In this case study we’re going to show you how to follow a repeatable process to greatly improve SEO rankings for a NEW website.

If you’re expecting this article to tell you how to cheat at Search Engine Optimisation without putting in much effort, you’re in the wrong place!

With a new website, there needs to be a focus on improving organic performance gradually.

This article shows you the process we put in practise with new clients to effectively improve search engine rankings, whilst protecting the long-term health of your website.

Step-By-Step SEO Process

The Challenge

Our initial focus when engaging with the Tailor Made Rail team was on understanding more about the business, the most important search keywords, and the existing SEO limitations.

The existing website was using a Wix Content Management System (CMS).

The Wix CMS platform had limitations which restricted SEO performance, with the site also looking dated and was not performing effectively in converting visitors into enquiries.

The pre-existing website was ranking poorly for all relevant search terms, resulting in the business looking to invest in improving their search performance.

Organic traffic was not delivering value for the business, and hence a focus on improving the overall SEO performance of the site was required.

Step 1

Re-building The Website

There are a range of reasons why businesses invest in a new website.

A website is essentially your shop window, representing your business and providing the opportunity to effectively market and sell your products.

A new website is important if:

• You do not currently have a website.
• Your current website is not performing well in terms of site speed (an important SEO ranking factor).
• Your current website is not performing well in terms of converting visitors into enquiries or sales (conversion rate).
• Your current website has SEO restrictions (such as limitations regarding the URL structure), or does not allow you to effectively manage your site content.

Working closely with the team at Tailor Made Rail, we embarked on a project to modernise the businesses web-presence.

The focus for the project was on ensuring the new website effectively highlighted the quality of the products on offer whilst providing a clean user-experience.

The site was designed with SEO in mind from the outset, focusing on a logical site-hierarchy and effective use of on-page optimisation.

The new website included:

• Mobile responsive design – An important SEO ranking factor
• An easy-to-use, SEO-friendly WordPress platform
• Well optimised landing pages focused on specific search terms

Whilst re-developing a website, or creating a new website won’t automatically result in tangible SEO benefits, a poorly optimised or slow-loading website can be the primary reason why you’re not seeing the results you would have hoped for.

You can see how your site is performing regarding page speed using Google Speed Test or GT Metrix.

Step 2

Keyword Research

Effective keyword research is a crucial part of building a new website.

The aim is to utilise research tools to identify keywords which offer high monthly search volume., as well as conversion intent.

Conversion intent relates to keywords clearly showing the intent of the user to purchase.

For example, ‘Orient Express Holidays’ would be used by searchers looking to holiday on the Orient Express (clear conversion intent); whereas a search simply for ‘Orient Express’ (which has higher search volume) would likely include a wide range of information searches.

The most effective free keyword research tool is Google Keyword Planner which, provided you are currently running paid PPC ads, gives you accurate search volumes for related terms.

The keyword research process is also useful to identify any ‘low-hanging fruit’ which are pages ranking just off the first page of Google.

These keywords provide opportunity to deliver immediate ROI, with a focus on improving ranking positions of these pages into top 10 positions.

Once a range of related keywords have been identified, a crucial step is to ensure that there are unique landing pages created to target each key-phrase.

Where possible, the proposed URL structure for your new website should highlight to Google which pages are more (or less) important, based on their position in the site hierarchy.

A simple Excel (or shared Google Sheets) document is a sensible way to understand for yourself the ideal hierarchy for your website, whilst also ensuring all key search-phrases are targeted with dedicated landing pages:

A core element of deciding the URL structure process for the new website is to identify whether keywords with sufficient volume would be better served through a static landing page, or a blog post.

• Landing page

A sales-focused landing page, such as a destination (i.e. Italy) or experience (i.e. luxury rail holidays) is designed to highlight relevant product and provide clear calls-to-action (CTAs).

A landing page ideally will have a logical position in the site hierarchy, and is not a date-specific piece of content.

Effective landing pages will have a strong impact on the total number of conversions from organic traffic:

An example of a landing page would be https://www.tailormaderail.com/destinations/italy

• Blog post

Blog posts provide the opportunity to add a large amount of content to a page which greatly improves overall SEO performance.

A blog provides the opportunity to link to relevant sales-focused pages, improving the internal link profile of key landing pages.

Blogs may include answers to relevant questions (i.e. What to pack for an Orient Express holiday?) or lists (i.e. Best rail holidays in Europe).

Step 3

Improving Existing Content

Where possible, the amount of content on landing pages or blog posts needs to be increased.

Pages with thin content are those which have a low text to html ratio.

Generally speaking you don’t want pages with less than 500 words of original content being crawled by search engines. Ideally, content will have a minimum of 1,000 words.

Reviewing and improving existing content provides 3 main advantages:

1. Increased content depth increases the possibility that each article ranks well in search engines.
2. Improving the content to include clear calls-to-action (CTAs) ensures that ALL of your content is working hard to convert visitors into enquirers (and hopefully bookers)
3. Adding relevant internal links (to appropriate sales-focused landing pages) improves the websites internal link profile, improving SEO performance.

Existing content, in whatever form, is your best starting point to improve your overall SEO performance.

Similarly to the keyword research process detailed above, an effective process for review outstanding content is simply using an Excel doc.

With a new (or fairly new) website the amount of pre-existing content will be very limited, allowing you to quickly group content into 3 key categories:

1. Fine as-is
2. Needing review
3. To delete

Whilst the aim is to develop your authority with new content, the best place to start is to ensure ALL content on your site is representing your business in the best possible way.

Key steps for improving content involve:

1. Adding additional content
2. Adding/improving imagery
3. Adding/improving calls-to-action
4. Adding additional internal links to key sales pages
5. Change keyword focus, if required (based on keyword research)

Step 4

Link Building – Start Sloooow with a NEW Website

With any new website, there are limitations.

Depending on how new the site is, and whether the new site is replacing an existing website; Google will likely have little prior perception of the authority (or importance) of your website.

Whilst the aim is to improve Google’s overall picture of the authority of your new site as quickly as-is possible, effective SEO involves ensuring that any growth in authority appears natural:

Links to the homepage are important to the performance of a new domain, developing the overall Domain Authority which has a strong bearing on the SEO performance of all pages.

This focus on links to your homepage using branded anchor text (your brand name or URL) is the safest way to improve your overall SEO performance, whilst also protecting the long-term health of your website.

The process ensures that all pages benefit from the increase in top-level domain authority.

Step 5

Start to focus on deeper pages

All pages need external links to rank well in search engines.

The number of links needed to be competitive depends upon the page, the site, your niche, the type of query and so on.

Lower-level pages may only need a limited number of direct links to rank well, so it’s important to understand your site structure and the relationship between pages:

Remember, a link to a ‘Category Page 2’ (in the example above) will benefit any pages set as children of that page.

Therefore it’s worth deciding (based on your keyword research), which pages you will focus on with links, and how links to this page will also benefit others.

Hence the Homepage has the highest overall link benefit to your site.

The focus needs to be on increasing the number of high-quality links, at a rate which looks ‘natural’ to Google.

When developing links, the key is to identify websites which have relevance to your brand.

In the example of Tailor Made Rail, we were looking for websites and blogs which were related to trains, travel and holidays in Europe.

Content placement on 3rd party websites needs to follow a few key guidelines:

1. Work with the highest authority domains you can afford with your budget – high quality link development cost money, there’s no getting away from this!
2. Create in-depth content – aim for at LEAST 1,000 words of well-written content (more if possible although don’t add filler just to meet the word-count)
3. Add your link towards the start of the piece – early links carry the most value
4. Ensure that your link looks as natural as possible – ideally the link should look like a natural citation (reference)
5. Add a selection of good quality links to the piece – ensuring that the additional inks are pointing to high-quality websites and that there are a selection of links to eCommerce and informational resources.

