During more than a decade of continuous professional activity in the field of SEO, I have always tried to fight the notion that SEO is just a gimmick. While gimmicks may get you ranked quickly, they usually don’t work in the long run and may even backfire. Consistently ranking well in Google requires a comprehensive website SEO strategy that focuses on every aspect of your website. Technical aspects, user experience, content of your website and security of your website should be organized and optimized. Therefore, to maintain a good ranking in Google, you need to develop a comprehensive approach to SEO .
Comprehensive SEO
Comprehensive SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to improving all important aspects of a website to increase its ranking in search engines. The ultimate goal is to create a website that meets the needs of its users not only by providing the right information at the right time, but also by being easy and safe to use. To achieve this goal, meet at all levels. Website owners should constantly work on the following aspects of their site:
- Good technical SEO;
- Writing quality and structured content;
- A great user experience;
- keep the website secure;
What is the reason for comprehensive website SEO approach?
Google’s mission is to build the perfect search engine that helps people find what they’re looking for, which is why building your website and marketing strategy around that goal is a viable and effective solution.
Let’s use an analogy to explain the holistic approach to SEO. Think of working on your site’s SEO like taking a ship to a shipbuilding race, where the judges are Google and other search engines. A website is like a big ship and has many moving parts that need to be managed. Your design is the exterior of the ship, your content is the interior and services, and your technical setup is the engine. The goal here is to get the judges to rate you highly and recommend you to people.
The competition is very tight and crowded, so to get a good rank, you need not only a beautiful ship and a fast and reliable engine, but also a good interior and high quality interior service. If you have a beautiful ship (eye-catching design) but the interior (content) is inadequate or lacking, people are less likely to be on that ship. On the other hand, if you have an amazing interior and service, but your ship is slow and your engine is prone to problems (technical settings), people will look for other alternatives.
As you can imagine, the reviewers (search engines) give a high ranking to ships (websites) that meet and exceed the standards listed above. Their mission and reputation depend on giving good advice, so they take this very seriously. This is why using “tricks” to make it look like you’ve improved your ship won’t work, because you haven’t.
By working on improving each part of the ship, your ship will improve over time. At the same time, you’re not the only ship trying to get better, others are doing the same. In a very intense and crowded competition, every small achievement and improvement will be significant. By doing this, you may rank higher in the competition and become a recommendation.
Are SEO tricks a thing of the past?
In the early days of SEO, people could get away with doing tricks. They put keywords and internal links on pages, write short and irrelevant content or copy content from other sites and rank with that content. These are things of the past. Since then, Google and other search engines have improved their algorithms every day and no longer fall for such tricks.
While Google has changed their algorithm several times, most of my recommendations have remained the same since I started. The advice is simple (doesn’t mean it’s easy!): you need to make sure your site is super good. Having a website with quality content, a great user experience, and up-to-date security won’t instantly improve your rankings. But in the long run, it will definitely have a positive impact on your site’s SEO!
Additionally, great websites tend to get more back links from other websites and will also get more social media attention. Remember the earlier analogy about the ship? It’s like getting recommendations from other craft (websites) in and out of that competition, which is a strong signal to search engines that your website is amazing.
Additionally, people behave differently on a website they like compared to a website they don’t understand. Google uses this behavior and signals to the user to understand how people experience your site. Great websites also lead to higher conversions. If your audience likes and understands your website, the chances of them buying your products or returning to your website are much higher.
SEO is time consuming
Understanding that SEO takes time to pay off is a key point in a comprehensive website SEO approach. You only have so much time and resources to improve your site. So, you need to identify what you want to improve, come up with a plan of attack, implement your plan, and see the results of those changes over time. Sometimes you make big changes, sometimes you make smaller changes that don’t seem like a big deal. But over time, they will gradually make your site a better site.
Plus, whenever you make a change or improvement, it takes time for Google to notice those changes while crawling your pages. Then, Google must take these changes into account in its complex ranking algorithm. So don’t worry too much if you don’t see the results you expect after a few weeks or even a few months. Just remember that you need more time and work on improving every aspect of your website in the meantime!
