Website promotion in search engines: 53 steps that will allow you to reach the top

Our clients and users often ask whether it is possible to promote a website with a zero budget and, if so, how to implement it in practice. They assure that they can do almost all the work on their own - they have the necessary skills, time and desire. All they need is a clear guide to action, a step-by-step list of recommendations, following which, you can achieve no less outstanding results than if they turned to a specialized agency.

Well, we'll give you this list. But we want to warn you right away: by following our recommendations, you take full responsibility for what will happen to your site. Do not think that we doubt the usefulness of our advice. It's just very difficult to imagine a person who can perform the work of a team of specialists with high quality: SEO-optimizer, programmer, web analyst, designer, layout designer, content strategist, copywriter, editor and SMM-specialist. Therefore, if you are confident in your abilities, add the article to bookmarks and begin to slowly implement what is written in it.

I. Setting up counters and taking basic indicators
1. Registration in Google Search Console
2. Installation of counters for statistics services
3. Registration in all popular social networks
4. Understanding the main indicators of the website

II. Identification and elimination of major technical errors
5. Robots.txt file
6. Sitemap XML
7. Defining the main mirror of the site
8. Duplicate home page
9. Duplicate content
10. Blocking content from indexing
11. Human-readable URLs
12. Site loading speed
13. Malicious code
14. Getting rid of filters

III. Elimination of errors in content optimization
15. Text relevance and "usefulness" of content
16. Title tags, description, keywords
17. The alt attribute of images
18. Headers H1-H6
19. Internal linking
20. Extended snippets

IV. Elimination of major usability mistakes
21. The usual arrangement of the main blocks
22. Easy-to-read fonts
23. "Breadcrumbs"
24. 404 error page
25. Broken links
26. Buttons for ordering a call / service
27. Phone in the header and footer of the site
28. Block "Most discussed"
29. Block "Similar materials"
30. Share buttons for content sharing
31. Online consultant
32. Useful articles to improve the usability

V. Creation of a wide semantic core
33. Collecting inquiries related to your site
34. Removing of non-targeted requests
35. Distribution by sections and articles
Why is it necessary to create a wide semantic core?

VI. Content plan creation
36. Brainstorming
37. Filtering Ideas

VII. Content creation
38. Creating the proper content
39. Content design
40. Creating infographics

VIII. Content promotion
41. Social networks
42. Email distribution
43. Interaction with experts

IX. Other promotion methods
44. External content marketing
45. ​​Creating an ebook or white paper
46. Newsjacking
47. Interview with experts in your field
48. Commenting on third-party resources
49. Video marketing

X. Tracking results
50. External links
51. Site and brand references
52. Search on Twitter
53. Identifying the most popular articles on your blog
54. Metrics that need to be constantly monitored

 

Setting up counters and taking basic indicators

1. Registration in Google Search Console
By registering in the panels for webmasters, you can find out all the information about site indexing, crawling errors, imposed sanctions, in general, about everything related to the "visibility" of your site in search engines. Without registration in this panel, competent complex website promotion is impossible.

2. Installation of counters for statistics services
Google Analytics must be correctly installed on your website. This analytics will broadcast data and reliable information about everything that happens on your site.

3. Registration in all popular social networks
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, Pinterest, WhatsApp - you must register on all popular social networks and instant messengers. Some of them will be more effective for your topic, some less, but you need to be present in all of them because you never know what material will “shoot” and where. Grab any opportunity to increase your reach, test different sites, and, of course, think about your users: let them have the opportunity to communicate with your company on the site where it is convenient for them.

4. Understanding the main indicators of the website

• Number of indexed pages on Google

The total number of pages on your site and the number of indexed pages should be approximately the same. If there are fewer pages in the index than there are on your site, this may mean the following problems: your content is poorly optimized for search engines, you accidentally blocked them from indexing, a filter was applied to the site, and so on. These are the basic things to check if you want good results from website promotion. For a complete list of the reasons for poor indexing, see Google's instructions. Sometimes a webmaster specifically closes pages from indexing. For example, WordPress site owners often hide categories and tag pages from robots to avoid duplicate content.

How to see the number of indexed pages on Google:

How to check traffic on the website:

Identification and elimination of major technical errors

5. Robots.txt file
Robots.txt is a file that contains parameters for indexing a site. The robots.txt file must be correct. The file must contain several mandatory directives, correctly composed and uploaded to the site root. Read more about robots.txt in our guide.

6. Sitemap XML
With the help of sitemap.xml, we inform the search engines about which pages of your resource need to be indexed and how often they are updated. Details on how to create a sitemap and what requirements it must meet are written in this article.

7. Defining the main mirror of the site
For search engines, a domain with www and without www are two completely different sites. In order to show them that this is one site, so that they index and rank it as a whole, it is necessary to put 301 redirects from the secondary domain to the main one (SEO-optimizers call it the main mirror).

8. Duplicate home page
Duplication of links to the same page of the site is not welcomed by search engines. Therefore, if your main page has several duplicates (for example, http://www.site.com/, http://www.site.com/index.html and http://www.site.com/index.php), you need to get rid of them urgently. The task is solved in special CMS settings or by using redirects.

9. Duplicate content
To find duplicate content, let's use the free BeamUsUp software. Download it, install and run. After that, click File - Check URL, type in the domain of your site and click OK. After the application crawls your site, select sorting by Title and see which titles are repeated.

You can solve the problem of duplicate content by specifying canonical URLs. The task is solved with standard site engine tools or additional settings, for example, on sites running CMS WordPress, the rel = “canonical” attribute can be added using the All In One SEO Pack plugin.

10. Blocking content from indexing
This is a controversial tactic that must be used carefully. For example, content projects can benefit from excluding tags and category pages from the index. In this case, search engines will direct users directly to the publication pages. On WordPress sites, categories and tags are prevented from indexing using the All in One SEO Pack.

11. Human-readable URLs
A good URL (not too long and consisting of clear and easy-to-read words) is another factor of search engine trust in the site.

12. Site loading speed
A fast website loading speed improves user experience, increases conversion rates and helps to improve your site's ranking. Google PageSpeed Insights is one of the best services that can help you find out how fast your website is loading and get recommendations on how to increase it.

13. Malicious code
If your site appears in the search results with the note "This site may threaten your computer's security," then it contains malicious code that needs to be removed.

14. Getting rid of filters
To find out if your site is sanctioned by Google, you need to go to Tools for Google Webmasters - “Actions taken manually” (automatic filters will have to be found out by yourself).

Also you can find out about the sanctions even without the webmasters' panel. The first sign of sanctions is a sharp and inexplicable drop in traffic. The second sign is that you are violating the rules of search engines, for example, you buy links in bulk, spam and so on. The third sign is that your site is simply of poor quality.

A few years ago, filters punished the site explicitly, but today filters work smoothly and almost imperceptibly. The offending sites lose their traffic pointwise.

Elimination of errors in content optimization

15. Text relevance and "usefulness" of content
Gone are the days when the number of keywords in the text affected the positions of the site and, accordingly, the growth of traffic. Now, this factor has a negative impact and is called "over-optimization", and the main indicator of the site's success is the usefulness of the content. All information posted on site pages should be useful for visitors. If the page contains a lot of unformatted text without subheadings and indents, on which all possible keywords have been added, but the visitor does not read this text, then the rating of such a page, as well as of the entire site as a whole, will decrease. Make sure your site doesn't have this kind of content.

Note again: search engines don't like texts that no one reads. It doesn't matter how big they are: a large long read or a short one with 1,000 characters. If the text is interesting and read, search engines will rank it higher. Therefore, do not limit yourself, write as much as you need to give expert information on the request for which the visitor came.

16. Title tags, description, keywords
Each page should have a <title> heading that is relevant to the content of the page itself. This title is displayed in the browser tab, in the SERP snippet, the name of the browser bookmark. It is desirable that these meta tags be unique on each page, not repeated. Basic requirements for using title and description on pages:

- The text should be relevant, meaningful, describing in a few words what the page is about;
- There is a small limit on the number of characters: title 50-80 characters, description 150-200 characters. This requirement is not strict, but it makes no sense to write anymore, they will not be perceived by search robots.

You can determine which pages of your site are missing these meta tags using SEO-spider. This software scans your site or a specific section of it, giving you all working and non-working pages with detailed data for each of them. In addition to the performance data of the page, you will also get it:
- Title
- Description
- H1, H2
- Keywords
- Number of characters per page
- Word count
The software is conditionally free - the free version has reduced functionality, and the number of analyzed pages is 500. If you have a large site, or you want maximum convenience and ease of use, you can switch to the paid version.