Step 6

New content strategy

Whilst the process of updating existing content and creating new links from high-quality external websites will take time, there needs to be a focus on creating new content.

A new content project will follow on from the keyword research, identifying which keywords are not being effectively targeted through pre-existing landing pages.

Once identified, the blogs or static landing pages need to be effectively optimised for search engines, which primarily includes ensuring page titles and headers are optimised for the selected target keywords.

To ensure that Google regularly visits your site, and hence indexes any new content quickly, it is important to publish content.

Results

As a result of the processes above, the overall SEO performance has been very strong.

There has been a clear increase in total visitors from organic traffic:

The SEO project has delivered noticeable improvement in the organic ranking for key search terms:

Organic Rankings

(Source: SEM Rush October 18 – July 20)

Aside from the key-phrases targeted above, the focus on links to the homepage delivers an increase to the overall Domain Authority.

This subsequently results in a wide range of keywords increasing ranking positions.

Ranks in Top 10 Positions

The number of keywords ranking in Top 10 positions in Google has improved dramatically during this time:

(Source: AHrefs)

Value of Organic Traffic

The overall value of organic traffic has increased significantly:

(Source: AHrefs)

Overall Organic Traffic

With a strong increase in overall organic traffic.

Performance Vs Competitors

When comparing overall performance with key competitors , the growth has been very encouraging:

As a result of the growth, the business is now out-performing long-established competitors.

Feedback

“Having worked with Apollo for 2 years now, we have been delighted with the accessibility and delivery of PPC and SEO services, as well as assisting us in building two new SEO-friendly websites for our UK and Australian operations.

I would have no hesitation in recommending Matt and his team to anyone looking to enhance their online presence and drive their business forward.”

Simon Hodge, Managing Director, Tailor Made Rail

Talk To Us

Whilst your SEO performance is something which requires a hands-on approach, the best best is to talk to the experts.

Get in touch with us today for a FREE, no-obligation SEO Audit to understand your current performance and the potential opportunities.

Want to get better rankings on Google? Of course you do!

However SEO is a complex beast and it can be hard to know where to focus your time to bring the best return.

In this case study, we’ll show you how we implemented a custom SEO strategy for one of our clients, and the results delivered.

Our case study provides actionable takeaways, following a simple and repeatable SEO strategy.

Any business can use this format to rank for a wide range of target keywords and drive more qualified traffic from search engines.

As can be seen below, the business is now ranking for over 50k more organic keywords:

Source: AHrefs

The process delivered an increase of almost 200% in high-quality organic traffic:

Source: Google Analytics

The Challenge

The client is a well-known magazine publisher, focused on travel, who were looking to increase the increase their Google visibility and make search a more important part of their traffic.

There was a clear need to improve their SEO performance and the increase the number of visitors coming from organic traffic.

We were challenged by the client to…”make it rain”!

Whilst Google search offers the potential to unlock a vast amount of additional traffic (the “rain”), for any client, the approach needs to be focused on sustainable, long-term growth.

Although the brand was a regular content producer, the articles published were not effectively optimised for search engines, resulting in limited organic traffic.

The challenge was:

• Identify and resolve technical SEO issues
• Cleanse the existing link profile
• Enhance the link profile using high-authority in-bound links
• Increase the overall Domain Authority
• Improve organic rankings in Google
• Increase overall organic traffic

SEO Strategy – Step-By-Step Process

The  goal with this case study is to introduce you to a range of new ideas which will help you to expand and improve your SEO performance and better serve your customers.

The approach that I will detail saw our client grow their organic traffic by almost 200%!

Step 1

Technical Audit

Any new SEO project needs to start with a focus on resolving any outstanding technical SEO issues.

Issues with the indexability of a site can cause fundamental obstacles to your ability to rank well for important search terms.

While your site is being crawled, search engines are checking a range of key areas including how secure, fast, and easy-to-use your site is.

Each search engine has its own algorithm, and algorithms get improved with regular updates.

When you conduct an audit, you are checking the SEO health of your website.

What is healthy one year can quickly change and therefore SEOs or in-house marketing teams need to keep up-to-date with an ever-changing landscape.

The core elements of a technical audit include reviewing both content and technical performance.

Back-end

• Optimising site speed (hosting and image compression)
• Reviewing the XML sitemap (submitting to Google Search Console)
• Ensuring a logical site hierarchy
• Review robots.txt file (adding XML sitemap if missing)

Front-end

• Removing duplicate content issues
• Identify issues with internal links

A technical audit is crucial to ensure key issues are highlighted and resolved.

There are a range of SEO Tools available to help with technical audits.

Those we mainly recommend are:

• Google Search Console
• SEM Rush (technical audits, rank tracking, link audits)
• aHrefs (technical audits, rank tracking, link audits)
• Screaming Frog (site crawls)
• Google Speed Test (site speed test)
• GT Metrix (site speed test)

You may need to get some help with understanding technical issues, however this step is an important first step with any SEO project.

Step 2

Keyword Research

Keyword research is a crucial next step to understanding the current SEO performance and the potential keyword opportunities.

There are a range of keyword research tools available, although the most popular is Google Keyword planner.

Understanding the scope of keywords which are most relevant to your business, and their average monthly search volume, gives you the knowledge to effectively optimise your website for search engines.

The starting point for your keyword research in PPC should be the landing pages for your products or services.

The aim is to identify the most important keyword to target with each landing page, considering both keyword volume and conversion intent (the search intent behind the user’s search).

You can research in 2 key ways:

1. Search for new keywords
2. Get search volume and forecasts for an existing keyword list

To find new keywords, use Google Keyword Planner to add words, key-phrases or your site URL.

You’ll get the following data:

• Exact monthly search volumes (or volume range depending on PPC spend)
• Level of competition
• Top of page bid (the equivalent cost-per-click through Google AdWords)

The other option, if you have a pre-existing keyword list, is to upload the list into Keyword Planner to identify those with the highest search volume.

Researching your current rank for relevant keywords will help to identify ‘low-hanging fruit’. These are keywords ranking just off the first page of Google.

Once you have a better understanding of search volume and your current ranking performance, you will be able to identify keyword opportunities.

Look to identify as many relevant target keywords with search volume as-is possible before moving onto step 3.

The more data you have, the more informed your on-page decisions will be!

Step 3

On-Page Optimization

Once relevant keyword opportunities have been identified, it is important to ensure that there is a unique landing page optimised for each target keyword.

On-page optimisation is a crucial component of SEO, ensuring that landing pages have the best chance of ranking strongly in search engines.

Using your keyword research, the aim is to identify which is the most relevant landing page for each target keyword.

Effective on-site SEO optimisation is primarily focused on ensuring the Header 1 (H1) and page title are aligned in focus on the chosen keyword.

This process provides clarity to Google, giving you the best chance of strong organic rankings.

Having unique pages focused on specific target keywords also ensures that there is limited risk of keyword cannibalisation (two landing pages competing for the same keyword).

Step 4

Cleanse Link Profile

An important step in delivering strong SEO performance is ensuring the overall link profile is healthy.

A healthy link profile is one which includes no ‘toxic’ links.

Links identified as toxic need to be disavowed in Google Search Console.

This process confirms to Google that you are aware of the link, however you do not wish for this link to be considered part of your links profile.

Disavowing poor-quality links is an essential part of giving your site the best possible chance of improving your SEO.

