A Complete Guide to SEO: Everything you want to know /Free courses: What SEO

This is the lesson 5 from the SEO Optimization  guide, in which we will cover how to do Off-Page SEO. 

 

In the previous lesson, we covered the most important elements of SEO on a web page. 

Today we'll talk about what you need to do off your site, to help it appear in the initial search engine results.

Off-Page SEO meaning external SEO or external search engine optimization (off-page). 

It is a set of smart marketing activities that are carried out outside the site, which aim at gaining confidence and a good reputation (authoritative and popular), working on its publicity, and facilitating and increasing its crawl rate by search engine spiders.

External SEO is largely centered around getting backlinks (links from other sites that point to your site).

Google views external links that refer to your site as an indicator of its quality and the confidence of others in it. So Google Backlinks is one of the most important factors in ranking results.

Your job here is to try to attract and acquire the largest number of Backlinks for your site legitimately, and for these links to be from reliable and popular sites as possible.

These are the most important and most effective ways to gain links to your site:

Create high-quality content

Your best, fastest, and the correct way to get a backlink for your website is to create unique, distinctive, and high-quality content. 

Good content will attract links naturally. You have to approach the topics more professionally and comprehensively.

First, consider providing value and benefit to your visitors. And always remember that no one will put a link to a webpage that contains weak content, and does not provide value to visitors.

Be generous and point out competitors' sites

Competitors are one of the most important sources for getting a backlink. 

They specialize in the same field as yours, so the links through them are especially important for both search engines and for getting targeted visitors.

To get Backlinks from competitors you have to be a generous race with them until you get the same treatment. It is okay for you in one of your posts to refer to topics on their sites related to your topic.

You should do this carefully and by choosing competitors' links, and do not refer to topics as competitors target the same keyword for your topic.

Constantly present in the community of your niche

Talk about your site and show it to others and talk about the features in it, maybe someone finds your site special in something and refers to it on his site.

Write to other sites in your domain (Post Guest)

This term (Post Guest) is one of the most famous terms in the world of blogging, which is that a blogger writes a topic for a site once or twice as a guest and not as the main blogger of the site.

A lot of website owners do this type of post, and in return, they get links from the sites they write on.

The link could be direct to the home page of the site, for example, and it could be one of the author's pages on social networking sites, which contain information about him, including his site link.

Use the broken links strategy to build links to your site

The web world is constantly changing, so besides creating new pages every second, there are also pages that are deleted or their links change, and there are entire sites that also disappear from the web.

This strategy depends on discovering broken or corrupt links on other people's sites related to your site, and then communicating with the administration of the site (which has the broken or corrupt link) and providing one of your site pages as an alternative to the broken links.

This strategy is very effective because in it you help the website owner to solve a problem on his site (broken links are harmful to websites). 

Therefore, the likelihood that the site owner will place the link on your site is great.

There is a special extension for Google Chrome ( Check my links ), this extension enables you to discover broken links on any web page. 

You can use this strategy as well, to suggest a page on your site as an alternative.

Example: There is a site that is related to your site and has a page that contains a link to one of the pages with weak content, and you have a page with strong content that talks about the same topic. 

Then contact the owner of the site, and suggest your page with strong content as an alternative to the page with weak content.

What are the backlinks quality standards?

Getting a good backlink for your site is a very important thing, but the issue is more complicated than just having a link to your site on another site.

There are criteria that you must consider for these links to bear fruit and help improve your site in search engines. 

Among the most important of these criteria:

The relationship of convenience between your site and the site from which you get Backlink.

It makes no sense to have a link on a site that talks about recipes, for example, to a site that talks about marketing. 

But it makes sense to have a link on a recipe site, to a site that talks about the benefits of food.

Relevancy and logical context are an extremely important element to convey the quality of a backlink.

The relationship or appropriateness between the content of your site page and the content of the web page in which the link is located.

Fit and relevance should apply to both web pages, as well as to both.

For example, in our previous example: a link to a page that talks about the benefits of broccoli, on a page on the other site about a broccoli-based recipe, more valuable than a page about a broccoli recipe with a non-essential ingredient.

Text link or Anchor Text.

