Hello, does SEO still work?

Is your target audience, traffic, and conversion just empty words for you? But you surely know that 25% of users click on links from the first page of Google, and only 3% reach the 7th page. So, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the only way to through, specifically by working on keywords, technical aspects of the website, content, and link profile.

Let's dive into each of these stages. There isn't a specific ideal order for them, and some will need to be done regularly. However, you should start working on them long before the first line of code is written. The preparation work for a website creation involves business analysts, designers, and an SEO specialist. So, get comfortable and listen to what needs to be done.

Start by examining your competitors, both direct and indirect. Study the keywords used in their titles, descriptions, and content. There are online services like SeRanking, SEMrush, and Ahrefs that provide tools for such analysis.

In addition to keywords, we look at meta-data, the number of inbound/outbound links, and examine the content (which texts are used, how much). For individual businesses, we assess the structure: i.e., what categories, and subcategories exist. In essence, we evaluate the website to create your own site map then skillfully.

The collected data is best presented in the form of a table. Highlight with colors which results are positive, which are neutral, and which are negative. From these, select those that highlight the competitor against the rest, and mark what should be avoided.

This is a list of keywords and phrases you would like to "see" your website for. You can use tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, and AnswerThePublic. They help explore search query volumes and offer ideas for keywords.

We actively use SeRanking because this tool is excellent for forming the initial structure of keyword queries.

Here you can see:

- Inquiry difficulty (the level of difficulty of ranking in the top 10 for this keyword: the higher the indicator, the more difficult the promotion will be);
- Frequency (average number of search queries for this keyword per month excluding identical meaning keys);
- CPC (cost per click received within a Google Ads advertising campaign);
- The most important, in our opinion, block is the selected keywords (keywords semantically close to the analyzed query). This will allow you to expand the core and select not the most obvious queries to build the site structure.

If you plan to have a website with a large number of subsections, you will likely need several iterations to collect semantics. But don't be lazy and already at the design stage, make a basic collection of queries - it will be easier to build the structure and plan the content.

Why? Firstly, it will help in planning the layout and optimizing the placement of content and internal linking blocks. Secondly, search algorithms are constantly changing. Implementing SEO at early stages will make the site more flexible and easily adaptable to these changes.

Congratulations! The preparatory stage is complete. However, working with SEO is an ongoing process, so let's take a look at what needs to be done regularly.

If you thought that building a semantic core was a one-time task, congratulations, you were mistaken. After wireframing the screens, semantics becomes an integral part of the strategy at all subsequent stages.

The collected semantics need to be uploaded to monitoring services. For example, to the SeRanking we mentioned earlier (we still don't get paid for advertising). Additionally, include the queries of your main competitors and monitor the dynamics of their visibility. You'll be able to adjust your strategy and content based on this data.

Content is the foundation of your website's SEO strategy. Without it, search engines have nothing to rank. Here we include everything that your audience reads, watches, or listens to:

- Blogs
- Website texts
- Infographics
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Social media posts

There was a time when it was trendy to stuff a bunch of "keywords," and people suffered from unreadable and silly texts because they were written for machines. Now it's all the other way around. If the text seems inadequate to the robot, your site will hang out in the back alleys of Google.

Why do you better to bother writing the text yourself, from scratch, without resorting to copy-pasting, and without shifting everything onto the shoulders of GPT?

Having a technically optimized website is important if you want to attract organic traffic from search engines. The design and content of the site become useless if users cannot access the site or navigate through it.

Technical SEO consists of management elements and settings that need to be optimized so that search engines can scan and index your site. Technical search engine optimization applies not only to the content of the site but to its configuration and elements as well, such as XML sitemap, structured data, page speed, URL structure, navigation, robots.txt, etc.

Website technical optimization deserves a separate article and even a whole guide, which is already started.

External optimization is aimed at improving external ranking factors such as online reputation and link metrics.

A link serves as a kind of recommendation. When an authoritative website with a high rating places a link to your resource, it essentially tells the search engine, "This page can be trusted, just like mine." The more positive recommendations, the higher the likelihood of landing on the first page of search results.

It is also important to ensure that links to your site are natural and high-quality. Search engines may react negatively to an abundance of artificial links.

There are several strategies for acquiring external links. In organic growth, effective methods include exchanging links with partners in your industry, posting on Reddit, Quora, and social media, as well as collaborating with influencers. Purchasing links through paid services is also an option, but it comes with risks, as it may lead to violations of search engine rules.

The main rules for building a link profile:

The final component in implementing an SEO strategy is tracking results.

Pay attention to the site's ranking and traffic to see what works best and what doesn't. Analytics will provide you with a lot of information about your customers. You'll see demographic data of those who click on your links, their behavior on the site, and the times when they are most active online. Understanding your audience will help in content creation and marketing actions.

You should also stay updated on SEO trends and algorithm changes. Google and other search engines make updates and changes, so make sure you're aware of them and adjust your strategy as needed. Where to do it?

AI has significantly changed SEO since 2022. For example, ChatGPT allows you to upload lists of keywords and analyze which ones are worth using. It helps brainstorm keywords and potential blog topics.

In 2023, there were many discussions about whether Google would penalize content partially created by AI. However, Google updated its content guidelines to clarify that they do not directly prohibit or punish the use of AI for content creation.

Artificial intelligence significantly saves time, but it does not possess your unique experience and does not guarantee the reliability and timeliness of information.

The conclusions are very simple: