SEO Essentials for 2021

The most important elements for
successful search engine optimization in 2021
Essentials

“The best place to hide a dead
body is the second page of
Google search”.
Have you heard this by now?
There is no big singular
development that can fly a website
to the first position in Google
Searches, but there is a lot of work
you can put into obtaining such an
amazing result, with a clever mix of
content and technical deployments
on the website.
SEO stands for Search Engine
Optimization - the process of
increasing the traffic to a website
through search engine results.
Introduction

3
THE SEARCH EXPERIENCE, TODAY
•93% of online experiences begin with a
search engine
•Google searches accounts for 92.26% search
engine market share
•61% of internet users do research on a
product online before making a purchase
THE ROLE OF CONTENT
•47% of consumers view 3-5 pieces of a
company’s content before talking to a
salesman
•1,890 words is the average word count of first-
page results on Google
•81% of people perform some type of online
research before making a large purchase
The global SEO Experience in 2020
THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY
•Bounce rate increments by 50% for every 2
extra seconds that your website takes to
load
•61% of mobile searchers are more likely to
contact a local business with a mobile-
friendly site
•Voice search accounts for 10% share of
total searches
•40% of mobile website visitors will leave
your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to
load.
Data provided by
Enabler Space. Source here.

Over 5.5 billion
searches are
performed on
Google every day,
on desktop and
mobile.
95% of users don’t
even scroll past the
first page of the
SERPs (Search
Engine Result
Pages).
21% of users access
more than one of the
search results.
27% of the global
online population is
using voice search
on mobile.
4
How are
people
using
the power
of search?

How are
people
using
the
power of
search?

Read
further on this:
Google
Algorithms
When you enter a query in the search box, the search engine is returning
millions of results in seconds. Every search engine (Google, Bing, Yandex)
has a crawler (a program that browses the Internet) that analyzes all the
relevant content that can be found on the Internet and chooses what it
considers relevant to your search.
The results are evaluated by an algorithm that collects technical
information like page speed, meta-tags, social signals, internal linking,
backlinks and so on.
It also takes into account details about user behaviour, such as search
history, location, time spent by visitors on a website, and number of visits.
In other words, Google trusts pages that people trust and will recommend
pages that other users have found useful.
All in all, there are over 200 ranking factors used by Google in its
algorithm, and you can check many boxes using the appropriate SEO
techniques. The pages that pass this assessment are returned on the first
positions, the ones that are not optimized will end up on a lower position.
Where dead bodies are hidden.
How SEO works

7
“Google only
loves you when
everyone else
loves you first.”
Wendy Piersall –
Artist, Design Expert & Author

Alt Attribute
HTML code that provides information used by search engines and screen readers (for blind and visually-impaired people) to understand the
contents of an image. Also known as: Alt Text
Anchor-text
The text of a link to a webpage. It’s usually blue or underlined on a page, to be visible and to encourage actions.
Broken Link
A link that leads to a 404 not found. Typically, a link becomes broken when a website goes offline, a webpage is removed without
implementing a redirect or the destination URL is changed without implementing a redirect.
Canonical URL
An HTML code element that specifies a preferred website URL, when multiple URLs have the same or similar content, to reduce duplicate
content. If you have similar content for two pages, you will use Canonical tag to help Google understand that content you want it indexed.
Cache
A technology that temporarily stores web content, such as images, to reduce future page loading times.
Crawler
A program search engines use to crawl the web. Bots visit webpages to collect information and add or
update a search engine’s index. Also known as: Bot, Spider, Web Crawler
SEO essential terms

SEO essential terms
Keyword Density
How often a word or phrase appears within the content of a webpage. At best, this unproven concept is outdated, if ever really mattered to
search engines. There is no ideal percentage that will help a webpage rank better.
Link Building
A process designed to get other trusted and relevant websites to link to your website to help improve your organic search rank and visibility.
Meta Description
A tag that can be added to the “head section of an HTML document. It acts as a brief description of your page (max. 160 characters) that is
displayed in Google Search results below the link title.
Nofollow Attribute
A meta tag that tells search engines not to follow one specific outbound link. This is done in cases when a website doesn’t want to pass authority
to another webpage or because it’s a paid link.
Off-Page SEO
Demand generation and brand awareness activities that take place outside of a website. In addition to link building, promotion tactics can
include social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing.
On-Page SEO
These activities all take place within a website. In addition to publishing relevant, high-quality content,
on-page SEO includes optimizing HTML code (e.g., title tags, meta tags), information architecture, website
navigation, and URL structure.
Outbound Link
A link that directs visitors to a page on a different website than the one they are currently on.