How to use it:
- Download, install and run the software
- In the very top line, enter the site domain (or the required section) and click Start
- In the Filter section, set the HTML value (this is needed in order to sort external links, URLs of images and other files)
- Click on the tabs and enjoy the most detailed information
- Export the report to a .csv file if desired

17. The alt attribute of images
Each image must have an alt=”” attribute containing a description of the image with keywords. In some CMS, this is done very simply - just fill in the appropriate field, which is usually called "Alternative text" or just ALT. The rest will have to write this attribute in the code. It will look like this:

<img alt="Manual actions in Google Search Console" src="https://crork.io/storage/uploads/Screenshot_5_1597220696.jpg" style="height:395px; width:900px">

18. Headers H1-H6
Headings of text, taken in the tag <h1> ... </h1>, like title, are the most important factor in internal page optimization. The content of the heading has a greater impact on the semantic relevance of the page than does plain text. The occurrence of landing keys (both exact and inaccurate) in the H1 heading quite seriously affects the ranking of content in the natural results of search engines. Read more about headers in this article.

19. Internal linking
Internal linking is extremely important for a website to rank better in search engines. Why? It is convenient for users and search engines. Here are three reasons to link your website pages.

First, linking different pages of the site helps search engines to index the site to the fullest. The search robot, having started indexing the site, follows the links, indexing new pages of the site.

Second, anchor links (links that use key phrases) affect ranking and transfer anchor weight from the donor page to the acceptor page. In other words, if an important and credible page for search engines links to another page with the text: "You can find out more about the equipment of educational institutions here", then the relevance of the page we are linking to is increased by the query "equipment of educational institutions." It is impossible to achieve serious results in search results without competent linking.

Third: links are just convenient for users if they are appropriate and relevant. Proper placement of links to various pages of the site increases the session length, the average number of pages viewed, and reduces the bounce rate. And already through these factors, there is an influence on the behavioral factors of ranking. Thus, the user-friendliness also affects the ranking of sites in the search engines.

20. Extended snippets
The Extended Search Snippet is your site's business card on the Google SERP. It serves not just for beauty but brings additional users.

Elimination of major usability mistakes

21. The usual arrangement of the main blocks
The best design is one that is easy to navigate on the site. Make sure that all the main components are in their usual place: the phone is in the header, the clickable logo is in the upper left corner of the site, the menu with services/product categories is in the left column, and so on.

22. Easy-to-read fonts
The user should not experience any discomfort while reading your site. Use simple sans serif fonts. Do not overdo it with italics, bold, and caps lock. To test how good your chosen font is, try reading an entire article with at least 5,000 characters. Stabbed your eyes? Did you want to look away? It means you have chosen a bad font.

23. "Breadcrumbs"
Breadcrumbs should display all the way from the home page to the current page. On some sites, this element is forgotten, although it plays an important role in usability. If you have a WordPress site and breadcrumbs are not included in the template, you can customize them using the Yoast Seo plugin.

24. 404 error page
The 404 error page should contain something like this: "The page you requested does not exist, but you can start from the main page or go to one of the sections of our site."

25. Broken links
The BeamUsUp program will help you find and fix broken links. To do this, click File - Check URL and enter the domain of your site in the very top line. After the software scans all the pages and asks you if you need a report, answer Yes. In the report, you will find all the broken links and the pages on which they are present.

26. Buttons for ordering a call/service
Should be located in the header, the form should appear on the same page, without reloading, and contain a minimum of fields to fill out: name *, phone *, convenient time to call, comment. Fields marked with an asterisk are required.

27. Phone in the header and footer of the site
Should be big, contrast well with the background, and contain an area code, if applicable.

28. Block "Most discussed"
For a longer session and user experience, add a list of the most commented or popular articles from your blog. To do this on a WordPress site, use the WordPress Popular Posts plugin, for Joomla - JComments. You can also use external commenting systems such as Disqus.

29. Block "Similar materials"
This block can be implemented using recommendation services from Google AdSense or Relap.

30. Share buttons for content sharing
Share buttons will help your site and content if users can share it on social networks and instant messengers. And if you have beautiful or interesting pictures on your blog, you may be interested in the ImageSharer service. With this service, the user can hover the mouse over the image and share it on social networks.

31. Online consultant
Try adding an online consultant to your website to increase conversions. In some niches this tool works great, in others, it doesn't work at all and only annoys users. Therefore, here you need to test, especially since many online chats provide this opportunity for free.

32. Useful articles to improve the usability
Ease of use of the site is one of the most important factors in search engine ranking. We have already given a couple of usability tips above, but this, of course, is not enough. If you want to level up in this area, the following materials will be useful to you:
How to use robots.txt
Sitemap creation and customization
Everything you should now about headings

Creation of a wide semantic core

We have a service for collecting the semantic core. This is a long and painstaking work. If you do not have a specialist who could do it quickly and without errors, please contact us!

