Hey! Wanna be on top of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)?

— Lord Vincent Van Mendoza (@digitallourd) June 25, 2021

You can optimize your website for different search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo! AOL, etc to maximize your chances of gaining high organic rank. This has something to do with Search Engine Optimization practices with which you should be very familiar. It’s more technical, but easy to follow. You don’t have to learn really how search engines index and rank websites.

1. Research.

Research is not just for obtaining a degree in college. Research is not just an element that breaks friendship. Research can be a powerful tool in SEO.

Research is a very broad area, where you need to delve into the possibilities and opportunities for creating a website and developing a strategy for you online business.

Keyword research

Keyword research is an are of online marketing that should be considered in your general campaigns. Most especially, it is highly valuable when it comes to SEO and paid advertising. That’s because you have to make use of related keywords in order to enable search engines to identify your content and show it to the relevant searches.

Demand research

Another aspect of keyword research includes marketing analysis. You need to explore the online market for you to determine what is lacking (or what potential solutions do you have that others have not yet provided), and what people need. This, in fact, increases the chances of your website to be successful in the digital arena. If you are a local business, you could try conducting a local search by adding the location to your search query, and explore the results you see in the search engines.

For example, “digital marketing Davao“.

I have illustrated this as internet marketing is very in demand in the metro these days. If your website is highly optimized, you are more likely to receive inquiries, requests for callback, and SEO consultancy deals.

For this matter, you could use Google Trends to explore the searches related to a certain keyword. For example, if you use the word “football” as the search term, you can analyze the number of searches over time, regional searches, as well as related searches that can provide additional ideas (that would sure help you out).

Competitor research

This another aspect of keyword research consists of two parts. You will first have to find out who your competitors are. Use the search engines to find the search results that appear when the keyword you find relevant to your content is used in the search query. This will help you discover the websites that are competing for the same keywords as you are.

For example, on Bing, I’ve known my competitors:

After you have discovered your competitors, make a list of their websites, as you will find such very useful later on when you want to track the competitors and compare their progress with your website.

Once you know your competitors, you should analyze their websites, as this can help you find out what they are doing well, and what they are doing wrong. A great tool to help you with this task is SemRush Competitive Research which can help you analyze different aspects of the website and to compare several websites.

2. Choose your domain name well.

You should choose your domain name very carefully. It should to be related to the business you want to present online, and it should contain the keywords you use (whenever possible, but not really required). If you own a brand, the domain name should be your brand name. Just like my friend’s brand name, JeaniusHub; thus, her domain name is jeaniushub.com .

Domain name should also be easy to remember, as this will be your online name, and people have to be able to easily remember it, so that they could find you in an instant. Short and easy-to-remember name is also good if you are going to feature the name on the flyers, business cards or posters.

The same rules even apply for social media usernames or the @digitallourd for Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram. etc.

3. Choose SEO friendly design.

It is generally recommended that you pay attention to this aspect, as the destiny of your website is largely based on the treatment you get from search engines. Thus, you need to make things easier for search engine crawlers, in order for them to promote your website through organic search results. Friendly design refers to the design of the website and the friendly URLs, as both contribute to well-optimized website that can be ranked high in the search engine results.

Hence, if you are into SEO, you need to strike the balance between aesthetics and the lightness of your website. You have to make sure that your web page’s loading speed is good. You could use PageSpeed Insights and Google Search Console Mobile Friendly Test to check it out.

4. Add content.

Content is Lord. Over the past few years, content has become the central point of digital marketing and online presence in general. Having highly relevant content on your website has become a crucial factor affecting SEO stanidng.

Ever wonder why most websites nowadays have a blog page? Unlike in the past, when it was not difficult to position a website without any content, evolution of search engine algorithms has come to value content as one of the metrics used when analyzing relevance and influence of a website.

For example, if you offer wedding planning service in Davao, your website could contain several pages with instruction on how and where to hire a wedding planner. While it is good to also include the section about your company and the contact page; however, if you want to improve your SEO score, you should consider adding content that is relevant to your topic, in this case, wedding planning ideas. Nowadays, SEO professionals usually feature content through adding a blog to the website. In this case, articles you could post on your blog could be about types of wedding themes, ideas for an intimate wedding, pre-nup venues, supplies rental, etc. This way, you prominently use keywords without being spammy. The idea with this approach is that you will use content to increase positioning of your website by providing relevant information that both humans and search engines would love.

5. Optimize content.

Creating content is not enough. You need to optimize it. Content optimization refers to the formatting of the text in order to allow search engines to understand it properly, so that search engines are able to match your content with relevant keywords. Here are some aspects of content you should optimize:

Titles

Titles should be catchy, interesting and engaging in order to attract the users to read the entire article. Apart from that, the title of the article must be related to the content of the article, as you should not post misleading titles that have nothing to do with the content. The usage of keywords in the title is also recommended.

Headings

According to eMarketing Institute, each article should contain a few headings where you would highlight the most important aspects of the article. Usage of headings is important for two reasons. Firstly, an article with headings is reader-friendly, as it is well structured and it allows users to scan the text before they decide to read it. Secondly, search engines use heading tag, as well as other tags, such as title tag, to differentiate sections of the website’s page. This way, search engines are able to figure out what is important on your website, as you would highlight the most important parts with headings. You should also try to include keywords in the headings, of course in a natural way that does not disrupt the reading process for the visitors. Please note, though, that you should not overuse this. Specifically for an H1 tag, you should only use one.

Keywords

Usage of keyword in the content is a necessary part, as those are the terms you want your website to be identified with. Therefore, besides using keyword(s) in the title and headings, you should also distribute the keywords in the text of the article (just be careful not to commit keyword stuffing). Besides the exact keywords, using synonyms is also helpful. For example, for “digital marketing“, you may alternatively say, “online marketing“, or “internet marketing“.

Make sure that you are using the keywords in a natural way. Do not sound like a robot, bruh! Write naturally. Be conversational. Speak directly to your audience. You want to avoid randomly repeating the keyword, as this will have negative effect on the readers. As a possible result, they will not read the entire article, they will not share it, and they will most like never come back to your website. This will, in turn, have negative effect on website positioning.

Besides written content, there are other types of content you could use, such as videos or images. Both are useful kinds of content as they are aimed at using the visual effects to attract the attention of your readers. for them to consider going on with your content. Furthermore, presenting content in such form can sometimes be more effective than writing the content down and publishing it in the form of an article.

When it comes to optimizing videos, it is recommended that you provide transcript of the video in the article, below the video itself. Most users will only watch the video, without paying any attention to the transcript, but since search engines are not able to understand the content of the video, they will use the text from the transcript to index that page of your website.

You should also optimize images, for the same reason. Images are most commonly used tool to attract attention of the visitors. Besides presenting a photo or a graph, images can also feature text with an effective message. However, search engines are not able to see none of this, which is why you should use Alt text to add the description of the image.

6. Add a sitemap.

Of all the things that you need to prioritize, NEVER FORGET the sitemap. I have made mention about this for quite a number of times already. In fact, in one of my blogs, “Comprehensive SEO checklist for every specialist“, I have explicitly suggested that you need to check that your XML sitemap is properly optimized and valid. You also need to submit your sitemap to Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, and other webmasters.

You may have a look at my sitemap here:

https://lordvincentvanmendoza.com/sitemap.xml

7. Integrate social media.

Another aspect of optimizing your website should be the integration of social media channels. The first part of this integration is allowing users to easily share your content by installing necessary plug-ins such as the one that I’m using. You could check the bottom of this page. You may wish to share this blog. I’d recommend that you place the plugin next to the article, and it allows website visitors to share content on their social media accounts with only one click, without even leaving your website. What I don’t like about placing it at the beginning is that visitors do not have yet enough reasons for them to share your content.

In addition, the plug-in (just like Disqus) usually features the number of times the article has been shared on social networks, which can also be encouraging for visitors to share it.

