference between SEM and SEO is that with SEM your website will no longer appear in the search results as soon as you stop paying for it. Organic Search results on the other hand, are free and do not disappear as soon as you stop doing SEO.

What is organic traffic?

Organic Traffic are the visits to your website that come from organic entries in the SERPs (search engine results pages). The opposite of organic Traffic is paid Trafficwhich refers to visits generated by paid ads. Paid visits stop the moment you stop paying, which is not the case with organic visits.

What are SERPs?

SERPs stand for search engine results pages and are the web pages that are displayed to users when they enter a search query (a keyword) into a search engine. Search Engine such as Google or Bing.

SERPs contain 10 organic results on the first page, sponsored results (ads) that are usually at the top, Featured Snippets (usually above the organic results) and other elements such as maps, images, videos and others, depending on the type of search query.

PRO INSIGHTThe goal of SEO is to rank your website as high as possible on the first page of results for a specific search term. Only the first three results on the first page receive significant organic traffic. Traffic.

In the past, 15 or more years ago, SERPs consisted of 10 blue links. You've probably noticed that this is no longer the case. Type in "Google in 1998" to see what the SERPs looked like back then.

What is the universal search?

Universal Search (also called Enhanced Search or Blended Search) is the integration of different types of results within an SERP (search engine results page). Universal Search means that there are no search results in a SERP different types of media exist and not only 10 blue links. The universal search has been around since 2007.

The universal Search results contain elements such as images, videos, local businesses, Rich snippets, Featured Snippetsmaps, shopping results and more. These elements can be displayed between, below, above or next to the regular organic search results in search engines such as Google or Bing.

What exactly is displayed depends on the type of search query, the user's location and even their previous search queries. Any smart SEO must take universal search into account when performing SEO for themselves or their clients.

What is a search engine?

A Search Engine is a program (an online tool) that returns results based on a search query (keyword) that a user enters. When a user enters a search query, a search Search Engine in its database for relevant information and displays it in the form of a SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

Search engines discover, analyze, understand and organize content on the Internet. Their main goal is to provide their users with the most relevant and best results.

PRO TIP: The main goal of search engines is to fulfill the needs of users and make them happy. To win in search engines, your goal as an SEO should be exactly the same.

The most popular Search Engine is - unsurprisingly - Google with a market share of more than 75 %. Other notable search engines are Bing (from Microsoft), Baidu (popular in China) or Yandex (popular in Russia). YouTube (owned by Google) is also a Search Engine and the second largest Search Engine the world.

What is a keyword?

A Keyword (also known as a keyword or key phrase) is a word or combination of words that defines and describes a specific topic. They usually refer to online content, such as articles or blog posts.

SEO basics: Keyword

In SEO, keywords are the terms and phrases that users enter into search engines to find the information they are looking for. Keywords, which are understood as words that are entered into a search field in a search engine. Search Engine are also referred to as search queries.

What is a long-tail keyword?

A Long Tail Keyword is longer and more specific than a normal Keyword. If users have a long-tailKeyword they know exactly what they are looking for. Long-tail keywords usually consist of several words.

Long-tail keywords are generally less competitive and are searched for much less frequently. However, there are many more long-tail keywords than normal keywords.

PRO INSIGHT: Did you know that around 18% of all search queries made on Google every day are completely new and have never been made before?

What is keyword research?

The Keyword-Research is the process by which SEO professionals find and analyze keywords (or search terms) that users enter into search engines to find specific information, products or services.

The easiest way to find keywords for SEO is to use one of the many SEO tools available.Keyword-Tools. There are many free and paid Keyword-tools that you can use.

PRO TIP: With a Keyword-research, you can find out which keywords are searched for most frequently, how competitive they are and how difficult it is to find a specific keyword. Keyword to rank.

The most popular Keyword-tool is the Google Keyword Plannerthat gives you Keyword-data directly from Google. Google Trends can also be very useful if you want to research broader terms.

What is the search intent?

The search intent (also known as Keyword Intent or User Intent referred to as) is the reason why a user would make a particular request in a Search Engine is entered. The search intent describes the goal that a user wants to achieve with the help of a Search Engine would like to achieve.

There are three main types of search intentions:

SEO Basics: Search Intent

A Information intent is when a user is simply looking for information and wants to learn something. For example, a query such as "How do I learn SEO".

At the Navigation intention is about a user wanting to visit a specific website. Instead of typing in the address of the website, they type the name of the website into a search box. For example: "seosly seo guide".

Transaction intent is when a user is ready to make a purchase and is already in purchase mode. For example: "Technical SEO-Buy audit".

PRO TIP: Search intent is becoming increasingly important for SEO. You should never create a website for a Keyword without first analyzing the search intent behind it.

PRO TIP 2: The easiest way to check the search intent of a query is to simply analyze the results that are returned for it. If there are only information guides there, you can be pretty sure that it's an information query.

What is a Featured Snippet?

A "Featured Snippet" is another way of presenting a search result. Instead of a link to the website, a Featured Snippet usually display one or two sentences from a website to directly answer a user's search query. A Featured Snippet can also be a list or a table.

SEO Basics: Featured Snippets

Featured Snippets are usually placed above the organic search results and below the sponsored results (ads). Another name for Featured Snippets are answer boxes.

What is CTR?

CTR stands for Click-through rateCTR is the ratio between the users who click on a specific link and the users who view a specific link. The CTR is often used for paid ads (Google Ads) is used to measure the success of an advertising campaign.

In the Search engine optimization (SEO), the CTR indicates what percentage of users who saw your website in the search results actually clicked on it.