33. Collecting inquiries related to your site
First of all, we collect requests directly related to your business/topic. If the site is large or very broad in scope, this process can take a very long time. 
For a professional Keywords Research contact us and we will make a custom quote after analyzing your website.

34. Removing of non-targeted requests
After collecting the semantic core for all possible requests, it is necessary to remove from there all non-target ones - those that do not relate to the topic or activity of the site. This is done exclusively by hand and takes a lot of time - sometimes the number of requests reaches tens, and sometimes even hundreds of thousands.

35. Distribution by sections and articles
After removing non-targeted requests, all remaining are distributed by sections and articles.

Why is it necessary to create a broad semantic core?
A wide semantic core allows you to create useful and relevant content that meets a large number of specific requests. Quality content, in turn, improves the site's behavioral factors and gets natural links. As a result, search engines "understand" that the site is an "expert" in its field and begin to rank it higher.

Content plan creation

36. Brainstorming
Subscribe to interesting newsletters on the topic, read as much as possible about the market, be aware of all current events. Study the sites of competitors. What are they writing about? How many materials are published? Which articles do they have the most comments on? Chat with professionals who communicate with your target audience. Customer service departments are the best source of ideas. Read the forums and all kinds of FAQs.

37. Filtering Ideas
Think about how useful this or that material will be to your target audience. Feel free to throw all useless aside. Consider a publication schedule. Create an editorial calendar and schedule each release date.

Content creation

38. Creating the proper content
The creation of proper, relevant is useful content is a broad topic that will be approached in other articles on our website.

39. Content design
Your article should have a striking headline, an intriguing introduction (with sharp questions or benefits to the audience after reading the article), high-quality images with captions, and highlights with the most interesting moments of the material. Title, description, h1-h6, alt attribute for images, logical linking (for people, not search engines) must be present.

40. Creating infographics
Infographics can be a very effective type of content. Especially when you need to illustrate a complex process or show statistics. It also has good viral potential - users are happy to share infographics on social networks, and this feature should be used.

Content promotion

41. Social networks
Promote your material on all possible social media platforms. Do not forget about open groups on Facebook and similar sites.

42. Email distribution
If you have your own subscriber base, recommend your post in one of the letters of your mailing list. If there is no newsletter, collect it using the free Hello Bar or Sumo services.

43. Interaction with experts
Connect with experts in your niche and ask them to publish your post on their site. Explain to them how useful and relevant your material is, and what benefits they will get from it (likes, shares, etc.).

Other promotion methods

44. External content marketing
Contact the authors of resources that are close to you on the subject, and negotiate the placement of quality materials. Don't do it for links, but for branding.

45. ​​Creating an ebook or white paper
Yes, this is a long and painstaking work, but if you manage to create high-quality and useful material, your labor costs will pay off with interest from users.

46. Newsjacking
In the nearest time, we will publish our practical guide to master newsjacking and drive a ton of traffic to your site. Seriously. Using this technique can cause a powerful influx of visitors.

47. Interview with experts in your field
A very effective method of attracting a target audience for one simple reason - an expert will share your interview on all social networks on which he is present, and his traffic will become your traffic.

48. Commenting on third-party resources
Leave detailed thoughtful comments, enter into discussions, answer all questions addressed to you, thank the people who share your articles. The more your logo will appear on thematic resources, the better.

49. Video marketing
The video format is gaining popularity. In recent years, a whole layer of the audience has formed, whose representatives prefer to watch rather than read. Give them that opportunity. Videos can be published on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and other available platforms.

Tracking results

50. External links
This indicator can be tracked in the Search Console or other paid tools like Ahrefs, MOZ, SEMRush. If you don’t know how to track and monitor your backlinks, we can help you with this.

51. Search on Twitter
Mentions of the company on this site are also easy to find:

52. Identifying the most popular articles on your blog
Go to Google Analytics. Select Behavior - Site Content - All Pages. Sort by unique pageviews. And you will see which articles on your blog are getting the most traffic.

53. Metrics that need to be constantly monitored
- Total traffic
- Mobile traffic
- Traffic sources
- Refusals
- Viewing depth
- Time spent on the site
- Refunds
- Conversion rate
- Sources of leads

In the current conditions, a business cannot completely abandon promotion in order not to lose positions and get new customers. Online competition is only growing. And putting everything on hold now means spending more in the future. But it is quite possible to cut costs. We have special offers: website development, design, promotion and much more. Also during the consultation, we can help you find the right tools and promotion channels that you need now.