Besides integrating social media plug-ins, you should also be present on different social media. It is highly recommended that you create social media accounts on the most popular social networks (such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest) as this is a perfect way to stay connected with the social media users. Remember that most of your target customers are on social media. Build presence where they are and lead them to your website.

This way, your audience can stay up to date with the current news, promotions and sales, and these are all the reasons why the internet users will decide to follow you on social networks. Just make sure that you don’t duplicate content across social media platforms. You may check my blog on what to post on different social media platforms.
Having a base of social followers can than reflect well on your website’s performance, as you get the chance to increase traffic and engagement on your website through social media.

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Note the in this digital age, it is not enough that you have mounted a website. You need to optimize it so that you get better web visibility. If you need an SEO specialist in Davao, you may shoot me an email at [email protected] .

Do you have what it takes to be an SEO specialist?

— Lord Vincent Van Mendoza (@digitallourd) June 22, 2021

The Ultimate SEO must-have for every SEO specialist

Understanding basic SEO concepts and key terms

As an SEO specialist, you need to know the common jargon used in the industry. As you delve into the complexity of doing Search Engine Optimization, these key terms will help you all along.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization is the process of maximizing the visibility of websites in search engines.

White-hat SEO – White-hat SEO refers to all the optimization techniques which abide by any search engine guidelines.

Black-hat SEO – Black-hat SEO consists of techniques, which are disapproved of by search engines and should not be tolerated. 

Grey-hat SEO – Grey-hat SEO tactics are often used by SEO agencies due to pressure to see quick results from a client and fall in between white and black hat SEO in terms of approach. 

Negative SEO – According to SEMRush, negative SEO is any malicious practice aimed at sabotaging search rankings of a competitor’s website. 

On-page SEO – Moz (n.d.) defines on-page SEO as the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. 

Off-page SEO – Off-page SEO refers to everything made outside of your site to fare better and feature higher up in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Local SEO – Yoast defines local SEO as the practice of optimizing your website for a specific local area. If you have a local business, like a shop, restaurant, or agency, you want your website to pop up in local searches. 

Technical SEO – Technical SEO refers to improving the technical aspects of a website in order to increase the ranking of its pages in the search engines.

Adding and Verifying your Website with Search Engine Webmaster Tools

Most SEO specialists only know about Google Search Console. That may be good. However, the bigger your scope of presence, the higher is your chance of getting discovered. These are the Webmaster Tools you need:

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a web service by Google which allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools is a free service as part of Microsoft’s Bing search engine which allows webmasters to add their websites to the Bing index crawler, see their site’s performance in Bing and a lot more.

Yandex Webmaster Tools

Yandex webmaster tools is a free web service provided by Yandex for webmasters to monitor their site’s performance in the Yandex search engine. You can use it to upload a sitemap, see how much traffic you are getting, get a list of indexed pages, see crawling or indexing errors, site speed problems, etc.

Checking your Permalink Structure and Making your URLs SEO Friendly

A permalink is the URL of a webpage. It is called permalink because it is not expected to change throughout the lifetime of the page.

For SEO purposes, you need to check and make sure that ALL your website pages have SEO friendly URLs.

When we say SEO friendly URLs, they must have the following characteristics:

• They are short and descriptive.
• They include keywords.
• They use hyphens (-) to separate the words.

For example:

https://lordvincentvanmendoza.com/seo-strategies-for-your-business

SEO strategies and techniques to use (and avoid) for your business’ online presence

Installing SSL and Making Sure that your Website is in HTTPS

Having an SSL installed on your website is one of the factors for you to rank well on search engine result pages.

An SSL ensures that any information shared between your website and server is secured.

If you haven’t migrated your website to HTTPS yet, then this is a top priority item in your to-do list. Depending on your hosting service, you may get this for free. Still, if you’re starting out, I suggest using Cloudflare.

Checking and Optimizing your robots.txt File

Robots.txt is a file that resides in the root folder of your site and gives instructions to search engines as to which pages of your site they can crawl and index. You can check if your robots.txt file is up and running by logging on to:

yoursampledomain.com/robots.txt

Have a look at mine as an example:

https://lordvincentvanmendoza.com/robots.txt

Optimizing your XML sitemap and Submitting to Search engines

An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the pages of your site that search engines need to know about.