What are ranking factors?

Ranking factors are the criteria by which search engines evaluate and rank web pages in search results. There are hundreds of less important and more important ones Ranking-factors (or Ranking-signals) that influence the visibility of a website in search.

Examples for Ranking-Signals are the backlink profile of a website, technical optimization, speed, user behavior, content, internal linking or safety, to name just a few.

The search engines rarely give precise information about what is and isn't a ranking factor. However, they do give a lot of useful advice on how to make your website the best of its kind so that it is friendly to both users and search engines.

PRO TIP: The 3 most important Google ranking factors are content, Backlinks and internal linking.

What is a backlink?

A backlink (also inbound link, Inbound link or inlink) is a link from one website to another. Any external link that points to your website is a backlink.

Use Google, Bing and other search engines Backlinks as a ranking factor. They all admit that it is a Ranking-factor. In this respect Backlinks treated by search engines as a "vote of confidence".

Since Backlinks play a very important role in most search engine algorithms, they are often overused or created with the aim of misleading the search engines.

PRO TIP: The structure of Backlinks to improve rankings is against Google's guidelines. Most link manipulations, such as link schemes, are either ignored or result in a website being penalized.

What is a nofollow link?

Nofollow-Links are links that you don't want Google to associate with your website when it comes to your Ranking goes. You insert a backlink Nofollow-tag to tell Google not to pass "link juice" to your website.

SEO Basics: Nofollow Links

With Nofollow-links, you can ensure that your website is only linked to reputable and authoritative sources. Unlike do-follow, no-follow is not a default attribute. You need to add the tag to every link that you don't want to be associated with your website.

What is a dofollow link?

A dofollow link is a backlink that Google does not use during the Ranking of your website. By default, all Backlinks dofollow. They must be changed to nofollow if you do not want Google to associate your website with these links.

With dofollow links, Google can determine which websites link to you and thus increase your "value" in the Ranking calculate. You do not need to add the do-follow attribute to make a link a do-follow link, as this is the default configuration.

SEO Basics & Google

Is Google the only Search Enginethat counts?

There are search engines other than Google, but Google is the Search Enginewhich counts the most. Google has over 75 % of the search market, while its biggest competitor Bing only has around 10 % of the market share.

Of course, there are also other search engines such as Baidu (the chinese Search Engine), Yandex (the Russian Search Engine) or DuckDuckGobut Google is the most important thing for all of us.

PRO INSIGHT: The reason for this is simple. Google simply delivers the best and most relevant results. That's why every SEO should know a bit about Google and what Google is most interested in.

Check out my list of alternative search engines and private search engines to discover more search engines.

What is Googlebot?

Googlebot is the name for the algorithms and code (i.e. the "crawler") that crawl each website and tell Google what it is about. The Googlebot is responsible for discovering and indexing all websites on the Internet, so that Google knows about almost every piece of content (on all websites) that is currently available online.

This allows Google to display the most relevant and up-to-date results when someone enters a term (or phrase) for Google search. A website should be relevant to the Googlebot be easy to crawl. Otherwise, Google won't know which pages you have on your website. According to Google, there are two main types of Googlebot-Crawlers:

A Googlebot, which stimulates and views the web from the perspective of a desktop user. A Googlebot Smartphone, which sees the web through the lens of a mobile user.

What are Google algorithms?

Google algorithms are very complex tools whose task is to extract data from the Index and present them in the form of the best and most relevant search results possible. Of course, Google uses combinations of different algorithms that take into account different types of signals to rank web pages.

Some of the best-known Google algorithms (or components of the Google search algorithm) are called RankBrain, BERT or Caffeine.

I recommend you read the article on how search works directly on Google to better understand how Google works.

What is a Google algorithm update?

A Google algorithm update is a change (big or small) to the way Google's algorithms evaluate and rank websites.

Google algorithms are updated several times a day! It is not possible to keep track of all these changes and adapt your website to each one.

PRO TIP: You can use one of the many SEO "weather" prediction tools that show the fluctuations in rankings on a daily basis. One of these tools is Mozcast.

SEO Basics: Ranking Fluctuations

A few times a year, Google releases a comprehensive core update that usually affects the rankings of many websites.

In the past, Google's algorithm updates were given special names like Panda or Penguin. Now they are simply called core updates, such as January 2020 Core Update. Moz has an interesting historical list of Google algorithm updates.

What are the Google Webmaster Guidelines?

The Google Webmaster Guidelines are a set of rules and guidelines that Google uses to optimize a website for search and for White Hat SEO set up.

PRO INSIGHT: I see it time and time again. When a website has the Google Webmaster-guidelines, it generally has no problems with the Ranking.

The Google Webmaster-guidelines should be your SEO bible. This is no joke. Be sure to read the Google Webmaster-guidelines if you have not already done so.

What is a Google penalty?

A Google penalty is a situation in which a website is dropped from the search engine index or its rankings for certain keywords drop drastically. A Google penalty is almost always the result of a violation of Google'sWebmaster-policies. There are two main types of penalties: manual and algorithmic.

PRO TIP: Google only imposes a manual penalty if it cannot penalize a website algorithmically. A manual measure exists if a website operator succeeds in deceiving the Google algorithms in such a way that they are unable to recognize this manipulation automatically and require the help of a human.

Google is getting smarter at recognizing various malicious SEO techniques. This is why more and more penalties are now handled algorithmically.

Your job as an SEO is to play by the rules so that your website or your client's website doesn't get penalized. If the website does receive a manual action, it's your job as an SEO to clean it up as quickly as possible and remove spam links that were created to Ranking to improve.

