Basic SEO and the aspects of quality website promotion

SEO15 June 202610 min

What is basic SEO? The article covers in detail every aspect of properly preparing a new or existing website for promotion in search engines.

Lately, many clients who come to us often say something like: "I need a good modern website and basic SEO." Yet few of them understand what basic SEO actually is.

The thing is, many business owners today are interested in growing their project online and try to learn as much as possible about it. However, information on this topic is quite scattered across the web, and it is hard for an unprepared person to make sense of it right away.

So the client does understand that today it is not enough to simply have a beautiful website - it also needs promotion to bring profit. And one of the promotion channels is organic search. Many also understand that not every site can simply be pushed to the TOP: ideally, all search engine requirements should be taken into account at the creation stage, i.e. basic optimization should be done. But few understand what that base actually consists of.

Minimal SEO, or what unscrupulous developers usually offer

Taking advantage of the client's lack of expertise, unscrupulous, unprofessional developers or even studios promise to build a site with basic SEO settings. In reality, it all comes down to a simple set of the most elementary elements, whose purpose and functionality the contractors themselves have, at best, a vague idea about.

And it is not even about dishonesty or incompetence. Many web studios that build websites have no SEO specialists on staff who could write a proper technical brief and oversee the site's creation with search optimization requirements in mind.

What do the "specialists" of such studios usually do?

They install a free SEO plugin - can't go without one, right?.. But the plugin itself gives you nothing; it must be configured properly. It is a webmaster's working tool that one must know how to use, not just install and forget.
They connect the site to Google Search Console. Yes, that's needed, but what next? It is also a working tool that will not, in passive mode, bring the resource to the TOP by itself.
More "advanced" developers may even fill in the title meta tags on the main pages. But again, you need to know how to compose them correctly so that they work and don't trigger the search engines' "spammy" content filter.
Some go further and add sitemap.xml and robots.txt files to the site. Yes, these are important files (though lately not quite as important). But while an XML sitemap can be generated automatically and will be almost correct, robots.txt requires directives written specifically for your site. Usually developers "drop" a template file into the root directory, and that's the end of it.
Breadcrumbs may also be added. It is an important navigation element, but its mere existence is not enough. It is advisable to add breadcrumb structured data so the site's snippet in search results is more attractive and informative - and therefore more clickable than competitors'.
Sometimes web analytics systems, such as Google Analytics, are connected to the site. Without proper work with these systems, as one Google employee put it, they turn into a mere traffic counter. Web analytics is actually a separate, fundamental area of internet marketing and cannot be attributed to basic SEO settings, because analytics itself must be set up correctly and then used correctly. And that requires special knowledge.
And the biggest blunder in the era of Mobile-first indexing is when a site works well on desktop devices (computer, laptop) but loads slowly or doesn't fully work on mobile. Nowadays search engines, Google in particular, consider the mobile version of the site the primary one, and the success of search promotion depends on its quality.

Proper basic search optimization. How do we do it?

Polyarix has its own SEO department. It is actively involved from the very start of developing our clients' web resources. So how does this process work for us in terms of SEO?

First, we write a technical brief for the developers describing all the requirements for basic search optimization.
Then this brief goes to the development department.
During the work, the programmers communicate directly with the SEO specialists to avoid possible misunderstandings and implement every point of the brief correctly.
At the end, when the site is ready, our search promotion department performs a technical audit of the site to find possible errors, flaws and mismatches with the brief and eliminate them before the site is opened for indexing by search robots.

What is included in the "Basic SEO" package at Polyarix?

A correct site structure

First of all, successful promotion of a web resource requires a correct structure. It allows you to distribute the keywords matching users' search queries across pages so that they don't compete with each other (cannibalization) but complement each other harmoniously.

For this purpose we collect the main keyword core. Detailed elaboration of the semantic core goes beyond basic SEO settings, so at this stage the main keywords are defined.

Based on the collected data, and following the client's wishes, the site architecture is developed.

Friendly URLs

Once the structure is defined, we approve with the client the content of every page. Each page gets a so-called friendly URL - a page address transliterated into Latin characters. Why does it matter?

