Top FAQs About Search Engine Optimization

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Irrespective of your online marketing experience, you might have heard the term SEO or search engine optimization. It is one of the most crucial digital marketing strategies. So, it is considered synonymous with digital success.
However, when studying the queries related to SEO success, you are likely to find different information from different resources. It is because Google updates its algorithm every day. And they often won’t disclose those changes.
So, it becomes challenging for SEO experts to draw a single definite guide to SEO queries. And even tough to stay at the top of their game.
SEO is a guessing game, but experts have been studying it for a long time now. And they can crack some fundamentals of SEO success.
So, based on these fundamentals, here we bring you answers to a list of frequently asked SEO questions. This list will help you understand SEO better and get the most out of it.

General SEO FAQs

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1. What Ultimate Goal Do Businesses Target with SEO?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a digital marketing strategy in which businesses optimize their search engines’ websites.
The Goal Is to Rank Higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
While growing the website rankings remains the primary goal, the ultimate goal is to attract relevant organic traffic.
You can further classify SEO into various types and techniques. However, the overall strategy circumnavigates around SEO rankings, organic traffic, and conversions.

2. Is SEO An Ongoing Strategy?

When it comes to technical or on-page SEO, they are more task-based processes. These can be done for once to make a site devoid of any errors and growth-ready.
However, Most of the Off-Page SEO Tactics Require Continuous and Long-Term Efforts.
These efforts are either to grow your rankings. Or to maintain your current positions on the search engine result pages.
Once you stop your off-page efforts, your competitors are likely to overtake you. It will result in a drop in your rankings. This drop can be quick or gradual depending upon the competitors you are fighting against.

3. What if I choose PPC Over SEO?

SEO vs. PPC is an age-old battle and continues to attract long debates. Both of these are fundamental digital marketing strategies and also complement each other.
However, both have different perks and limitations.
PPC : If you choose PPC, you will show your ads directly on the top of SERPs in exchange for cost per click. But, these ads would disappear once the campaign budget expires.
Therefore, Businesses Choose PPC When They Want Instant Traffic in Exchange for a Handsome Investment.
SEO : On the other end, when you choose SEO, you look for a long-term goal. Here you grow your site rankings gradually to make it to the top of SERPs.
These SEO Rankings Stay Longer and Attract Organic Traffic.

4. How Long Would My Website Take to Rank on the First Page of Google?

As mentioned earlier by many experts, SEO is a long-term strategy. It typically takes around 3 to 9 months to display some considerable results. And the time required to acquire top positions in the SERPs depends upon various factors like:

• The number and competition on the keywords you target
• Your current rankings
• The size of your website
• The expertise of your SEO professional
• Your SEO budget
• The current state of your website
• The SEO strategy of your competitors

5. Should I Consider SEO for My Business?

SEO is a quintessential part of every digital marketing strategy. An effective SEO strategy can help you rank on the first page of Google. And Google answers to over a trillion search queries every year. With this, 53% of total site traffic is a result of organic search.
SEO can help you gain traffic without having to pay for each click. While in PPC, you need to pay for each click. Moreover, 70 - 80% of users tend to ignore paid ads and click on organic listings.
The conversion rate of organic results is also higher. 57% of B2B marketers believe SEO produces more returns than any other marketing channel.
The above stats show SEO is crucial for online success. However, its effectiveness depends upon your specific business industry.

6. Can I Discontinue My SEO Efforts Once I Have Achieved Desired Rankings?

You can see SEO as a method to nourish your website. So, it grows gracefully on the World Wide Web. Once you stop the nourishment, it is likely to stop growing and begins to deteriorate.
Maintaining your rankings in the SERPs is equally complicated as growing them. It is because the search engine algorithm changes almost every day.
You Need to Regularly Update Your Website with Great Content, High-Authority Inbound Links, and Other SEO Best Practices.
Moreover, if your competitor’s SEO efforts outperform yours, you will lose your SERPs positions. This drop can be gradual or quick based upon the algorithm update and the competition.

7. How Often Google’s Algorithm Is Updated?

Google keeps most of its algorithm updates a secret. And only Google’s tech team knows when a new update is released.
However, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of Web Spam, once said that:
There Are over 600 Algorithm Updates Every Year (In 2012).
The takeaway is that you need to keep updated with the search engine trends to grow or maintain your rankings. Until you follow ethical SEO practices, algorithm updates do not affect your rankings adversely.

8. What Is Black-hat SEO and What Kind of Black-hat Tactics Are Popular?

Black Hat SEO Is Unscrupulous SEO Tactics Used to Deceive Search Engines and Get a Shortcut to High Rankings.
These techniques violate search engine guidelines and are not encouraged. Black hat SEO gives you temporary results. These, once tracked by Google, result in penalization.
Some of the common black hat SEO techniques people use are:
Keyword Stuffing : This practice involves stuffing invisible keywords on the page to make the content seem optimized for the search engines.
Using a Private Blog Network : This practice involves publishing low-quality content on various microsites and backlinking it to the main website.
Cloaking : In this untruthful tactic, people trick Google to rank a page for a specific keyword. This keyword does not fit into the actual context of the page. Here two versions of content are created, one for the search engines while the other for users.

