Sep 4, 2022 1403 reads

What is JavaScript SEO and How is it Done?

One of the most common problems faced by people doing SEO work is that JavaScript content is not discovered by search engines. If you are dealing with sites built with JavaScript, the issues you encounter will be quite different from classic content management systems.If you want to succeed in search engines with a JavaScript-heavy site, you need to carry out JavaScript SEO. You must ensure that your site’s pages are created correctly, indexed, and are search-engine friendly.What is JavaScript?JavaScript is highly valuable when it comes to web development solutions. HTML and CSS are the foundation, but many developers prefer to leverage JavaScript. The reason is that JavaScript makes it possible to make sites more interactive.When JavaScript is used, it becomes easier to update the content on pages dynamically. For example, websites that share constantly streaming data like match scores use JavaScript. This way, data is updated in real time with minimal delay.Without JavaScript, you would need to refresh the page constantly to follow such data. Therefore, even if you build the foundation of the site using HTML and CSS, you need JavaScript to make the site interactive and perform real-time updates.What is JavaScript SEO?JavaScript SEO is part of technical SEO work. It is indispensable for sites built with JavaScript. JavaScript usage is quite popular. It is especially used on e-commerce sites to generate main content or to link to similar products.Despite its popularity, sites built with JavaScript often perform poorly in search engines. The main reason is that JavaScript SEO efforts have not been carried out correctly.Google Index and JavaScriptUsing JavaScript is great for users. However, the same cannot be easily said for search engines like Google. Getting JavaScript content indexed by Google does not always happen. Google’s approach to this is a bit different.While Google can easily index some content created with JavaScript, it may not index other content. Here, it’s important that the site using JavaScript content is structured correctly. However, you may encounter a similar situation even if your site is built with HTML. JavaScript Crawling Difficulty: On HTML sites, crawling content is quite easy. Search engine crawlers scan everything quickly. On JavaScript sites, the crawler visits the site but cannot find the links. It downloads and renders JS files and then examines them. Crawler Limitations: Google’s crawler does not always crawl all content. If the content on your site depends on cookies and other stored data, the crawler may not see them. Therefore, it’s not easy to say Google is excellent at JavaScript rendering. Despite these challenges and limitations, Google continues to improve its search crawler. As long as content is important to Google, it is considered worth rendering. In addition, when the rendering process takes too long, Google’s crawler is designed to skip it.Is Using JavaScript Bad for SEO?JavaScript makes it harder to detect various SEO problems because it’s not guaranteed that Google will execute every JavaScript snippet on a page. While trying to make your site successful, you must put in extra effort—and most importantly—apply JavaScript SEO methods.JavaScript is not entirely bad for SEO. Many sites that use JavaScript extensively still enjoy strong organic visibility. In modern web development, JavaScript is a necessity—just like HTML and CSS.Is JavaScript SEO Mandatory?If you own a JavaScript-heavy site, JavaScript SEO is mandatory. Without this work, you’ll struggle to ensure your content is discovered by Google. If the content located within the JavaScript section isn’t discovered, this may also mean the page itself isn’t discovered.Even though Google is getting better at reading and interpreting JavaScript content day by day, you still need to take the necessary steps to be discoverable. If your site content is tied to JavaScript, you should use JavaScript SEO methods to ensure it gets indexed.JavaScript SEO: Core RequirementsOnce you clearly understand the relationship between JavaScript and SEO, you can take the first step toward JavaScript SEO. If you want your JavaScript-built site to perform well on Google, you should know you must dedicate time to JavaScript SEO. Google should be able to crawl your site, understand its structure, and discover its valuable assets. Google should be able to render your site without difficulty. Google should not consume excessive crawl budget while crawling and rendering your site. If you want to succeed in JavaScript SEO, you must meet these three requirements. JavaScript rendering is a serious burden in terms of crawl budget. Once you exhaust the crawl budget Google allocates to you, some of your pages will be ignored by Google.Search-Engine-Friendly JavaScript ContentThere are two important ways to check whether JavaScript content is detected and indexed by Google. The quickest method is to use the “site:” search operator. The other method is to check your Google Search Console property. But first, you should perform the following checks: Make sure Google can technically render JavaScript content easily. It’s not enough to open Google Chrome and check the site. Instead, go to your Google Search Console property and inspect your site with the URL Inspection Tool. During checks, verify whether the main content appears. See whether Google can access the related posts or similar products section. If you notice issues during these checks, you should make the necessary adjustments as part of JavaScript SEO. If Google is having trouble rendering your site, the reasons may include timeouts, various errors, or blocked JavaScript files.After the basic checks, you should verify whether your site is on Google. To do this, search for “site:https://www.analyticahouse.com/tr/blog/seo-terimler-sozlugu” and check whether the content is on Google.If the URL you checked appears on Google, you can move on to a detailed review. Take the content located in the JavaScript-rendered section on your site and search for it on Google. From this, you can learn whether the JavaScript content has been crawled.So far, the method we tried was the simplest. However, if you want to perform a much more advanced examination, you should turn to Google Search Console. To perform the necessary checks in your GSC property, follow these steps: Log in to Google Search Console and paste the relevant URL into the URL Inspection tool. Review the inspected URL and check the content rendered with JavaScript to perform the necessary checks. Repeat similar steps for different URLs on your site. Remember that a single URL is not sufficient for verification. During checks, you may find that JavaScript content is not being crawled. The reasons can include the Googlebot timing out, rendering issues in the content, some resources being skipped, low-quality content, and the page not being discovered.Delivering JavaScript Content to GoogleAfter making your JavaScript content search-engine friendly, you need to ensure it is delivered to Google correctly. At this point, two different methods are used: server-side rendering and client-side rendering. Rendering: Rendering is the process of presenting site content, templates, and other features to the user. Rendering has two types: server-side rendering (SSR) and client-side rendering (CSR). Server-Side Rendering: With SSR, when a user visits the site, the page is rendered on the server and sent to the browser. Since JavaScript doesn’t need to be rendered separately, this is generally the most suitable method for SEO. Client-Side Rendering: CSR can be problematic in terms of performance. Slow-loading pages negatively affect overall page rankings. To avoid problems, JavaScript SEO methods and CSS should be used effectively. Some sites use both main rendering methods together. This approach is called dynamic rendering. In dynamic rendering, the site switches between the two rendering techniques depending on who is accessing the site. Thus, pre-rendered pages are served to users.When JavaScript content is delivered correctly, Google notices JavaScript code immediately and processes it properly. Google’s crawler attempts to crawl millions of sites, so there is a crawl budget allocated to each site.Google’s crawler handles JavaScript sites in two stages. In the first stage, the crawler looks at the HTML content and evaluates the site using it. Then, the JavaScript that needs to be rendered is processed. When SSR is used, indexing the site is easier.Anyone who wants to benefit from JavaScript SEO should use as much HTML content as possible. This way, critical information will be sent to the crawler in the first stage, making it possible for the site to be ranked based on that information.Common Mistakes in JavaScript SEO WorkAlthough JavaScript is uniquely important in site development, it can be a headache when not used correctly. No matter how good the site is, there will be technical shortcomings if JavaScript is misused. Therefore, you should pay attention to common mistakes when using JavaScript:Ignoring HTML: The most important information on the site should be delivered with HTML, not JavaScript. Search engine crawlers process the initial HTML. If you want your site to be indexed quickly, create critical information with HTML.Incorrect Use of Links: Links help people interact better with your site. When using JavaScript, you need to structure links correctly. If the site is structured with JavaScript, Google recommends not using HTML elements for links.Blocking Google Bots: Unless Google’s crawlers revisit your site, they cannot detect JavaScript code. Some developers use the “noindex” tag, making this revisit impossible. Make sure you don’t have this kind of issue on your site.JavaScript and PaginationMany sites use pagination to spread long content across multiple pages. However, most of these sites only allow Google to visit the first page. Therefore, when Google crawls, it cannot notice the other valuable content.The reason for this error is the link structure. Sites do not use to implement pagination. Instead, they perform pagination based on a user’s click action. As a result, Google’s crawler must “click” to view other pages.When Google’s crawler visits a site, it does not click or scroll. For Google to notice the next page, links must be used. When links are not used in this way, they are not noticed by Google and your content cannot be discovered.Use of Hashes and RedirectsOne of the most common situations in JavaScript sites is creating URLs using a hash (#). Google may have trouble crawling a page where a hash is used. You should use the correct URL structure to make Google’s job easier.Incorrect URL: https://www.analyticahouse.com/tr/#/seo-glossary Incorrect URL: https://www.analyticahouse.com/#seo-glossary Correct URL: site:https://www.analyticahouse.com/tr/blog/seo-terimler-sozlugu If you use incorrect URLs of the types mentioned, you are quite likely to face various crawling problems. Even overlooking a tiny detail means taking a problematic step in terms of JavaScript SEO. You should perform the necessary checks to avoid such situations.In addition to the use of hashes, you should pay attention to various redirects. If you are implementing redirects via JavaScript on your site, you may run into issues. Therefore, it is much better to perform redirects with server-side 301s.JavaScript SEO work is part of technical SEO. While trying to improve your site in terms of technical SEO, you should not forget the JavaScript side of things. Not every error is caused by JavaScript. Therefore, performing the correct SEO audits is very important.