Note: The disavow process needs to be carefully reviewed as this can severely influence your ranks if not managed correctly. 

Step 5

Internal Linking 

Once we completed a technical audit and solved key on-page optimisation issues, we need to think about improving the internal link structure.

Bounce rate is an SEO ranking factor, hence an initial focus was on creating clear calls-to-action (CTAs) and ensuring each page has a logical next step through relevant internal links.

This involved working with the internal team to ensure pre-existing blog content has links to core sales landing pages.

Key steps for improving content involve:

1. Adding additional content
2. Adding/improving imagery
3. Adding/improving calls-to-action
4. Adding additional internal links to key sales pages

Where possible, content relating to a specific destination or product should have an optimised link through to the relevant landing page.

Adding new links to content already live on the clients’ website was crucial in giving landing pages the best chance of ranking for competitive key-phrases.

Internal links are an increasingly more important part of SEO performance, therefore any time spent in this area is beneficial.

Step 6

Content Strategy

An initial starting point was to review the existing blog to ensure ALL content on the site is representing the client’s brand in the best possible way.

Generally speaking you don’t want pages with less than 500 words of original content being crawled by search engines. Ideally, content will have a minimum of 1,000 words.

Reviewing and improving existing content provides 3 main advantages:

1. Increased content depth increases the possibility that each article ranks well in search engines.
2. Improving the content to include clear calls-to-action (CTAs) ensures that ALL of your content is working hard to convert visitors into enquirers (and hopefully bookers)
3. Adding relevant internal links (to appropriate sales-focused landing pages) improves the websites internal link profile, aiding overall SEO performance.

Ideally all content should be reviewed, looking to improve both the keyword focus, content depth and user engagement.

Key steps for improving content involve:

1. Adding additional content
2. Adding/improving imagery
3. Adding/improving calls-to-action
4. Adding additional internal links to key sales pages
5. Change keyword focus, if required (based on keyword research)

As well as utilising existing content, we worked closely the internal content teams to ensure that there is a strategy in place for new blog content.

Essentially the aim is to add to the number of contextually-relevant articles and to create ‘topical clusters’ which can be thought of as groups of pages that talk about different elements of the same key topic.

Ensuring that the content matches the user-intent across the entire conversion funnel is a great way to build awareness of your brand as well as helping with link acquisition and visibility.

The content you produce should:

• Position your brand as an authority within your specific niche
• Be of sufficient depth to effectively cover the subject
• Contain internal links to key sales-focused pages

Your content plan should ensure that content is regularly being published.

A regular publishing schedule makes that the process is easy to manage, whilst also ensuring that Google crawls your site more frequently index new content.

Note: The more frequently your content is crawled, the quicker your search rankings are likely to improve.

Step 7

Link Profile Development

Your link profile is one of the most important elements dictating your ranking performance in search engines.

Both the number of referring domains (links from external website), as well as the quality and relevancy of the sites linking to your domain, are key contributors to your overall organic performance.

Whilst the above is true for any domain, it is essential to grow your domain’s backlink profile in a natural-looking way, especially if you have a limited number of pre-existing backlinks.

With little previous history, there is a higher risk of penalisation by Google if your approach is not careful.

An initial focus was on developing high-quality back-links to the homepage which use safe branded anchor text.

A focus on links to the homepage ensures that the link-development process appears natural and also benefits the overall Domain Authority of your site.

Improvements to the overall Domain Authority improves ranks across your all your pages, delivering an increase in both ranking keywords and organic traffic.

The Results

Ensuring that the client’s site was effectively optimised for specific search keywords, whilst improving the internal link structure, has been fundamental to the results delivered.

Inbound links from contextually-relevant domains has improved the Domain Authority and the rankings for a wide range of pages.

Organic performance has been very strong, with a noticeable improvement in terms of keywords and almost 200% more organic traffic YoY!

Organic Keywords

A focus on high-authority links to the homepage improved the overall Domain Authority.

As a result of this process, rankings for a wide range of keywords have improved:

Source: AHrefs

Organic Traffic

Overall organic traffic has improved noticeably due to the increase in ranking keywords:

Source: AHrefs

As can be seen below, at the start of 2020, Google was delivering an increase of almost 200% in high-quality organic traffic:

Source: Google Analytics

Whilst the subsequent issues caused by Covid 19 has resulted in more limited value from the increased ranking positions, however once the market improves, the ranking positions deliver a stable flow of relevant search traffic.

Conclusion

Through this case study, we have illustrated the need to build content and back-links at a controlled pace, in a natural way.

The right content allows your brand to showcase expertise and authority within your niche, which increases your chances of ranking for tons of relevant keywords, both at the bottom and top of the funnel.

Talk To Us

Whilst your SEO performance is something which requires a hands-on approach, the best approach is to talk to the experts.

Advice tailored to your website, and your resources is crucial to achieving the best possible ROI from Google search.

Get in touch with us today for a FREE, no-obligation SEO Audit.

This will show your current performance and the potential opportunity through Google Search.

If you own a travel or bookings website, you will have heard about ‘SEO keywords ‘ many times before.

Although we hear lots about how SEO keywords can boost our website rankings, what we don’t often uncover is how you can use keywords to actually grow your online bookings.

Turning your website visitors into paying customers requires the clever use of keywords so that the right audience will find your website.

Any keyword strategy must be reinforced with top-quality content displayed on your website when your visitors arrive.

With the right types of keywords, website content and web design it is possible to gain more bookings for your online business.

Let’s take a look at how SEO keywords can be used to grow your online bookings.

Top tips to grow your online bookings with SEO keywords:

Use Keyword Tools

If you have never used a SEO keyword tool such as Google Keyword Planner, you may be surprised to learn the discrepancies between what you want to rank for, and the phrases that people actually type into search engines.

Especially when identifying keywords which have more specific conversion-intent (intent to buy as opposed to research).

Without using a good SEO keyword tool or employing the services of an SEO agency such as Apollo, it is possible to spend your time on keywords that are not searched by your potential customers.

The people who would actually buy your products or services.

By using keywords with the exact phrases and language that are specifically your target market use, you will find that the visitors who land on your website are able to locate content that is tailored to their need.

Providing that you have high-quality and well-planned website content , you can begin to lead your website visitors through their journey, which will hopefully end in a booking.

Image credit: pumpkinwebdesign.com

The aim of keyword research is to identify the most important keyword to target with each landing page, considering both keyword volume and conversion intent (the search intent behind the user’s search).

You can research in 2 key ways:

1. Search for new keywords
2. Get search volume and forecasts for an existing keyword list

To find new keywords, use Google Keyword Planner to add words, key-phrases or your site URL.

You’ll get the following data:

• Exact monthly search volumes (or volume range depending on PPC spend)
• Level of competition
• Top of page bid (the equivalent cost-per-click through Google AdWords)

Once you have a better understanding of search volume and your current ranking performance, you will be able to identify potential keyword opportunities.

In addition, researching your current rank for relevant keywords will help to identify ‘low-hanging fruit’.

These are keywords ranking just off the first page of Google and offer the potential to greatly increase your search traffic.

Think outside the box

We all know that competition for rankings in search is tough, so thinking outside the box is essential.

Especially when it comes to your keyword choices

Instead of using lots of single or two-word keywords, opt for longer phrases that your competition are less likely to target.

These longer phrases are known as long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are groups of words, in a longer phrase, that are searched by your user.

For example, ‘quiet wellness spa in Bali’ would have limited monthly search volume, but is a term with strong conversion intent (intent to buy).