First, seeing your page's snippet in search results, the user will understand faster that the page matches their query and click through to it.
Second, while on the site, it is easier for a person to understand which section they are in.

And finally, third: search engines give priority to sites with readable URLs, because they want users to get relevant answers to their queries. In other words, the URL is one of the ranking factors.

Correct meta tags: we build in the ability to manage them

Meta tags (especially title) are an important factor by which search robots determine a page's relevance to a query. Their weight in ranking is no longer as big as a few years ago, but they remain an important part of the content for search optimization.

The title, description and keywords meta fields are filled in differently - optimizers hold different opinions on the matter. But at the site creation stage, it is important to build in the ability to fill them from the admin panel, so the SEO specialist doesn't have to run to the developer with requests every time. It is also important, especially for large online stores, to be able to define meta tags for groups of pages by a mask.

That is exactly why we account for these requirements at the site creation stage.

We remove duplicate pages before the site opens for indexing

It is very important to prevent duplicate pages. Duplicates come in different forms: for example, the page site.com/page1 may also open at site.com/page1.html. From a human point of view it is the same page, but from a search robot's point of view these are two different pages with duplicated content.

We will cover the dangers of duplicated pages in another article. Here, let's just note that they must be avoided. So before opening a new site for indexing by search engines, we carefully identify all possible kinds of duplicates and eliminate them at this stage.

The site's main mirror

Continuing the previous point, let's note the importance of configuring the main mirror.

A site mirror is its copy with full or partial duplication of content. When created, a site is reachable at two addresses: with www and without. For example, site.com and www.site.com. Again, for the user it is the same site, but for a search engine these are two different sites duplicating each other.

The fact that search engines demote sites with an unconfigured main mirror is one side of the coin. Besides, when building a link profile, part of the links may mistakenly point to one mirror and the rest to the other. As a result, the link mass gets diluted and the site's promotion slows down.

To designate the site's main mirror, we usually set up a redirect from the www version to the non-www one (or vice versa). Then, in webmaster panels such as Google Search Console, we specify the preferred URL version.

HTTPS - a must-have today

Search engines now recommend ever more insistently that sites switch to the secure data exchange protocol (HTTPS). This is because they care about user safety and strive to minimize possible leaks of personal data, for example into the hands of fraudsters.

To use HTTPS, an SSL certificate must be installed on the site. We won't go into technical details - that is beyond the scope of this article. But the fact that using the secure protocol is a ranking factor has been proven by more than one study by the world's leading SEO companies.

In addition, modern browsers increasingly warn about the risk of information leaks when a visitor opens a site using the insecure HTTP protocol. That, in turn, makes the user leave the site - and means lost potential profit. Not to mention that such bounces negatively affect the site's ranking in search results.

Correct pagination setup

If a site has pages numbered sequentially at the bottom, that is called pagination. It is common in online stores and content projects (blogs, news and the like).

The problem is that when search robots "see" such pages, they may treat them as duplicates. Most often their meta tags coincide, and boilerplate text may repeat as well. To prevent this, you should make the meta tags unique and correctly specify the canonical page.

It is important to remember that the canonical page must be specified with the rel="canonical" attribute, not rel="prev|next", which Google has stated it "has not considered for a long time".

If we have two pagination pages at site.com/catalog/page-1 and site.com/catalog/page-2, then in the <head></head> section of each page's HTML we write the following: <link rel=»canonical» href=»site.com/catalog/page-1″/>.

There are actually several ways to use this attribute; it all depends on the specific project. Google, for example, does not recommend splitting content with pagination at all. But what should large stores with tens of thousands of products do? If all the product cards are placed on one page, it will take forever to load.

We usually use the method described above. Correctly configured pagination helps avoid indexing problems such as:

the wrong pages - not the ones chosen for promotion - getting into the index;
priority pages not getting into the index;
your site being perceived as low-quality and demoted in the results.

All redirects must be 301 only

To begin with, two kinds of redirects are mainly used:

301 - permanent;
302 - temporary.