Sep 4, 2022 3501 reads

How to Write SEO-Friendly Content in 4 Steps?

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the improvements made to increase organic traffic and comply with search engine parameters. The priority of SEO optimizations and search engines is to provide users with a great experience and high-quality content. Search engines reward websites that deliver quality content by ranking them higher.SEO-friendly content is: optimized according to search engine parameters, built around a primary keyword, targeted to the right audience, responsive to user intent, valuable to users, easy to read, engaging, aligned with the brand’s voice, enriched with images and infographics, comprehensive, natural, and original. How to Write SEO-Friendly ContentThere are steps to follow before, during, and after writing SEO-friendly content. The first two are deciding your topic and outlining your content.1. Define Your TopicChoose niche topics that your target audience will easily consume and find interesting. Your content should relate to your website and the services you offer. Search engines emphasize content that adds value to users, so your articles need to provide up-to-date information.You can discover what interests your audience by examining competitors’ blogs, as well as forums and news sites to find questions users ask but haven’t had answered.In short, when choosing your topic, you can look at: your competitors’ blog pages, forums and news sites. 2. Analyze and Research KeywordsAfter choosing your topic, identify relevant keywords. These fall into primary and secondary keywords.Once your content is indexed, it will rank for those queries. Your main target query is your primary keyword—it summarizes and best represents your content’s focus. Secondary keywords (like subheadings) support the main topic. For instance, if “search engine optimization” is your primary keyword, “organic traffic” could be a secondary keyword.Three factors are crucial when selecting keywords: user intent, search volume, and competition.Your chosen keywords should match user intent. To verify intent suitability, search your keyword and compare the results to your planned content.For example, if your article covers “digital marketing trends,” targeting “digital marketing” is too broad, as Google returns “What is Digital Marketing?” pages for that query.Search Volume: Average monthly searches indicate how often a keyword is queried. High search volume doesn’t guarantee more traffic for you—it also means stronger competition.Competition: Difficulty levels (low, medium, high) show how hard it is to rank for a keyword. New or smaller sites should aim for low- to medium-difficulty terms first.Tools like Google Ads Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator, and Answer the Public help you find search volumes and competition. Google Ads – Keyword Planner Google holds about 86.64% of global search market share (Statista, Sept. 2021). Its Keyword Planner suggests new keyword ideas and shows average search volumes and competition levels per term.Enter your product or service to get related suggestions. You can enter multiple terms, filter by language/region, or paste your site or a competitor’s URL to see which keywords they rank for. “Avg. monthly searches” shows volumes; “competition” shows how contested each term is. Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator Ahrefs’ Free Keyword Generator shows search volumes and keyword difficulty (KD) for each term. Filter by country (e.g., Turkey) or by other search engines (Bing, Amazon, YouTube). KD is on a log scale: 0–10 (easy), 10–30 (moderate), 31–70 (hard), 70–100 (very hard). Answer The Public Answer the Public organizes queries around your keyword, showing alphabetical combinations and questions. It doesn’t display volume or competition data, and it lacks Turkish localization—but it can still surface Turkish queries if you set the region accordingly.3. Research User IntentUser intent explains why a user makes a search. Four main types exist: Informational (seeking knowledge—e.g., “What is SEO?”), Navigational (seeking a specific site—e.g., “AnalyticaHouse”), Commercial (researching before purchase—e.g., “best SEO tools”), Transactional (ready to buy—e.g., “buy iPhone 13”). 4. Outline Your ContentDecide on your content’s: length, and headings. Your article must be comprehensive and up-to-date. To outrank competitors, cover topics more thoroughly than they do.HeadingsUse competitor posts to identify key subtopics and include them plus new insights. Tools like Answer the Public’s “Questions” and Google’s “People also ask” can reveal popular questions to answer. Maintain a clear hierarchy with H1, H2, H3 tags and matching font sizes. Include your primary keyword in headings.LengthBacklinko’s analysis of 912 million blogs suggests 1,000–2,000 words is ideal. Longer posts also attract more backlinks. Quality matters more than sheer length.5. Ensure ReadabilityYour SEO-friendly article must read naturally and engagingly. Avoid robotic language. Keep paragraphs around 100–150 words, avoid repetition, and present each main idea clearly.Use and Optimize ImagesEnhance clarity with relevant images, videos, or infographics. Name files with keywords—e.g., “sunflower-oil.jpg” rather than “IMG1234.jpg.”Benefits of SEO-Friendly ContentHigh-quality content differentiates you from competitors and builds authority. Ranking for multiple keywords boosts visibility, making it easier to attract prospects. In short, SEO-friendly articles enhance your: conversion rate, organic traffic, brand awareness, and loyalty. SEO-Friendly Content ChecklistHere’s a 13-point checklist for SEO-friendly content: 1. Outperforms competing articles in depth and breadth. 2. Accurate, reliable information. 3. Written by a subject-matter expert. 4. Enriched with images and infographics. 5. Focused on a high-volume, medium-competition primary keyword. 6. Uses semantically related secondary keywords. 7. Each heading covers one main idea plus supporting points. 8. No redundant repetitions. 9. Primary keyword in headings. 10. Consistent heading hierarchy and font sizes. 11. Consistent tone of address (“you” vs. “we”). 12. Consistent verb tenses. 13. Clear, engaging writing with no spelling/grammar errors. 14. No duplicate content across platforms.

Sep 4, 2022 1449 reads

What Should You Pay Attention to in SEO Compatibility When Creating a New Website?