What is E-A-T?

E-A-T stands for expertise, authority and trustworthiness and is a concept that comes from Google's search quality evaluator guidelines. 

PRO INSIGHT: Any type of SEO analysis you perform should look at the website in terms of E-A-T rate

SEO Basics: E-A-T

Your job as an SEO is to make sure that a website has a fair share of E-A-T has. If it does not, you must make recommendations on how it can be improved. 

E-A-T is becoming increasingly important, especially for YMYL (Your Money Your Life) websites. In some niches, such as medicine or law, it is now practically impossible to find a good website without a good E-A-T to rank. 

What is PageRank?

PageRank (PR) is an algorithm for calculating and rating websites based on the number and quality of links pointing to them. PageRank was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google.

Since its introduction in 1998, the PageRank has changed and evolved, but it still works according to the same basic principles. The PageRank-value is not public and is only used internally by Google.

PRO FACT: In the past, the PageRank-value in the form of the Google Toolbar PageRank publicly and was updated regularly. However, the PR score was overused and manipulated by black-hat SEOs, so Google removed it completely in 2016 (and stopped updating it in 2013).

What is RankBrain?

RankBrain is a machine learning based system within Google's core algorithm. The purpose of RankBrain is to identify and determine the most relevant results for user queries. It also helps Google to better understand users' search queries and their intentions.

PRO TIP: According to Google RankBrain next to PageRank and content is one of the most important ranking factors.

What is BERT?

BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and is a neural network-based machine learning technique from Google that is used for natural language processing and pre-training.

The purpose of BERT is to help computers better understand natural language and better recognize the context of words in complex search queries.

PRO TIP: With BERT, Google is able to understand and process complex search queries, which often take the form of complicated questions with a lot of context.

BERT is part of the Google search algorithm and is now used for almost all English search queries.

What is Google Autocomplete?

Google Autocomplete is a function in Google Search that is designed to help users complete their search queries more quickly. As soon as a user starts typing, Autocomplete automatically begins to predict search queries based on the data entered.

With autocomplete, you can complete your search without having to type in all the letters and words of your query. This is a huge time saver, especially for mobile users.

PRO TIP: Google emphasizes that autocomplete is about predicting what a user will type and not about suggesting the search query.

What are Google search operators?

Google Search Operators (also called search commands or search parameters) are special commands and characters that you can type directly into Google to filter, refine, or narrow the results. Search operators make it much easier to find specific information or search a particular website.

The most common Google search operators are site: (displays results only for the specified domain), "" (forces an exact word match) or - (excludes a specific word from your search).

Google Search Console

What is the Google Search Console?

Google Search Console or simply GSC (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) is a free Google tool that allows website owners to manage the process of indexing and Crawlings of your website.

GSC also provides a wealth of data about a website's rankings, number of clicks, CTR and much more. It also helps website owners to better understand how their website is performing, what problems there are and how to fix potential issues.

What is technical SEO?

Technical SEO focuses on the technical aspects of a website when it comes to improving its visibility in search engines.

Technical SEO includes optimizations such as accessibility for internet robots or how they understand the content of a website. The performance and speed of the website are also part of technical SEO. The same applies to security (use of HTTPS).

If you are doing technical SEO for a website, you should use terms such as internet crawler (robot), Crawling, indexing, rendering, Structured data, breadcrumb navigation or internal linking and understand them. You also need to know what a robots.txt file and an XML map are and how you can fix potential problems with them.

Why is technical SEO important?

Technical SEO is important because it is the door opener for the visibility of a website in search. The purpose of technical SEO is to allow search engine robots to access, crawl, index and understand your website.

If a robot can crawl and index your website efficiently, your website has a chance to get better rankings and better visibility.

It doesn't matter how great your content is if the search engine robots can't reach and understand your website. Don't neglect technical SEO!

What is a technical SEO audit?

A technical SEO-A technical audit focuses mainly on technical errors and optimizations that need to be made to a website. A technical audit usually analyzes things like the indexability, speed, performance, XML sitemaps and robots.txt of a website.

PRO TIP: The first and most important step in a technical SEO audit is to ensure that the website is indexable.

Technical SEO audits should point out quick fixes and quick wins, such as no-indexing thousands of Thin Content-websites or the implementation of correct redirects from outdated and irrelevant websites.

What is crawling, rendering, indexing and ranking?

Crawling, rendering, indexing and Ranking are four different processes that should not be confused with each other.

Crawling is the process by which a search engine bot discovers and analyzes new or updated content on the Internet. A web page, an image file and a video are all a type of content. Search engine bots discover content via links.

Rendering is the process by which a search engine bot retrieves a web page, executes its code and analyzes its content to understand its structure and layout.

Indexing means that the content that is indexed at the Crawling and rendering are stored. The information and data collected during the Crawling-process are collected in the Index Saved.

Ranking is the process of determining where a particular piece of content (usually a web page) should be placed on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) should appear. Good rankings are the main goal of SEO.

PRO TIP: Crawling is not equal to indexing and indexing is not equal to Ranking. Google has a nice guide that explains how the process of crawling, rendering and indexing works.

What is the crawl budget?

The crawl budget is the number of pages that Google crawls each time it crawls your website. indexed (or goes through). As soon as your website has exhausted this budget, the crawler switches to another website. However, this does not mean that it goes through the "known" old website and misses new pages that you have set up.

The budget is set and updated automatically by Google. It is based on the size of your website (number of web pages), the update frequency, the speed of the website and the internal linking. Therefore, new pages that you have set up are usually taken into account and your crawl budget is updated accordingly.