9. Can I Do SEO Myself for Free?

There is no denying that SEO requires abounding technical expertise and a good amount of work. But you can do some of the SEO yourself if you can invest your time.
You can do these free SEO activities:

• Creating a Google My Business page for your company.
• Listing your website on various free local directories
• Creating content for your web pages
• Creating your company’s social media accounts
• Adding posts to your company’s social media accounts
• Writing blogs and adding to your website
• Adding header tags, alt tags, and Meta description to your web pages

However, these are just basic SEO tips. And they would only mark your entry into the online business world. You would need to hire an SEO consultant who could help you create an established online presence and draw the best returns from it.

10. Why Is It Frowned upon to Employ Black-hat SEO?

As you know, black hat SEO is an unethical practice, and it yields more harm than good.
Black hat SEO can affect your business website adversely in multiple ways like:
An Abrupt Drop in Rankings or Disappearing from the SERPs : Black hat SEO tactics are against search engine guidelines. And search engines are most likely to penalize your site if you are found guilty of using black hat SEO services.
A Drop in Conversion-Rate : When you use black hat SEO, you are likely to invest in low-quality content with poor user-experience that misleads them. Your business will also look untrustworthy.
Results Are Short-Term : Black hat SEO techniques try to get the advantage of any unexamined criteria in the search engine guidelines. However, these algorithms are updated daily. Once they consider these unexamined criteria, you will lose your gains.

11. When Should I Opt for Local SEO Services?

Local SEO services are the right fit for businesses targeting local customers.
These businesses operate from a physical location. And the local SEO services can help them boost their local brand awareness. It also increases the footfall traffic to their stores.
Does your business has a local customer base where you wish to grow your store sales?
Then, local SEO can be the right ship to mount on. However, if it is a software company or any business focussing on online sales, local SEO would not be a smart choice.

12. Should I Dread a Google Penalty?

As you know, Google follows strict webmaster guidelines to curb any black-hat or non-ethical SEO practices by businesses.
In case someone violates these guidelines, Google rolls out a penalty for their website. These penalties can result in a significant loss of rankings and traffic.
There are mainly two types of penalties including, Manual action penalty and Algorithm penalty.

• A manual penalty is a human-processed penalty. Here, if someone from Google staff comes across a manipulation, he/she will send you a penalty.
• The algorithm penalty is bot-driven. Here, if the Google algorithm witnesses a manipulation in your website, it will hand out a penalty. You would be able to notice the results of this penalty in the form of lost rankings.

13. Can Search Engine Optimization Benefit My Start-up Business?

Yes. Start-up businesses usually operate at a high-risk factor. SEO can be the best strategy to help them establish an eminent online presence.
SEO can help you get better visibility in the long-term as compared to PPC. It can help you even if you have budget constraints.
Today, most start-ups spend over 50% of their budget on digital marketing. And SEO, if started early, can help you reap good results within less time.
Moreover, according to 57% of B2B marketers, SEO offers higher returns than other marketing strategies.
SEO can be a reliable strategy for your start-up if you wish to lead with:

• Website traffic
• Online conversions, or
• Good store visits through online presence

14. Is There Any Way to Track SEO Efforts?

Yes, you can easily track your SEO efforts through free tools like Google Analytics and Search console. With this, you can check your real-time ranking using the MozBar Chrome extension.
There are many other paid SEO tools like SEMrush, UberSuggest, Moz tools, and more. It can help you track your real-time keyword rankings and leading landing pages.
If you hire a professional SEO company, they provide you with detailed monthly reports. These reports include metrics that help you track the progress of your SEO campaign.

15. My Brand Has a Good Offline Reputation; Will It Help Me with My SEO?

Your offline brand reputation would not impact your SEO directly. However, your brand might be able to establish an impressive social proof within less time owing to its reputation.
With this, a good brand reputation might help boost your external link building efforts. And it is likely to help your SEO.

16. If I Invest in PPC and Pay Google for My Ads, Does It Gives a Push-Forward to My Organic Rankings?

No, when you pay Google for PPC, it is only for the ads.
PPC Has Nothing to Do with Your Organic Rankings.
Irrespective of your PPC budget, Google would not roll out any favors for your organic search engine rankings or SEO.

Technical & On-page SEO FAQs

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17. What Makes Website Audit a Quintessential SEO Strategy?

One of the first things most SEO experts would include in your SEO strategy is a website audit. A website audit helps analyze and list down all the discrepancies affecting a website’s performance. It also lists the errors that are affecting visibility on search engines.
These technical discrepancies may be related to:

• Website performance;
• Website security;
• Site health;
• User experience a site offers;
• Any redirection errors;
• SEO integrations (Black-hat or improper);
• Site architecture and broken links;
• Site functionality; and
• Other SEO ranking factors;

This overall website audit report helps SEO experts understand the technical status of your website. They can check if your website is affected or is vulnerable to any Google penalty. A transparent audit report helps experts create the right SEO strategy for your business.