When building a website, it is the best time to make the easiest optimizations and infrastructure setups in terms of search engine compatibility. Many SEO metrics such as speed, visuals, canonical and meta editing can be easily organized during the website construction phase, coded within certain rules, and provide great convenience after the website goes live.1- Speed FactorsSpeed is one of the most important factors for successful search engine optimization and user experience. Among the most obvious factors affecting the speed of websites are: Visual & Media Content CSS Files JS Files Server Quality When preparing a website, first of all, all the images on the site must be optimized and sized in a way that does not compromise efficiency. For this, it is important to use images in WebP, JPEG2000, JPEG, SVG formats. Since the WebP format is not displayed in Safari browsers, the “on-error” function can be used in the HTML part so that the JPEG version of the image is shown in Safari browsers while the WebP format is shown in other browsers (Chrome, Mozilla, Opera, etc.). It is extremely important that visual and media content is optimized as much as possible. Compressing images under 150 KiB positively affects browser loading speed. It is also important that visual and media content is not larger than the area in which they are placed. For example, if an image is to be added to an average 400x400 pixel area in a grid module on the homepage, the image should not be larger than 400px. Otherwise, while the image covers an area of 400px in the browser, it will load with higher size and resolution during loading, which will negatively affect the opening speed.The most obvious mistake made with JS (JavaScript) and CSS files is the use of ready-made JS and CSS libraries without optimization. For example, the jQuery JS library or the Bootstrap CSS library contains many classes and functions. However, we generally use only a few of these classes and functions in our websites. Therefore, before being included on the page, unnecessary classes and functions should definitely be cleaned from these files and compression operations should be performed.Another factor affecting website speed is server quality. When a user visits a web page, the loading of DOM elements on the page by the server and the late response of request queries by the server negatively affect page performance. Therefore, it is important for the website to be hosted on a quality server in terms of processor, CPU, and RAM, and to have high bandwidth.2- Meta EditsA web page has indispensable metas. Meta title, meta description (meta keywords for search engines other than Google) are the main ones. First of all, the meta title and description fields must be editable and customizable on the CMS side. However, since a page's metas must not be empty, and sometimes some pages may be overlooked, if no custom meta description is entered, metas can be generated by defining a rule. For example:Page H1 + Site Name In this way, on forgotten/overlooked pages, instead of meta tags appearing empty, they will be generated based on a standard rule. Meta tags must be included among the tags of the page.3- Canonical TaggingCanonical tags are one of the most important markers that determine a web page's crawling and indexing criteria. To avoid duplicate page issues on websites and to indicate whether a page is its original version or another version, canonical tagging is used. Canonical tagging must be editable and customizable on the CMS side. However, since there may be pages that are forgotten or overlooked, just like in meta edits, canonical tagging should be created on all pages by defining a rule. For example:In this way, canonical tagging that automatically points to itself will be created on all pages that are not optionally edited. Canonical tagging must be included among the tags of the page.4- H1 Heading TagThe H1 heading tag is the main title of a web page. It directly carries the targeted keyword of the relevant page and reflects the title of all the content on the page. Each page must have exactly 1 H1 tag. H1 tags must be editable and customizable on the CMS side. However, as in meta and canonical, a rule can be defined so that it does not appear empty on pages where it is forgotten to be edited. For example:Page NameThere must be a maximum of 1 H1 heading tag per page. Therefore, if there are areas on the page that contain different H1 tags, these areas should be defined with or tags instead of H1.5- Robots.txt FileThe Robots.txt file is a kind of entry navigation that search engine bots first visit on a website. The pages/folders that are desired to be crawled or not crawled within the site, and the path of the sitemap, are specified in the robots.txt file. The line starting with the “Allow” command indicates a crawlable web page, while the “Disallow” command indicates pages that are not desired to be crawled. The “User-agent” command specifies which bots the commands will apply to. For example, a website can be open to crawling for Google bots but closed for crawling bots like Screaming Frog. The “*” symbol means that commands apply to all bots. For a web page with an admin panel, a standard robots.txt file can be created as follows:User-agent: * Allow: / Disallow: /admin Sitemap: https://sitename.com/sitemap.xmlThe Effect of Robots.txt on the SiteWhen a robots.txt file is created, the commands defined here must have a dynamic effect on the pages within the site to help with the crawl budget.For example, we give disallow to the /myaccount URL in the robots.txt file to block it from crawling. In this case, to help search engine bots, a “nofollow” tag should be dynamically added to all links pointing to the /myaccount address within the site. Otherwise, search engine bots may crawl a page that should not be crawled in robots.txt by following internal links. This negatively affects the crawl budget. In addition to the nofollow tag, if a page is disallowed in the robots.txt file, a meta robots tag should be added directly into this page. Example:Pages disallowed in the robots.txt file should also not be included in the sitemap. All of this process should be dynamically created during website construction. If a page disallowed in robots.txt is linked within the site, adding nofollow to all of them and adding a meta robots tag to the page itself should be dynamic. 6- Sitemap – Sitemap.xmlThe sitemap is a kind of navigation file that facilitates navigation and crawling for search engine bots visiting the website. Sitemaps should be generated dynamically, not manually. All pages listed for the user, such as service, blog, product pages, should be included in the sitemap. Of course, while generating the sitemap dynamically, the primary factor must be the robots.txt file. If a page/URL is blocked from crawling by adding disallow in the robots.txt file, this page/URL must not be included in the sitemap. Sitemaps must be in .xml extension and readable. For an example sitemap model, you can visit Google documentation:https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/sitemaps/build-sitemap 7- Pagination & Infinite Scroll UsageEspecially in e-commerce sites’ product listing and blog listing pages, pagination must be used. Listing all products/content of a category on the same page when a category page is visited negatively affects browser performance and user experience. To prevent this and increase page efficiency, a pagination structure should be used on the page. There are several types of pagination. For example:Pagination done by page numbering:Or infinite scroll pagination, where content loads as the page is scrolled. Among these types of pagination, the most widely used today are Load More and Infinite Scroll pagination. Because instead of directly switching to different pages, content/products loading as the page is scrolled increases the user experience. Today, Google is also switching to infinite scroll pagination and recommends it. Example Google documentation:https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2014/02/infinite-scroll-search-friendly8- Language / Hreflang TagsIf a website uses multiple language options, hreflang tags must be used on the site to avoid duplicate issues and to ensure more relevant results in location-based searches. These tags should mark the alternative language pages on each language page. For example, if a web page that opens in Turkish by default has an English version:The hreflang to be placed on the Turkish page:The hreflang to be placed on the English page:9- Structured Data MarkupStructured Data Markup is a kind of schema markup that allows a web page to be more easily interpreted by search engines. There are many types of structured data markup for web pages. To give examples of the most commonly used structured data markups: Organization MarkupOrganization markup is a type of markup that should only be placed on the homepage of a website and represents the business card of the website. This markup includes the organization of the website, contact information, etc. Organization markup can be done as follows:  {"@context": "http://schema.org", "@type": "Organization", "name": "SITE NAME", "logo": "LOGO URL”, "url": "https://sitename.com/", "email": "SITE EMAIL", "address": "COMPANY ADDRESS", "telephone": "CONTACT PHONE" } Breadcrumb MarkupBreadcrumb markup is beneficial because it presents the existing breadcrumb structure more neatly to search bots, so we strongly recommend using it on all pages to show hierarchy.The breadcrumb markup to be placed on all inner pages should mark all categories that precede it hierarchically. Example: { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "item": { "@id": "https://sitename.com/", "name": "Home" } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "item": { "@id": "https://sitename.com/category", "name": "Category Name" } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "item": { "@id": "https://sitename.com/category/product-name", "name": "Product Name" } } ]}Product Markup (For E-Commerce Sites)Product markup is used for product pages and directly contains information about the product. Example: { "@context": "http://schema.org/", "@type": "Product", "name": "PRODUCT NAME", "url": "PRODUCT URL", "description": "PRODUCT DESCRIPTION", "sku": "PRODUCT SKU", "brand": { "@type": "Thing", "name": "BRAND NAME" }, "offers": { "@type": "Offer", "url": "PRODUCT URL", "priceCurrency": "CURRENCY, e.g.: USD", "price": "PRODUCT PRICE", "availability": "http://schema.org/InStock", "seller": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "BRAND NAME" } } } Service Markup (For Service Pages)For sites that sell services in consulting, education, etc., service markup can be used instead of product. Example usage: { "@context": "https://schema.org/", "@type": "Service", "provider": { "@type": "Service", "name": "SERVICE NAME", "description": "SERVICE DESCRIPTION" }, "providerMobility": "dynamic", "url": "SERVICE URL" } BlogPosting Markup (For Blog Pages)BlogPosting markup is used for blog pages on the website. Example usage: { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BlogPosting", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "BLOG URL" }, "headline": "BLOG NAME", "image": [ "FEATURED IMAGE URL" ], "url": "BLOG URL", "datePublished": "PUBLISH DATE", "dateModified": "LAST UPDATE DATE", "author": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "SITE NAME" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": " SITE NAME ", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "SITE LOGO" } }, "description": "BLOG DESCRIPTION" } FAQ Markup (For FAQ Pages)FAQ markup is used for frequently asked questions pages on websites. The most important benefit of this markup is that it appears in search results, called Google snippets. Example FAQ markup usage: { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "FAQPage", "mainEntity": [{ "@type": "Question", "name": "QUESTION 1", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "ANSWER 1" } },{ "@type": "Question", "name": "QUESTION 2", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "ANSWER 2" } },{ "@type": "Question", "name": "QUESTION 3", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "ANSWER 3" } } ] } 10- Breadcrumb StructureBreadcrumb is a type of header navigation that makes site navigation easier. It is a structure that allows users to see hierarchically which page they are on, which category the relevant page belongs to, and to easily navigate between categories and pages. The breadcrumb structure must be created dynamically and placed at the top of the page. An example breadcrumb usage may look like this:An example for e-commerce sites:Home > Category > Product NameFor more information, you can visit the W3 documentation:https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_css_breadcrumbs.asp 

Sep 4, 2022 2696 reads

How to Do an SEO Competitor Analysis Step by Step?

SEO competitor analysis, in other words, SEO competitive analysis, is a process in which you investigate the keywords, content, links, user experience, and more of your competitors in order to improve your SEO strategies. SEO competitor analysis allows you to enhance organic traffic and the ranking of your website by surpassing your competitors.Performing an SEO competitor analysis for SEO Companies, can help you understand your strengths and weaknesses inferred from the competitors. Instead of relying on guesswork for your SEO strategy, you can create a real plan by knowing your competitors.So, SEO competitor analysis is a strategy that gives you an idea about how to improve the performance of your website by analyzing and comparing the bests and worsts of your competitors. Why Is Competitor Analysis Important for SEO?Before diving into the details of competitive analysis, let's make it clear why it is critical for your business. Performing an SEO competitor analysis is important because it lets you:  Understand your industry better: Numerous different strategies are going on by your competitors. Figuring out which strategies work and which do not can be valuable to specify the SEO strategies you should focus on by outperforming your competitors. Identify strengths and weaknesses of your competitors:  Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors help you to identify what you are doing well and worst. It can help you pinpoint the gaps between your website and your competitors' websites. So that you can work on new strategies to fill the gaps and improve the deficiencies. Reprioritize your SEO strategy:  Once you identify and realize the positive effects of competitors' SEO strategies, you can prioritize your new tactics and existing SEO strategies according to them. How to Conduct SEO Competitor Analysis?Step 1-) Identify Organic Search CompetitorsThe first step of performing a competitive analysis is determining your actual competitors because you cannot make any comparison and work on a new strategy for your business without knowing the competitors. You may think that you already know your biggest rivals in the industry, but they do not have to be the same as your SEO competitors. Depending on the industry and the scope of your business, SEO competitors can be different from your real-world competitors.For example, a vintage store located in the same neighborhood as your store can be an important rival for you in the real world, yet if the same vintage store does not rank for one of your target keywords like red vintage dresses, then that store would not be your organic search competitor. In this case, you would be competing online with other stores that rank for red vintage dresses on the first page of SERP. Accordingly, your organic search competitors are the ones who rank on the first page of SERP for your target keywords, and they may differ from your real-world competitor. Also, please keep in mind that if you work in more than one distinct category, you may probably have different lists of competitors for each service you provide. But, the question here is how will you find your search engine competitors? There are two different ways of identifying your search engine competitors; using Google or getting help from SEO Tools.   Firstly, you should decide on your top keywords for each service you offer. Then, search the keywords on Google and analyze the top sites on the first page of SERP to determine your actual competitors. By repeating this process for all the keywords, you can create your competitors' list from the top pages of particular categories. The biggest problem of this process is working manually. If you have dozens of unique services, unfortunately, the process will take so much time. Therefore, you can always consider getting help from SEO tools such as; Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, Semrush, etc. However, even if you decide to use a SEO tool, we recommend you to always keep an eye on SERP to analyze better in a concrete way (e.g., if the most popular content form is blog posts for your target keyword, you can not know it without controlling SERP).  Step 2-) Conduct Competitor Page AnalysisOnce you decide your competitors according to the scope of your business, the next step to do is perform page analysis to take the competitive advantage. While examining the pages, you should try to understand their performance by looking at which pages of your competitors get the most traffic, rank top, and how. Understanding competitors' performance on a high level will give you an idea about the current SEO performance of your website compared to your rivals. And the easiest way to monitor performance is controlling SEO metrics by using SEO tools which can be free or paid (e.g., Semrush, Moz, Ahrefs).So, the metrics that you should monitor are as follows; Domain authority and rating Alexa rank Organic traffic volumes Page impressions Ranking position Ranking keywords Referring domains  According to the metrics above, you can investigate the weaknesses and strengths of your competitors that you can turn to your advantage. However, please note that the higher the competitors' metrics than yours, it will be harder to dominate them.Step 3-) Perform Content Gap AnalysisAfter analyzing the pros and cons of competitors, the next step is performing content gap analysis (also called keyword gap analysis). Content gap analysis is a method that helps you to find the high-search volume and business-relevant keywords that you do not rank, but your competitors rank at the top. Content gap analysis gives you a chance to gain a competitive advantage by ranking for new keywords and threatening the SEO performance of competitors. Therefore, it is a critical part of the SEO competitor analysis.Doing the content gap analysis manually can be difficult because your competitors probably rank for hundreds of keywords on SERP. Therefore, using an SEO tool can honestly be helpful to save your time and not miss any opportunity. You may consider tools like Ahrefs Content Gap tool to perform the analysis and find new opportunities. While performing SEO content gap analysis, you can ask yourself the following questions below; Which keywords do my competitors rank? Why do they rank for those keywords which you do not?  What do they do differently and extra from you?  How do they drive organic traffic to their websites instead of yours?  What can you do next to improve the performance of your pages and outrank your competitors? When you complete your content gap analysis, you can optimize your pages according to the new and existing keywords to increase your traffic and ranking.Step 4-) Analyze On-Page SEO and ContentThe next step you must follow for the competitor analysis is studying the on-page SEO strategies of your competitors. Analyzing competitors' on-site SEO strategies and performance will help you determine what you can do better and differentiate to improve your performance.You should check and try to understand the following parts below; Page title Meta description Headings Content (check content and media types, topics, length, style, keywords, and publish and update dates) Internal linking, breadcrumbs (pay special attention to schema markup and featured snippets for advanced ranking opportunities)  URL structure So, performing on-site SEO analysis and making comparisons with your rivals can help you recognize issues related to your pages which you can optimize and work on to rank better.Step 5-) Study BacklinksThe next step to do is research the backlinks of your competitors. As link building is a significant ranking factor for search engines, it is one of the critical SEO strategies. If your competitors put so much effort into link building and have high-quality backlink profiles then, you should work on your backlink strategies. Otherwise, it will definitely be more challenging to compete against them to improve your SEO performance. You should look at the following features below while working on backlinks of your competitors; Quality over quantity (prefer high-quality backlinks from reliable sources)  Link-type (focus on dofollow links but do not ignore nofollow links which are great sources to increase traffic, brand awareness, and site performance) After finishing backlink analysis, you can work on building your backlink strategy according to the sites where your competitors get their backlinks.Step 6-) Focus Web Design and User Experience (UI/UX)The final step of the SEO competitor analysis is making better the design and user experience of your pages compared to competitors. As it is known that Google has attached importance to user experience with improved page speed, better mobile experience, or rich search results over the past few years. Therefore, if your site is not performing better than your competitors and not working in accordance with the Google algorithm, you should clearly work on user experience. Controlling and focusing on the following topics below can help you to learn what your competitors are doing, what you are currently doing, and what you can do to achieve the best;  Responsiveness (both mobile and desktop) High page speed and performance (both mobile and desktop) Well organized and understandable site structure (especially check site navigation) Meeting with user intent Providing basic but smartly designed pages Thus, if you realize problematic issues after your analysis, this is an excellent chance to get the competitive advantage on your side on SERP. Final WordsFinally, SEO competitor analysis is an ongoing process that you should redo every month that depends on the industry and scope of your business to survive in the market and be competitive. And do not forget that even the basic improvements can matter when it comes to SEO. If you have more questions about the competitor analysis or need any help related to SEO, do not hesitate to contact our team!

Sep 4, 2022 755 reads

What is SEO Friendly Content?