Basics of SEO: crawl budget

For most websites, the crawl budget has no influence on the search engine optimization or the Ranking (simply because the crawlers are efficient and the budget is almost always sufficient). But large websites with several thousand pages, where new pages are added very frequently, should optimize their crawl budget.

What is a search engine robot?

A search engine robot (also known as a bot, crawler or spider) is a tool that search engines such as Google or Bing use to collect information about websites and add it to their database.

The functionality of search engine robots is similar to that of web browsers, with the difference that they do not require human interaction.

Bots usually access websites via links on other websites or XML sitemaps. The best-known search engine robots are, of course, Google's crawlers.

What is an XML Sitemap?

An XMLSitemap is a text file that tells search engine robots which pages to index. An XMLSitemap may also contain links to other types of content such as videos or images.

An XMLSitemap informs Google (or other search engines) about the most important pages of the website. The purpose of a Sitemap is to help search engines find the web pages of the website.

PRO INSIGHT: An XMLSitemap is particularly important for large websites that have an extensive information architecture. Small websites (up to a few hundred web pages) can be used without an XMLSitemap get by. But it is still good practice to have one!

What is robots.txt?

A robots.txt file tells search engine bots which pages or files should be crawled and which should not. The purpose of a robots.txt file is to protect your website from being overloaded with requests. It is not a means to remove a web page from Google'sIndex to banish.

PRO TIP: A widespread SEO Error is to block URLs from being indexed using robots.txt. To create a URL from indexing, you should exclude them with a meta robots "noindex" tag.

What are canonical URLs?

A canonical URL (also called canonical tag or canonical link) is the URL a web page that is the main or "preferred" version of a particular content.

SEO Basics: Canonical URL

It helps to avoid the problem of duplicate content when there are many similar web pages on a website.

What is canonization?

In search engine optimization (SEO), canonicalization is the process of selecting from a set of similar URLs a URL as mainURL and representative of the other URLs is selected. 

One way to help search engines find a URL preferable to another is to use a canonical link element. However, this is only one hit and Google can still find another URL select as canonical if it considers them more relevant. 

PRO TIP: To check which URL Google has selected as canonical, you can use the URL-Use the inspection tool in Google Search Console. 

What are meta tags?

Meta tags (also known as Metadata ) provide search engines with information about a website. Meta tags are practically invisible to the users of a website, as they are small snippets of code.

The most important meta tags are meta titles, Meta description, meta robots, metaViewport and meta character set.

PRO TIP: For many websites, optimizing the meta tags is a quick win when it comes to SEO.

PRO TIP 2Meta tags should contain important and relevant keywords.

Search engines use the information contained in the meta tags to display a website in the SERPs.

SEO Basics: Meta Tags

Meta tags also help search engines to better understand what a website is about. High-quality and clickable meta tag content can help to improve the CTR of a website.

What is the title tag?

A title tag is an HTML element that tells users and crawlers what the title of your page is. It is displayed as a clickable main heading when you search for something in Google.

SEO Basics: Title Tag

Title tags are important for both SEO and click-through rates, but they are more important to your users than to the crawlers, because when they put a link first, they consider the entire content of the page. In contrast, online users are likely to decide to click only after reading the title.

What is the ALT text?

ALT text (alternative text) is the HTML attribute used to describe the appearance and content of the image used on a website.

PRO TIP: Remember that the ALT text is not the place to stuff in your keywords, but to describe the image.

The ALT text is important for both screen reader users and search engine robots because it conveys the meaning of the image.

What are headings?

Headings help both users and search engine robots to better understand the content of a web page. There are five types of headings (from H1 to H5), with the H1 tag being the most important.

PRO TIP: Headings are also very useful for screen reader users.

Headings define the different parts of a web page and how they relate to each other. They should contain the keywords for which you are optimizing a particular web page.

You can use headings such as Kapiin a book, with the website being the book.

What is anchor text?

Anchor text is the content (usually just a few words) that is linked to another website. The Anchor text should ideally be relevant to the topic of the page or the content to which it links. It is clickable and usually stands out from the rest of the content with a different color and underlining, but you can also integrate it into the content.

There are several types of Anchor textincluding exact, partially matching and generic (e.g. click here). More relevant Anchor text helps both users and crawlers to understand how the current content relates to the website it links to. My link to Google Page Experience The instructions contain, for example, a relevant Anchor text.

What is structured data?

Structured data in the context of SEO simply means that information about a web page or content is provided in a specific format, in this case Schema.org.

Structured data improve the Ranking not directly, but some of them can influence how a website looks in the search results.

What is breadcrumb navigation?

The breadcrumb navigation (also simply Breadcrumbs is a secondary type of navigation that helps users to better understand their position within the structure of a website.

PRO TIP: Breadcrumbs are an important element of the correct internal linking structure.

They are usually located at the top of a web page and contain links to higher-level pages such as the category or the Homepage.

What is mobile-first indexing?

Mobile-first indexing means that Google takes the mobile version of a website into account when crawling, rendering, indexing and Ranking considered.

In the past, users mainly accessed websites from their desktop computers, which meant that Google primarily used the desktop version for indexing and retrieval. Ranking used to use a website. Today, the majority of internet users use mobile devices, so the mobile version has become the new "standard".

PRO TIP: You should consider mobile-first indexing as "mobile-only" indexing.

In Google Search Console, you can check whether your website has been converted to the mobile version. Simply go to Coverage and check whether the primary crawler says mobile or desktop.