18. On-Page vs. Off-Page: Which SEO Brings Results to the Table?

Let’s keep it under the white light:
Both On-Page and Off-Page SEOs Are Equally Important.
On-page SEO prepares the base or makes a website high-rank worthy. While off-page SEO includes the techniques to make an optimized website rank in the search engines.
On-page SEO refers to all the SEO techniques incorporated within a website to make it error-free and visible in the search engines. It includes optimizing keywords, content, meta tags, alt text, internal linking, HTML source code, images, etc.
Off-page SEO refers to all the external linking techniques that aim to build a website’s authority, link equity, and rankings. It includes various techniques like link building, content marketing, building social proof, media outreach, etc. It is an ongoing process.
A Perfect Harmony of On-Page, Off-Page, and Other Technical SEO Tactics Bring Results to the Table.

19. Can Breadcrumb Elevate Your Site SEO?

Akin to categories and internal links, breadcrumbs help Google crawlers and users understand the taxonomy and site structure. The breadcrumbs help users easily locate their position on the website and improves site crawlability.
Image – Example of breadcrumbs highlighted.
The Use of Breadcrumbs Directly Impacts Your SEO.
Google Has Now Started Displaying Breadcrumbs Even in Search Results.
Be it categorizing your website or navigating through it, breadcrumbs help Google to comprehend better. And therefore, breadcrumbs elevates your search engine ranking power.

20. What Does PageRank Denote?

PageRank Denotes the Authority of a Webpage. Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have created the PageRank system at Stanford University. It is a crucial parameter for ranking web pages. And it is directly related to links.
In simple terms, PageRank is the ranking power of a page based upon the quality and quantity of backlinks it receives. One can pass PageRank from one domain to another (externally) or from one page to another (internally) through do-follow links.
PageRank is an influential ranking factor in Google’s algorithm, and one can improve his website’s rankings by growing PageRank.

21. Why SEO Professionals Advise Switching from HTTP to HTTPS/SSL?

You might be aware that HTTPS/SSL is more secure than HTTP. The “Secure” word on the left side of an HTTPS URL conveys this.
Now, Google and other search engines consider this as a crucial rank signal.
Google Ranks HTTPS Sites Higher as Compared to HTTP Sites.
HTTPS Is Also Faster than HTTP Sites.
HTTPS Improves Other Ranking Factors like Click-Through Rate and Lower Bounce Rate.

22. What Does a Robots.txt File Do?

Robots.txt is a file of instructions placed in the top-level directory of your website.
Robots.txt File Directs the Search Engine Crawlers and Googlebot About Your Website Structure and the Right Way to Interact with Your Website.
If you do not want the crawlers to avoid indexing a particular webpage, you can add the instruction in the robots.txt file.

23. Why Should You Include an XML Sitemap?

An XML sitemap helps you create the right roadmap for your website. Here you list all the pages that you want the bots to index. Even if your website lacks an accurate internal linking structure, an XML sitemap helps Google notice all the important pages of your website and index them.
An XML Sitemap Allows Google to Understand the Flow of Your Web Pages.
It also tells it when a page was last updated. One should not confuse it with the robots.txt file that tells bots about the directories and files that are not indexed.

24. Do Redirects Make Your SEO Performance go Fade?

According to SEO, the longer your navigation part is, the lower is the link juice passed to the last link. With that said, redirects do affect the SEO performance of a page. However, the intensity of this effect depends upon the type of redirect.
The most common redirects are 301 redirects, where a page is redirected permanently to another URL.
The 301 Redirect Transfers About 99 Percent of Link Juice.
However, for temporary redirects like 302, the share of link equity is divided. It then affects the SEO performance of the redirected page.

25. Why Do We Use Canonical Tags?

When you have the same content on multiple URLs for any genuine reasons, this may not affect your user experience. But, search engines see it as duplicate content. And they may penalize your website.
To avoid this, we use canonical tags.
Canonical Tags Tell the Search Engines About Which URL Is the Master Copy of a Specific Page and the URL They Should Display on the SERPs.

26. Is Image Alt Text Crucial for SEO?

An alt text or alternative text is also popularly known as “alt attributes” or “alt description.” It is added in an HTML code to describe the context of an image.
You can use alt text to help users understand an image in case:

• Any visually impaired user who is accessing the website can read out the alt text to him.
• If the image fails to load, then only alt text is displayed.

Moreover, Alt Text Helps Search Engines Understand the Context of the Image.
The Use of Page-Specific Keywords in the Alt Text Also Boosts Content Relevancy and Page Ranking Power.
Further, the alt description makes the image rank in the Google image search results.

27. Do 404 Pages Hurt My Site SEO?

404 Pages Do Not Affect Your Website SEO. But They Impede the User Experience on Your Website.
With this, 404 pages waste your crawl budget.
If you have new pages as a replacement to your 404 pages, you can use 301 redirections to direct the traffic to these pages. Or, in the case, if your page is removed permanently, you can use 410 – Gone status.

28. Are There Any Possible Reasons Why My Website Isn’t Indexed Yet?

Yes, there are more than one reasons why search engines have not indexed your site yet.
Please check the information below:

• There are instructions in the robots.txt file about disallowing the crawling and indexing of your entire website. You need to change these instructions.
• The developer has mistakenly forgotten to remove the noindex tags from important pages while making them live.
• Search engines have detected Malware on your website. And for security concerns, it has removed your website from search results.
• You might be blocking the crawlers through the .htaccess file.
• Search engine bots are still taking some time to index your entire website. It may be due to low page load speed.
• Google has penalized your website with manual or algorithm penalties owing to unethical black hat practices.

29. Does Crawling and Indexing Mean the Same in Terms of SEO?

When you make your site live on the web, search engine crawlers crawl through your content. Now while crawling through your website content, they pick the content they wish to index on the search engines.
Search Engine Bots Will Crawl All Your Website Content. but When It Comes to Indexing, They Will Either Index It Entirely or Partially.

30. What Are the Factors That Influence the Results of On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO refers to all the optimization and additions you make on your web pages to make them rank in the search engine. It includes adding new content, adding HTML tags, optimizing for keywords, and adding images.
Some of the most influential factors that impact on-page SEO are:

• The E-A-T framework : It means Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google keeps these parameters into consideration while assessing your on-page content and other implementations.
• Title Tag and Meta Description : These should display the real context of the page with context-related keywords.
• Headings and HTML Header Tags : These should be compelling and include focus keywords. The goal is to increase readability and reduce bounce rate.
• Keyword Optimization and Content : Avoid keyword cannibalization or stuffing. Add quality content that boosts conversion.
• Image Optimization : Use images to improve the user experience. Optimize them to increase page load speed. And add alt text.
• Focus on User Metrics : Optimize pages to decrease the bounce rate and increase interactions on the page.

31. Google Bombing

Some part of technical SEO requires basic knowledge of coding, and it can be useful.
However, One Can Do SEO Without Coding Expertise.
Most importantly, you should know the main principles of SEO. You can also take help from a developer for code integrations.

Off-page SEO FAQs

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32. What Does Link Equity Reflects, and How It Affects Site Rankings?

Link Equity or ‘Link Juice’ Reflects the Amount of Authority or Clout That a Domain Transfers to Another Domain Through a Do-Follow Link.
You should also know that a no-follow link does not transfer any link equity, and it can only transfer referral traffic.
Now link equity can be directly related to domain authority. Therefore, the higher is your domain’s link equity, the higher is its ranking power.
You can grow a site’s link equity by increasing the quality and number of backlinks to the website. When you draw links from relevant content or high-authority sites, it shares higher link equity.

33. How SEO Backlinks Directly Influence Website Rankings?

All the Do-Follow Links That You Earn from Other Domains Are Your Followed Backlinks. And These Backlinks Pass You Link Equity from the Donor Sites.
Therefore the number and quality of backlinks you gain affect your website’s domain authority. And it is directly proportional to your site’s ranking power.
The more quality backlinks you gain, the higher grows your website ranking.

34. Can You Explain to Me the Difference Between Outbound Links and Inbound Links?

Outbound Links Are the External Links That Help the User Travel from One Domain to Another Page on a Different Domain.
It is you linking out your traffic to any other domain. You can link out a no-follow or do-follow outbound link.
Inbound Links Point to the Page from Another Domain (Other than the Page’s Domain).
Inbound links bring you link juice from other domains.

35. Is Broken Link-building a Smart SEO Move?

Broken links are the backlinks to the pages that have ceased to exist due to unknown reasons. One can replace these broken link pages with their live pages.
Now, Your Backlink Score Is a Crucial Ranking Signal, and Broken Links Can Be an Easy Way to Get Good Backlinks.
You can check your competitor backlinks and see if any broken links solicit good backlinks from authoritative sites.
If yes, you can dig down to find the sources of the backlinks.
Connect with these sources and pitch your relevant resource page as a replacement to that broken link page.
Broken Links Help You Attract All the Backlinks from That Lost Page to Your Page.

36. Does Every Backlink Count?

One of the most common misconceptions is that gaining a higher number of backlinks can boost your webpage’s ranking power. However, it is just partially correct.
Soliciting a higher number of backlinks can only grow your page’s link equity if the backlinks pointing to it come from relevant, authoritative sources.
Do not attract backlinks from irrelevant sources or spammy tactics (just in the wake of gaining more backlinks).
Links from Irrelevant Sources Do More Harm to Your Authority than Good.
A Single Backlink from a High-Authority and Relevant Website Can Help You Earn More Link Equity than 50 Backlinks from Irrelevant Sources.
Every backlink counts, given it is from a relevant and authoritative source.