Of course, there are cases when we need to redirect a visitor to a page temporarily. If we are running a promotion and want the user to land on a page with a promotional offer for a specific product, without reworking the product's main page, then a 302 redirect is exactly right, because from the SEO point of view:

the valuable link "weight" is not passed from the main page to the temporary one;
search robots do not "forget" the main page and keep indexing it;
the main page will not drop out of the search results.

That option suits particular cases. But if you ordered a turnkey website built from scratch, then of course all redirects to working pages must be 301s.

This matters because we will be sending pages for indexing and, accordingly, telling the search robots from the start that the structure we built is the primary one.

Closing outbound links

There are situations when, for one reason or another, the client needs to link from their site to another one. For example, a school's website is required by law to link to state regulations hosted on government websites.

On the one hand, a link to a trusted resource is a plus for the site's promotion. On the other hand, page weight leaks to someone else's resource, which complicates the work of distributing the site's internal weight. To avoid this, Google recommends using the rel="nofollow" attribute on outbound links, which forbids the robot to follow them.

Optimized load speed

The reality of today's web is that visitors, spoiled by fast internet and the abundance of websites, often leave a resource without waiting for it to load if a page takes more than 3-4 seconds to open. On top of that, there is this sobering statistic: an increase in site load time of more than 1 second leads to:

a drop in conversions of more than 7%;
an 11% decrease in pages viewed;
a 16% decrease in visitor satisfaction.

That is why it is very important that your site opens fast, both from the home page and from internal pages. We pay special attention to optimizing site speed at every stage of development. This includes configuring browser file caching, GZIP compression and many other technical points.

A quality mobile or responsive version of the site

Lately, the share of mobile traffic in many segments of the internet has been growing rapidly. Having a fast, user-friendly mobile or responsive version is no longer a luxury but a vital necessity.

As for SEO, a quality mobile version is a weighty ranking factor in itself. For example, in March 2018 Google introduced so-called Mobile-First Indexing. It means that the primary version of a site for indexing and ranking is now the mobile or responsive one.

Naturally, when developing a site we focus on the quality of its mobile version without forgetting the desktop one.

Here it is important to account for many factors and avoid all kinds of mistakes. For instance, if the robots.txt file - discussed below - is composed incorrectly, you can block the indexing of important scripts, CSS files or images. As a result, even if the resource actually works well on mobile devices, search engines may simply "not see" it and accordingly "not credit" it, which will cause promotion problems.

Cross-browser compatibility

With the two previous points in mind, we build all our projects so that they work properly in all common browsers. This is very important for the user experience. If some elements fail to display, then besides the negative impression it can lead to fewer conversions, bounces or other unwanted consequences the site owners would rather avoid.

Setting up multilingualism correctly

Many websites today use several language versions. This is especially relevant when the resource's content targets users from different countries with different language environments. It is very important to target correctly during promotion, i.e. to show the appropriate language version in the corresponding regional search results.

There are several solutions. The most common one, which we use, can be described with the following example.

There is a site with 3 language versions:

Ukrainian https://site.com - the default;
English https://site.com/en;
French https://site.com/fr.

In this case, in the <head></head> tag of the home page code we form the following block of tags:

For internal pages we write the following:

In some cases you may need the "x-default" attribute, which indicates the use of several languages on a page:

if content can be dynamically served in the needed language;
if there are pages with language and region selection;
if there are IP-dependent pages redirecting the user to the appropriate language version.

In that case the following HTML is used:

Optimizing internal linking

We already mentioned internal linking above when talking about the rel="nofollow" attribute. What is it for?

The thing is, when indexing the pages of a web resource, search robots take into account how many links lead to each page from other pages and how many links point to other pages. This is how the internal weight of each page is calculated, indicating its importance relative to the others (the so-called PageRank). For example, the home page has the greatest weight, since all web pages link to it.

What does this give SEO? By building internal linking wisely, we can help the most important pages rise to the TOP thanks to their growing importance in the eyes of search engines. That is why, even before creation begins, it is important to think through and compose a site structure that will later cause no problems with "pumping" the needed pages with internal weight.

