Increase website visibility and attract more traffic with our SEO ultimate guide.
The SEO Ultimate Guide.
Insights / The SEO Ultimate Guide.
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Table of Contents /
Overview
- Last updatedSeptember 12, 2024
- Written by
Diogo Queimado
- 8 min read
This is our comprehensive guide to SEO!
Perfect, if you want to:
• Understand the importance of SEO for your business and how it works.
• Discover the various types of SEO.
• Learn how to do SEO by yourself and increase website visibility.
• Start your SEO journey.
So, if this is you, keep reading because you are in the right place. Let’s increase website visibility together.
01 /
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is all about making your website optimised for search engines like Google.
The more optimised it is, the higher it will appear in the search engine results, meaning more people will see it.
By optimising for the keywords you want to rank for, you increase website visibility and connect with your target audience.
In turn, you will have higher chances of converting visitors into actual customers, which will drive revenue.
02 /
Why is SEO Important?
Whenever people want to go somewhere, find information, research, or buy something — where do they go? Usually, they go to a search engine like Google.
According to Forbes, Google has over 8.5 billion searches per day worldwide. And that is not all...
A recent study by BrightEdge found that organic search remains the most dominant source of website traffic. The study analysed various businesses and discovered that 53% of their traffic came from organic search.
According to Forbes, Google has over 8.5 billion searches per day worldwide. And that is not all...
A recent study by BrightEdge found that organic search remains the most dominant source of website traffic. The study analysed various businesses and discovered that 53% of their traffic came from organic search.
So, I don't know about you, but to me, that's a pretty convincing reason why SEO is so important.
In other words, neglecting SEO would mean neglecting one of the most important channels to increase website visibility.
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03 /
How does SEO work?
Now that you have an idea of what SEO is, let’s dive into how it actually works.
When you implement an SEO strategy, can you guess what are you doing?
You are telling Google that your website has great quality, provides value to users, and is worth ranking higher in search results.
In other words, you are sending positive signals to Google, resulting in higher rankings and increased website visibility.
This is because search engines like Google aim to provide the best possible experience for users. If they don't, users might switch to other search engines like Bing or Yahoo.
When you implement an SEO strategy, can you guess what are you doing?
You are telling Google that your website has great quality, provides value to users, and is worth ranking higher in search results.
In other words, you are sending positive signals to Google, resulting in higher rankings and increased website visibility.
This is because search engines like Google aim to provide the best possible experience for users. If they don't, users might switch to other search engines like Bing or Yahoo.
With SEO, you apply a set of techniques, such as link building and keyword optimisation. These improve user experience and ensure that your site provides users with the answers to their queries.
04 /
Top 3 Ranking Factors
There isn’t a single SEO factor that is more important than all the others and that will make or break your SEO efforts.
Google uses automated ranking systems, known as “algorithms,” to rank pages. According to Forbes, Google looks over over 200 factors and signals.
To be honest, nobody really knows all of these 200+ factors because Google has not confirmed them all, and because they are constantly changing.
Now that you understand the vast number of ranking factors involved, there are four factors that stand out from the crowd:
QUALITY CONTENT /
Nowadays, with AI becoming more prevalent, standing out in your industry is incredibly more difficult. Because anyone can create a blog post on any topic within seconds using tools like ChatGPT.
Google is taking severe measures in its ranking systems to eliminate unhelpful, irrelevant, and unoriginal content from search results.
In March of this year, Google reduced spammy and low-quality content by 40%, impacting numerous websites. Some of which were even de-indexed.
Therefore, now more than ever, you need to create high-quality content. But what does that mean?
It means prioritising this thing called E-E-A-T, which stands for:
• Experience.
• Expertise.
• Authoritativeness.
• Trustworthiness.
Even though it is not a direct ranking factor, by following E-E-A-T, you are essentially telling Google,
"Hey, rank me higher because I create awesome, unique content that people want to hear."
Basically you are signalling to Google that you are less likely to harm user experience and that you are an expert in your field.
And don't forget to keep it updated, fresh and relevant.
The key takeaway: quality over quantity. Focus on expertise, depth, credibility, and unique firsthand experiences rather than trying to manipulate rankings.
And remember, write content that resonates with people and feels human.
PAGE EXPERIENCE /
Many people overlook page experience, yet it plays an important role in SEO — and why is that?
To be aware of its significance, we need to understand Google's primary goal: make users happy.
Page Experience contains four main signals:
• Security factors like HTTPS (via SSL certificates).
• Page speed.
• Mobile friendliness.
• Core Web Vitals (CWV).
Without these, Google cannot make sure users stay on their search engine to find what they need by providing them the best experience possible.
So, Google does not want to top-rank a page that takes forever to load or is not secure for the user to be on.