Image credit: nichesiteproject.com

When targeting longer phrases, your competitors are less likely to use the same long-tail keywords as you because the increased number of words in each phrase makes the likelihood of other sites putting together the same combination of words less likely.

Therefore your chances of ranking well are increased.

Targeting long-tail keywords also means that your website content is even more tailored to the search query so your chances of gaining visitors who have already done some research and know exactly what they want are greatly increased.

Their searches are more specific and they are more educated regarding what they would like to do.

Often users who use long-tail keywords have already begun to commit themselves to purchasing the booking and are now searching for the provider offering a product similar to their ideal.

Therefore, they are much more likely to turn into paying customers once they arrive on your website.

Another benefit of using unique sets of keywords for each individual page is that you avoid the dangers of search engines assuming that your web pages are simply duplications of each other.

If search engines interpret multiple use of the same keywords across numerous pages on your website as duplicated content, they will only list one of the web pages in search and count the others as inferior duplicates.

As a result, allocating plenty of time to develop and implement a solid keyword strategy that builds your conversion rate has many benefits for your online business.

Once again, if you don’t have excellent content on your travel or bookings website when visitors arrive your use of long-tail keywords or in fact, any other keyword strategy will go to waste.

The use of powerful keyword strategies to increase your bookings has to be executed alongside a review of your website content and web design.

Keywords are only the first step in your sales journey.

You won’t increase your bookings with SEO keywords if your website content and web design isn’t up to scratch.

Image credit: epsilontheory.com

SEO keywords will create awareness of your website, to take your visitor on through the sales funnel and finally make that booking you need to have compelling snippets in your search listings and superior content and web design ready on your website when your target market arrive.

Online competition is high, so whatever your marketing strategy, even with the powerful force that SEO keywords are, you still need top-quality content and web design to secure those bookings.

Relevant content

Once you have identified a keyword list, you need to find the most relevant keywords for the information on each existing landing page.

This may entail a tweak to just the page title and H1 (to make the keyword targeting more specific), or a re-write of the content on the page.

Every web page and piece of meta data needs its own carefully researched target key-phrase.

Identifying synonyms (other key-phrases similar to the chosen keyword) and using these in the content avoids keyword stuffing and demonstrates that the content is rich in detail.

The aim is to convince Google that the web page is the best option to be returned in search results for the keyword you’re targeting.

Avoid highly competitive terms

Unless you’re big!

It is really tempting to see the big numbers that accompany the top keywords and want to use them.

However, to get results from keywords you have to think differently and that means not trying to rank for all of the top keywords.

Most people don’t make enough time to develop a successful keyword strategy so clearly the top-ranking keywords can be found with the least keyword research and will be used by the majority of your competitors.

Therefore it makes sense to use the keywords that most people don’t get to see because they won’t spend enough time looking through the full range of options.

With less competition for the keywords that don’t show up first during your research, you are more likely to rank better and be found more easily by your target market.

However, of course you must also use all of the aforementioned strategies, such as long-tail keywords and unique sets of keywords, if you want to use less popular keywords with any success.

5. Audience specific

Now that you have devoted a large proportion of time to your keyword research, you can also ensure that you only select keywords that apply to your specific target market.

For example, if you are looking for keywords for a web page that relates to an adults-only health and wellness resort in Kerala in Southern India, you can eliminate any keywords to do with children and families from your selection, as well as any keywords that relate to other parts of the world.

Similarly if you spot SEO keywords that match the interests, needs and priorities of your target market, you know that they are the best ones to choose.

Image credit: rankwatch.com

In the diagram above, if your web page was about luxury hotels in Paris, you would clearly choose 5 star hotels in Paris from the list of results.

However, if your web page was about luxury hotels in Florida, you would select 5 star hotels in Miami and 5 star hotels in Orlando.

As with any other marketing strategy it is crucial that you have a thorough knowledge of your target market and a clear understanding of your content strategy, before you begin your keyword research so that you can tailor your keyword strategy to fit your target audience.

6. Analytics

Keywords are quantifiable data so it is easy to track their success and adapt your keyword strategy accordingly.

Evaluating the performance of every element of your website is essential if you want to grow your bookings and that includes the performance of your keyword strategy across the pages of your website.

You can gain a huge amount of valuable information about the success of your keyword strategy from your website analytics.

Using your website CMS and your keyword tools, it is possible to track and adapt your use of keywords to increase your bookings across your website pages.

In the same way that you would test and re-test a marketing campaign, it is necessary to implement, review and evaluate your use of keywords if you want them to operate at an optimum level.

Similarly, you will need to give your keywords some time to take effect so don’t be too hasty in making changes if you don’t see the results you want.

Remember too, to keep the keyword sets for each page unique.

Copying successful keywords across multiple pages will devalue your hard work.

Keyword cannibalisation, where two pages compete for the same target keyword, is a major factor influencing your rankings.

Like any other marketing strategy, keyword use needs time, knowledge and expertise, as well as excellent content.

Finding the time to:

• Research the best SEO keywords for your website and target market
• Create a comprehensive keyword strategy in line with your website content strategy
• Analyse and review the results of your keyword strategy

…is beyond the time constraints of most business owners.

There are many keyword tools available on the market to assist business owners to develop a successful keyword strategy, however they also require time and expertise to be used to good effect.

Furthermore, having a keyword strategy without good website content and website design is useless, so the development of any keyword strategy must be accompanied by a review of your website.

It may sound like a lot to do but here at Apollo we deliver a complete range of digital marketing services to increase your bookings, that includes developing your use of: SEO keywords, web content, web design and much more.

Working solely for the travel and leisure industry, we have a deep knowledge of how to utilise online marketing for travel and leisure brands.

Whether you need support to develop your use of SEO keywords, website development,  marketing support, video marketing, online advertising or something else, give us a call on: 01730 239858 or contact us to have a chat about how we can help you.

Complete Guide To On-Page SEO

On-page SEO (also known as on-page SEO) involves improvements to your website content in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic from search engines.

This can refer to optimising both the content, the speed and the HTML source code of a page.

On-page SEO for Travel is about enabling search engines and people to clearly and quickly understand what a page is about, and which are the most appropriate keywords.

The objective is to ensure that each page is targeted to a search query or queries (keyword or set of keywords), and that the page is worthy of ranking prominently within the relevant search engine results page (SERP).

SEO Keywords

Dress your Keywords for Success

Having the right dress code will open the door to strong ranks in search engines. From keyword research to content writing, the process is a fine art, where quality comes before quantity.

It’s not about how much content you’ve got on your website, but how good it is considered to be in the opinion of search engines. It’s rather straightforward, there is no reason to publish content if no one will find it useful.

The aim is to provide useful and relevant information based on the users search query.

This is why keyword research is so important.

Each page needs to provide clear guidance to search engines as to the keyword it is targeting.

For each of your pages, ask yourself how relevant the content is to the user intent behind the search query.

What is important is relevance.

Read our guide on using keyword research tools to find the right keywords for your business.

Quality keyword research and selection is an ever increasingly important skill for digital marketers.

Marketers need to know how to develop a good keyword list for PPC and SEO.

Keyword research is crucial to understand what topics and keyword groups should be the focus of blog content.

• Firstly, create a seed list of starting terms
• Then, expand your list by using keyword research tools
• Lastly, refine your list with competitive research.

What keyword types are available to you:

1. Brand name terms

It’s OK to build on your brand name success and use it further.

People who are familiar with your brand already are the easiest of all to convert.

2. Product terms

They describe the product type, what it does, or what problems it solves.

3. Competitor terms

Earlier in the life of paid search marketing, this type of terms was second only after brand terms for conversion rate and CPA efficiency.