You need to check that your XML sitemap is properly optimized and valid. You need to submit your sitemap to Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, and other webmasters.

Here’s mine as an example:

https://lordvincentvanmendoza.com/sitemap.xml

Checking your Comment Settings and Making Sure that all Comment Links are ‘nofollow’

Another check to make is to ensure that any links within your comments section have the nofollow attribute attached.

Comments are good for SEO and should be enabled on your blog but to avoid getting a Google penalty for ‘unnatural links’, all outgoing links need to be nofollow.

A nofollow link instructs search engines not to pass any PageRank (or link juice) to the target website.

Adding Structured Data Markup Data to your Homepage

Schemas and structured data are nowadays very important for SEO. They can help you enhance your website’s appearance in Google search results as they are also good for local SEO and for Voice SEO.

Your homepage is one of the most important pages of your site for many reasons and when it comes to SEO, it should be treated like the rest of the pages. Make your homepage as the comfort zone for your SEO.

When it comes to structured data for the homepage, you need to ensure that you define the following schemas:

Organization (if you are an online business)
Local Business (if you have a physical presence i.e. a shop)
Person (if you are running a personal blog).

Enabling Breadcrumb Menus on all your Posts and/or Pages

A breadcrumb menu is a small menu usually located at the top of a page, used as a navigational aid. It shows the path to go from the current page back to the homepage.

If you did notice, I also have a breadcrumb in this blog, specifically. You can take a look back at the top.

Breadcrumb menus are good for the user experience and thus they are also good for SEO. Google loves breadcrumbs and they recommend using them on your site.

Checking that all your Pages Define a Canonical URL

According to reliablesoft.net, a canonical URL is added in the HEAD section of a page and tells search engines which is the preferred URL for the particular page. A canonical URL can point to itself (self-referencing) or to a different URL.

Canonical Tags are most commonly used to:

• Help webmasters solve duplicate content issues
• Help search engines index the most appropriate page (in case pages have similar/identical content)
• Help webmasters specify their preferred domain
• It’s a way to consolidate incoming links to a specific page
• It’s a way to protect your PageRank from websites that copy your content
• It’s a way to avoid duplicate content issues when syndicating content
• It’s a way to specify which page to index in cases where you have accelerated mobile pages (AMP) enabled on your site

Checking and Improving the Loading Speed of your Website

As part of a technical SEO review, you need to check and improve your website loading speed as much as possible.

Loading speed is a ranking factor and a very important user experience factor. It’s anyone’s experience to feel so frustrated if a website takes so much time to load. One way of doing this is by using Lazy Loading for images and videos.

Optimizing your Website’s Logo and Favicon

Optimizing means making sure that your logo is an image and not text .

According to Woorank, there are at least 2 benefits of using a logo/favicon:

Increased Usability Of Site: Usability of a site correlates to higher search engine ranking. So, if having a favicon next to your website title on browser tabs, on bookmarks, on history archives and so on, helps a user save time, identify and browse your website without difficulties, they may have a rather minuscule but noteworthy role in SEO.

Bookmarks: With a favicon you seem to have a higher advantage over websites that do not when it comes to saving and keeping a website bookmark on the browser. Search engines such as Google has the Chrome browser for users through which they also deduct certain search ranking signals for sites bookmarked on the web. If there is no favicon to your site, you may lose out on the chance of being on a bookmarked list of a Chrome browser and hence indirectly lose out on a small but significant search ranking signal.

Optimizing your Page Titles

Page title optimization is the most important SEO factor. In your title, you should include your target keywords as this helps both search engines and users get an idea of what the page content is all about.

Besides using keywords in the title, you should also follow these best practices:

• Each and every page of your website should have a unique title tag
• A page title should accurately describe the page content
• Titles should be brief and informative (typically less than 60 characters)

Optimizing your Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are primarily shown in the search results and it’s a great opportunity to showcase what it’s about in a nutshell to the end-users. Here’s a sampler from my own website.