What are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are a set of Google performance metrics that highlight the most important aspects of the user experience on the website. The Core Web Vitals include the following 3 metrics:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which focuses on the loading time

First Input Delay (FID), which refers to interactivity

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which focuses on visual stability

When you think about mobile SEO and the speed of your website, core web vitals should always be the first thing that comes to mind.

SEO Basics: Types of SEO

There are many different types, categories and subcategories of SEO. I mean really many! Let's take a look at the most popular and important ones.

SEO is often divided into on-site SEO and off-site SEO.

On-site SEO refers to the optimization of website elements such as meta tags, content, speed, URLs, internal links and more.

Off-site SEO refers to optimizations that are carried out outside the website, such as Linkbuilding.

There are also on-page SEO and Off-page SEO, which work in an analogous way, but refer to a specific web page and not to the entire website.

SEO practices are often divided into back-hat SEO and white-hat SEO, depending on whether you follow Google'sWebmaster-guidelines or prefer manipulative techniques.

Another common division of SEO is into technical SEO (with a focus on technical optimization), mobile SEO (with a focus on optimizing a website for mobile devices) and local SEO (with a focus on local visibility).

In most cases, SEO simply refers to optimizing a website for search. But not always!

That is why there is also YouTube SEO, Instagram SEO or App Store Optimization (ASO), which focus on increasing the visibility of a YouTube channel, an Instagram account or a mobile app.

What is Off-Site SEO?

Off-site SEO refers to optimizations that are carried out outside the website to improve the Ranking and improve the visibility of a website in the search engines. Off-site SEO aims to collect external signals, such as. Backlinks.

There are also Off-page SEOwhich aims to collect external signals for a specific web page rather than for the entire website.

PRO TIP: A good SEO strategy is based on both onsite and offsite SEO.

Off-site SEO is mostly done with Linkbuilding which is the most important part. But there are also other Off-page SEO-techniques.

Off-site SEO includes all promotional activities that take place outside of your website. This includes (high-quality) guest posts, mentions by other experts in the field, your activities on social media or even trust and recognition from other authorities.

What is On-Site SEO?

On-site SEO refers to the optimizations made on the website itself, e.g. meta tags, headings, ALT tags, content, speed, URLs, internal links and more. It includes optimizing both the content of the website and the HTML code.

PRO INSIGHT: Many on-site SEO optimizations fall into the area of technical SEO, which we will discuss in more detail below.

On-site SEO should focus on making the website accessible and easy to understand for both users and search engine robots.

Take a look at my checklist for on-page SEO.

What is Black Hat SEO?

Black Hat SEO is the exact opposite of White Hat SEO. This refers to practices that violate the rules and recommendations of search engines. The aim of Black Hat SEO is to create a Search Engine to deceive them into rating a website higher than it deserves.

PRO INSIGHT: Black Hat SEO is an old-fashioned type of SEO, which is a very risky and short-term strategy.

Common black hat SEO practices include Keyword stuffinglink schemes, cloaking or hidden text. Google is aware of what it considers to be Black Hat SEO and describes this in detail in its quality guidelines.

Black hat SEO techniques often result in a website being penalized either algorithmically or through a manual action. A penalty is usually associated with a sharp drop in visitor numbers or with a website being removed from the search results.

What is White Hat SEO?

White Hat SEO refers to a website's optimization tactics and methods that comply with official search engine recommendations and practices, such as the Google Webmaster Guidelines. In practice, this means playing with Google instead of trying to fool it into thinking that our website is better than it actually is.

PRO INSIGHT: White Hat SEO is a long-term strategy that requires a lot of patience and perseverance, but it pays off.

PRO TIP: A good starting point for White Hat SEO is the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

White hat SEOs focus on providing valuable and useful content that allows them to build trust and authority. They care about users and their experience while making the website as friendly and accessible as possible.

What is Grey Hat SEO?

Grey Hat SEO is an area between Back Hat SEO and White Hat SEO. In most cases, these are violations of the GoogleWebmaster-guidelines or violations of some of them, without going to extremes.

PRO INSIGHT: It's very easy to switch to back hat SEO when you realize that some of your Grey Hat SEO-tricks work.

A gray-hat SEO can have a pretty decent website with good content, but still rely on tactics such as buying relatively cheap links from guest posts on blogs that are part of a PBN (Private Blog Network).

And now another interesting type of SEO. Did you know that SEO is not always about improving rankings? Sometimes it's about the opposite.

What is negative SEO?

Negative SEO refers to black-hat SEO techniques and practices that are designed to undermine the Ranking and impair the visibility of a competing website in the search engines.

Negative SEO practices include, for example, building thousands of spam links pointing to a competing website, hacking the website or copying its content to publish it in many different places on the internet.

PRO INSIGHT: Negative SEO is usually not only unethical, but also a waste of time.

Google is getting smarter at recognizing when someone is trying to harm a website with negative SEO techniques. In most cases, Google simply ignores these practices and the targeted website hardly receives any negative results.

What is mobile SEO?

Mobile SEO refers to the optimization of the website with a focus on mobile users and mobile-first indexing.

The purpose of mobile SEO is to ensure that a website is mobile-friendly and that the site experience is as good for mobile users as it is for desktop users.

SEO basics: mobile friendly

PRO INSIGHT: More than 50 % of global website traffic comes from mobile devices, which means you can't neglect mobile SEO.

Mobile SEO includes optimizations such as the speed of a website, responsiveness and the aforementioned page experience for mobile users.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is the process of optimizing a website for visibility in local search results. Just like normal SEO, local SEO is about improving the organic (also known as free or natural) rankings of a website. Traffic on a website.