4. Substitute product terms

Terms that can be used as an alternative of your product, e.g. instead of “pens”, optimize for “pencils”.

5. Complementary product terms

Terms for products that complement you product, ie. wireless laptop mice if you sell laptops.

6. Audience terms

This vast category covers all sorts of terms that your target audience might be searching for.

As this category’s impression volume is huge, there is always space for your to experiment with and gain a bigger audience.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is actually as old as SEO itself.

In fact, back in those glorious days when Google was an infant trying to step on AltaVista’s footprints, keyword stuffing was a great way to perform well in SEO!

All you had to do was to stuff hundreds of keywords that made up a text with no meaning at all.

To overcome the bad user experience, the keyword-stuffed text was often kept hidden from the human eye.

For instance the font colour was the same with the background, or the text was hidden using CSS (zero font size) or it was positioned outside the visible screen area or even behind an image.

Nowadays search engines have become far more sophisticated and they are equipped with filters and algorithms that can very easily report keyword stuffing.

Beware, if they catch you stuffing your ranking will plummet.

If you have to use non-visible text in your page remember to modify your code so that you use the alt to describe images, <noscript> tag for JavaScript content and descriptive text about a video in HTML.

Instead of keyword stuffing, put your effort to creating rich, original and useful quality content.

Use specialised keywords—long tail keywords—and include only those that are closely related to the topic of the web page. Add new and original content to your site and don’t repeat yourself.  

Search engines are becoming ever more sophisticated.

They are now able to extract meaning from the use of synonyms, the frequency of specific word combinations and many other factors; however the importance of ensuring that page titles and headers are appropriate has not diminished.

Titles & Headers

Headers – H1, H2 etc

What are heading tags and why are so important in SEO?

An important factor to remember is that all search engines pay attention to the page titles and headers. Besides the obvious visual effects, titles and headers comprise a very important part in effective keyword targeting. 

Text has structure, something denoted by the title, the subtitles, the bold parts and the italics. Web pages follow the same patterns with a bit different industrialisation.

Here, apart from the title we have headings. The heading tags are denoted with the h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 tags.

Their role is to inform the visitor with summarised information about the content that’s ahead and thus help readers better understand what they are about to read.

This is also very useful for the search engines as the headings encapsulate the most important information your page and provide guidance as to keywords the page is targeted towards.

Google’s algorithm will weight the keywords and phrases of the heading tags more than the rest of the content.

Regarding the heading tags in a web page, the HTML standard request the following:

• Each page can contain one or more h1 to h6 heading tags
• Each h1 to h6 tag necessarily requires a <hn> opening tag and a </hn> closing tag where n is the heading level.
• There are 6 possible levels of heading tags: h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6. h1 is a first-level heading, which is the most close tag to a document title, while the h6 tag is the most fine detail heading tag.

For successful heading composition, titles should be used in sequence. An example usage pattern would be:

Correct	Correct	Wrong
H1 H2 H3 H4 H5	H1 H2 H3 H4 H2 H3 H4 H5	H1 H3 H2 H6

The first example is correct and it is quite straightforward. The second is simply the same as the first, it only shows how you can use multiple tags as long as they have the correct hierarchy.

The last example is wrong because it does not honour the correct sequence. Missing a fine grain tag is not that much of an issue as long as it contains the most important titles (h1, h2, h3).

But having them in a wrong order or leaving them without the proper parent heading is a pitfall you should avoid.

Search engines do not deal with heading tags with the same importance. The less the number that follow h, the higher the level of the heading and the higher its importance in regards to search engines.

Therefore, if your content misses an h1 or h2 tag, you miss an important part of your content definition. If you don’t use h6 but still use h1, h2 headings the condition is manageable.

Thus, focus your SEO efforts by priority on h1 heading tags, then on the h2, and then all the rest.

Page Title

Let’s take a deeper look at the titles and how they should utilise keywords. The first remark has to do with the position of the Target keyword. The more left, the better.

Starting your title with the most prominent keyword helps search engines understand the meaning quicker and rank you better from the start.

Action words. Verbs that dictate to your audience what to do. Words like learn, find, read, see, discover, or words that dictate a transaction like buy, sell, get, download, try, help not only your audience understand what to do but also search engines understand the reason of that page’s existence.

Your next movements should be to add synonyms, keyword variations and secondary keywords.

Doing this is important if you want to increase the chances of ranking on multiple search queries for different keywords than the primary. This mix and match will solidify your primary keywords and in the same time provide a differentiation that search engines can map to different cognitive aspects of a search query.

What you should avoid in your pages and especially in your titles is keyword mirroring. This situation occurs when a single term or keyword is overused in such a level that several pages have the same keyword target in the title and header tags.

This will pose problems for search engines trying to understand what page is better as a search result when all of them look alike in terms of describing the same thing, the same keywords.

When we’re talking about the title of your homepage, your most precious landing page, remember that we are referring to the page that gathers the most in authority links should have the strongest page rank.

Therefore, your homepage’s title tag should be the most powerful SEO element (most valuable target keyword) on your entire site. So this is the place that you want to insert your most competitive keywords, your signature keywords, those that are the hardest ones to rank.

What should your page title include?

Regarding the page title format use the following as best practice:

<Target keyword> | <brand name><primary brand keyword><secondary keyword>

This format is important because it makes sure that listings of your site in the search result pages remain consistent and have the same look and feel. It also enforces the same appearance of titles over large-scale content networks and multiple contributors as well as reinforcing branding through the repetition of the brand.

Great Content

…Means Usable Content

If you offer good content, people will engage with it (time on your site), share it (on Twitter and Facebook etc) and search engines will rank you higher. 

Every now and then Google changes its keyword and site ranking algorithm, silently of course, but the impact is always profound.

Google’s aim is to make their algorithm more discerning when it has to compare two successive shades of the fifty shades of quality.

They want to be able to sort sites by their quality, even if the difference between each is small.

On every algorithm update, you hear about different parameters, yet one factor is common and repetitive: quality.

Quality content, quality links, quality keywords, quality etc. Build quality content by hearing the needs of the people. Observe the trends.

Use informational keywords and dress them up with resourceful, useful and detailed content.

Utilise meta descriptions, title tags, and image tags with consistency and you will see your content spread.

Social media platforms will like your content and in time the internet will honour it with relevant, high quality, and thus high page-rank links.

But what happens if you discover that a certain page on your site ranks high for a keyword that you didn’t intent to?

Why it happens

It is not a rare phenomenon to have a page-ranking better for a non-intended keyword than the intended one.

In order to diagnose the exact underlying reason, you will have to google the keywords you target using the site or the exact page scope modifier (i.e. “site examplesite.com: keyword). In other words, you should ask Google about the problem.

This will easily show you the existence of the keywords, their density and their locations, something that will give you clues about the keyword. Is it a wrong keyword selection? Irrelevant? Not the best choice? Or, on the other hand, is there something wrong with the page? Is there really a page devoted to the specific keyword?

How to cope with it

Check that the keyword has its own page. If it doesn’t you have to create it. If it exists, you have to enhance its content.

The content should not deviate from your main keyword and spread over different topics. Build internal links that will help search engines understand better the keyword relation to the content and its differences from other keywords. Do the same with external backlinks from related content.

If you have external links that come from irrelevant content then your problem is either the remote content or the remote link. In both cases, it is easier to send an e-mail to the author of the remote content to correct the link.

Be prepared to divert the old link to either existing relevant content on your site or new, high-quality content.

Further steps

Check for broken content. Does your page have the same external links as it did one or two months ago? Is there anything missing? Did you used any redirects (301’s)? Are there any other pages sharing some of the keywords?