A correct hierarchy of <h></h> headings

Continuing the internal linking topic, let's note the importance of using the H1-H6 tags properly. The thing is, not-so-diligent developers often wrap working buttons, design elements and the like in these tags. Whereas the H1-H6 headings are an important text element (and nothing else) that helps the search robot determine the page's topic and structure.

If, for example, the cart and the subscription form are marked with H2 headings on a page, then while scanning it the search bot may treat these elements as parts of the content, which will "blur" its perception of the page's real text component. That, in turn, will hinder ranking for the target queries the optimizer so carefully selected and integrated into the text.

The basic rules for using H1-H6 headings:

A page must have an H1 heading, placed as high as possible in the HTML code.
Then the text is divided into logical blocks with H2 subheadings.
Blocks with H2 headings are divided, if needed, with H3 subheadings and so on. Priority must be respected: you cannot, for example, first split the text with H4 headings and then divide those blocks with H2 headings.

We strictly monitor the correctness and hierarchy of headings on the site.

Usability

The topic of User Experience Design is not directly related to SEO, so we won't dwell on it in this article. Let's note the main thing - search engine representatives have long and insistently repeated the same message at every webmaster conference:

"Make websites convenient and useful for your users. That is the key to success!"

Yes, there are many examples of resources sitting in the TOP that are inconvenient and unattractive. But in competitive niches such sites have long been, at best, on the 3rd-4th page of the results. And given the intensifying competition, there is no doubt that soon we will no longer see such sites in the TOP at all.

That is why, when creating a web project, we thoroughly work through all usability aspects, taking into account the client's wishes and the experience and knowledge we have accumulated over the years. For example, such a "trifle" as breadcrumbs will:

improve site navigation;
enable snippet markup (see below);
indirectly affect the resource's traffic and popularity.

Structured data

To make your site's snippet in search results attractive and clickable, and to help search engines correctly "understand" the page's content, so-called structured data markup is used. What is it?

Structured data is the addition of special attributes and tags to the page's HTML code that help correctly identify the page's content.

There are several structured data vocabularies. The most popular one, supported by all major modern search engines, is Schema.org, which we mainly use. Also, to make social media posts with links to your site's pages look attractive, the Open Graph markup is used.

Strictly speaking, semantic markup is not on the list of basic SEO services, but in our practice clients often choose this item, as they understand its growing importance.

The sitemap.xml and robots.txt files

These two files work best "as a pair", i.e. both should be present in the site's root directory. They cannot be called mandatory - in theory you can do without them. But in practice, skilful work with them lets you significantly influence the site's indexing, and therefore its ranking in search results.

Generally speaking, sitemap.xml shows the search engine's crawler the pages that should be indexed, while robots.txt shows which should not. And if a not-so-competent SEO specialist "throws onto the host" a template robots.txt and a generated sitemap.xml, then - as discussed above - important scripts may end up unavailable for crawling while "junk pages" such as the admin panel, the cart and so on end up in the index.

For all the simplicity of these two files, working with them requires quite a deep knowledge of how modern search engines operate. We always carefully check every robots.txt directive and every sitemap.xml line.

Conclusion

So, we have covered the main points of a site's basic search optimization at the development stage:

Forming a correct site structure;
Setting up friendly URLs;
Preparing for meta data optimization;
Eliminating duplicate pages;
Configuring the main mirror;
Implementing the HTTPS protocol;
Working with pagination pages;
Redirects;
Closing outbound links from search robots;
Optimizing load speed;
Creating a quality version of the site adapted for mobile search;
Cross-browser compatibility;
Multilingualism;
Internal linking;
Respecting the heading hierarchy;
Usability;
Structured data;
Setting up sitemap.xml and robots.txt.

There are many more points, small and not so small, that we haven't touched on in this article so as not to stretch it to super-longread size.

Besides, our portfolio includes sites of completely different kinds and scales: from a private school's website to a large online store. Each of these projects has its own specifics, so some of the above may not be needed, while some points not raised in the article may prove necessary.

When you turn to us, you can always count on an individual approach based on our experience in promoting websites on the internet.

Lev KorneevSEO specialist & marketer All articles