SEO Guide 2021 - what you need to know

Although the subject SEO is so complex that it is impossible to cover every aspect of it in a single article, we decided to provide you with the most important information about optimising your website in search results. This is how this guide was created. We hope it will dispel many doubts and answer questions that often arise. We encourage you to read it, and to return to the article throughout your SEO adventure.

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)?

What happens when you need to find a mechanic to take care of a flat tyre on your car? Or when you decide to find and buy an interesting book on marketing? It's obvious - you turn to Google. It will also 81% people who buy online. Simply put, when we have to face a problem, a challenge or a choice - we google the topic of interest. The truth is that a business that does not exist on Google has little chance of survival. That's why it's so important to discover the right strategy to build that presence.

So what is SEO, which still sounds mysterious to some (Search Engine Optimisation)? It is the action (skill or perhaps art?) of convincing search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahooto recommend to users your content as a solution to their problems. At its core, SEO focuses on increasing the company's visibilityimproving its position on the search results page, i.e. in the SERP-ach (Search Engine Result Pages). Why you need them. To drive more internet users to the page and increase the chances of conversion.

If someone who has no idea about SEO and asks you what it is, in the most simplistic terms you can answer: it is a strategy to ensure that when someone crawls your product, service or their category, they will quickly find their way to your website. Obviously, this is a simplification and a cheapening of this complex process, but it captures its essence. 

What can you do to get search engines to offer your content in search results?

How high in the rankings and how often you appear is based on substantive criteria - Search engines do not work 'blindly', awarding one page such a position and another such a position at whim. They show results that they consider to be best-fit to your users' needs. So, if you want them to offer them your content you have to make an effort. You have to make sure that the search engines understand who you are and what you offer. What's more, you need to convince them that you are the most reliable. Easier said than done. It is doable, however, and we are confident that after reading our SEO guide you will be richer with the knowledge to help you do so.

How does Google ranking work? What does a position in the search results depend on?

Have you ever wondered how Google 'knows' how to rank a page? First of all, search engines have only one goal - to provide users with the most relevant answers or information. Every time you type in a query, search engine algorithms select those pages that most closely match it and then 'rank' them, exposing the most popular and with the most authority. 

So, to provide relevant information, search engines look at two factors. The first is conformity of the content of the page with the request. This compatibility is assessed by the search engine, taking into account elements such as keywords and topics. The second factor is authority of the party measured by its popularity. Search engines assume that the more popular a source (page) is, the more valuable, from the reader's point of view, the content it contains.

To analyse all this information, search engines use complex algorithms, the details of which they keep secret. Fortunately, over time, SEO specialists have identified certain parameters that are taken into account when ranking a page on Google - these are the so-called "ranking factors". These are the focus of the entire SEO strategy. 

Should your company invest in SEO?

You may be reading our guide and thinking to yourself - "wait a minute, does my business even need this?". W 99% the answer is yes. You might start to wonder - shouldn't Google find me naturally? Well, millions of websites are created every day in the world, but only a small percentage of them, reach their target. If your website does not rank high in the search results, there is no way your target audience will find it. Why? According to research carried out by HubSpot, as many as 75% Internet users go no further than the first page of search results! What conclusion can you draw from this? If you are not visible on this page, you simply do not exist for 75% potential customers.

With a better position in search results you will improve the visibility of your brand and ultimately increase conversions. However, are there situations where SEO is not needed or even unprofitable? There are few, but there are. There are two that stand out. The first is when business is short term (not to be confused with seasonal activity!). In this case, SEO activities miss the point because they take time to start having the desired effect. Thus, there may be a situation in which you end your business and the SEO has not yet started to produce results.

The second situation is when no one searches for what you offer. This happens when you work in a very specific or narrow industry. Of course, before deciding not to do SEO, a detailed analysis should be carried out! 

SEO versus SEM - the relationship

The acronym SEM often appears in the context of SEO. The term is translated in different ways, often mistakenly equating SEM with paid advertising from Google, whereas SEO is optimisation pages in the organic search results. The development of SEM is Search Engine MarketingSEM is a broader term that includes both SEO and Pay Per Click advertising. Thus, SEM is a broader term - it includes both SEO and paid Pay Per Click advertising (PPC). You are now aware of the difference between SEO and SEM.

