When searching on the Internet for a certain keyword or product, most users probably access the site from the first page or what shows first on the top. Therefore, when providing content or selling products on Web, search results play a major role in site traffic and product sales. Users have to understand the important factor in enhancing your marketing efforts in order to rank higher.

Basics of SEO that marketer must know

What is SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a system for improving the search rankings of websites, providing useful content, and information to users when certain keywords are searched for in search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The system is constantly evolving, understanding SEO, and implementing SEO strategies are essential for ranking a web site higher to increase search traffic. By doing them correctly, we can deliver helpful content and good services to users.

Since Google and Yahoo account for more than 90% of the search engine market share in Japan, and Yahoo uses Google’s search algorithm, SEO is synonymous with improving rankings on Google.

Why is SEO so important?

Your content will not be recognized by search engines such as Google if you do not try figure out SEO. You will find it difficult to see the search results especially when you take no action. Learning SEO, you will also figure out that search engine mechanisms and algorithms work. By doing so, you can create high quality content that is easily recognized by search engines.

Hence, most of the search sites used in Japan are Google, it is the most effective method to conduct SEO for Google’s search engine. Current SEO is becoming closer to Google’s “user first” philosophy compared to past method. Quality content appears higher in search results because it is more useful to users. Also, it is more likely to help them to solve their problems and get answers from their questions.

Benefits of SEO

SEO for Google, which is “user first” – the main priority is the user, and the benefit that making it easier for searchers to find cool quality content and useful information. So what are the benefits for the content and information providers?

SEO can bring in a lot of traffic

One of the benefits of SEO is that it can bring in a lot of search traffic; by setting keywords and creating content that takes into account the user’s search intent. SEO is evaluated by Google’s search engine, expose the users on this, and increase the search rankings for keywords. The outcome of this is to escalate in search inflows. As a result, the search inflow will improve. Increased search traffic makes it easier to attract visitors to your website or blog, leading to more potential users and higher sales.

In addition, CTR (Click Through Rate) is an indicator of the percentage of clicks on displayed content and advertisements when certain keywords are searched for. Data shows that most people click on the top site on the first page. The number one website in search results is clicked on by 28.5% of users, and the first-page website alone accounts for nearly 90% of clicks.

Quote:
Why (almost) everything you knew about Google CTR is no longer valid – SISTRIX

SEO can attract semi-permanent traffic

Making your website an asset and branding it, you will be able to gain credibility, authority, and your content will spread through word of mouth, social networking sites and could attract visitors on an ongoing basis. In addition, as users become aware of the brand name, they will not only search for the site by keywords. Therefore, it will also search for the site directly by name. Once a site is recognized as a brand, word-of-mouth, and reputation among users will be generated. There is a possibility to attract an influx of users without advertising or spending time for promotion.

SEO can get potential traffic for free

One of the advantages of SEO is that it reduces advertising costs: Web ads, known as listing ads, which appear at the top of searches on Google and Yahoo, incur a posting fee each time the ad is clicked. However, if you implement SEO measures to appear at the top of the listings, there will be no cost at all. In addition, since many users dislike Web ads and tend to avoid them, the CTR of content that is displayed on top of SEO is generally said to be higher than that of listing ads. In other words, it does not cost much to advertise and can be expected to attract more customers than listing ads.

A Beginner’s Guide to Strategic SEO

To implement effectively the SEO and increase the number of search results as well as the search traffic. It is necessary to address the following seven points.

• Enhance crawlability
• Updatability of the site
• Create content that answers readers’ questions
• Use attractive keywords
• Achieve user-friendly page speeds
• Creating a site that will attract inbound links (links to your site)
• Setting titles, Meta descriptions, and snippet support that improves CTR

Strengthen crawlability

Even with SEO, if search engines do not recognize the content, it will not appear in the search results. In other words, you need not only create a content, but also have search engine robots to find it, and register it in their databases. The process of discovering content by search engines is called “crawling” and registering it in the database is called “indexing. The robot that performs the crawling is called a “crawler”.