37. How Can I Solicit Backlinks from Other Sites?

Backlinks are crucial for rankings, and the more quality backlinks you gain, the higher is your ranking potential.
So here are some quick ways to convince other domains to link back to your website:

• Broken link building
• Digital Press Releases
• Converting no-follow backlinks into do-follow
• Drawing backlinks from unlinked brand mentions
• Resource link building
• Using the Skyscraper Technique in coordination with competitor analysis
• Guest posting

38. How Competitor Link Analysis Helps in SEO, and How Can One Do It?

When you analyze your competitor’s profile, your main aim is to find:

• The number of backlinks
• The contact of the referring domains
• The domain authority of the referring domains
• Top linked resources or pages
• Valuable broken links, if any

Now when you have this information, you can use it to plan your link building strategy.
You can connect with the same high-authority referring domains as your competitor and ask them for backlinks. Since they are linking to your competitor, they are more likely to offer you a backlink too.
With this, you can employ a broken link building strategy. It will accelerate your link-building efforts and elevate your SEO rankings.

39. Why Buying Links Isn’t a Good Idea?

Webmaster Guidelines List ‘Link Purchase’ as a Violation.
If Google’s Algorithm Comes Across Any Such Violation, Your Website Can Get Penalized.
Whether you purchase a link in exchange for money or goods, it is a violation. And you need to focus on earning links from good authoritative websites instead of buying them.

40. Should I Use the Exact Match Anchor Text for Link-Building?

Anchor text is the text that is hyperlinked to an internal or external webpage. An exact match anchor text is the clickable text that exactly matches the focus keyword of the webpage to which you wish to link.
The Exact Match Anchor Text Is Good as It Has High Relevancy. However, If Too Many Exact Match Anchor Texts Are Present on a Page, It Looks Spammy.
It can do more harm to your site than good.

FAQs Related to SEO Trends & Ranking Factors

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41. Up to What Extent Does Voice Search Impact SEO?

Voice search is proliferating. Google witnesses over 1 billion voice searches every month. And with this increased voice search traffic, search engines appreciate voice-search optimized content.
Google Ranks Almost 75% of Voice Search Results Among the Top 3 Positions on SERPs.
It shows search engines value voice search. And the websites that optimize for voice search have a higher ranking power.

42. Does Including LSI Keywords Impact Your SEO Efforts?

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing, and it is a crucial part of Google’s algorithm.
When Google gears up to offer context-based search results, it uses latent semantic indexing. And these LSI keywords help Google comprehend the context better.
Therefore including LSI keywords in your content affects your site SEO in various ways like:
Site Visibility : The use of LSI keywords helps your website appear on related context-based searches better.
Search Engine Rankings : While you optimize LSI keywords, you make your content more relevant for search queries. Resultantly, you attract relevant traffic. It improves your ranking factors like lower bounce rate and better interaction on the website. Thus, growing your rankings.

43. Why ‘Optimizing for Mobile’ Has Become a Crucial Trend for SEO?

Today up to 70% of online traffic is through mobile devices. With this, a majority of searches on Google and Bing are through mobile platforms. Thus, making mobile-friendliness an important consideration for search engines.
Mobile devices account for 50.81 percent of overall website traffic. And therefore, the websites offering the best user experience to their mobile visitors are prioritized by search engines.
Lately, Mobile-Friendliness Has Become an Important Ranking Factor for Search Engine Optimization.

44. Which SEO Trends Will Dominate This Year?

The SEO trends list gets updated almost every year. Some trends step down the ladder while making room for the new ones.
Here is this list of the latest SEO trends that you need to check:

• Optimize for intent-based search
• E.A.T (Expertise, Authority, and Trust) Concepts remains valuable
• Voice search is becoming popular, so try to rank for the featured snippet.
• User metrics are becoming crucial for rankings, therefore improve your user experience.
• Mobile search is surging. Optimize for mobile interface.
• Online shoppers are more concerned about security, and Google’s algorithm also appreciates web security.
• CTR (click-through-rate) on featured-snippet is increasing. So, produce structure content that could rank for position zero (featured snippet).

45. Does Social Proof Influence My SEO?

Yes, social proof influences your search rankings in different ways. These include:
Improved Rankings : When users post reviews about your products or services on your website, they are considered fresh content. And search engines appreciate frequent new content, thus growing your site’s ranking potential. Moreover, if the keywords used in these reviews are relevant to the search queries, your website visibility improves.
Website Authority : When a group of people mentions your business or offerings across various social or review platforms, they are likely to give a link back to your website. Search engines recognize them and boost your authority.

46. Which Ranking Factors Are the Most Crucial for Search Engine Rankings?

This popular faq has no definite answer as with every algorithm update. Google modifies its ranking factors list now and then.
However, some ranking factors have been at prime focus consistently even after multiple algorithm updates.
These factors include:

• The Number and Quality of Backlinks
• Content Quality, Relevancy, and Optimization
• Domain Age and Authority
• Webpage Speed and Performance
• Mobile-friendliness
• RankBrain
• Social Proof
• Time on site
• Technical SEO
• Website Security and Accessibility

Ultimately, you have to:

• Produce quality content;
• Offer impressive user experience;
• Grow your social proof;
• Optimize your website’s security & performance; and
• Solicit a large number of quality backlinks.

You need to convince Google that you offer the best result to a particular query. And Google will rank you for that query.