Improvements aimed at increasing organic traffic and made in accordance with the parameters of search engines are called search engine optimization (SEO). The priority of SEO optimizations and search engines is to provide users with a good experience and good content. Search engines reward websites that offer good content by ranking them higher.SEO friendly content is; optimized in accordance with search engine parameters, shaped around a main keyword, appealing to the right target audience, responding to user intent, benefits the user, easily readable, striking, in line with the brand language, enriched with images and infographics, an inclusive, natural and original content. How to Write SEO Friendly Content?While and after writing SEO friendly content, there are some steps to be considered before. The first two of these are to determine the subject of the content and then to outline it.Determine the Subject of the ContentThe topic you choose should be niche topics that your target audience can easily consume and attract their attention. It is important that your content is related to your website and the services you offer. While search engines offers content to users they also adds value to users. Therefore, the content should present up-to-date and new information.Thanks to your competitors with a common target audience, it is possible to see what interests your target audience. In addition, by examining news sites and forums, you can reach the questions that your target audience is looking for but cannot find an answer to.In short, while determining the subject of your content you can check... blog pages of competing brands, forums and news sites. Analyze and Research KeywordsAfter determining the topic, you should identify the keywords that may be relevant to your topic. Keywords can be divided into main keywords and sub-keywords.After your content is indexed by search engines, it is ranked in related queries. The query you want to rank primarily for will be your main keyword. You can think of this keyword as the main topic of a piece of content. The main keyword is the phrase that most accurately, informatively and naturally summarizes your content and is most relevant to your content.Additionally, just like subheadings, there are subordinate keywords. These words should be relevant and supportive of the content and the main keyword. For example, if we set the word “search engine optimization” as the main keyword, “organic traffic” will be a side keyword.There are three key points to consider when choosing keywords so that your content reaches the right people. These are user intent, search volume and competition.User Intent: User intent refers to why a user makes this search, its “intent” when searching. It can be examined under four basic headings as informational, navigational, commercial and transactional: Informational Intent: Here, the user searches for information about a subject. Usually these queries are in the form of questions or these queries are accompanied by question patterns such as: “what, how, why, when, where, who?” An user's search for "What is SEO" to learn about SEO is an example of this user intent. Blog content usually responds to this user intent. Navigational Intent: Here, the user aims to reach a resource. This resource can be a website or a brand. Searches like “AnalyticaHouse”, “Google Search Console” are examples of this user intent. Transactional Intent: It is the searches that users make before making a purchase. Searches like “Top 10 SEO Tools”, “Cheapest airfare” are examples of this user intent. Commercial Intent: Here, users have decided to buy and are searching to buy. “Buy iPhone 13” query is an example of this user intent. The more appropriate the keywords you choose to the user intent of your content, the easier it will be for your content to reach the right people. Search engines are the best source to check whether keywords match user intent. You can measure whether your keyword is suitable for user intent by searching for the keyword you have chosen and determining how compatible the search results are with your content.For example; if your content will be about “digital marketing trends”, it would be wrong to primarily target the keyword “digital marketing” in your content. As you can see, when the phrase “digital marketing” is searched on Google, “What is Digital Marketing?” titled content will come up. We can say that this query is too general for our content topic.Search Volume: Search volume shows data on how much search traffic a query receives, on average. Queries with high search volume are more searched and demanded by people on search engines. However, this does not mean that you will get higher organic traffic by using high search volume words. On the contrary, these queries have more competition and will be harder to rank for.Competition: Competition indicates the degree of difficulty required to move a website to the top of a query. There are three grades: high, medium and low. If your website is new and does not yet have a certain audience, it is recommended to choose keywords with low or medium difficulty.There are some paid and free tools, called keyword planners, that provide you with data about keywords such as search volume and competition. The free ones are the Google Ads Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator and Answer the Public tools.Google Ads – Keyword PlannerSearch engines are the most reliable sources for keywords, as they aim to provide users with the most relevant and quality content. Google, which has a market share of 86.64% according to the Statista's September 2021 search engine market share report data, offers a tool that allows site owners to discover new keyword variations with Google Ads Keyword Planner and indicates the average search volume and competition rate for each keyword.Keyword Planner has a field that asks you to enter the term you find most relevant to the services you provide or your product. The tool will make suggestions related to the terms you enter in this field. You can enter multiple terms in the field and filter the results by language and geographic region. In this way, Keyword Planner better understands the scope of your product or service and offers better recommendations for your target audience. In addition, by adding the URL of your website or your competitor, you can see which keywords your website or your competitor is ranking for and target these keywords.It is possible to filter the words listed in the "Refine keywords" field as "branded" "non-branded" or by customizing them by product or service. In this way, you can select or remove brand-specific words from your selection, and you can find more suitable options for the service you provide.You can see the search volumes of the keywords in the "Avg. monthly searches" field and the competition on the basis of words from the "competition" field. By selecting a certain date range in the "Avg. monthly searches" field, you can view the search volume data of the keywords, as well as estimate how these queries will perform in the future.For example, by examining the results above, you can see that the word “seo” had an average monthly search volume of 27,100 and a moderate competition rate between November 2020 and October 2021.Ahrefs Free Keyword GeneratorAhrefs, one of the most popular SEO tools, offers a free SEO tool called Free Keyword Generator, where search volumes and keyword difficulty are listed.Just like in Keyword Planner, it is possible to filter by geographic regions in this tool. For example, by selecting the region Turkey, you can access the data of the keywords in Turkey.In addition to Google Ads Keyword Planner, Ahrefs also allows you to access the data of search engines such as Bing, Amazon and YouTube besides Google.Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator has two fields, phrase match and questions. Phrase match presents the phrases that contain the query you entered.The “Questions” field shows which questions were asked about the keyword you provided. The KD (keyword difficulty) & Volume fields, which you can see in both the Questions and Phrase Match sections, show competition and search volume, respectively. The field NE has a logarithmic range. 0-10 indicates little competition, 10-31 medium, 31-70 difficult, and 70-100 very difficult. The “Updated” field provides information on when the keyword was last updated given.Answer The PublicAnswer the Public is a free tool that groups Google searches and shows which keywords are combined in alphabetical order.Unlike Ahrefs & Google Ads Keyword Planner, it is not possible to see search volumes and competition for words in Answer the Public. Another disadvantage of Answer the Public is that it does not offer Turkish language support. However, it offers data for calls made through Turkey. After selecting your region, you can search by entering your keyword.Outline Your ContentTo create the skeleton of your content, you must first need to decide on its... length subtitles. Your SEO-friendly article should be filled with up-to-date and reliable information and should cover your chosen topic comprehensively. If you want to rank well with your article, you need to create more comprehensive content than your competitors.SubheadingsSubheadings are the things that will form the outline and scope of your article. Therefore, when choosing subheadings, you can review your competitors' blog articles on the topic you have chosen. You should definitely include the topics your competitors include in your content, and in addition to these topics, you should add up-to-date information that will feed the user.At this point, you can take advantage of the questions in the “Questions” section of Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator and Answer the Public tools, and in the “Users also asked” section of Google. In this way, you can include topics that users are curious about in your article.You need to establish a hierarchy among the sub-headings both structurally, formally and semantically. At this point, it is very important to use heading tags correctly in SEO compatible articles. You can set up the hierarchy between headings by going from general to specific. For example, you can use the H1 tag for the main heading, the H2 tag for the secondary heading, and the h3 tag for the tertiary heading. A hierarchical order should be established between the heading sizes. For example, the heading with the H1 tag should have the largest size and the size should decrease as the heading level decreases.It is important to have SEO keywords in subheadings, therefore heading tags. In this way, you can both direct your users within the content correctly and give more information to search engines about what your content is related to.LengthAccording to Backlinko's research on 912 million blog entries, an SEO-friendly article should be between 1000 and 2000 words long. Also, longer articles get more backlinks than shorter articles. However, you should not forget that how much information a content conveys and how useful this information is for users is more important than its length.Make sure your content is readableA quality SEO content is readable, natural and original content. Your content should be readable by any reader. In other words, it is important that your SEO compatible article is not written in a robotic language, interacts with the user and is fluent. That's why:Paragraphs should not be too long or too short. Approximately 100 to 150 words are ideal for comfortable reading of a paragraph. The important thing in the paragraph is to present the main idea and support it with side ideas. In order not to bore the reader, it is important not to repeat the paragraph or the content.Include images in your content and optimize imagesYou can support your content with relevant images, videos or infographics to increase the understandability and readability of your content. Using explanatory infographics or graphics will not only make the subject easier to understand, but also enrich the SEO-friendly article.Take care to pass the keyword in the file name of the images you will use. For example, "ay-image.jpg" would be a better filename instead of "2017IS232738.jpg".What are the Benefits of SEO Compatible Content?SEO compatible article also means quality and reliable article. The quality of your content helps you stand out from your competitors. Offering reliable content helps increase your authority in the eyes of your users.SEO compatible content allows you to be visible on multiple keywords. In this way, your organic visibility will increase and it will be easier for you to discover potential customers.In short, thanks to SEO compatible content, your brand's conversion rate organic traffic brand awareness brand loyalty increases. SEO Compatible ChecklistHere is a 13-item checklist with the features of SEO compatible content The content should be more comprehensive than competitors. The content should have accurate and reliable information. The content should be written by someone who has a good command of the subject. The content should include images and infographics. The content should be structured around a descriptive, high search volume with a moderately competitive keyword. Synonyms to the main keyword or words that are very close to the main keyword should be used in a way that is still relevant to the context. A title should have at least one main idea and several supporting ideas to follow. The same ideas should not be repeated within the same content by different phrasings. Main keywords should be used in titles and subtitles. A hierarchy should be formed within titles both constructionally and stylistically. The proper heading markings should be done and these headings should be in order in terms of fonts, punto etc.) The manner of expression should be consistent. For instance, the shift between the 1st person and the 2nd person should be avoided within the narrative. Keeping the narrative consistent is highly important. Not switching to one tense to another in a text should be paid attention to. Texts should be fluent and easy to follow. Making grammatical errors and publishing careless content should be avoided as much as possible. Plagiarism should be avoided while forming content. Content should not be used on more than one platform.