Crawlers patrol websites all over the world, and by enhancing crawlability to make it easier for crawlers to recognize your content, you can deliver your content to the users. To enhance crawlability, you should follow the following:

• Establish an XML sitemap
• Create high quality content that includes keywords
• Use simple URLs.

Site Updatability

Increasing the frequency of updates to a website or blog alone is not effective for SEO; site updating in SEO means adding content that is useful, informative to users, organizing similar pages to make them easier to view, and so on.

It is more important to improve the quality of content than to update it more frequently. Rewriting pages with low search rankings or unifying pages with duplicate themes or keywords will result in an increase in the percentage of high quality content and SEO benefits.

Create content that answers readers’ questions

All of Google’s services operate under a “user first” philosophy. Consequently, the most important point in SEO is whether the content can solve users’ problems and get accurate answers to their questions. Content that is just a personal diary or an opinion piece. Content that does not meet the needs of users or content that deals with information, which is too old to be considered low quality content with little chance to benefit to the user.

Use attractive keywords

When creating content, it is so important to set keywords in consideration of the user’s search intent, and the information they are seeking. To provide users with the content they are looking for, use a “keyword search tool” to set keywords that are in demand by users. By doing so, we better set keywords effectively that are relevant to the theme, the number of searches for those keywords, and the competitiveness of those keywords.

Creating a site that can obtain inbound links

Obtaining links is an important part of SEO. Search engines may consider content with many links to be of high quality and efficient to users. As a result, the content will be rated higher and will be more likely to appear higher in search results. However, simply increasing the number of links without purpose can be counterproductive.

There are many companies that offer to increase links to your website, but be wary of using inbound link acquisition companies, like malicious inbound links can resulted in penalties.

User-friendly page speed

Content display speed affects not only SEO but also user abandonment rates. In addition, in recent years, with the increase in searches not only from PCs but also for smartphone. Plus, content with slow page speed is now rated lower by Google.

Improving page speed not only improves search rankings as an SEO measure but also brings benefits in terms of user’s trust and satisfaction. The factors that need to be improved to increase page speed vary from content to content, so it is effective to optimize using Google’s free PageSpeed Insights and Google Search Console Speed Report.

PageSpeed Insights: https://pagespeed.web.dev/

Setting up titles, Meta descriptions, and snippet support to improve CTR

The easiest and most effective way to increase CTR is to set an attractive title that users want to click on. While a simple title that simply describes the content is effective as an SEO measure, you can expect to increase CTR by using techniques such as increasing specificity by including numbers (e.g. “Recommended 00 things to do”), defining the target audience (e.g., “00 you must try”), and raising concerns (e.g., “It’s dangerous if we continue like this. Meta descriptions can also be used to increase CTR.

Meta descriptions are also effective in improving CTR. A meta description is a sentence that appears below the title in search results and describes the content. Like the title, it is also the first part that a user sees to determine whether or not to view the content. Therefore, a straightforward description of the keywords and content has the potential to increase CTR.

The mechanism by which answers to search terms are highlighted at the top of Google search results is called an “Featured  snippet. This is very important not only for improving CTR, but also for SEO, since the snippet takes precedence over the regular search results. In order to be displayed as an featured snippet, it is a prerequisite that basic SEO measures are in place. Since featured snippets are intended to answer users’ questions and doubts, keywords and the phrase “What is…” are effective.

If we consider that Google has adopted this system in order to increase user satisfaction as much as possible, we can see that the most important thing is the basic principle of creating content for the benefit of users.

Summary of SEO guide

In this issue, we have provided a guide to SEO

• Basics of SEO
• Benefits of SEO
• Efficient SEO

In order to promote SEO, it is important to understand Google’s philosophy and principle accordingly.

• Content that includes the information users are looking for.
• Content that provides answers to questions and concerns.
• Content that loads quickly and is easy to read.

Please do remember that it is important to have all of these in mind in creating good content.