Understanding SEO Basics and Basic SEO Optimization Steps from Scratch

First, what is SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a method of improving the ranking of a target website in relevant search engine results by exploiting search engine retrieval rules.Its main purpose is to increase free natural traffic to your website and improve its competitiveness, thus earning more revenue.

underwaySEO optimizationWhen working, you first need to have an understanding of theTargeted Search Engines(used form a nominal expression)Crawl rulesrespond in singingranking algorithmConduct an in-depth analysis and thenTargeted website optimizationThis includes the quality of the website's content, structure, page loading speed, user experience, etc., in order to increase the number of search engine entries on the website and improve its ranking. This can increase the number of visitors to the site, increase the exposure of its products and strengthen its brand awareness.

In addition to optimizing websites, SEOers can also combine the algorithmic characteristics of search engines for online marketing to disseminate the targeted information (e.g., brands, advertisements, products) that companies need to market to their target users. Therefore, SEO plays an important role in online marketing.

Second, the role of SEO on various types of websites

With the rapid development of the Internet, SEO applications are expanding, whether it is for portals, corporate websites, e-commerce sites or personal websites, SEO has a role that can not be ignored. Currently on the Internet there are many users say SEO is dead, this statement I personally do not agree, because there are users where there is traffic, there is a need for SEO traffic, this is not to argue, personal opinion, do not like do not spray.

1. The role of SEO for portals

对门户网站来说，SEO optimization可以让网站获得更多的流量。由于门户网站拥有大量的页面和关键词，若要通过竞价排名的方式来获得更多的流量，将会产生巨大的成本。而通过SEO，网站可以获得较高的排名，以较低成本来获得巨大的流量。图1-1所示为腾讯网每天通过SEO在百度获得的流量，为587万~967万。

2.The role of SEO for business websites

For business websites, SEO not only improves the traffic of the website, but also improves the quality of the traffic. High-quality traffic often comes from potential users of a business, and when viewers learn about the products and information of a business through its website, they may become direct users of the business. Therefore, SEO plays a vital role in increasing the conversion rate and sales of a business website.

Figure 1-2 shows a sports website daily traffic through SEO in Baidu, the total amount of traffic on the whole network is about 150,000 to 240,000, the site is currently bringing a lot of benefits.

3. The role of SEO for e-commerce websites

For e-commerce websites, SEO is even more indispensable for promotion. E-commerce websites can only form sales if they have a large number of potential customers. Through SEO, companies can show their products to more potential customers, which not only saves huge advertising costs, but also increases product sales. Figure 1-3 shows the daily traffic of Jingdong Mall in Baidu through SEO, and the total traffic of the whole network is 5 million to 9 million.

4. The role of SEO for personal websites

Personal websites generally have limited funds and are more in need of low-cost and effective promotion methods, and SEO can fulfill this need. Through SEO, a personal website can get more traffic and attention, thus expanding the influence and popularity of the website. Figure 1-4 shows the daily traffic of a person's website through SEO in Baidu, for 602 ~ 960, which is still a very good performance in the personal website.

Third, the basic steps of SEO optimization

Do things generally have to have a sequence of steps, otherwise it will waste time, and even half the effort. For SEO, its technical requirements are relatively high, the entire workflow throughout the website planning, construction, maintenance of the entire process, you need to follow the appropriate steps. The following is an introduction to the basic steps of SEO:

1. Website positioning analysis

The first step in SEO is a website positioning analysis, the purpose of which is to determine the role of the website on the Internet, the core concepts that need to be conveyed to the target group, and the role that the website needs to play. For SEO, website positioning analysis is quite critical, only when the positioning of the website is clear, the next step can be carried out in an orderly manner.

2. Keyword analysis

Keyword analysis (also known as keyword positioning) is an extremely important step in SEO, and subsequent work revolves around the selected keywords. According to the positioning of the site to choose the right keywords, screening quality keywords can make the site to get more traffic. Keyword analysis includes core keyword analysis, secondary keyword analysis, long-tail keyword analysis, keyword attention analysis, keyword relevance analysis, keyword layout analysis and so on.

3.Website Structure Optimization

A good website structure is more conducive for search engines to collect the content of the website, thus making the website rank high in the search result pages.
A good website structure needs to follow these 4 principles:

(1) Adoption of a flat or tree structure

Currently, the more SEO-friendly website structure is mainly flat structure and tree structure. Flat structure of the website as shown in Figure 1-5, the entire site to the home page as a starting point, the extension of the page are based on the main domain name of the site page or section, all the pages can be reached by clicking only 1 to 2 times. This structure is suitable for the official website of the enterprise with a single product.

Tree structure website is like a big tree with many branches and leaves, which consists of 4 parts: main trunk, main branches, sub-branches and leaves. The trunk is equivalent to the home page of the website, the main branch is equivalent to the secondary columns, the sub-branches are equivalent to the tertiary columns, and the leaves are equivalent to the sub-pages or final pages of each column. The tree structure website is shown in Figure 1-6.The tree structure of the site should not be too many levels, starting from the home page should be up to 4 clicks to reach the final page.The structure is suitable for e-commerce or information websites.

(2) Optimize site navigation

Website navigation is to guide the user to access the site's columns, menus, layout structure and other web forms collectively, its main function is to guide the user to easily and quickly access the site content. For small-scale websites, the whole site can only use a navigation, through the navigation can reach all the columns. For large-scale e-commerce sites and information portals, it is necessary to set up the main navigation in the home page of the site, and then set up sub-navigation in it. It should be noted that the main navigation should be in the first screen of the home page of the site in a prominent position, and it is recommended that the form of text links. Figure 1-7 shows the main navigation of the Sohu website.

If the main navigation of the site includes multiple sub-navigations, and the sub-navigations also have many branches, the sub-navigations can be made into secondary channels. Figure 1-8 shows the Sohu Sports channel navigation.

In addition to the main navigation and secondary navigation, there should be breadcrumb navigation, its role is to show the current web page in the entire site in the logical position, the form of "main classification > first class classification > secondary classification > tertiary classification > the final content page", as shown in Figure 1-9.In general, no more than four levels of categorization.This allows users to quickly find the location of the current page, but also to ensure that the weight of each column after the column classification is not too scattered.

(3) Optimize internal links

In general, users want to click once to reach the target page, but in fact a page is difficult to meet all the needs of users searching for the same or the same type of keywords, so there will be all the links to the relevant pages together in the aggregation page, or in the target content page to add related content page links to the website architecture optimization strategy. General page contains "related" "recommended" and other text columns are based on this purpose of construction, as shown in Figure 1-10.

(4) Create a site map (Sitemap)

Although Baidu has recently announced the closure of the Sitemap function, but I still recommend that we all establish a Sitemap map, there is better than none, and our target search engine more than one, so sitemap we still need. According to their own site structure to create a site map, so that search engines through the site map can access all the columns and pages on the site, as shown in Figure 1-11.

Site map has two formats, one is HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language, Hyper Text Markup Language) format, as shown in Figure 1-11 is the use of html format, it is convenient for users to quickly find the site information; another is XML (Extensible Markup Language, Extensible Markup Language) format, it is convenient for search engines to obtain the frequency of site updates, update time and page weight and other information, such as Figure 1-11-1 is my current site to use the site map function.

4. Website page optimization

The good or bad of the website page will directly affect the website's inclusion in the search engine, which is an important indicator of the weight of the search engine.Therefore, website page optimization is also one of the more important steps. General website page type can be roughly divided into the home page, column page, topic page, content details page and so on. In the website page optimization, not only optimize the home page, column pages, feature pages and content detail pages should also be optimized, so as to achieve the purpose of the whole station optimization. Home and section pages are generally more fixed and important, so focus on optimization; thematic pages of the timeliness, relevance is very strong, in the optimization process needs to be reflected; content details page needs to be based on the importance of the content of the high and low in the optimization of bias, such as although the enterprise website "about us" page, to establish Although the "About Us" page in the corporate website is very important to establish the corporate image and improve user trust, it will not be taken as the focus of optimization.

5.网站Content Optimization

The first thing you need to do to optimize your website content is tokeep updating. If a website adds new content regularly, it will result in a large number of pages being indexed by search engines, giving the website a chance to grab more keywords, which will help in the accumulation of website weight.

Secondly, to improve the quality of content, original content that meets the needs of users is the best way to accumulate search engine trust, not only for the short term to improve the ranking of the site, but also for the long term to improve the weight of the site. Site weight is very important to the site, for example, in more than one site have an identical article, with a higher weight of the site will let the search engine is more willing to believe that the information from this site, so as to give it a higher ranking.

Generally speaking, the regular columns of the enterprise website include enterprise news, product introduction, enterprise profile and other content related to the enterprise, it is more difficult to do frequent updates, you can consider the establishment of industry news, Q&A, expert lecture hall and other information columns. In addition, while keeping the site to promote updates should also pay attention to the quality of the content, authoritative content has a better chance of being cited outside the site.

6. Proactive submission of websites

In addition to passively waiting for the search engine to crawl the site's pages, you can also take the initiative to submit to the major search engines and a variety of classified directory sites to promote the site.

7. Import external links

External links are links that are imported from other websites to your own website. The quality of external links will largely determine the weight of the website in the search engine. There are many ways to import external links, mainly including links, knowledge and answers, network collection, soft promotion, classified sites, online yellow pages, forums and so on.

8. Data monitoring and analysis

Data monitoring and analysis is essential to really good SEO. Through the monitoring and analysis of website SEO data, you can evaluate the SEO health index of the website, discover the SEO trend of the website in time, and take corresponding measures to improve the SEO health index of the website. Data monitoring and analysis mainly includes the following 7 aspects:

• Monitor page crawls:Monitoring search engine crawling of website pages is the first step in website SEO data monitoring and analysis. This involves analyzing website logs, tallying up visits from all types of mainstream search citation police, and recording them for daily updates.
• Monitor page indexing:Separate statistics on the total inclusion of each search engine, for sites with multiple sub-sites, to record the situation of each sub-site separately.
• Monitor page snapshots:Separate statistics for each search engine site snapshot update, the site's home page, channel pages should be given special attention and records.
• Monitor keyword rankings:Separate statistics on the daily rankings of the site's core keywords and long-tail keywords.
• Monitor SEO traffic:Separate statistics on the daily SEO traffic given to the website by each search citation, including the number of visits, page
  Number of faces, bounce rate, dwell time, etc.
• Monitor backlinks:Record backlink data from major search engines. Record all external link URL (Uniform Resource Locator) addresses, check, record abnormal external links, and break their links.
• Use the official webmaster tools to detect it:Such as the daily use of Baidu Webmaster and other tools for testing, the problems found in a timely manner to record, and be resolved.

SEO optimization can not be achieved in one step, you need to accumulate over time, perseverance to achieve certain results. Only through long-term data monitoring and analysis, to find the website SEO optimization dynamic development curve, only to be able to accurately judge the website's future SEO development trend, so as to bring greater help to the optimization of the website.