47. Is It Essential to Create an SEO-Friendly URL?

The answer is ‘Yes.’ Your website or page URL is a crucial ranking factor for your website.
According to Google’s list of 200 Ranking Factors by Backlinko:
URL Length is on #54 : Shorter URL length is appreciated more by search engines.
URL Path is on #55 : Shorter is the URL path, the more is its ranking power. Therefore, pages closer to the main URL have higher ranking power than pages deep down in the navigation table.
URL keywords are on #58 : Use of keywords in URL boosts its relevancy. It is a small ranking factor.
URL String is on #59 : The URL string categories may help Google bots understand the page theme.

48. Does Extensive Internal-linking Help My SEO?

You need to decide and execute the right internal linking structure.

• It Offers the Right User Experience and Displays an Appropriate Website Structure.
• It Helps You Pass the Link Juice to Important Pages of Your Website, Which Further Helps in SEO.

However, more than required internal links can delude your site’s user experience. Search engines like Google consider it spammy. So do not overdo internal linking.

49. Is User Metrics Affecting My Site’s SEO?

Many SEO experts believe user metrics like bounce rate, time on the website, sessions per visit, etc., influences the SEO score. While on the other end, Google says it doesn’t consider user metrics. It is because people could use unethical practices and bots to amplify the metrics.
However, in Several Experiments, by Various SEO Experts, It Is Noticed That User Metrics Impact Search Engine Rankings.
A website with a high click-through rate and lower bounce rate is likely to rank higher in the SERPs.
So creating quality content and attracting a relevant audience to your page helps increase your conversions and ranking power.

50. Is a Fast-loading Site Likely to Rank Higher in Search Engines?

Website Load Speed Is a Crucial Parameter That Needs to Be Optimized in Technical SEO. Search Engines Also Avoid Crawling Pages That Take Too Long to Load.
Google says, “Google will reduce the number of crawlers it sends to your site if your server is slower than two seconds.”
It can delay the indexing of your latest pages and content. Thus, reducing your ranking power. Further, page load speed itself is a valuable ranking factor.
With this, page load speed is directly associated with bounce rate and conversion rate.

• One second delay in your page load time can reduce your total page views by 11%.
• 47% of users expect an average website to load within 2 seconds.
• Websites that take longer to load lose about $2.6 billion in revenue every year.

51. Why Is There an Abrupt Drop in My Search Engine Rankings?

There may be cases when you may witness a sudden drop in your traffic. It may be due to:
Malware Detection In Your Website : If your site is hacked or due to some reason it is considered harmful by the search engines, it is removed temporarily from SERPs. You can check the search console to see if your site is marked as Malware. There are steps to request a review in any such issue.
Noindex Tags : Your developer might have forgotten to remove the noindex tags while making your site live. You need to remove these tags so the crawlers could index your site and revive your rankings in SERPs.
Manual Penalty : If you have violated the search engine guidelines, and a human reviewer from Google comes across it, you will get penalized. They can temporarily suspend your site listing from SERPs.

52. Why My Position in the SERPs Is Gradually Declining?

A gradual decline in rankings or changing traffic volume is quite common. It can happen owing to two reasons:
Rise of Competition : Your competitors might have gone more aggressive with their SEO efforts. And they would have outperformed your efforts. Thus, overtaking you on SERPs. You can do a competitive analysis to find out what is working for them.
Search Engine Algorithm Update : Google might have introduced a core algorithm update. These updates are mainly Google’s efforts to improve the accuracy of its results. If your rankings or traffic decline due to a core algorithm update, you can study the top ranking websites to check what makes them rank after the new update.

53. Will High Search Volume Keywords Give Me an SEO Boost and Good Traffic?

It is partially correct.
High Search Volume Keywords Can Bring You Significant Traffic. But Most of These Keywords Are Highly Competitive. It Wouldn’t Be Easy to Rank for High-Competition Keywords.
You should focus on driving relevant traffic on your site rather than driving more traffic. Keep this in mind when choosing keywords for your SEO.
For instance: If you are an SEO company, a keyword like - “search engine optimization” would be too broad and bring you a lot of irrelevant traffic. While intent-based keywords like – “hire SEO experts” would draw you the ideal traffic for your business.

FAQs Related to SEO Tools & Tips

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54. Can You Suggest to Me the Best Tools to Find Technical SEO Errors?

The foremost step to executing your SEO strategy is fixing your technical SEO errors. Once you fix these errors, you can optimize your site further. And implement other off-page activities to achieve your target rankings.
There are various tools for finding technical SEO errors, among which the most popular ones are:

• Screaming Frog
• SEMrush Site Audit tool
• Ahrefs SEO Tool
• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics
• GTMetrix Page Speed Check
• Majestic
• Pingdom DNS Check
• W3C Validator

These tools will help you scrutinize:/p>

• Various crawlability reports
• Website speed
• Redirection errors
• HTTPS implementation
• Warnings, and more.

With this, they would list other on-page attributes like Metadata, Alt text execution, image optimization, and much more.