SEO basics - keywords, page structure, content, optimisation

We already know the definition of SEO, how search engines 'rank' results and why you should be interested in search engine optimisation in the first place. Now it's time for the SEO guide to give you the knowledge on the basic steps you need to take for your website to improve its visibility. We will divide this section into three sectors - planning, on-page SEO and off-page SEO. 

Keyword planning and analysis

You have made the decision to take your website to a new level - you are starting its SEO adventure. Bravo! But where do you start? The right plan of action is the basis for successively reaching your goals. The most important planning stages are: analysis of your potential customers' searches, selecting keywords, grouping them and matching search intent to them. These first four stages can be described as strictly keyword-related. The next four are directly related to the website, being planning of relevant subpages, their basic SEO optimisation, the construction of structures and the development of page content and its development. 

On-page SEO

On-page SEO (on-page SEO), as the name suggests, refers to all those 'signals' that Google receives and finds on your pages. These are aspects on which you can directly influence and control - Therefore, it is easiest to ensure that they are correct. To understand on-page SEO more easily, we will divide these activities into two groups - technical SEO and content SEO.

Technical on-page SEO

When we talk about technical SEO, we are referring to aspects such as: page load speed, adaptation of the website to mobile devices, structure URLnavigation, sitemap, site security or code quality. Charging speed pages is one of the most important factors for SEO. No one likes to wait, especially at a time when we have become totally disenchanted with it. We want the best and we want it now. So Google will send users to sites whose content loads quickly, even with a poor internet connection.

No less important is adaptation of the website for mobile devices - They are the ones used by the vast majority of your potential customers. Therefore, even if they arrive at the site, but the content does not look good and prevents them from experiencing what we call a "positive user experience", the viewer will quickly abandon the site. You need to know that Google does mobile-optimised indexing! In practice, this means that for the purposes of indexing and Google rankings, the mobile version of a page is used first and foremost. Mobile-optimised indexing was enabled by default for all new sites on 1 July 2019. Remember, there are not two different indexes - for the desktop and mobile versions. There is one, and Google's bot scans and indexes pages as a client-smartphone (mobile-first)!

We also mentioned site security and code quality, which also have an impact on SEO. It is obvious that a site secured with a protocol HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), which protects the integrity and confidentiality of the data between it and the user's computer, is more reliable. As for the code, on the other hand, it needs to be 'transparent' so that Google can effectively understand the content on the page. It is well known that the most popular search engine 'prefers' and understands some programming languages better than others (e.g. HTML from JavaScript).

To summarise technical on-page SEO, it is first of all important to point out and remind ourselves that a website looks different from our point of view and different for the search engine. We see a whole array of colours, graphics, variously formatted text. For the search engine, on the other hand, there is only text - nothing else. As a result of this, all the elements that it cannot display in this way remain invisible to it. So, from your point of view, it may look good, but Google will consider its content inaccessible. 

On-page SEO content

We have not, of course, exhausted the topic related to the technical issues of on-page SEO. However, you have learnt about the basic steps that need to be taken to make it easier for search engine robots to find, understand and index a page. Now it is time to look at optimisation of content on the website in terms of SEO. Every time you use a search engine, you are looking for content, for example information related to a certain problem. However, content can take many forms, not only text, but also images, graphics or video. 

Optimisation On-page content for SEO includes, but is not limited to: titles, quality and 'richness' of content, internal linking, length of content. On-page SEO of content is predominantly related to presence of keywordswords for which the page in question wishes to rank. For Google to understand what these words are, they need to be in:

• titles - the closer to the beginning, the better
• URLs
• headings (H2, if the content has more levels, also H3, H4, etc.).
• the first hundred words, or the first paragraph if the text is divided into them - this will reassure Google that the page really does address the topic in question
• meta-title and meta-description
• image file names and alt tags - remember how we wrote about the way search engines read content? Well, that's right, if you post images, the robots only see their names

You already know how your on-page content should be optimised for keywords. However, key words are not everything. Your content must be valuable from the point of view of the internet user, serve their purposes and bring them benefits. It should also solve problems and answer the queries that the searcher has expressed on Google. Importantly, the content should also be attractive in terms of the variety of elements. Users expect "rich content" - not just text, but also graphics, sound files and videos to make the content easier to digest. And Google wants to provide them with this. 