Do-follow
A link that doesn’t use the “nofollow” attribute. In other words, a link.
Domain Authority
The overall “strength” of a website, built up over time, which can help a new page rank well quickly, even before that content has earned links or
engagement.
Duplicate Content
When a significant amount of content contained on one webpage matches or is incredibly similar to content that exists elsewhere on the same
website or a completely different website.
Heading
Heading tags (H1-H6) separate content into sections, based on importance, with H1 being the most important and H6 being the least important.
Heading tags help you highlight the most important parts of the page. We only use one H1 on each page and this is the title of the page, we use H2
for subtitles or other important content elements and so on. We use Headings in order on a page, from H1 to H6 and we don’t skip.
Inbound Link
A link to a webpage that originates from an external website. For example, if Search Engine Journal were to
link to Google, that would count as an inbound link on Google’s side; if Google were to link to Search Engine
Journal, that would be an inbound link on SEJ’s side.
Keyword Cannibalization
A type of self-competition that occurs when multiple pages from one website rank for the same query on a
SERP. This can result in a lower CTR, diminished authority, and lower conversion rates than from having
one consolidated webpage that ranks well.
SEO essential terms

SEO essential terms
PageRank
According to Google: “PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In simple terms, each
link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site’s PageRank. Not all links are equal.”
Page Speed
The amount of time it takes for a webpage to completely load. Page speed is ranking factor.
Ranking Factor
An individual component which contributes to a complex series of algorithms that determine where webpages should appear with the organic
search results for a specific query.
Redirect
A technique that sends a user (or search engine) who requested one webpage to a different (but equally relevant) webpage. There are two types
of redirects: 301 – Permanent and 302 - Temporary
robots.txt
The Robots Exclusion Protocol (or Standard) is a text file, accessible at the root of a website, that tells search engine crawlers which areas of a
website should be ignored.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
The page search engines display to users after conducting a search. Typically, search engines show about
10 organic search results, sorted by relevance.
Search volume
The number of searches that are expected for a keyword within a certain period (usually the
search volume is returned for a month).

“No website can stand
without a strong
backbone.
And that backbone is
technical SEO.”
Neil Patel –
top SEO expert, founder of Kissmetrics.com and
Ubersuggest

Technical SEO consists of
behind-the-scenes
optimizations like site
architecture, page load
speeds, data markups, mobile
friendliness and more.
Technical SEO includes all the
improvements made in the
code of the website,
information that Google reads
in addition to all the content
we can see (texts, images,
videos, etc.).
Technical SEO Technical SEO focuses on improving the technical aspects
of a website. Here are some points you must check:
1. Ensure your content is crawlable and indexable, so Google
can see and read it
2. Use https instead of http, as the secure version of your
website
3. Create a sitemap that includes all pages you want Google to
read
4. Fix duplicate content and similar issues that might decrease
Google’s trust in the quality of your content
5. Use robots.txt file
6. Make sure your website loads fast
7. Use Open Graph Protocol
8. Make sure that you have a clean site structure and navigation
9. Use a customized 404 page that is returning a 404 status
code
10. Use a good cache policy for your resources (all the jpeg, pdf
resources should be cached for one year)

OnPage & OffPage SEO
IBM iX / © IBM Corporation 15
Off-page SEO refers to all the actions taken
outside of a website to improve rankings. It
includes for example links that other
websites include in their content to
recommend pages on your website.
On Page SEO is the process of optimizing a
page for search engines and users. All these
improvements are related to what people
and Google see on your page, how they
read it and how it responds to their needs.

Here is a useful checklist for OnPage SEO performance:
1. Relevancy regarding the keyword - if the keyword is present in the title,
heading and body of the text, Google will consider your content relevant for
that search
2. Add your title into a H1 tag and make sure to use the keyword you are
interested in
3. Wrap subheadings in H2 tags
4. Optimize the title tag and meta description. Title tag should contain the
keyword, a separator - “|” and the website name. It should have around 60
characters. Eg: Red dress - how to wear it | Websitename
5. Write a catchy meta-description, include the benefit for the user if he clicks
on your website, include a CTA. Write around 160 characters.
6. Optimize your URL - keep it short, use the keywords and avoid special
characters (_, %, diacritics, etc).
7. Optimize images - all your images should be saved using the keywords and
the words should always be separated by “-”. The images should also have Alt-
tag - a description of the image.
8. Use external links to relevant and trustworthy sources (wikipedia, CNN,
webmd, mayoclinic etc). Don’t add external links to websites that are not
secure (don’t have https:// at the beginning of the link).
TOOLS:
Extension to check meta
tags: SEO META
Extension for keywords
research: Keyword surfer
Free tool for keyword
research: Google keyword
planner
OnPage SEO

