What is SEO?

According to Wikipedia, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)is the process of optimising the visibility of a website in the unpaid (or natural) results of a search engine.

To apply these optimisation techniques, we need to understand how search engines work, and earn such visibility or positioning in the search results of users. When a user searches, he wants to see the best possible results for what he’s looking for. That’s why we use search engines like Google… and they’re good at it!

Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult to be in the top positions in the results of a survey. Imagine a cat and mouse game where marketers or SEOs try to figure out what they have to do for sites to gain visibility, and search engines, like Google, try to understand what (unnatural) techniques are used to neutralise them. All this so that the results are really the most relevant and not just the most optimised.

Keywords: what we do

Enter keywords – the words or expressions that users use in searches – for each of these keywords, in any language, Google will present a set of links ordered according to the criteria of its algorithm, and the weight of those criteria in the algorithm simulate that relevance. It is thought that there are more than 200 criteria in Google’s algorithm… After all, it is easy to see that most (if not all) of them will have an impact of less than 1%.

With this number of criteria, we should try to use the keywords with greater emphasis for our area, and if the market is very saturated, others where we can stand out from our competition. Above all, we must keep our content natural, because keywords must also naturally reflect what we do.

Ranking: Are we relevant?

The most frequent request that potential new customers make is: I want to get to first place on Google! – even without knowing for which keyword … Only one site can be the first for each keyword and it is impossible to guarantee this with a huge amount of criteria and with constant changes to the algorithm. Google changes its search algorithm between 500 and 600 times a year!

Whenever SEO services are contracted, we want it to become more relevant and rise in the search ranking, but in most cases, placing a website on the first page of Google results for a particular keyword is already difficult. And if it is already difficult for a website with a history, it is even more difficult for a new website. Why? Why?

Backlinks: Who recommends us?

Backlinks are links coming from other websites – read from other domains – to a particular page. For Google they work as recommendations and are important, very important! There are two very important things to know about backlinks:

  1. Quantity: In general (very), the more links a page has from other websites, the better. If many pages on a website have many links, the website will also be valued as a whole, helping to value new pages that do not yet have links.
  2. Quality: However, Google does not only pay attention to the quantity of links, but also to their quality Receiving poor quality or unnatural links is halfway to receiving a penalty from Google.

When we recommend a product or service because we are satisfied, we do it naturally – for example, the links I put in this article – and this is what Google wants! If I pay someone to recommend me it is not natural, it is artificial and for that you must use Google’s paid links service, AdWords.

One of the jobs of an SEO consultant is to ensure that the website being optimised will gain backlinks because it is indexed, has interesting and relevant content. There is no problem in suggesting a link to a website as long as the other party does it naturally, because they agree that the link is deserved – this is called “Link Building”.

NOTE: Not only links coming from other websites are of interest. Internal links are also important because they give Google an idea of the structure of a website and the context of the link between the pages. A page without links is the equivalent of a dead end… and Google doesn’t like that!

A page without links is the equivalent of a dead end… and Google doesn’t like that!

Contents: What we do

But then how do we earn backlinks to our website? But then how do we earn backlinks to our website? See this from the user’s perspective:

  1. When I do a Google search I want to quickly find relevant and updated information.
  2. When I share something on Facebook or Twitter, I do it because I find something interesting or that I identify with and I want to make it known to other people.
  3. When I waste several minutes on a website page, it is because I am seeing (or reading) something relevant enough to hold my attention.

It is in the content and functionality of a website that the topics in this article begin to come together: We must know which keywords make the most sense, to build interesting and relevant content and features for users (and other websites) to share / point out!

SEO audit

SEO is not magic! It takes patience and work, and it’s not just for those who provide SEO services – for the client as well. An SEO audit is more and more fundamental: it provides exempt metrics, it is a real representation of a website at a given time because it shows current problems and opportunities, and more importantly, it defines a foundation for SEO work, regardless of how it will be done and by whom it will be done. An SEO audit should show in detail all the points that influence (or may influence) the positioning of a website in Google’s results.