Or, for example, a page that is full of intrusive interstitial ads and pop-ups may offer a poor page experience. As a result, it is less likely to rank highly and increase website visibility.
However, page experience doesn't affect rankings in every scenario. It typically comes into play when two pages are competing closely for a position.
LINKS /
Links are what enable users to move from one place to another around the web and it is how search engines discover new pages.
While it's possible to rank without links, they significantly improve rankings and help increase website visibility.
Generally, the more links a site has, the more likely it is to rank for relevant search queries.
You can think of links as votes of confidence in ranking pages.
Now, one thing is true...not just any links will do.
"What? Why?" is what you must be asking yourself.
Because — do links matter? Yes! For sure, but they must be high-quality, relevant backlinks from authoritative websites.
To understand why, we need to roll back in time.
Since Google inception, SEOs have used links to manipulate rankings. Google has ever since been fighting link spam and low-quality backlinks to enhance its user experience.
And it did with the Penguin update in 2012. It worked by crawling backlinks on websites and assessing the quality of each backlink.
Today, ranking with a high volume of low-quality inbound links is impossible. Relevance and link quality now are what matters to Google.
Because the reality is — not all links are equal and carry the same weight.
To Google, it's not about quantity but the quality of links.
As John Mueller, Google Search Advocate, put it:
"One really good link from one website out there that is, for us, a really important sign that we should treat this website as something that is relevant because it has that one link."
In other words, one high-quality link holds more value than one million low-quality links.
Other important ranking factors
• Search intent and relevancy — how well your content matches a user’s search intent and how relevant it is to the search query.
• Brand signals — The overall perception of your brand online. Ensure your brand is well-known and respected.
• Keyword optimisation — meaning work refining the keyword strategy of your website.
05 /
SEO Types
SEO includes three main elements: On-Page, Off-Page, and Technical SEO.
These are all important parts of SEO, and they work in tandem to increase website visibility and traffic.
You can think of SEO as running a successful restaurant...
• On-Page SEO is your menu, the quality of your dishes and the atmosphere.
You need to offer high-quality, delicious meals that satisfy customers, so they keep coming back for more. And the background music needs to set the right mood.
In SEO terms, this means:
• Off-Page SEO is your restaurant’s reputation and customer relationships.
It involves aspects like reviews, social media presence, endorsements from food critics, and local marketing efforts such as distributing flyers to increase the restaurant's visibility.
Local SEO, Link Building, and Social Media SEO fall under this category.
• Technical SEO, on the other hand, is comparable to your staff – ensuring everything runs smoothly behind the scenes.
It’s about having a clean kitchen, efficient processes, and skilled chefs who can prepare meals to perfection.
In SEO, this would mean:
06 /
Get Started with SEO
Now that you know what SEO is, it’s time to take action and learn how to do SEO by yourself.
Should you focus your SEO efforts only on Google?
According to Statcounter, about 91,73% of all searches from May 2023 to May 2024 happened on Google.
While you can optimize your website for other search engines, the truth is — SEO usually goes around what works best for Google.
Now there are still a lot of daily searches happening on other search engines, like Bing and Yahoo. What should you do?
One approach is to view Bing and Yahoo as additional opportunities to increase website visibility.
So first, focus on making everything better for Google. Once you have everything optimised for Google's algorithms, you can then start fine-tuning for other search engines.
WHAT TO TRACK FOR SEO SUCCESS /
SEO is a very slow channel that takes time to build value and requires a lot of effort and patience before it shows results.
According to WebFX, SEO typically takes between three to six months to begin showing measurable outcomes. And, sometimes up to a year to increase website visibility with continuous improvements.
So how can you measure the progress of your SEO efforts?
Well, that depends largely on your type of business and the specific goals you aim to achieve.
The most critical metrics that you can track are:
Wait, wait, hold on a moment......
It might be easier if I tell you which tools are most important and what metrics you can find there.
Here’s what you need to know:
GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE /
It’s a must-have SEO tool that is super rich when it comes to features. And unlike pretty much every other tool on the market, you know the data is legit (After all, it comes from Google).
You can use it to measure things like:
• Organic traffic to your website.
• Keyword rankings.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR).
• Sitemap submissions.
• Link checks, and much more.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS /
OK, OK. Google Analytics isn’t really an SEO tool.
However it is indispensable and almost impossible to generate reports without using it.
It gives you information on whether or not your SEO efforts are paying off:
• Organic traffic.
• Bounce and engagement rates.
• Traffic sources.
• Time on site.
• Conversion rate, and much more.
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About Diogo /
He is a co-founder of Confetti and our go-to expert for anything related to Google and Website. With a deep understanding of SEO and Web design, he combines his finance background to bring a unique, analytical approach to digital marketing.
We hope you enjoy reading this blog post.
If you want us to do your marketing for you, we are happy to chat.