However, the difference between SEO and local SEO is that the latter focuses on increasing the visibility of local and usually smaller businesses that have a physical location.

A geographical location is an important part of local SEO. An example of a local search query would be "pizza near me" or "pizza in London".

Local SEO

All technical and mobile SEO techniques naturally also apply to local SEO. But there are also a few tactics that only apply to local SEO. The most basic and important component of local SEO is listing your business in Google My Businesswhich brings us to another question.

What is ASO?

ASO (App Store Optimization) refers to improving the visibility and ranking of mobile applications (apps) in the app stores (primarily Google Play and iTunes).

ASO is also known as mobile app SEO or app store marketing. The main aim of ASO is to increase the number of app downloads.

There are many similarities between SEO and ASO, as both focus on similar Ranking-signals, such as quality, user experience, indexability, user signals, etc.

Many traditional SEO techniques also apply to mobile app SEO. These include the Keyword-research, app name and title optimization, app indexing in Google, app ratings and reviews, app CTR optimization, and much more.

What is Social SEO?

Social SEO is the process of gaining signals from social media to improve a website's visibility and search engine rankings.

PRO TIP: Signals from social media websites do not have a direct influence on the Ranking of the website in search engines.

However, social media can add a lot of valuable value to a website. Traffic and users when, for example, a piece of content goes viral. This can indirectly help to improve the overall visibility of a website.

What is YouTube SEO?

YouTube SEO is the optimization of a YouTube channel (and its videos) so that it ranks well on YouTube (and Google). SEO for YouTube includes techniques such as optimizing a channel (description, Metadata) and its videos (optimization of keywords, title, description, adding transcriptions).

YouTube is the second largest Search Engine in the world (guess who's number one). So if you produce video content, it's definitely a good idea to invest your time or money in this kind of SEO.

What is WordPress SEO?

WordPress SEO simply refers to the search engine optimization of a WordPress-based website. The general SEO recommendations apply to any website, regardless of its CMS.

However, the methods of implementing some of these SEO optimizations differ depending on the CMS used. In the case of WordPress websites, the implementation of SEO optimizations is usually very quick and easy.

PRO INSIGHT: 30 % of websites on the internet are powered by WordPress, so it's certainly a good idea to know how to perform SEO for WordPress sites.

The beauty of WordPress is that you can optimize many advanced and technical aspects of a website, even if you're not a techie.

Do you need SEO tools?

SEO tools make it much easier to collect and analyze data and draw conclusions from it. You can also use them to thoroughly analyze any website. Most SEO tools also show the most important SEO problems of a website and suggest possible solutions.

What matters, however, is how you interpret what the tools say.

Tools are also invaluable when it comes to analyzing the competition, choosing the right keywords, developing a strategy for your website or simply checking how it compares to other websites.

SEO Basics: SEO Tools

SEO tools give you the knowledge and data you need to develop a website and turn it into a profitable business. The catch, however, is that you need to know which tools to use and how to use them. I know, the number of SEO tools available is overwhelming. But don't worry. That's why you have SEOSLY Pro and me.

What tools should you start with?

There are so many SEO tools out there that choosing the right one for a website can seem overwhelming. Luckily, many of these tools are very similar and it's really about choosing the tools you like best and learning how to use them.

Here are some tools you might want to start with:

• Google Analytics (GA), in order to Traffic and analyze the target group.
• Google Search Console (GSC) to analyze indexation, reachability and visibility.
• Google Keyword Planner for the Keyword-Research.
• AnswerThePublic to check what questions people are asking.
• Ahrefs and/or Semrush for all the above tasks and more.

I know there is overlap between the tools I show you below, but some tools belong to multiple categories (i.e. a certain tool is free, essential and comes from Google).

What free SEO tools are available?

Luckily, there are many great free SEO tools you can use to improve your website's search engine optimization. Here are some free SEO tools you should try:

Basic Google tools like

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Google PageSpeed Insights
• Mobile-Friendly Test
• Rich Results Test
• Google My Business.

Check out my full list of Google SEO tools.

Bing Webmaster Tools and Clarity from Microsoft.

What are the best SEO techniques?

In my experience, these are among the most important SEO techniques:

• Ensure that the website is accessible to search engine bots and that there are no obvious technical problems, such as a noindex-day.
• Optimization of meta tags and headers so that both users and search engine bots can understand the main topic and subtopics of a website.
• Create high-quality, useful and in-depth content that helps users solve their problems or answer their questions. In other words: Content that meets users' needs.
• The consideration of all Google page experience factors.
• High quality Backlinks earn (not build up) that actually Traffic on a website.
• The E-A-T build a website. 
• Compliance with the SEO and Webmaster-Google's guidelines.

PRO TIP: I put accessibility for search engine robots at the top because this is the foundation without which a website has no chance of high rankings, no matter how good it is.

When does SEO start to work?

SEO takes time and a lot of patience. There are many variables that influence how quickly you can see the first effects of SEO. It depends on the size, type or age of a website. It also depends on the niche and how competitive it is.

In general, you can expect the first results after a few weeks.

New websites usually have to wait a few months.

The greatest impact (and the snowball effect) is achieved by consistent White Hat SEO-measures that are implemented over several years.

PRO INSIGHT: My own experience shows that a brand new website usually picks up speed after about 8 months. Of course, I mean 8 months in which new, high-quality content is created.

SEO Basics: Organic Traffic

Unfortunately, many people want instant results and are not willing to wait for the big and real SEO effects. Therefore, they either apply black-hat SEO techniques or look for an SEO "expert" who guarantees quick and great results. This is usually a shortcut that leads to website penalization instead of SEO success. Don't take this route.