The most used and effective Off Page techniques are:
1. Get backlinks from trustworthy websites: get other trusted and relevant websites to link to
your website to help improve your organic search rank and visibility. Link building can be done by:
• Conducting outreach to media outlets, bloggers, influencers, and webmasters.
• Attracting editorial links naturally, by publishing various types of high-quality or sensational content.
• Forging partnerships.
2. Make your users trust you: build a strong and trustworthy brand and a community
that returns to read your content. In other words, if they are presented with two links to click on, one of
them being your website, they should love and trust you enough to choose you.
3. Improve your social media presence: visits coming from social media accounts
increase your visibility and number of visits, thus increasing Google’s trust in your content.
OffPage SEO

Content SEO focuses on creating content that helps your page to rank higher in SERP.
Here is a useful checklist for actions:
1. Follow all the steps from On Page SEO
2. Make sure that your content is useful and unique
3. Make sure that your content is valuable
4. Always think about your users
5. Spy on your competitors - make sure that your content is better
6. Always search for the keywords you want to include in Google - make sure that you
understand user’s intent and you know who ranks on first three positions.
Content SEO
“Better content is outweighing more content.”
– Rand Fishkin, CEO & Founder
of the SEOMz leading SEO tool

Best Practice Tech Note: HTML, Hyperlinks,
HTTPS & Canonicalization

“Successful SEO is not about
tricking Google. It’s about
PARTNERING with Google to
provide the best search results for
Google’s users.”
– Phil Frost, Main Street ROI

In 2020, Google made some algorithm updates, one of them important (called Core Updates) and some less
significant. Sometimes, such updates can influence the ranking of websites and can influence the actions you have
to take in order to improve results. Here are some of the most important updates:
● January 2020 Core Update (January 13, 2020): changes noticed include disclosure of affiliate links, content
quality reviews, new standards for pet health content, reviews on spam content.
● May 2020 Core Update (May 4, 2020): travel, real estate, health, pets & animals, and people & society saw the
biggest fluctuations with rankings.
● September 29, 2020 and October 12, 2020 - Indexing Bug affecting indexing and canonicalization have been
fixed.
Changes and trends to follow in 2020:
The Google’s EAT update has influenced the SEO actions in 2019 and 2020 regarding building trust in the quality
of the content. To rank well on Google, you need to nurture your brand by building its expertise, authority, and
trustworthiness.
Voice Search Optimization has grown immensely in 2020, and now thanks to Siri, Alexa and other virtual
assistants, more than half of the online searches are made through voice.
Secure Websites – a HTTPS protocol uses encrypted data for secure communication, unlike HTTP protocol. Usage
of HTTPS will ensure a trust factor about your website to your audience.
SEO in 2020

Prepare your website for Core Web Vitals algorithm update, expected in
2021. Experts say this update will be “not so much about the text of the page,
which are traditional ranking signals, but more about the user experience and
what it's like, how pleasant it is to use the page, how useful it is.”
Google’s new page experience update is based on some metrics and those are
called core metrics or core web vitals. They are:
o Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - check the loading time of a page from a user
point of view. If your LCP is below 2 sec then its good if it’s under 4 sec it’s
categorized as needs improvement. Anything greater than 6 is a poor LCP
value.
o First Input Delay (FID) - the time duration that a user takes to interact on your
page after they have opened it. FID under 100ms is considered good.
o Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) - the visual stability of your page. Google
considers anything below 0.1 sec as a good CLS.
What to expect in 2021

Must-follow in
2020-2021:
1. Provide the best user experience,
considering the Core Web Vitals algorithm
update
2. Write for the users, their needs and
expectations, don’t just target keywords
without bringing added value
3. Increase brand awareness - make people
trust your brand through valuable content
4. Improve your social media presence
5. Focus more on the value you bring and
less on the products you sell
6. Save images using next-gen format
7. Increase the quantity and quality of
video content
23

Too many consumer journeys start with an online search for
you not to care about SEO. Millions of “google it” are told or
thought every year. After all, a brand or a website values is
given by the impact it has on its customers.
“If you’re not on Google you don’t exist” is not a cliché. It
tells us that you should be present and ranking well in the
most important online space that answers your potential
buyer’s questions. Fortunately, there are ways we can do
this, together. And good SEO is a strategic, long lasting
investment in your business.
- Ioana, KITE Agency CoFounder & Marketing Strategist

SEO Essentials for 2021

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