Optimizing your Website for Sitelinks

Sitelinks are links shown below the description of your snippet in Google Search Results that point to other pages on your website. Sitelinks are automated by the Google algorithms and are only shown when they are useful to the user.

Take a look at this example from the best school in Davao.

Checking and Optimizing the H1 Tag for All Pages

The H1 tag is the first important element shown on a page and it usually has the same value as the page title.

Be careful though. There should only be one H1 tag for every page or post that you make. This should contain the gist of your content. This helps web crawlers understand the main context of your page.

Adding a Google Map to the Contact Information Page

On the contact us page make sure that you embed a Google map and have text content that shows your business name, address, and telephone.

Registering your Website with Relevant Directories

Submitting your business page to various directories is actually a plus factor on getting more backlinks. These are some of the directories my friend, Ms. Ross Bato, a wedding planner in Davao, has submitted her business to.

Considering implementing Accelerated Mobile Pages

Accelerated Mobile Pages is a term used to describe a new way of building mobile-friendly pages that load faster compared to traditional mobile pages. Google, specifically, loves pages in AMP. In my blog on PICASSO Framework in Content Marketing, you can see that it is in AMP.

TL;DR

Having an SEO checklist in mind means having to-do list in working on your web visibility and online presence.

If you manage to make your website compliant with all the above-listed items, then you can really feel confident that your website is in good SEO standing. This should translate to higher rankings and more traffic.

Are you aware of the deadly sins you commit in doing SEO?

— Lord Vincent Van Mendoza (@digitallourd) May 27, 2021

7 deadly sins of SEO

This is the truth of the matter: Not all who have been doing SEO for years are doing quite well. The reason why they are not on top is because of their outdated orientation on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). That is just one. In this blog, I will share with you the 7 deadly sins in doing SEO.

Here’s the thing: Search engine webmasters are constantly evolving the SEO guidelines to enrich user experience (yes, SEO is for humans). Such governing rules work to keep searches safe, credible, relevant, and up-to-date. Penalties for breaking the rules can wreak havoc on your web credibility.
Here are 7 SEO deadly sins you should know:

(1) Waiting to start.

Most advertisers underestimate the power of organic search and so they rely on paid ads. No doubt. It works. For instance, Fibo Lim is fond of doing a lot of paid video marketing campaigns. But the question is undefined — until when should you be paying for ads to get visibility? Sadly, ads can’t make that last.
You have to do SEO the moment you have your website. It is the most important form of traffic after all. This is your way of making it easy for people to find your business online. As a matter of fact, websites that do not have a high figure of visitors do not sell much. I don’t want to talk much. Just start.

(2) Hiring an old SEO agency.

It is a rule of thumb to hire an SEO specialist that really performs well. Even in the world of SEO, the rule “Ignorance of the law excuses no one” applies. If your website is caught using high-risk tactics, you are the one who will be punished. Hence, you should look for the right guy to do the job for you.
It is therefore imperative that you hire a contemporary SEO specialist who knows exactly what to do based on trends and latest search algorithms. It is too good to be true to promise placing you on rank 1. However, isn’t it hard to believe of your SEO specialist really ranks first on searches?

(3) Using irrelevant keywords and links.

A keyword is a word or phrase that describes the message of the content. Keywords and links to external sites that are not relevant to your product offerings can lower your ranking on the search engine results page. In 2016 alone, Google’s Webmaster Guidelines began penalizing websites demonstrating ‘patterns of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative outbound links’. You have to bear in mind that search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo!, AOL) will penalize websites that wrongfully insert irrelevant keywords and links. You don’t wanna do this, do you?
Search engines catch unrelated keywords and links because it hurts the user experience (you may even get reported by searchers). Even if you get away with it, visitors who come to your page only to find that it doesn’t match their search criteria bounce off the site. In effect, high bounce rates can hurt your Search Engine Result Page (SERP) rankings. It is recommended to keep the keywords and links included on the page as specific as possible to your product or service.

(4) Using too many links.

