Admittedly, SEO is complex - you have to keep an eye on the behavior of Google and Co. as well as that of the users, you have to consider technical and content-related aspects, and you have to define a long-term strategy on which to base your measures. We will give you an overview of all topics of search engine optimization and show you a way through the jungle.
This article focuses on strategy and monitoring because of their importance for successful SEO. The area of content is only touched upon and explained in detail in the article "SEO Content: Content for People and Search Engines", while we give a brief overview of the topics of technology and off-page in this article.
SEO is the abbreviation for "Search Engine Optimization" and describes an area of online marketing. It specializes in unpaid (also called organic) search engine results and is divided into onpage and offpage optimization.
Onpage optimization includes content and technical improvements to your website. Technical factors include performance, mobile optimization, and clean HTML. Content optimization includes editorial content, keyword distribution, and navigation structure.
Offpage optimization includes all activities that do not take place directly on your website. An important part of the external ranking factors is the backlink structure, and the integration of social media is becoming increasingly important.
With the primary goal of improving search engine visibility, SEO aims to increase traffic to your website and increase actions on your site. However, if you want to attract more visitors to your website, you have to face a number of challenges:
To best manage all of these tasks, you need a long-term strategy with clear goals.
The SEO strategy defines the goals and strategic directions. For example, a company's goal may be to be found in the organic search results for its name or its products. It may simply be to defend its own brand keywords from competitors by ensuring that website content is crawlable, mobile-optimized and fast loading. In the areas of content and offpage, a minimum of measures is usually sufficient.
The situation is different for transaction and reach-oriented business models such as online shops, marketplaces and news portals: Due to the high level of competition, these should be found via general keywords in addition to their own brand keywords. To achieve a high ranking here, all areas of responsibility - technology, content, offpage - must be optimized as best as possible.
The keyword and content strategy, which focuses on three fundamental questions, forms the basis for the strategic orientation and thus the planning of measures in the areas of responsibility:
Let's start with keyword selection.
Defining the keyword set is part of the strategy and should not be done on a whim. It is best to follow these steps:
In order not to start in a vacuum, you need to determine the status quo of your website. You need to find out what keywords your site is already being found for and where you are ranking in the organic search results. Since this analysis is impossible to do manually, tools like Google Search Console, Sistrix and Semrush can help. As a result of the status quo analysis, you will get a list with many keywords and data such as ranking position and, if applicable, clicks and impressions.
The next step is to expand this list with keywords and topics for which your site is not currently ranking, but which are still relevant or for which you can provide suitable content. There are several approaches to detailed topic and keyword research: adding synonyms and combinations to existing keywords, analyzing competitors' keywords, and brainstorming for new ideas.
It is also worth looking at the different keyword types, which are divided into two categories:
Transactional, informational and navigational keywords provide information about the searcher's intent.
Shorthead, midtail and longtail keywords differ in their specificity and provide information about search volume.
The different types of keywords are not mutually exclusive and can be used in combination or as a mix.
To avoid prioritizing the wrong keywords or getting lost in an endless number of keywords, you need to clean up your keyword list. Evaluate each keyword in terms of relevance, competition, search volume, and seasonal fluctuations. Also try to avoid misunderstandings: If you run a hotel called "Rose", this is a weak keyword because searchers are likely to be more interested in the flower than in an overnight stay
Topic clustering involves grouping several keywords together. These should be related both thematically and in intent. The goal is to create relevant content that satisfies the searcher's intent (transactional, informational, or navigational): People looking for general information on a topic do not want to be bombarded with sales language. Those looking to buy something specific need clear product information, not long-winded articles.
Finally, mapping helps you match the relevant keywords to your page structure: On which page of my site can I best place my keywords? Is there already a subpage that is thematically appropriate for a keyword cluster, or do I need to create a new one?
Now it's time to create content.
Search engines rely on web pages to give users the best possible answers to their questions: They evaluate the relevance of a page based on the various content elements. The term "content" in SEO refers mainly to text, but also to images, graphics and videos.
The content of your website should be written primarily for the user, not for the search engines. This means that good content must add value to the reader, entertain them, inform them, or help them. In addition, good content is unique, targeted to the right audience, and encourages users to participate, share, and like. To make this work, site owners should remember to share their content through social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as other seeding channels. For more tips on creating compelling, SEO-optimized content, read the article “SEO Content: Content for People and Search Engines”.
While keyword density used to be the benchmark for search engine optimized text, SEO experts now focus on less fixed values. Of course, all relevant keywords should be included in the cluster, but more important than their number is their proper placement: in H1 headings, in H2 headings, at the beginning of text and paragraphs, near images or videos, at the end of text, and also in meta tags.
The technical implementation of a website is the basis of search engine optimization: It allows your website to be found by Google and other search engines. Two requirements must be met:
You must allow the search engine bots to view and search the content of your website (crawling).
Every website has content that is relevant to the user, but not to the search engines. For example, this could be the privacy policy or filtering and sorting options. These rarely SEO-optimized pages can be excluded from indexing so that the search engines only find the best content.
Once your site is listed in the search results, you need to take steps to ensure a good ranking. In the technical area, the tasks have not changed much over the past few years, but have been supplemented by new areas such as a strong focus on performance and mobile optimization. The basics of technical search engine optimization include topics such as
The knowledge of a technical SEO expert is very specialized. If you do not have experienced employees in this field, it is best to contact an agency.
The main part of offpage optimization is the creation and management of backlinks, i.e. external links to your website. This is due to the fact that search engines assume that a linked page has relevant content to a topic. However, with the boom of paid link pages and reciprocal link exchanges in the 2000s, Google began penalizing manual link building with the Penguin update in 2012, causing affected pages to rank lower.
It is not the quantity of external links that matters, but their quality: one backlink from a site that Google values highly will move your site up in the rankings; too many backlinks from sites that Google values little or not at all will move it down. The area of offpage optimization is therefore highly controversial: some people consider link building no longer relevant due to the risk. The other side shows with countless case studies that even manually created backlinks still have an effect, as long as they are of sufficient quality.
Regardless of which measures you choose, it is important to monitor them on a regular basis: Continuous monitoring of SEO KPIs allows you to track the success of your efforts, identify problems, and react quickly to new Google updates. The data should always be collected at the same frequency and with the same tools, otherwise it will not be comparable.
Key metrics to monitor your SEO strategy and efforts are:
Performance KPIs are directly related to your site's ranking.
Onpage KPIs can be very individual and depend on your SEO strategy.
Offpage KPIs mostly deal with your link management.
Wie Sie an den Kennzahlen sicher sehen, ist das Monitoring nicht nur für Ihre weitere strategische Ausrichtung wichtig, sondern hilft Ihnen auch zu reagieren, bevor ein Schaden entsteht.
When you're doing search engine optimization, don't forget what it's all about: Users should feel comfortable on your site and be able to find what they're looking for as easily and quickly as possible. If you provide them with a satisfying experience, Google will be satisfied. If you want to deepen your SEO knowledge, our next article "SEO Content: Content for People and Search Engines" should be of interest.
Of course, if you need help creating your SEO strategy and defining and implementing the right measures, we are always here for you. Just give us a call at +49 711 184 206-0 or email us at hello@wus.de.