Such an important issue of optimising content for SEO should not be overlooked. regular updating of content on the website. In this way, Google knows that you are not lagging behind and that users who come to your site will find the latest information that has not lost its value. 

We will conclude the topic of on-page SEO related to content with internal linking, which Google relies on to identify which content on your web pages is most important. What does such linking consist of? Internal linking are links within one site that allow (both users and robots) to reach other pages of the site. These can be in-text links as well as links in the form of administrative sections. Internal linking must be simple, logical and clear. It is advisable to place internal links in the content of the site - for example, where a particular service, product or related topic is mentioned. 

Off-page SEO

In the previous section, we discussed the basics of on-page SEO - both those related to technical issues and those related to content. In addition to on-page SEO (also referred to as on-site SEO), care should also be taken to off-site SEO. This is the more difficult part, because sometimes we do not have direct and total control over it. Off-site SEO factors are signals sent to Google not by us and the changes we make to our site (its code, content), but via third-party sites. So this category of factors mainly includes links and mentions of your pages on other sites and social media.

Inbound links are the most important element of off-page SEO. Links to content from thematically related pages with authority are a very strong signal to Google - this page is valuable and popular! You can think of inbound links as votes - people link to your content because they appreciate it.

In turn mentions from social profiles create a positive buzz around the page, i.e. around your business, which Google also interprets as an indicator of popularity and relevance. It's worth pointing out that robots don't always need a link to your site, sometimes a mere mention is enough. Google will know that your business is being talked about as soon as its name is used. Of course, we only care about positive mentions, in brand-relevant contexts.

In addition to the off-site SEO factors mentioned, it is also important to mention Trust Signals (we can use the translation - signs of trust) and about a phenomenon that has gained strength in recent years, namely Influencer Marketing. Signs of trust can be defined as any kind of feedback, reviews, positive contributions on forums, comments under posts, etc. It is simply any favourable activity around your companies, products, services or content and includes social media. In turn cooperation with influencers gives you the advantage of increasing your brand's credibility. An influential person talks about you, quotes your content, in simplest terms, vouches for you. Their mentions have a positive effect not only on internet users, but also on Google, which notes that you have the backing of an authority. 

How do you build an SEO strategy?

If you have read the previous part of this article carefully, you will know that, in order to create an SEO strategy that really works, you need to address three main areas: technical configuration of the website, content and links. Let's remind ourselves and summarise what makes up each of these spheres.

Speaking of technical configuration sides, we mean:

• creating a site navigation that is easy for bots to analyse and user-friendly
• the URL symplification of pages
• improved page load speed
• removal of dead links (dead links that send to a non-existent website)
• creation of sitemap and robots.txt files to speed up crawling and indexing of the site's content
• eliminating duplicate content, which makes it impossible for search engines to decide which content they should show in search results

Speaking of content, we mean:

• research into keywords that will attract the right audience to the site, i.e. those with the potential to become customers
• on-page optimisation, both in terms of keywords (optimisation of title, URLs, first paragraph, meta title, meta description, image file names and alt tags) and in terms of internal links, content length and multimedia diversity

Speaking of links, we mean:

• link buildinglinkbuilding is the process of acquiring links to a site. Different approaches can be adopted when building a linkbuilding strategy. These are based on natural links, sponsored links or guest posting (publishing articles on third-party blogs in exchange for the opportunity to place a link there).

It is only by including all three of these scopes of action in the SEO strategy and performing them correctly that a website will be able to rank higher in search results. It is the factors listed above that determine its success or failure.

Can the effects of SEO efforts be measured?

You already know what is responsible for a page's position in search results and what SEO actions you need to take. You have taken care of it and expect results - that much is obvious. So how do you check whether your efforts are producing positive results? Is it even possible? This is what you will read about in this part of the guide.