Questions like these may help you take all the measures to correct content-keyword pairs judged by Google as dimly correlated.

Meta Data

Meet My Meta

Meta descriptions, metadata, or even simply ‘meta’ are small HTML attributes that provide concise summaries of web page content.

There commonly two ways to view them. They either appear underneath the clickable page description links in a search engine results page (aka SERPs) or you will have to use your browse in ‘inspect’ or ‘view page source’ mode to view them.

These descriptions should ideally be no more than 155 characters. The optimal is to use as much of this length as you can so that the descriptions be informative enough, but not exceed it neither formulate the text so that it reads unnaturally.

If these descriptions are of poor quality, chances are that people who see your listings in the SERPs turn to some other sites that present a more well-written description of what they’re looking for.

Don’t forget that is it an issue to have multiple or duplicate meta description tags and to have meta descriptions that aren’t unique (a common problem across many website).

Another tip for successful employment of meta tags is to avoid using double quotation marks. Google cuts off the description at the quotation mark when it appears on a SERP.

To be sure it will not happen to your meta, remove all non-alphanumeric characters.

If quotation marks are important in one or two meta descriptions for some reasons, use the appropriate HTML entity to prevent truncation.

Bear in mind that if you don’t provide a meta description, Google will create one based on the text contents of your page. So, in some cases that your page is not intended to rank high on search results it is not a big deal not to have a meta.

In the case you have a high ranking page though, it is imperative to provide a well-written meta description that captivates the users performing the search query.

Availability and Accessibility

Reliable website and hosting

Availability means that you offer content 24/7 without downtime. The selection of a reliable and fast server is a good investment. 

If your server suffers downtime then your content will not be available and this can turn potential customers away from your website.

Availability also means that your content is clean from dead links. Your visitors will tend to quit after even a single instance of a dead-end or a 404 (content not found page).

Accessibility means that your content is accessible from different types of devices—desktops, tablets, mobile phones, operating systems—unix variants, windows variants, android, iOS, etc, browsers—internet explorer, chrome, opera, dolphin, etc.

Nowadays all sites are built to be responsive, that is automatically adapt on the previous diverse circumstances and deliver the content with the less friction from the user side.

If you resize the browser’s window on a desktop while viewing your site in a width say less than one third of the screens width and the browser window displays a horizontal scrollbar on the bottom, then condole yourself. Your site is not mobile responsive yet.

Site Speed

The Need for Speed

How nice it is when you don’t have to wait an age for pages to load?

Google encourages web developers to use fast servers, close to the country that they supply. They employ an army of techniques to speed things up and make the whole process of page loading as quick as possible.

Yet, many SEO gurus will argue that Google’s PageSpeed grade is not actually an accurate indicator of speed and that achieving an “A” grade is seemingly impossible.

It’s good to have a look at your sites pagespeed results (use Google Pagespeed Insights) if only to apply the Paretto rule: Fix the important 20% and you will achieve 80% better performance.

From that point on the effort that’s needed for further improvement may well not be worth it. In fact, no site gets a perfect grade.

You can remove render-blocking JavaScript by either putting it in the footer of the page, or load it asynchronously (after the page has loaded). This task may be quite hard, especially if you are using a WordPress theme off-the-shelf.

Another step to improve performance is to optimize CSS delivery. What this means is that Google wants you to split CSS into two parts, one that will be used to render the initial part page and should be put into the HTML code rather than leave it inside the main CSS pool.

That makes pages load faster because the needed styles are already there when the rendering of the page starts.

Cache

Another easy trick you can do is to use a cache directive on your server, if it allows you to do so, or otherwise a cache plugin.

Both methods ensure that the content is served from a stored version, rather than each load calling all of the information anew. This reduces load times across the site and helps with server performance.

Caching is used to provide the bots the requested pages fast. You don’t want to make bots wait in a queue, this can lead to non-indexed pages due to slow response times.

Plugins are usually small applications that you can install into your CMS platform. Either you use WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, magento or whichever CMS you choose, as long as it has the ability to use plugins.

You may use a plugin for caching your files or a plugin to turn your site into an e-shop. Use a plugin for captcha verification or for a firewall, antivirus, spam comment blocker or other security feature.

Most  are free, or they have at least a free version.

Clarity

Your content will not be usable unless it is clear to the users what you want and what’s in it for them.

To achieve clarity, you must keep things simple and set the spotlight on the most important information. If you distract your visitors with too much information, they will probably get confused and leave.

Build on known information so that your audience feels familiar to your content up to a level.

Create a well-structured site where people can find what they want in the place they expect it to be. Use standard patterns in your writing (introduction, main theme, call to action) and be consistent. Don’t adopt features that spoil the user experience just because they look fancy.

Guide your visitors to your site like a tour guide. Show them what they were missing and why this site is here.

Let people interact with your site. Give them speech and feedback opportunities. Provide them with an indication that their actions were successful or not. Don’t forget to be polite and say thanks for the input.

Learnability

Your site will not be usable if it takes a long time for a user to figure out how it works.

Your user interface should adhere to common design patterns, utilise elements that are easy to use and keep a consistent look and feel site wide.

If you create something new, make sure it is self-explanatory.

Credibility

Bravo! Nice site, but is it about a real company? Is it trustworthy? Credibility is a game changer for any website.

It is essential to show people that you are a real company with real people. Provide contact information and have a prominent ‘About Us’ section. Use a postal address, a map or even a street view whenever possible to show that there is a real business behind the website.

List your site in relevant directories, such as Google Business and nationwide yellow or white pages. Use secure layer connection protocols that are appropriate for your site (https).

Relevancy

Relevancy is a coin with two sides. Inside your site the contents should be related to each other and related in specific ways to external content though references.

If you cannot achieve harmony it is better to split the content in different taxonomies, categories, subdomains or even in different domains.

The second side of the coin is your users.

Be prepared to differentiate your content based on the diverse audience you may attract.

Who are the users of your site? What are their goals when they visit your site? What type of content do they prefer?

Build content that engages your target audience and design the interface in a way that the site will be a great and easy experience for your users.

These factors are easy to grasp but not that easy to achieve, especially if you run a huge site that produces and consumes great amount of content. Yet through an incremental approach of small modifications and refinements, it is usually possible to achieve a good level of overall usability for the people who visit it.

While taking good care of the previous content aspects is important to achieve high SEO results, it also necessary to avoid pitfalls that will negatively affect your ranking. The most common error, especially for newbies, is the keyword stuffing.

Duplicate Content

Don’t panic, it’s canonical

Sometimes it so happens that repetition is unavoidable.

In this case you may have content that appears on your site or over the internet in many places, which may or may not share the same root (domain).

While strictly speaking duplicate content is not a penalty, it may still sometimes affect your ranking.

If Google realises that most of your content on your website is appreciably similar to other sources, that will be recognised and your ranking would be affected accordingly.

How do duplicate content issues arise?

In most cases, website owners create it unintentionally. Let’s review some of the ways this can occur.

URL variations

URL parameters—those little values in the URL separated by ‘&’ (…&page=1&count=10&lang=en…) — can create duplicate content.

Some cache plugins suffer from this issue as they blindly provide the same HTML page for different URLs as the request may require. This problem can get more complicated if the order of parameters changes from request to request but the target html page is the same.

HTTP vs. HTTPS or WWW vs. non-WWW pages

If your site has separate versions at ‘www.site.com’ and ‘site.com’ (with and without the “www” prefix), and the same content lives at both versions, you’ve effectively created duplicates of each of those pages.

The same applies to sites that maintain versions at both http:// and https://.

