Changes in SEO: how to promote a website in modern realities

Previously, promotion was many times easier: links, text content, and some actions with the site code solved everything. But progress does not stand still, and soon Yandex's Perespa appeared, which later improved to Baden-Baden and Minuting. These algorithms forced optimizers to invent new ways to promote web pages.

Search engines use neural networks, and finding what you need has become much easier. Search engines seem to guess the needs of users. And although the system is still imperfect, its development is happening quite fast.

The competition is also growing: more and more sites are competing for coveted places in the search results, and if earlier there was a set of actions that consistently led to the top, now everything has become more confusing and complicated. Nowadays, promotion is a real job that requires a huge investment of time and money.

7 tools to help promote your website

Of course, the links and texts remained the same, but their quality increased. Accordingly, the prices have also risen. However, if an SEO specialist uses only these components, he is unlikely to succeed, and may even get caught by a filter. Therefore, it is important to use new tools that allow you to move to the top of organic search.

Behavioral factors

At the moment, optimization algorithms are designed in such a way that a developed site will get to the top of the search results faster than one that is optimized in terms of links and text. If users are satisfied with the site and all the necessary options are organized in it, then it will be higher in search results.

Behavioral factors are used to understand how convenient and useful a website is.

• Duration of user contact with the site.
• The depth of the overview of catalog items and specific products.
• Bounce rate: what percentage of users do not stay on the page for a long time.
• Conversion actions: placing an order, filling out a form, etc.
  

To improve these factors, you should improve the website in general. The clearer the interface, the more useful the information and the more detailed the product description, the more time the user will spend on the site. In some cases, it is easier to create a new website than to revive an old one.

Modern SEO is a continuous improvement of the website. It helps not only to increase search rankings, but also to make the site more convenient for visitors. The result is an increase in sales both from search rankings and increased conversion. SEO optimization offers businesses a double benefit.

There are several life hacks that help you reach the top. For example, posting videos on the site or pagination in the catalog. This will extend the time of user interaction with the site and increase the page's ranking. And in order to increase the percentage of direct traffic (the user enters the site address directly in the address bar), which significantly affects the promotion of the site, you can launch an offline promotion or contest.

For new sites that have few visits, the best solution is to place ads. Then new people will come to the site, and behavioral factors will begin to be recorded, gradually increasing the site's ranking.

Site structure

If your site's topic involves a large range of words with high frequency, you can create many pages, each of which will meet a specific query. In some cases, the location plays a role (a furniture store near a specific metro station, sushi delivery in a particular city). You can create a separate page for each city, district, region, metro station, and it will guarantee results. There's a lot of room to roam in this field, given the size of the country.

You can also create websites for different types of goods (pizza recipe with pineapples, a monitor with a diameter of 21 inches).

If the basic semantics are in short supply, you can try using similar topics. Such pages will be visited by a not quite targeted, but relevant audience. The result is an increase in website traffic due to the full relevance of the page to the query. And this is not only additional traffic and conversion, but also promotion in terms of SEO.

Selecting basic queries

Ranking in the top for all queries related to the subject of the site will require huge expenses that not every entrepreneur will dare to spend. You can do everything more skillfully and rank in the top for specific queries related to the company's activities.

That is, if a website specializes in selling tires for trucks, trying to promote it with the query "tires" is a futile exercise. But "tires for trucks" is a different matter. It's important to study the market, identify the strengths and weaknesses of competing businesses, and understand what makes this site better than others. The information obtained will help you understand which queries will make it easier to promote your site and position your company as a whole.

Loading the site

Page load time is an important factor in SEO promotion. It is taken into account by search engines both directly and indirectly - most often, site visitors do not wait more than 3 seconds and leave slowly loading pages. The site must have time to load during this time, because every next second increases the likelihood that the user will not stay. Website loading speed on mobile devices is especially important.

There are many services that evaluate website loading speed. The most popular version is the service from Google. But it will give you nothing but statistics and some recommendations.

The entire page load time consists of several stages:

• server response (ideally, it should not last more than a second)
• start loading page elements (up to one and a half seconds)
• full page load (the ideal time is up to 7 seconds).
  

The time should be measured for each type of page: the main page of the site, product category, detailed product description.
If a page is taking too long to load, you may want to consider one of the following measures:

• reduce page size: compress key elements such as photos, videos, and style
• reconfigure server caching
• compressing data so that the server can exchange it faster
• change of hosting

The faster the page loads, the better. This is especially important for websites that involve frequent transitions from one page to another. For example, catalog sites or news portals. It is equally important to organize a high loading speed from mobile phones. This is especially true for delivery and taxi services.

Creating a mobile version of the site

Statistics show that the share of purchases made using gadgets is constantly growing. A website that does not want to be left behind should be adapted for viewing on mobile devices. In terms of SEO, such actions are doubly beneficial: a high-quality mobile version will not only promote the site in Google search results, but will also allow smartphone users to spend more time on the site, increasing the overall duration of user contact with the site.

And it's better not to develop a mobile version from scratch, but to create a responsive website that can adapt to the device from which it was accessed. It is important to keep track of the following nuances:

• put the most important elements forward, and abandon the minor ones altogether
• the text should be readable, regardless of the screen diagonal
• the most convenient navigation through the sections of the site
• simplified order and payment form
• reduce the number of pop-ups.

Link to the site in search engines

The speed with which a user receives comprehensive information about a product is no less important than the speed of website loading. It is important to attract the user even before he clicks on the link in the search results. Several elements are used to improve the appearance of a website in the SERP. We will consider only 2 main ones.

Micro-markup. There are several services that allow you to modify the links to your website that appear in search and social networks. Although search engines choose what to display in the snippet (the so-called information about the page that appears in the search results), some pages can be supplemented with their own information. For example, you can add delivery terms, warranty, or price.

Company card. This is information stored in Yandex and Google services. It allows users to find out the address, business hours, contact details, and other information. It is displayed on maps and to those users who request the name of a particular organization in search engines.

Aggregators

This is the name of the sites where you can filter a medical institution, university or facility by specific parameters. This eliminates the need to study all the sites. As a rule, aggregators quickly move to the top, and it is almost impossible to oust them from there. But this is not necessary. It is much more important that the site is there and makes a decent impression. This will improve its image and contribute to the growth of the number of visitors, and thus sales.

Even though many aggregators charge a fee for adding an organization to the registry or displaying it in the top, it is a worthwhile investment. Moreover, many users choose services on aggregator sites.

To summarize: will SEO live on?

No matter what they say about SEO, it is still a powerful tool that can attract a large audience. People will always use search engines, so it is important that the site is in the top. SEO has simply evolved and taken on a human form. Now the trend is that if people like a website, search engines will like it too. And those who can adapt to the new conditions will be successful in the future.