I have observed some counterparts in the SEO industry who keep on duplicating content; that is, making it available in so many pages (although the title is just rephrased a bit). Obviously, these people do not know that Google recommends a maximum of 100 links per webpage. One they reach this limit, it’s a homerun.
You do not want to do this, too. Instead, step up your content marketing game. Keep your content relevant and valuable and include internal links.

(5) Committing keyword stuffing.

Other SEO specialists are so inlove with their keywords that they want to use it almost after every paragraph. They are being so political in SEO sense. That is so wrong! That might work for a short term. It does, I know. In fact, I have observed from my colleagues. This should be avoided as this may result to total removal from SERPs. A great way of countering this sin is by using synonyms for your keywords.

(6) Focusing too heavily on “text” content.

While it is true that texts are what the crawlers or spiders can read, you have to note that doing SEO is for human experience. Offer some other content other than text. You can do this by incporporating pictures in your blog.
Nevertheless, keep your non-text content related to your overall theme. No misleading!

(7) Copying external content.

Being a total copycat is a NO-NO is SEO. For every work that is inspired by other content creators, do the honors of doing attribution. If you keep on copying content from others, you will soon be filtered.

In conclusion, doing SEO is not some rocket science. It should be thoroughly learned. Otherwise, you will not get the results that you desire. Are there other SEO deadly sins that you know? Drop in the comment section below.
Sure?

Do you need an SEO specialist in Davao to help you improve your business reputation?
Visit my website at https://lordvincentvanmendoza.com or shoot me an email at [email protected] .

What are the benefits of SEO for your business’ online presence?

— Lord Vincent Van Mendoza (@digitallourd) February 28, 2021

As we are living in the digital age, we normally consult search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, AOL when looking for answers to our questions or solutions for our problems. The same is true with your potential clients. They also use search engines to look for the best products or service providers online.

This is where SEO comes in. This should be a BIG deal for any business owner like you because normally, we first pay attention to the results found on the first pages on search results.

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Overview

In this blog, I have provided a simple definition of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I even presented the benefits of investing in SEO for small businesses. I then included some helpful SEO strategies you can apply to boost your presence in the digital space.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of maximizing the visibility of websites in search engines. In the results, we can generate and get the optimum level of relevant traffic directed to a site. It can be considered both as a science and an art.

It is all about traffic (first of all). It is common knowledge and in fact, statistically proven that the higher up or earlier a website appears on a search engines results page, the more traffic it is likely to get from the users of a certain search engine. The second factor to influence traffic is frequency of appearance on the results page, or how many times a certain website appears on a search engine’s results page. The basic goal of search engine optimization is to maximize both these aspects of appearance to direct more traffic towards a website from a search engine.

The ones responsible for optimizing web pages are the ones used by search engines referred to as the internet bots or ‘crawlers’ or ‘spiders’. Such index web pages on the World Wide Web and keep their indexes updated. This process is called crawling. With the help of these bots, algorithms are written to generate results from the indexes created by such internet spiders. 

Basically, SEO deals with improving the ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ results that a search engine generates for search results. Organic or natural means that the results are not optimized through paying the search engine (paid advertising). Still, that is another tactic in Search Engine Marketing. However, just to be clear, SEO deals with results not influenced by paid traffic.

If you’re asking why this should bother you, well here’s my two cents. Search engines are the virtual highways through which the majority of internet traffic flows and finds its destinations. According to Forbes magazine, at the end of 2013 Google made up 40% of all internet traffic. And that is just Google alone. So if your web page is not doing well in its relationship with search engines, it is literally missing out on the majority of the traffic found on the internet. 

SEO as a marketing strategy

One of the most important uses of SEO is its beauty as a marketing strategy for businesses and entrepreneurs. Having better visibility and rankings on search engines can make all the difference in the success of a business when it comes to getting ahead and having an edge in today’s competitive market (on the internet). A simple way to understand this is to think of the internet as a network of roads and the search engines being the main highways through which travelers (your customers) navigate their route and discover places that have something valuable to offer them. The search results on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and AOL are like sign posts on a highway. They show you what is where and give you access to places you might not even know existed.

