To make it attractive to search engines
That’s what I was talking about at the beginning, the search engine defines the websites it likes the most and invites you to adapt to the definition.
To please or look attractive, SEO optimization goes far beyond a single aspect, in fact, it’s the sum that improves your chances of being in the top positions.
How do I like the search engine? There are several conditions you must meet in order for the search engine to index your blog above other related results.
Technical conditions
In the case of Google, it is known that it looks for the Web page to load quickly, to improve the user’s experience (we’ll see later). That’s why some time ago we recommended you to use a content distribution network (CDN) on your website.
SEO optimization strategies in this sense are quite specific, in fact, there are tools that help you measure how optimized your Blog is. Among them are: optimization of images to occupy less space, optimization of code, definition of browser cache, compression of site resources, among other SEO positioning factors of Web pages.
In reality, of all, the technical conditions are the easiest to satisfy, as it involves activities that are measurable, and are small tips for SEO optimization that you can do yourself on your website.
Content conditions
These are the most variable conditions, the most difficult to meet.
The search engines are changing their opinion with what they consider optimal in this sense. A few years ago there was no talk of text extensions, or percentages of keywords in the text, if you like, everything was much coarser.
Today, search engines have managed to relate some aspects of the content with the quality of it and its usefulness to the user, and takes them as a reference.
For example, it is argued that the more words a text has, the more likely it is to provide more complete information. The use of images and videos to strengthen the message is also valued.
Above all, there is talk of the appearance of keywords in specific places, which helps the search engine interpret what the content is about and index it correctly.
As we commented some time ago, at the level of website content, there are many SEO optimization tips that are often forgotten.
Conditions of authority
I like to call them that, because that’s what search engines want to know in order to rank the results. In very simple words, Google gives greater priority to Blogs that, after having fulfilled the two previous conditions, have the best response from users.
As the engine cannot check site by site, what it does is establish certain rules.
If an article of your Blog is quoted or referenced from another, Google takes it as a point in your favor, because it understands that it has been useful to other people.
The time a user stays on your Blog also speaks of the authority of the site. The engine assumes that the more time a user spends on the Web page, the more quality information he or she has found.
Undoubtedly, this is the most important part of all SEO optimization, but if you look, it’s not up to us, rather we strive with the above conditions and hope that that will have an effect and that we are granted some authority.
Generally speaking, this is how we make our Blog attractive to Google.
Some time ago we gave more information about these aspects of SEO to consider even before launching your website.
To improve the customer experience
The second reason you should SEO your Blog is to improve the user experience. Search engines don’t demand everything we’ve seen before just because they want it, it’s not a whim.
It is assumed that, if your site loads fast, if it has quality content, that responds to the needs of Internet users, then the latter (the users) will positively affect the indexing of your Web site pages.
It is very important that we understand that the secret of optimization revolves around customer satisfaction, when we see the most common mistakes I will talk more about this.
Is it possible that the customer experience is good and yet my site is not optimized with respect to the search criteria? Yes, of course, but I wouldn’t say that the site is not optimized, but rather that you did it without realizing it.
It’s as simple as that, if you don’t know how to instruct the search engine to index your site, it’s never going to. Ask yourself, if the site is not indexed, how am I going to get visits? It is very likely that you do not have them, so SEO optimization is the path that is usually used.
One last idea about the reasons is that you should not optimize in SEO “because my competition does”. Let’s stop doing things because we’ve seen it on other websites and start seeing how to adapt the optimization according to our needs.
SEO Mistakes
I’m not going to talk to you about the errors that result in the penalties of the site, maybe for that we will have more time later. What we are going to study are the errors at the moment of the implementation of the plan, starting from the conditions that I have mentioned previously.
Give more relevance to the search engine than to the client
This is a typical case and the biggest mistake of all. Many Web pages get caught up in following the suggestion to the letter and the Web site loses that unique touch.
For example, I have seen many cases that change the template of Web sites for ones that have a simpler design just to load faster.
Obviously you want to please the engine, but what about the customer? Surely you’re not offering them the experience they want.
Then we have the use of images. I invite you to use the Google tool and notice how it tells you to “optimize the images” and suggests you reduce the size of the image.
The most common practice to satisfy this is to deteriorate the quality of the images or eliminate the heavier ones and replace them with others. Again, the optimization conditions are met, but the user receives a poor result visually. Although in this particular case it is a matter of putting a little creativity.
In fact, if we get caught up in the use of keywords and force the text, then we also undermine the customer experience, albeit in a subjective way. That is, if the text is not easy to read, or contains spelling errors so that the keyword matches, the information will probably not be enjoyed as much.
Is the user experience improved? According to Google, yes, but it understands that Google is a machine, and that people are not.
You must know how to balance the suggested optimization and the true experience of the user.
Believing that you only do it once
I have heard hundreds of times that SEO optimization of a website is only done once. I’m not saying that some aspects are configured and that constant changes should not be made, but there are others that need it.
In this sense I would say that there are two great moments to make SEO Web optimization changes: when the search engine changes the rules of the game and when we update our blog. In the same way we should make a new SEO optimization when redesigning or migrating a Web page.