55. How Can I Plan a Stellar Local SEO Strategy?

Google pays extra attention to the search location of a user. And in many industries, the success rate of local SEO is significantly high. Now, akin to SEO, local SEO also requires long-term efforts.
Some of the key tips to lead with local rankings are:

• Build your Google My Business profile and register your business locations on Google Map.
• Target location-specific keywords for your products or services.
• Use these keywords in all the main parts of your content including, header tags, meta tags, and more.
• List your site on various popular local directories with NAP consistency.
• Register and encourage reviews on Google and popular review sites.
• Employ Schema’s geographic markup code.
• Get digital coverage on local media platforms.

56. Any Quick Tip to Make an SEO-Friendly URL?

As an important tip, your URL should be:

• Short and crisp
• Include relevant page keywords
• Help crawlers understand the context of a webpage
• Seem relevant and authentic to users

The URL should not include mixed numbers, special characters, and letters. Like the one shown below:
Instead, it should be crisp, clear, and relevant. For example:

57. Should I Plan SEO and PPC Together? Is It Good or Bad?

SEO and PPC are both leading digital marketing services. And there are many perks of investing in SEO and PPC together.
Some of these perks are:

• You can get better exposure to the SERPs. You can rank for the same services in multiple positions. Thus, attracting more traffic.
• You would have more data to analyze, both from PPC and SEO.
• PPC can help you analyze the conversion rate of various keywords in less time. And you can use this data to plan your SEO keywords.
• You can analyze the organic search data like the most promising search terms and high-conversion service pages. It will help you to plan high-performing PPC campaigns.
• PPC ads can help you scrutinize which tag lines perform the best and have the highest conversion rates. You can use these inputs for creating good meta tags and header attributes.

58. What Is the Secret to Finding the Right Keyword Set for My Site’s SEO?

Keywords are the basis of every content and SEO strategy. And one of the initial steps towards creating your SEO outline is finalizing your focus keywords.
So here are some steps for finding the right set of keywords:

• Sort out and finalize the set of services/products you wish to rank for
• Start searching keywords for these offerings in Google Keyword Planner
• Select keywords by viewing metrics like search volume, competition, ranking difficulty
• Do competitive analysis using Ahref, SEMrush, or Ubersuggest
• Scrutinize your competitors’ content for focus keywords
• Search for LSI keywords using tools like LSIGraph and Keywordtool.io
• Make sure your main keywords have a transactional intent
• Finalize your keyword list and start building your content and SEO strategies around these keywords.

59. How Can I Draw Insightful Metrics to Analyze My SEO Performance?

SEO being an ongoing investment, it can be reported in the form of a variety of metrics. These metrics range from keyword rankings, total website traffic, domain authority, conversion rate, and more.
Google Analytics Delivers Abounding Useful Metrics That Are Enough to Overwhelm You.
Many other SEO tools are offering insightful metrics to track and analyze your SEO performance. Some of them are Google Search Console, Ahref, SEMrush, and more.

60. What Kind of Reports an SEO Company Delivers?

Each SEO company has a unique style of creating SEO reports.
Companies use various paid SEO tools to deliver comprehensive reporting on your SEO performance. In combination with Google Analytics and Google Search Console, they also use various other tools.
Some of the main insights in most SEO reports are:

• Total organic traffic
• Focus keyword rankings
• Changes in ranking positions (every 6 or 12 months)
• Goal mapping
• Bounce rate and time per session
• Organic conversion rate
• Blog and content performance
• Changes in Domain Authority
• Landing page performance
• Number of Backlinks
• Local SEO Performance (if targeted)
• Keyword performance

With this, there are other goal-specific metrics, recommendations, and future roadmap.

61. I Know Website Authority Matters, But How Can I Improve It?

Various factors impact your website authority. The most impactful among them is your backlinks.
You Can Improve Your Website Authority by Soliciting Backlinks from Relevant, High-Authority Websites.
Google sees these backlinks as a vote of authority from these sites to your website. The more the links pointing to your site, the higher grows your website authority.
However, keep your focus on the ‘quality’ of backlinks rather than quantity. A single backlink from a leading website in your industry can yield you higher authority than multiple backlinks from many low-authority websites.

FAQs Related to SEO Pricing & SEO Partner

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62. Why Are Businesses Advised to Hire an SEO Company over a Freelancer?

SEO is a long-term strategy that doesn’t reflect instant results. Therefore, it is hard to measure the quality of service your SEO provider offers.
A Freelancer Might Quote You Less for a Similar Set of SEO Services as a Professional Company. However, You Do Not Know the Degree or Level of the Sub-Services Offered by Each Party.
In this case, it is better to hire a professional SEO company that offers accountability, transparency, and trust. Because your idea to save some dollars in the initial stage might cost you a loss of your entire SEO investment. However, one can use freelancers for task-based SEO execution services that are easy to scrutinize.

63. Why Different SEO Vendors Quote Me Significantly Different Prices for the Same Set of SEO Services?

You cannot measure the SEO efforts by a company based upon the number of services they offer. It’s not like other digital marketing services.
The Same Set of SEO Services Can Produce Different Results Based upon the Level of Those Services.
For example, link building is a service that is common in each SEO campaign. However, the number of backlinks offered by different vendors can be different. With this, the quality of the backlinks offered by each vendor can be different.
Therefore, there can be a significant price difference between SEO services from two different vendors. You can also look at the value each of them promises.
With this, the experience and expertise also bring a significant difference in the price range.