If both versions of a page are live and visible to search engines, you may run into a duplicate content issue and some versions of the page will need to be-redirected.

HTML templates for products or services

If your site is about similar products, you will probably want to use HTML templates to achieve a uniform representation.

This may lead Google to see ‘appreciably similar’ content repeatedly over the products you have in store.

In fact, if the products on your site are also sold elsewhere, perhaps both re-seller sites use the same sources for description, images and links, a classic case of duplication.

How to resolve duplicate content issues

First, make sure that you make only one version of the site available, served regardless of the existence of the URL prefix. This is a task for the .htaccess file on your root directory.

Second, make sure that no plugins or code in general on your site formulates the URL links with different parameter sequence.

Pay close attention to cache plugins that create HTML versions of every possible URL in your site. And finally, use canonical links (the HTML tag rel=”canonical”) to denote content that can be found in several URLs; one of which bears the role of ‘original’ and the others are the repetitions.

With this tag the search engines will know what version of the content they should present in the search results.

Nevertheless, wouldn’t it be better to redirect the URL of the similar content to the ‘canonical’ version? It would, at least from a search engine’s perspective.

301 re-directs

301 redirects (a.k.a. permanent redirects) despite of the difficulties and the dangers they impose, have a number of benefits.

One important element is the fact that you can divert different URLs to effective landing pages to avoid getting a penalty from Google.

When launching any new website, 301 re-directs are crucial to ensure that search engines receive guidance as to the new landing page to replace the old URL.

The truth is that monitoring and managing large amounts of 301 re-directs can be problematic. Too many re-directs can easily get out of hand and create orphan content, broken links (that point to error 404—page not found) and slow down page-load times.

A common issue with redirects is the redirect loop, where two pages redirect to each other. Browsers in such a condition stop the page loading with a declaration of ‘too many redirects’.

Google-Friendly

How to Make Your Site Crawlable

Ever wondered how Google knows everything? Bitter truth is, it doesn’t. Wikipedia does that. But Google knows where to find everything. It does so by creating indices. What is a web index?

It’s a large table of content that show search engines where to find something. This is created using two main columns: keywords and URLs.

How does Google create this database? Using software tools called spiders. Named this because they crawl the net from site to site creating a web of information.

The data retrieval that a spider follows along its path is called fetching. Google sends out millions of spiders every day to fetch information for their WWW index databases.

The first thing a web spider does when visiting a site is to look for the sitemap.xml and the robots.txt file. The latter contains directives for web crawlers whether to access a file or not. Knowing more about this file will help you avoid its improper usage, which can negatively affect your ranking. It controls how search engine spiders see and interact with your webpages.

This important role raises the significance of this file and for this reason, it is mentioned several times in Google’s search guidelines. 

In order to make your site easy for the web spiders crawl, you should follow these steps:

• Create a sitemap – Use an online tool or a plugin
• Create a robots.txt file – Populate it with the desired rules including which URLs Google should not crawl
• Submit your site to search engines – Monitor the crawl results
• Create internal links – Add links between relevant pages on your site
• Build high quality content – Earn inbound links that crawlers will record
• Focus on social media marketing – Encourage social sharing
• Create a blog – Create relevant, in-depth content regularly
• Register your site to relevant directories
• Use email marketing – Develop your audience
• Create an RSS feed
• Check for indexing errors – Correct any issues found

After the steps are carried out, a ranking algorithm comes into play. This is where you reap what you sow.

Google has indexed over 90 billion pages in its database and over a trillion URLs. While this is an estimate, it is important for you to know exactly how many of them are yours and if they are indexed correctly.

Even if Google doesn’t index just one page from your site, you need to know the reason. Making your site Google-able is actually the essence of SEO.

You must try to see things from the perspective of a search engine, not just by creating text with keywords, images with alt text, etc…; but by making sure that your website is easily accessible and index-able by a search engine.

Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking

To perform well you need to remember the steps taken by a search engine: crawling, indexing, and ranking.

The first term, crawling, refers to the process of implementing a bot (or spider) to scan your site for content. It’s important to have your information structured so that a bot can easily restructure your pages.

Having good site architecture, robots.txt file and a well-written, error free XML sitemap is the most important steps towards this.

The indexing process requires the bot to fetch all your pages and scan them for raw text, keywords, meta, media, links, etc.

.Htaccess File

It is possible to use a permanent re-direct to divert traffic to a completely different server. This can be achieved on the .htaccess file level that corresponds to a specific URL directory using re-write URL rules.

Such rules inform the server that a specific URL or even a URL branch live on a different server and most probably under a different domain or sub-domain, and thus all the relevant requests should be re-routed there.

As long as you don’t deliver iterative content, Google will not have a problem with the content fragmentation.

From the server’s perspective, the less content served locally, the lighter the server load will be. For a practical example take a look at the following portion of an .htaccess file that was taken out from a modified WordPress installation.

“RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^domain2\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain1.com/$1 [R=301,L]”

The last line contains the rule that advises the server to map every request falling under the conditions described in the first two lines, actually the requests towards domain2.com and its subdomains, towards domain1.com.

In this example, the server previously responsible for serving the domain 2 files will have less of a hard time as this process is now transferred.

Sitemap

In this section, we will talk about a unique file living in the root directory of your site called sitemap.xml.

If your site is mysite.com navigate to mysite.com/sitemap.xml to view its structure and contents. If you don’t find it there, most probably you’ll need to create one.

Sitemap is an XML database file that contains the map, the structure of your site, in an easily understood manner for a web crawler.

Most modern CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla, and others utilise many sitemaps linked together under a centralised sitemap.xml the ability to create, update and control a basic sitemap.

Advanced plugins, such as All-In-One SEO pack or Yoast SEO offer more options and fine-tuning capabilities.

Consider a site with many products, categories, portfolios, posts, reviews, and comments in many languages and you will realise the importance of a map to help search engines distinguish the full range of pages to be indexed. This file helps web crawlers be faster and more precise.

Otherwise, to locate a potential change they would need to scan all the entire file system and links, taking more time and spending more server resources on both ends, with finally the result that nothing has changed.

To help crawlers as much as possible, sitemap exhibits to the reader some special information, called metadata, this usually refers to when the page was last updated, how often the page is changed and how this page connects to other pages on the same site.

Robots.txt

In order to use a robots.txt file you firstly need to decide if you need one.

If one of the following conditions occur, you may want to consider having an active robots.txt file:

• You want specific content blocked from search engines.
• You are employing paid links or advertisements that need special handling from robots.
• You want to allow specific access to your site from selected robots.
• You are developing a site that’s live, but you don’t want crawlers to index it yet.
• It helps you follow some of Google best practices under certain conditions.
• You need some or all of the above, but do not have full access to your web-server.

On the other hand, you may want to avoid having this file manage crawlers interaction with your site because:

• It’s easier not to have one.
• You suspect that it is blocking some important pages from search engines.
• You have nothing to hide from search engines.
• You see none of the above mentioned apply in your case.

If you suspect that a robots.txt is blocking important files from the search engines, it’s a good time to perform a check with Google guidelines tool provided by varvy.com or Google Indexed Pages Checker from NorthCutt, which will notify you if you are blocking resources that Google needs to access for the content of your pages.

If you have the appropriate permissions, you can also use the Google search console to test your robots.txt file against the files indexed by its engine. Well-written instructions to do so are found here.

From there on you will acquire a full review of what is blocked and why. All you have to do next is to remove the entries you want from the file to become viewable to the web spiders.

If you want to discourage a bot from following a link use a rel=”nofollow” tag. This tag was a game changer when it first came into the SEO industry. Overnight, the google PR index of almost all sites on the net fell several grades.