Text link means the word or sentence that the owner of the other website used as a link to go to your site. 

The more this word or sentence expresses the content of your site, the better the result.

The confidence and popularity enjoyed by the site that contains the link to your site.

The better the site that contains links to your site, the better the result.

The number of links entering your site

Of course, the more links entering your site, the better your site gets. 

The number is important, but it does not interfere with quality and suitability.

What are Google's terms and policies regarding getting backlinks?

Our motto at MoneyUpgold is always to respect the policies and laws, and to speak only of legitimate ideas.

Therefore, here I will list for you a set of the most important laws recommended by Google, which you must observe when obtaining links.

• It is prohibited to buy or sell any links to or from any of the other websites. 
• Google believes that by buying links from other sites, you are thereby overcoming the idea of ​​neutrality, which is based on the quality that they want in their policy.
• Excessive exchange of links between sites and some of them. 
• Google also rejects the idea of ​​continuing to exchange links with other sites intentionally and by agreement.
• The use of automatic programs to publish your site links on other sites that allow others to add content to them, such as forums.

You can also review all the terms of Google's policy in the links entering your site to form a more comprehensive idea.

What are the types of backlinks?

At the outset, here we have to clarify an important idea, which is that the value of backlink stems from the fact that it is a signal for the transfer of trust or authority from a site to a site or from page to page.

The idea is very similar to the idea of ​​nominations or recommendations in real life.

When person A nominates Person B for a specific job. The amount of confidence in Person B's aptitude for the job is greatly influenced by the popularity, trust, and reputation of Person A.

But what if Person A, in the answer to the recommendation, adds a note that says: I am not responsible for the competence of Person B, but I mentioned it as a neutral suggestion.

Backlinks' idea works roughly the same as the previous example. To clarify, you should get to know the two types of backlink:

Do-Follow Links

Do follow: It is a special code that defines the properties of the link. 

The function of this code is to tell the search engines that the recommendation for this link is complete and trustworthy, and this means transferring the trust of the site in which the link is located to the site referred to.

Do-Follow Links, Of course, it has more value for you as a website owner.

No, Follow Links

No, Follow: It is a code that defines the properties of the link. The function of this code is to inform search engines that the recommendation for this link is incomplete. 

This means not transferring the trust or the authoritative from the site containing the link to the indicated site.

The normal setting for all links is of the initial type, but why did the type No Follow Links appear? This type emerged as a way for large sites not to transfer their trust to small and new sites.

What is meant by large sites here: Sites that allow the average user to add content to them, such as social media sites or large forums.

Although the second type (No Follow Links) does not convey trust or authority, it is not completely useless.

It is through it that you can get visitors to your site, and also although it will not convey confidence, it is still able to transfer search engine spiders from these sites to your site.

Other factors have a role in improving external SEO

External SEO services is not only about obtaining Do-Follow links from other sites, but the idea goes beyond that to include, publicizing the site and increasing its popularity. And the definition of the target audience, including the content. 

Of course, this will be reflected in more links to your site.

In this part, I will address 3 important external SEO factors, which have proven to play an important role even though they are of the No Follow Links quality.

Social Media

Social media is a great source of visitors, and many rely on it as a main source of visitors, and they achieve great success through it.

As for when we are talking about social media from an external SEO perspective, it is a very important indication for search engines of the popularity of a site. Search engines are not entirely clear on this point.

For example, Google previously announced that the popularity of a site on social networking sites is not a ranking factor. 

I believe it because I trust that Google will never announce anything that is not real.

But if we approach the issue from another angle, the scales will be completely reversed. 

Promoting your site on social networking sites may not be a direct factor in ranking results, but it is important in improving your site for search engines for the following:

• The popularity of your site on social media will bring you more targeted visitors, and this will help your site appear better for search engines.
• The popularity of your site on social networking sites will increase its popularity, and then the number of direct visitors to it, and this is an important positive indicator for search engines.
• The popularity of your site on social networking sites will help it appear in front of the owners of nearby sites in the field, and then increase the likelihood of it getting backlinks.

You have to create official pages for your site on all possible social media sites, try to continue creating advertising campaigns on the communication sites for your site. 

Work to increase interaction and increase the volume of subscribers of your pages.

Take care to respond to every message that comes to you, and every comment your topics get. Social media is a great path for close communication between you and your potential visitors.

Use this method intelligently to get targeted visitors on the one hand, and to draw attention to your brand (Brand Awareness) on the other hand.

Forums

Many claims that the importance of forums is dead. Maybe they have some right to it, but I learned that someone who dies does not exist. 

As long as there are some models for successful forums, this means that they are still alive, and can be used as a marketing tool for your site.

In the old days, website owners used the forums directly to get links, but today this has not and will not work yet. If you have extra time to take advantage of the power of the forums, you should do it smartly and legitimately.

Subscribe to forums that are directly related to your site, try to start first. Answer other people's questions and try to help them as much as you can.

Show an expert in his field, don't pretend to be, but be the expert. 

You can then direct others through a direct link to your site, or use it as a signature, or even use one of your social media pages as a pathway to your site.

Paid ads

Paid ads are one of the most important ways to introduce your site to the world. 

Paid ads will not directly benefit your site as search engines tell us, especially Google. 

But its power lies in reaching your audience.

As long as your site has good content, things will work in the interest of optimizing it for search engines indirectly.

Choose the best marketing channel according to your site, and set your targeting settings thoughtfully and intelligently. And let your audience know what your website content is worth their time.

Technical SEO

What is SEO

This is the lesson 6 from the SEO guide, in which we will address: The most important technical factors related to optimizing your site for search engines.

In the previous two lessons we covered:

One of them,  SEO company (what you have to do on the page to improve it for search engines and visitors together).

In the other, we covered external SEO (what you should do outside the site to improve it for search engines).

Today we will talk about the technical aspect of SEO google (what you need to do on or off your site to:

• Improve its performance and raise its efficiency.
• Make it better equipped to crawl than search engine spiders.
• Increase its security level.
• Solve technical and technical problems.
• Make him a friend and more satisfying to the user.

The most important technical SEO checklist

1- Choosing a good hosting company

The decision to choose your hosting company is one of the most important decisions that affect your site all the time. You should choose a reliable

, secure, and good support service.

2- Make your site HTTPS

HTTP is an acronym for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. It is the protocol that allows data to be transferred between the server and the browser.

The S at the end of HTTPS is an abbreviation for Secure. 

It means that the data transmission between the server and the browser is in a secure or encrypted mode, and no third party is allowed to access this data.

The Google search engine strongly recommends https for every website, and this is one of the important basics that every website should consider.

To make your website https, you have to buy a certificate called an SSL certificate. You can purchase and configure it through the hosting company with ease.

3- Subscribe to webmaster tools

Large search engines, led by Google and Bing, have tools dedicated to website owners called Webmaster Tools.

These tools are very important to you as a site owner, they give you an understanding of how search engines crawl your site, they also tell you about problems on your site, if any, and give you many other important features.

They are tools for linking your site to search engines.

One of the most important and famous of these tools, of course, is the Google Search Console tool.

This tool gives you many advantages, the most important of which are:

• Knowing crawling errors, 
• which pages Google tried to reach but found something wrong that prevented them from doing so.
• Adding a sitemap will be fully explained in a separate point.
• Notify you in the event of a security problem on your site.
• Request to crawl the new pages that are created on your site.

It is worth noting here that Google has many free tools for website owners other than this service. These services cover almost everything you need as a website owner.

Also, the Bing search engine has many wonderful and useful tools for every website owner.

4- Good structure of Benan, your website links (Link Structure)

Links are one of the most important elements of every website. 

Links are the paths through which search engine spiders can crawl your site, and they are also the paths that visitors use to reach your site and move between its pages.

Your website links should be easy to understand, not excessive in length, and contain no meaningful symbols and numbers.

Use the (-) sign to separate words when needed. It is not recommended to use this symbol (_) or space. Each page link must contain the target keyword.

Each web page on your site must contain a unique link, completely different from the rest of the pages. There must be at least one text link on the site for every page on other pages.

5- Do not use a lot of Flash and JavaScript files on your site.

It is also known that search engine spiders still find it difficult to read Flash and JavaScript files.