Monitoring of SEO activities is possible. What is more, it is imperative that we continue to develop the strategy and introduce positioning to an even higher level. What such "measuring SEO success"? It means as much as tracking traffic dataThe website's visitors, visitor engagement and links. Typically, companies set their own key performance indicators, the so-called SEO KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), the most popular being:

• an increase in organic traffic to the website
• keyword rankings
• average time spent on the site and bounce rate
• conversion from organic traffic
• number of indexed pages
• link database (new links led to the site, but also lost links)

It is said that if you cannot measure something, you cannot improve it either. This principle also applies to SEO. Analysing various metrics allows you to measure the effects of your actions and continuous improvement is crucial for SEO. It gives an insight into the real impact of SEO activities on the site and allows you to reprioritise when you see that something is not working as you would like.

However, it is worth particularly emphasising in this section of our guide the fact that SEO is a long-term strategyand not one isolated wave of the wand and expect quick results. As you already know, SEO is based on three basic pillars - technical, content and links. For the strategy to bear fruit, all these pillars need to be solid. And as you can guess, this cannot be done overnight. 

While elements such as meta-description and headline optimisation can have a positive effect quickly after implementation, other SEO activities take time. It is sometimes tedious and lacy work, but done correctly, it results in sending the following signal to search engines: we have valuable content that will satisfy users who are interested in the topic.

Local and regional SEO

You already know quite a bit about SEO. Now it's time to learn about activities that will work even better for your business. This is local and regional SEO, which will work well for businesses operating within a particular city (local SEO) or, for example, a province (regional SEO). What do these SEO 'variations' consist of? These are optimisation measures aimed at ensuring that a website is displayed in the highest possible positions in the search results for queries related to a particular region.

What does this look like in practice? You select appropriate key phrases containing geographical names, e.g. "massage in Wrocław", "funeral parlour in Warsaw", and in this way you target offer to an audience in a particular city or region. It is worth noting, by the way, that such keyword phrases containing geographical names (local phrases) are characterised by lower competitiveness. This means that we have a greater chance of success and conversion. Also, their price is lower than, for example, nationwide key phrases.

What else speaks for the implementation of local SEO activities? The figures - 97% Customers use search engines to find information about local businesses. They are usually looking for suggestions on vendors, locations and addresses of specific businesses. 

White hat and black hat SEO

SEO, like virtually all our activities, can also have its dark sides. In this section, we will introduce you to something we hope you will never try. We are talking about black hat SEO. And we're not just talking about the ethical aspects, we're also talking about the damage you can do to your sites. But wait, you're probably wondering what we're even talking about and what this strange term black hat SEO is. 

Black hat SEO is, in simplest terms website positioning through manipulation search engine algorithms and using techniques that do not comply with the recommendations of these search engines. What are these practices? The most common are:

• keyword stuffing (keyword stuffing), i.e. filling the page with phrases, placing the keyword in an unnatural number, sometimes in places not generally associated with it. Such text is usually hardly suitable for reading by Internet users, and is aimed solely at improving the position of the site for specific phrases. Key phrases may also appear in places such as footers or sidebars.
• masking (cloaking) - consists of presenting different content to search engine robots and presenting different content to website visitors. For this purpose, the address is checked IP or the header of the client programme. An example of cloaking is, for example, the display of additional content containing key phrases when a user presents themselves as a search engine robot
• creation of thin content (thin content) - consists of artificially generating additional pages whose sole purpose is to be heavily cluttered with keywords. Such pages are of no value to the site visitor and are sometimes copied from other sites - which is also a violation of copyright law.
• hiding elements in the content (or elements) in the code - unfortunately, this is a common technique to manipulate rankings. The most common use is to place white text on a white background (hiding keywords, for example, by adjusting their colour to match that of the page)
• automatic implicit redirection users without their consent to another site

These are just some of the activities classified as black hat SEO. Of course, there is no limit to human imagination and 'creativity' in ways to trick search engines. However, if it ever occurs to you to take a shortcut and use one of these techniques, you should know that you could pay dearly for it. Google provides penalties for fraudulent SEO activities. 

First, the owner of such a site will be informed of the irregularities detected. The site will then be superimposed filterwhich will cause the page's position in the search results for specific phrases to drop. In the end, we may even pay for arbitrariness by removing a page from the index. Therefore, think carefully before taking shortcuts.