Now it’s common practice for all major sites like Youtube, Facebook, CNN, Google and almost the entire internet to use this tag. Now, if you want to exclude something from index use the tag rel=”noindex”.

Examine the indexing status in the search console and if you see pages left out, locate the problem, correct it, and the re-submit a request to get them re-indexed.

Site Hierarchy

Use a silo structure

As with all the components of a site, we want to have optimised structure of the site, so that search engines access the contents easily and can distinguish your most important pages.

We will discuss two main elements: domains and URLs. Take care of the following steps to make sure that your URL structure and the domain selection is optimised for search engines.

The ideal structure is to ensure that pages are divided into relevant sections, with your most important pages listed as ‘parent’ pages to relevant ‘children’.

Use a single domain & sub-domain

If your pages are spread across several domains or sub-domains, or a domain and some sub-domains you will have a certain ranking bleed. Search engines consider a sub-domain to be a different domain, even with regards to its parent.

That’s why if you set up a sub-domain inside a main domain you will see for one part the main domain to take a negative for the other part no equal boost to the sub-domain.

This is a well-described issue in the WordPress community where multi-site installations suffered greatly as the search engines cannot easily distinguish whether content should inherit the ranking ability of its parent domain.

The more readable, the better URLs

Do not be surprised from the fact that the easier a URL is to read for humans, the better search engine treatment it will have.

This is not just a matter of accessibility. It is how humans interact with URLs, and search engines are now able to determine what people are engaging with.

URLs have become a universal address If your URL is built up from the article id, a whole host of unique identifier codes, chances are that it will make good impression to your audience.

Keywords in URLs

Adding keywords in URLs is the correct way to go in order to achieve high ranking. It helps both your audience and the search engines to get the understand the keyword focus of your content and help you rank better.

Keywords as part of the URL structure help those who see your URL to understand where they are heading within the website. Whether they see it on social media, in an email campaign, or as they hover on a link the landing page focus will be evident to them.

In addition, sometimes URLs get striped of its anchor text. In this instance, keyword use in the URL itself plays the role of anchor text.

URLs also appear in the search results. Having a readable URL containing your target keyword the user has been looking for is a great way to get the click.

Avoid dynamic parameters in URLs

Dynamic parameters in URLs may end up in duplicate content, something we covered previously. They may end up with an unreadable or unfriendly URL format.

Further effort in this direction can be assisted by tools like mod rewrite and ISAPI rewrite or MS’ URL Rewrite Module.

Keep your URLs as short as possible

Shorter URLs are preferable than longer. Longer addresses are difficult to read and share and may point into many many folders inside the directory structure of your server’s file system.

Modern CMS’ employ a URL shortener to keep things concise.

Try to match URLs to titles

The same principles of readability apply to this point too.

Use underscores and hyphens instead of spaces and other word separators and keep them short as possible. Exact match is not required.

Exclude stop words from your URLs

Stop words (and, or, but, of, the, a, etc.), are not important in the URL Experience has proven that leaving them out will not do much harm to the URL readability.

On the opposite it will shorten a bit your URL. So it’s actually a balance between readability and address length.

Exclude punctuation characters

Special character can destroy your URL readability and they can ruin your URL structure.

If a special character comes from some exotic language or encoding you may end up with an unreachable URL

For the same reason avoid case sensitivity, unless you have a feature based on uppercase/lowercase hashes distinction.

Limit redirects to the bare minimum

You want to avoid redirection loops.

Having many 301’s increases the chances of sending your users to a black hole.

Avoid keyword stuffing

As we mentioned earlier. We do mean everywhere, including the URLs.

Other Parts of the SEO Puzzle

Anchor Text

Anchor text is called the visible, clickable blue underlined text in a hyperlink. It can provide both search engines and users textual information relevant to the content of the hyperlink’s destination.

There are several types of anchor text.

For example, anchor text may be exact-match, partial-match, branded, naked link, generic, or an image.

When the keyword of the destination page is included in the anchor text then we have ‘exact match’ anchor text. When the keyword is a variation or a synonym, we have a partial match while a branded anchor text refers to an anchor text with a brand name.

When the URL is used the anchor is a naked link. Generic anchor text is some simple generic action text like ‘Click here’.

It is important to ensure a mix of anchor text so that your anchor text profile looks as natural as possible.

HTML

HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) is the standard in which web pages are produced.

It consists of text inside tags, which in turn decide the functionality and the appearance of the text. Tags may be used to insert multimedia of other webpages.

CSS

CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is, as denoted by its name, a set of rules that provides specific rules about how and when html tags will presented. 

Creating styles for web pages has the advantage of providing a consistent look and feel over the entire site.

Javascript

The Javasript is a script programming language used to control both the HTML and CSS elements.

All the animations you can see in a web page, as well as all the automations have their root in Javascript. It is not required to know Javascript to success in the SEO industry.

It helps to know the basics when it comes to identifying and locating indexing problems, loading time issues and so on.

PHP

PHP is another important programming language in the web sphere.

The vast majority of modern CMS is built upon PHP, including WordPress and Joomla. You can gain a lot if you start to learn more about this impressive programming language.

Images

Create links to images to help people and search engines find what they look for.

Use the right image, the right size, and be sure that you have the appropriate permissions to use the image for your purpose.

Do not just download image from the internet and post them on your site just because you like them. Use high-quality paid images to deliver quality results.

Make sure you have set all the right image tags in both the link and the photo.

Use pictographics to deliver captivating information.

Do not upload uncompressed, high-resolution images to the public.

Instead, use GIF, PNG, and JPEG compression for faster loading times.

Set the resolution in a level that will not degrade quality but will save your users bandwidth.

Use informative file names.

Rename the images taken from your personal camera with a descriptive, that makes it easier for search engines to related them with a topic and classify them.

Always pay attention to set the alt text descriptions.

Alternative text (aka alt text) plays the role of the identity of an image when you hover your mouse over it.

When there is a problem with the rendering of the image, alt text appears to notify the user about the image information. Moreover, it is used by screen readers to help the visually impaired perceive the contents of the image.

Create image sitemaps.

These special type sitemaps are referenced from within the main sitemap and thus consist an extension to it.

The good thing is that when there is an image update, only on small part of the sitemap is locked for update.

The other parts are free for fetching. Such sitemaps allows the indexing of the relevant images even if they get loaded inside the page by JavaScript (ie. Sliders, animations, etc).

Avoid using third-party image hosting services.

It is better to have your photos on your site. It is not uncommon for images to get deleted or change URL

Avoid a broken outbound link by using a local copy of the image.

Share your images on social media. 

Social media give you the opportunity to share valuable information with others. They play a catalytic role in the overall SEO industry as well as in the customer acquisition policy.

Adding social media sharing buttons to your website, especially close to the images is perhaps the easiest way to populate your images into social media platforms.

When in doubt, ask Google.

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines are very helpful and informative regarding image publishing guidelines.

Don’t hesitate to consult these information in order to deliver high quality content to both humans and spiders.

Conclusion

All of these elements tie back to the same basic principle: creating a good user experience.

The ultimate goal of on-page SEO is to make it as easy as possible for both search engines and users to navigate your website, understand which keyword each page is targeted towards and find good-quality, engaging content.

Whilst a large part of the SEO mix relates to creating quality in-bound links, it is essential to have ticked off the boxes on-page in terms of a wide range of SEO ranking factors. On-page optimisation is always the first step in any successful SEO campaign.

Hopefully this guide has been helpful in pointing you in the right direction for where to focus your efforts.