64. What Are the Most Crucial SEO Pricing Factors?

The pricing of your SEO services depends upon several variables. Some of the most crucial factors are:

• The website size or number of pages : Bigger is the website, more is the SEO efforts required.
• The website’s current technical status : It decides the efforts and time required to optimize your website.
• The rankings and DA of the competition : The tougher is your competition, the higher are the efforts required, and the higher is the cost.
• Your current SEO rankings : Your starting point decides how much time it will take to reach SERPs’ desired position.
• The returns you expect from the SEO services : Based upon your expectations, your SEO partner will quote you the right price.
• Types of SEO Services : The pricing depends on whether it is an ongoing service, one-time service, off-page, or on-page SEO.
• The experience of the SEO professional
• The location you wish to target

Relevant : SEO Cost: Top 7 Pricing Models for SEO Services

65. Should I Hire SEO Professionals or Do the SEO Myself?

Firstly, do you have the right expertise and resources?
If not, we recommend hiring a professional SEO company rather than wearing the SEO hat unless.
65% of businesses lack professional SEO training. And 37% of these businesses still manage their online marketing themselves. However, a majority of them fail at it.
Moreover, some of the most important reasons to hire a professional SEO provider are:

• Minimizing the risk of failure
• Getting access to valuable paid SEO tools
• You can direct complete focus towards core business activities
• You can plan your budget against the desired value and returns
• Measurable results and progress

66. Should I Pick an SEO Provider That Guarantees Me Rankings on the First Page of Google?

I would suggest making an informed decision.
No Ethical SEO Provider Would Guarantee You Rankings at a Fixed Quote.
There are many companies that practice black-hat SEO to display temporary results.
But you need to understand:

• According to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, companies following ethical SEO practices would never guarantee you rankings.
• Rankings achieved through untruthful activities are temporary, and if tracked, your site can get penalized.
• You may get rankings for low-competitive keywords that bring you irrelevant traffic or low traffic.
• Your focus should be on driving highly-relevant traffic to your website instead of the rankings.
• Many providers make these alluring promises, only to make a one-time deal and fail to offer you any results.

67. With So Many Options, What Would Be the Right Way to Select the Best SEO Partner for My Requirements?

SEO is a significant part of your digital marketing investment. You need to be very particular in choosing a long-term SEO partner.

Relevant : Warning Signs to Spot a Bad SEO Company (Or SEO Services)

Six crucial tips for choosing the right SEO partner include:

• Check the SEO provider’s services and expertise
• Scrutinize the various portfolios and case studies
• Take a look at reviews and recommendations from previous clients
• Ask for the experience of the professionals working on your project
• Compare their fees and contract
• Book a free consultation to set the right expectations

68. Why Some Large Businesses Hire Dedicated SEO Teams?

Many agencies and large businesses prefer to hire dedicated SEO teams offshore for many reasons like:

• Having better control over the SEO execution part
• Having the freedom to decide the team structure
• The client can manage the work and priorities independently
• Dedicated resources serve better accountability then shared resources
• SEO is an ongoing service, and one can retain good dedicated resources for a longer-term
• A dedicated team also means high privacy and transparency
• Hiring an SEO team offshore can be cost-effective for clients in Tier-1 and Tier-2 countries

69. Should I Hire an In-House SEO Professional or Outsource SEO to a Firm?

It depends upon the nature of your business, your expectations, and your budget. Both hiring SEO experts in-house and outsourcing SEO has their perks and limitations.
When you hire an SEO expert in-house, you have to bear the added costs like infrastructure, space allocation, insurance, and other employee benefits. With this, you need to plan a long-term budget.
On the other end, when you outsource SEO to a professional firm, you save on additional costs.
Moreover, when you hire SEO professionals in-house, you also need to invest in the paid SEO tools. But an SEO company works on multiple SEO projects and already has paid access to these tools.
The price difference between in-house hiring and outsourcing can be significant, especially if you consider offshoring SEO to a Tier-3 country like India.

70. Would You Call SEO a Cost-Effective Strategy?

Yes, SEO is one of the most cost-effective digital strategies. And if executed correctly can offer you abounding returns.
Once you gain good rankings, you can draw a plentiful amount of relevant traffic to your site. And you do not have to pay for each click, as in the case of PPC advertising.
However, as mentioned earlier, SEO takes a larger timescale to offer you returns. Generally, it takes from 3 to 9 months to reach significant positions in SERPs. While in the case of PPC, you can draw instant returns by investing a handsome sum in your search or social ads.

Adding a Semi-colon (;) Because it is not the end!

Above are some of the most common questions we often come across. In case you are a business owner who is planning to invest in SEO, these questions will help you make an informed decision. While if you are an SEO beginner, these will help you learn some crucial basics about SEO.
With this, it is not the end, and there may be many other queries you would have regarding SEO. We will be happy to resolve them for you. Feel free to connect with us.