The more people find your page, the more they are likely to become frequent visitors and convert into consumers of whatever your website has to offer — be it a service or a product or whether you are simply sharing information.

Search engine optimization is a way to enhance your relationship with search engines. You ultimate goal here is to be seen as much as possible. Using our previous metaphor, it means to make as much sound as possible. Investing in SEO is quickly becoming an integral part of the marketing strategy of businesses, groups and individuals alongside other methods, which take up the bulk of the marketing budget, such as advertisements, endorsements, social media marketing etc. The reason for this is very simple – experience. Investment in SEO pays off and businesses/organizations witness significant results popularity and revenue after making SEO a part of their marketing strategy.

Essentially, search engine optimization is a part of internet marketing, and as such it overlaps with other forms of internet marketing, such as paid advertising and social media marketing. For example, when it comes to paid advertising, SEO helps you create landing page that will affect the outcome of paid advertising. When it comes to social media marketing, it is said that social media send so-called social signals that might affect search engines when determining ranking. Even though this might be the case, what we know for sure is that when you use a search engine to look up a certain query, you will see the results from social networking websites, especially if those are popular accounts with lots of activity and lots of followers. Therefore, you will frequently see the results from Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks ranked high in the search result page, which supports the fact that social media marketing can also help you improve visibility of the website on the internet, fulfilling the same goal as SEO.

Common SEO strategies and techniques

Generally, there are 8 SEO strategies under which there are techniques you can (and should not) apply for your own digital web pages.

1) White-Hat SEO

White-hat SEO refers to all the optimization techniques which abide by any search engine guidelines. While one needs to be patient to see results, this is sustainable and creates goodwill around your brand. White-hat SEO is low-risk and has high rewards if you do it right. Examples of white-hat SEO techniques include authoring useful and relevant content after doing extensive keyword research, earning links from high-authority sites based on the merit of your on-page content, and fast page loading times.

Here’s a comprehensive list of white-hat SEO techniques you should employ (eMarketing Institute, 2018):

• Making the website abundant in keyword-rich text and key phrases to anticipate as many search queries as possible. It includes the addition of relevant keywords to the metatags of the website.
• Creating dense and unique title tags for every page. It helps search engines understand the contents of a page by providing them a quick reference.
• The creation of media content such as press clippings, e-zines or newsletters to maintain a threshold of inbound links.
• Maintaining the search engine saturation at an optimum level and making regular comparisons with competitor websites. (Search engine saturation is a term denoting the quantity of pages of website that have been indexed by search engines. It is a measure of how efficient optimization efforts have been and are a good marker of the site’s visibility and accessibility.)
• Using online resources such as Google Trends and Google Analytics to understand current online behaviors and patterns in context of what is trending.
• Varying search phrases and employing them in the first 100 words of content.
• Employing a backlink from a web directory.
• The use of canonical metatag or 301 directs to achieve URL normalization in case of multi URL webpages.
• Crosslink between pages of the same site.
• Providing greater number of links to the main pages of the website.
• Using other websites to link back to the original.
• Employing a mixture of keywords and key phrases in conjunction with brand/business being promoted.

2) Black-Hat SEO

Black-hat SEO consists of techniques, which are disapproved of by search engines and should not be tolerated. This can lead to your website being penalized, which means losing ranking or being completely removed from the search engine results. This effort is not geared towards creating better content and developing a committed user base or content visitors. This is solely concerned with climbing to the top of the search results page through tricks. 

Here’s a list of recognized black-hat SEO tactics (Wordstream, n.d.):

• Content Automation
• Doorway Pages
• Hidden Text or Links
• Keyword Stuffing
• Reporting a Competitor (or Negative SEO)
• Sneaky Redirects
• Cloaking
• Link Schemes
• Guest Posting Networks
• Link Manipulation (including buying links)
• Article Spinning
• Link Farms, Link Wheels or Link Networks
• Rich Snippet Markup Spam
• Automated Queries to Google
• Creating pages, subdomains, or domains with duplicate content
• Pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing, viruses, trojans, and other malware

3) Grey-Hat SEO

Grey-hat SEO tactics are often used by SEO agencies due to pressure to see quick results from a client and fall in between white and black hat SEO in terms of approach. Although Google’s webmaster guidelines do not explicitly say that such methods are prohibited, they are still frowned upon and can lead to undesired search outcomes. 