Remember that there are no guarantees with SEO. If an SEO specialist or a Agency Rankings guaranteed, run away.

Why does SEO take so long?

SEO takes so long because it's about establishing yourself as an expert in your niche, building authority and trust, adding value and meeting the needs of your visitors. As in any other field or industry, this is not a quick process.

If you want to get immediate results and drive traffic to your website, PPC (pay per click) may be the better option for you. But SEO brings long-term results and steady, free, organic traffic. Traffic to a website.

How can you tell if SEO is working?

You can say that SEO works when your business is growing and new customers are coming in. The success of SEO should never be Keyword-rankings are measured. It's a rabbit hole!

The Ranking of a website for a specific Keyword or specific keywords provides a lot of useful information, but it should never be an SEO goal in itself. It is common for a website to have high rankings for hundreds of low-volume, low-demand keywords that have no Traffic or do not attract new customers.

However, sometimes all it takes is for a website to rank well for a set of high-volume, high-demand keywords that have a lot of Traffic and convert them easily.

The SEO success metric is organic Trafficthat converts and turns into satisfied customers. It does not matter whether the Traffic comes from a large number of long-tail keywords or from a few highly competitive search terms.

How often does SEO need to be performed?

SEO is not a one-off process that you follow and complete. It is an ongoing process that needs to be carried out regularly and requires constant monitoring and control.

Unlike PPC (pay-per-click), however, SEO doesn't stop the moment you stop paying for it. An excellent website (in terms of content, E-A-T and technical SEO) can run well for many months without much work on the SEO side other than basic monitoring and the regular creation of new content.

However, I believe that any serious company that focuses on organic Traffic should have an SEO or SEO agency that constantly takes care of the SEO page.

What is link building?

Link building is the process of acquiring links to a website from other high-quality and thematically related websites.

Acquiring does not mean buying, but earning these links by creating such high-quality content that others really want to link to it.

PRO INSIGHT: Examples of high-quality content that can be shared are statistical reports, detailed instructions or research results, to name but a few.

Whether you like it or not, Content Marketing is an essential part of SEO.

What is a link audit?

A link audit involves analyzing all incoming links to a website to determine if they are harming the website and negatively impacting its Ranking have an impact.

The performance of a link audit and the transmission of a Disavow-file to Google Search Console can prevent a website from being penalized for link manipulation.

PRO INSIGHT: The disavowing of Backlinks is a must if a website receives a manual action due to unnatural linking.

What is an SEO audit?

An SEO site audit (or simply SEO audit or website audit) is the process of analyzing and evaluating a website in terms of its search engine optimization and visibility in search engines.

PRO INSIGHT: The purpose of a website audit is to identify problems that need to be fixed in order to improve the Ranking and improve the visibility of a website.

An SEO audit checks whether a website meets the Webmaster-guidelines and other SEO best practices.

What is Disavowing?

Disavow means to give Google (or another Search Engine) to notify that certain Backlinks at Ranking of your website should not be taken into account. You cut off all positive or negative connections to a backlink when you disavow it. Even if it still works (i.e. still points to your website and you may have Traffic from him), he is "dead" in terms of SEO. You disavow all Backlinksthat you believe do more harm than good to your website.

If you do it right, removing a link will prevent a spammy page from using the Ranking of your website by linking to it. However, it can also be a double-edged sword, because if you disavow a link, it also means that it has no Link Juice more to your website.

Disavowed links will not be removed and you must enter the Webmaster of the page or contact the original poster to have them removed.

Is SEO hard to learn?

Whether SEO is hard to learn depends on where you start and how comfortable you are with computers. I would say that SEO is not difficult to learn, provided you are willing to spend many hours learning, experimenting and drawing conclusions.

PRO INSIGHT: SEO can be quite hard to learn if you don't really "feel" it and aren't really interested in it.

It's like any other craft. If you dig deep, are curious and educate yourself in a variety of ways (books, online courses, videos, podcasts), then SEO gets easier and easier. All the necessary SEO resources and materials are available online, so it really depends on how easy and effective your SEO learning path is.

Can you learn SEO on your own?

Of course, you can also learn SEO on your own. In fact, most SEOs are self-taught (especially those with years of experience).

SEO is not taught at universities, at least not yet. There is also no degree course with a focus on SEO. However, there are plenty of SEO resources on the internet. Google alone offers so many guides, articles and books on SEO that you probably won't have enough time to read them all. A good place to start is the Google search center.

You're very lucky if you're starting your SEO journey now, because the number of courses and SEO materials available is so large and varied. That wasn't the case when I started.

There are also many friendly and helpful SEO communities or SEO experts who are willing to share their knowledge. All you need is perseverance, motivation and consistency. A good place to learn SEO is wherever you are right now!

How quickly can you learn SEO?

The answer to the question of how fast you Learn SEO the most hated SEO answer is: It depends. But that's true. It depends on how much time you're willing to invest and how serious you are about your SEO journey.

If you plan to spend a few hours every day on SEO, you can master the basics in a few weeks or even less.

If you only have a few hours a week, you'll need to prepare yourself for a few months before you have basic SEO skills.

And don't forget that once you've learned the basics and have a basic understanding of SEO, you need to start learning it in a practical way. Practice and experience are the be-all and end-all of SEO.

In my article "How long does it take to learn SEO?" I share my experiences and best practices for learning SEO.

How can you gain experience in SEO?