As you can easily guess, white hat SEO stands on the "bright side of power". These are positioning activities for the website in line with search engine guidelines. White hat SEO is to improve the content, optimising the site to increase its value for users. That is, all the things you might have read about in the earlier parts of our guide.

How much does SEO cost?

You know the definition of SEO, you know what activities it covers and which ones it should under no circumstances cover. You also know why SEO is necessary for a website and what benefits it brings. Now you are probably wondering whether you can afford the services of SEO specialists. First and foremost, you have to reckon with the fact that SEO is an investment, long-term investment into business. If, in a situation where you don't see spectacular results from an agency after 2 months, you decide to break the contract, then you have little chance of success for your website to improve its position in search results.

Often clients of SEO specialists also fall into another trap. Seeing that the position in the organic results has jumped up, they decide to end the cooperation. Successful SEO is an ongoing process. Once you gain a position, there is no guarantee that you will maintain it for long. You need to continuously optimise your website and update its content. 

You are probably still wondering how much you need to invest in SEO activities to make sense. In our opinion amount between 1500 and 2000 PLN is the minimum you have to be ready for if you hope for effective SEO. Only with such a budget, can an SEO agency allocate the right amounts to content marketing i link building. 

Beware of offers such as "50 cents per link", "results in the first month", "10 links and a place in the TOP10 of the search engine". Usually in such cases you will not spend much, but it will simply be money wasted, thrown down the drain. 

SEO audit - the foundation of any cooperation

You have decided to work with an SEO specialist who has convinced you with their offer. What now? How will this cooperation work? The basis is a website audit. Without a properly executed audit, you cannot expect any results. 

Thanks to the audit, the SEO specialist must check, among other things:

• basic information contained in the website
• the website displays correctly on both PC and mobile devices
• page load speed
• correctness of internal linking
• whether there are duplicates
• presence of external links leading to the website

In addition, SEO's carry out keyword analysis and the activities of competitors. Well executed SEO audit allows errors that negatively affect a page's position to be found and the correct elements that can still be improved to be identified. 

It is only on the basis of the audit that the agency will carry out SEO activities that will increase the organic traffic on the website. In addition, it can also offer to run Google Ads campaigns or Facebook adverts. It all depends on the strategy developed, the expectations, the potential of the site and the client's budget.

SEO consultancy

If you can't currently afford to establish an ongoing relationship with an SEO agency, or you think you don't need one, then you can take advantage of a service such as an SEO consultation. This is simply a meeting during which specialists (such as us at SEOSki) advise you, how to develop the site.

When to choose an SEO consultation? This is ideal for those who are still undecided about whether to take on a long-term relationship with an SEO agency. It is an opportunity to test the knowledge and working style of a specialist. You should also opt for it if you are about to invest in certain activities but want to make sure they will be effective. The specialist will examine the situation of the website and assess whether they are worth undertaking.

The thing you must remember is that an SEO consultation is not the same as an audit! You cannot expect a complete analysis of the market and an assessment of your situation on it. This is impossible, if only because a consultation is limited in time - usually lasts up to several hours (60 minutes is the minimum). During this time, the specialist will answer your questions, share substantive knowledge, can also point out tools to use when marketing yourself online.

Summary

It's time to move on to a summary of the SEO guide. You should remember a few important things from it. First and foremost, that SEO is a pillar of your online marketing strategy and does not function in isolation from its other elements. Effective SEO triggers as many signals taken into account by search engines as possible. How does it do this? By making the website meet three basic conditions:

• enables Google to understand seamlessly what it offers and what problems and queries users are responding to
• gives evidence of its credibility and the relevance of its content
• responds to users' expectations with regard to content, format, attractiveness, speed - in short, provides a good "user experience"

We hope you find our guide to SEO useful and benefit from the information it contains. However, you need to be aware that search engine optimisation is a constantly updating and expanding subject. There is no way to exhaust the subject in one article, even a very long one. If you are interested in SEO, you must keep hand on the pulse and constantly seek new information. To this end, we encourage you to observe SEOSki's Facebook fan page, where we regularly post interesting content on SEO and marketing.