The best way to improve websites for search engines is to rely on the texts on your site to inform search engines what the site contains. This is usually done by using HTML files and not JavaScript or Flash files.

6- Make sure to create a sitemap.xml file

Site Map or Sitemap: This is an XML file. This file should contain all the links on your site. And some data about these links, such as rate of change and importance.

This file is very important for search engine spiders, as it helps search engine spiders to crawl the website properly.

In short, the importance of this film stems from its name as it serves as a map for the links on your site. 

After creating the sitemap file, you must add it to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools.

7- Create a rebots.txt file

This file is also extremely important in influencing the efficiency of the crawling process. 

But you must deal with it with care, and it is better to have a specialist set it up for your site. This file enables you to tell search engines which links you do not want to crawl or index.

The benefit of this file is that it saves you crawling time by preventing spiders from crawling the pages that are not of interest.

Examples of these pages: The Downloads page for files that you display to your users. Or thank you page after entering the e-mail and making a subscription. There are many other page examples that website owners do not want to index, especially large sites.

8- Make your site a friend of all screen sizes

This is a point that is now very intuitive, even for beginners. Internet users now browse the web through smart mobile devices. 

The use of the Internet through smart mobile devices is also booming and growing year after year.

You have to make your site ready for this type of visitor. To do so, there is more than one option, among these options, to make a separate copy of the website for mobile users.

Another simpler option in my view is creating an intelligent design that responds to all screen sizes (Responsive Design).

9- Working to improve the visitor experience (User Experience)

Search engines, led by Google, place special importance on user satisfaction with your site, so the more the user is satisfied with your site, the more confidence the search engines give to this site. 

But what does the concept of improving the visitor experience mean?

Visitor Experience or User Experience: It is a term that includes all the elements on your site that affect the satisfaction of your visitors with the site.

Which you must take into account since you first create your website.

Among the most important elements that give a good experience to your visitors about your site are the following:

1- Good design for your site

This includes the colors used, the font size, the shape of the logo, and everything related to what is visible in front of the user. 

Here you have to choose an easy design for your site that does not contain a lot of crowded colors. And easy-to-read font size and type selection.

2- Helping the visitor with ease of movement

You should work to achieve a good level of ease of movement for the user between the pages of your site, this includes the use of lists containing important links to your site.

It also includes the use of the "related articles" feature, which is placed at the end of the article and contains a list of selected articles.

3- Website loading speed

It will be taken up separately shortly.

4- Avoid disturbing the visitor

Many elements can cause inconvenience to a visitor, including excessive use of ads, or frequent pop-ups.

As a website owner, you should imagine yourself in the place of the visitor, and ask yourself, which elements should be changed to improve my experience as a visitor?

5- Working to reduce the bounce rate

Bounce rate, or bounce rate, occurs when a visitor visits a page on your site and then leaves without going to another page within the site.

You can reduce your bounce rate through internal links to other related topics, and also by having the Related Topics feature below the article, as in MoneyUpgold.

6- Paying attention to the top part of your website pages (Above the fold) in particular.

Above the fold is the term for the top portion of a webpage that appears after it has been loaded before Scroll runs. 

This part is very important because it gives the visitor a first impression. You have to choose its elements, design it carefully, and make it attractive to your visitor.

10- Improve your site's loading speed

Speed ​​is one of the most important elements that make up the user's satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your site. 

Every second delay for your site in loading leads to a potential loss of visitors. An Internet user loves and expects speed in everything on the Internet.

You have to work to improve the speed of your site, by choosing the appropriate hosting company and cleaning the site from corrupt codes that work to disable it.

11- Always work to solve technical problems in your site

Your website, like anything based on technology, can have some technical and technical errors. These errors include, for example, crawl errors, which you can access through the Google Webmaster Tool.

Among the common mistakes are corrupt or broken links, which are caused by changing the link of one of the pages, and errors may also occur due to updating some WordPress plugins or lifting one of them, which may cause a conflict between it and one of the other plugins.

Follow-up webmaster tools, responding to visitor reviews, and checking the site yourself from time to time, will enable you to discover these errors early and then solve them in a way that does not affect the performance of your site with search engines.

Are you ready to move on to the last lesson?