Here’s a list of sample grey-hat SEO tactics (Infidigit, 2019):

• clickbait content
• paid reviews
• link exchange between sites

4) Negative SEO

According to SEMRush, negative SEO is any malicious practice aimed at sabotaging search rankings of a competitor’s website. This is generally considered “black hat SEO” for its malevolent nature. 

Listed below are the examples of negative SEO:

• Hacking a website.
• Creating toxic backlinks with spammy anchor texts pointing to the website.
• Scraping a website’s content and creating duplicates of the website.
• Posting fake negative reviews about the website.
• Removing a website’s backlinks by sending out fake removal requests to webmasters.

5) On-Page SEO

Moz (n.d.) defines on-page SEO as the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals.

Example of some on-page SEO action items include:

• Optimizing your title tags and meta descriptions.
• Writing in-depth, quality content.
• Cleaning up your site’s code.
• Streamlining your site’s navigation.
• Speeding up your website.

6) Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to everything made outside of your site to fare better and feature higher up in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). In laymen terms, off-page SEO helps search engines understand what others think about your product, services, or website. Even having just a few links from strong, relevant sites with high levels of authority will increase your chances of ranking higher. Off-page SEO isn’t just about getting a link to your site from just anyone; it’s about getting a link to your site from the right one. And, you want to make sure that you’re getting the “link juice” from the backlink too.

Here are some off-page SEO ideas you can try:

• Brand Mentions
• Commenting
• Forums
• Influencer Outreach
• Guest Authorship or guest blogging
• Broken Link Building
• Social Networking
• Social Bookmarking
• Content Marketing
• Questions & Answers
• Newsletters

7) Local SEO

Yoast defines local SEO as the practice of optimizing your website for a specific local area. If you have a local business, like a shop, restaurant, or agency, you want your website to pop up in local searches. But optimizing the website of your local business is also about making sure people are able to find you in real life.

Have a look at the ranking performance of one of my clients (Grandeur) on Google:

Here are 10 ways to optimize your website for local SEO:

• Optimize your homepage.
• Optimize your metadata.
• Create a page for every product, service, and location.
• Use local businesses, organization, product, and service schema.
• Claim your Google My Business Page.
• Update NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Numbers) citation on your website.
• Add your business to local directories.
• Setup social media signals.
• Prioritize reviews.
• Implement SEO best practices throughout your website.

8) Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to improving the technical aspects of a website in order to increase the ranking of its pages in the search engines. Making a website faster, easier to crawl and understandable for search engines are the pillars of technical optimization.

Here’s a technical SEO checklist:

• Specify a Preferred Domain
• Optimize Robots.txt
• Optimize Your URL Structure
• Navigation and Site Structure
• Breadcrumb Menus
• Implement Structured Data Markup
• Canonical URLs
• Optimize 404 Page
• XML Sitemap Optimization
• SSL and HTTPS
• Website Speed
• Mobile Friendliness
• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
• Pagination and Multilingual Websites
• Register your site with webmaster tools

If you need a figure why you should consider SEO for your business’ digital presence, here one: Data from Statista put SEO on top with 32% of marketers worldwide saying it offers the highest ROI; a significant 41% say it offers medium ROI. The long-term average advantages of SEO are impossible to overstate.

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TL;DR (The bottom line):

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should be given priority alongside other online marketing initiatives so that you can get on top of the competition. Apple the ethically accepted SEO strategies and techniques in order to establish genuine search reputation.

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If you are looking for an SEO specialist in Davao city, I can be the guy for the job! If you have SEO projects you want me to do on your behalf, you may reach me via email at [email protected] or you may call me at +639760030342 .