The best and quickest way to gain experience with SEO is to create your own website and experiment. Your first website probably won't be "the website" you'll be proud of, but it will help you gain the SEO experience you need.

PRO TIP: Set up a WordPress website and start experimenting without fear of breaking anything!

That's how I got my first job in SEO. I showed the recruiters the websites I had created myself and their GA-.Traffic-reports to prove that they actually rank. And I was hired as a junior SEO!

What skills do you need for SEO?

What skills you need for SEO is another question, but in general you need basic knowledge of computers and how they work, basic knowledge of how websites are built and how they work (HTML, CSS), knowledge of how the internet works, an analytical mind that likes data, tenacity and a willingness to learn.

And above all, you need to have a "feel" for computers. If you have that, you know what I'm talking about.

Who is an SEO?

An SEO is a search engine optimizer, a person whose job it is to check and analyze websites to see if they meet the standards and guidelines of search engines. An SEO is also often the person who carries out on-page optimizations on a website or at least checks their implementation.

My work as an SEO mainly consists of carrying out extensive and technical SEO audits. However, what exactly you do as an SEO depends on your specialization in SEO, the company you work for, the nature of your clients and much more. I am an SEO and I really love it!

How to start a career as an SEO?

SEO is one of those professions where experience is much more valuable than formal education. You don't need a master's degree in computer science to become an SEO. To start a career in search engine optimization, here's what you need to do:

• Learn SEO yourself. Master the basics with the help of numerous free SEO resources and materials. The SEOSLY website is a great place to start.
• Put your new SEO knowledge into practice by creating a few websites and optimizing them for SEO. You can also help a friend with SEO.
• Contact other experienced SEOs and let them advise you.
• Analyze the results you have achieved with your first SEO projects.
• Apply for jobs as a junior SEO specialist. And you're already in!

Does SEO pay well?

With SEO and whether it pays well, it's like any creative profession. The more value you generate, the more you earn. The average basic salary for an SEO specialist is around €30,000-50,000 per year. Whether you go above or below that is entirely up to you.

As in most professions, you will earn many times more if you have your own SEO company instead of working as an SEO in another SEO agency.

If you are very good at SEO, it will pay well or even above average. If you're only mediocre, it will almost always be reflected in your earnings. So, yes. SEO pays well if you deliver real value and do your absolute best at every SEO task.

Is programming knowledge required for SEO?

No, SEO does not require any programming knowledge. You can do SEO without programming knowledge. There are many great SEOs who don't program. But if you are an SEO and can program, you have an advantage.

There are many great online courses where you can learn the basics of programming. It's really worth taking a few of these courses.

In my opinion, every ambitious SEO should invest some time to learn at least the basics of programming. This will make their work not only easier, but also much more valuable.

Should you hire someone to do SEO for you?

If you're serious about growing your online presence (and in most cases, you should be), then you should consider hiring someone to optimize your website for search engines.

A business owner usually has little or no extra time to spend learning and performing SEO themselves. Not to mention the fact that an experienced SEO specialist has the knowledge to do SEO without experimenting with your business.

If you have SEO experts working for you, you can gain a major competitive advantage. The knowledge and experience of a good SEO specialist is almost always worth paying for. Even if it involves a lot of money.

Note that practically every company with a good online presence and high visibility in the search engines has an SEO or SEO team on board. You should too. Google has a nice article on whether or not you should hire an SEO.

How can you find a trustworthy SEO company?

It is not easy to find a trustworthy SEO company because there are still many black and unethical SEO companies that guarantee great results at very low prices.

Below are the criteria that can really help you. A reliable and trustworthy SEO company:

• will never promise you specific rankings for specific keywords.
• is ready to share with you the results it has achieved with other customers.
• has many good testimonials

How much does SEO cost per month?

The cost of SEO per month depends primarily on the experience of the SEO hired, the competition in the industry and the specific goals you want to achieve with SEO.

On sites like Fiverr, you can find many SEO "specialists" who will audit your website for €50 and offer SEO services for €100 or €200 per month, but do you really want to do that?

A few years ago, it was enough to pay a few hundred dollars to any SEO agency that could make your website the best it could be using mostly black or gray techniques like building hundreds of spam links or inserting keywords into your pages. Ranking helped.

PRO INSIGHT: A reputable SEO expert will rarely charge less than €1500 per month for complex SEO services. This is because high-quality SEO requires hard work and is very valuable.

A lot has changed since then. Today, it's all about authority, quality, expertise and Relevance. That's why you need to be prepared to pay at least a few thousand dollars a month for a quality SEO service and at least a few thousand for a thorough SEO audit.

In many cases it is 5000 € and more. Some well-known SEO experts even charge €10000 per month for SEO. Provided you find an excellent SEO company or SEO expert, it's money well spent.

What do SEO services usually include?

Contracted SEO services usually include some or all of the following:

• A detailed SEO audit at the beginning to diagnose the website
• A technical SEO-Audit at the beginning and then at least 2-4 times a year
• A content audit
• A link audit
• Competitor analysis
• Keyword-Research
• Visibility analysis

• Analysis and monitoring of data in Google Search Console and Google Analytics
• On-site SEO optimization, such as the optimization of title tags, meta descriptions, H1 tags, etc.
• Off-site SEO, e.g. building the reputation and trust of your website on the Internet
• Technical optimizations, such as creating or updating an XML-Sitemap and robots.txt
• Speed analysis and optimization
• Monthly reports
• Link building (or rather authority building)

Of course, this list is not exhaustive. The exact scope of an SEO service depends on the SEO company, the website, the industry, the competition, the business goals and many other factors.