Sep 3, 2022 9408 reads

What is Link Building? SEO Guide For Internal Linking

In-site linking and link building are among the SEO items that directly contribute to the crawlability and indexability of our pages. Search engine bots crawl our pages from link to link. For this reason, it can be said that link building and internal linking are the backbone of a site. As we shared with the screenshot below, you can see Mike Khorev's high rate of internal linking and link building in the Google ranking algorithm for 2021.At the same time, in-site linking and link building ensure that the visitors we can attract to a page can discover other pages and make them easy to navigate. It contributes to the prolongation of the time a user visiting our site spends in his session and to increase our page view potential. To sum up, it is very important both for search engine bots and for our visitors to have an efficient experience.What is Link Building and How Is It Done?Link building is a method of navigating users between pages on the Internet. Link building should be shaped according to the importance of the pages on our site. Thanks to this construction, which is the backbone of the site, you can create authority and increase your organic traffic gain by increasing your rankings. As shared with the image below, intra-site linking should proceed in a certain hierarchical order.Since your page with the most links on e-commerce sites can easily access all pages, it is recommended to have Homepage, followed by category pages in order to support the product discovery potential of users.It is known that search engine bots prioritize 360-degree quality, high-relevance and unique websites in the long-term ranking algorithm. As for how link building should be done, it is recommended that in-site linking works be built in a way that directs visitors to relevant and useful links, in order to obtain long-term benefits.E.g; “What is Backlink and How to Get It?” from a page about Link Building. Linking content will navigate users more accurately.Formation of Links and Appearance by Search EnginesIn order to understand how the links, which are the backbone of the site, are viewed and interpreted by search engine bots, we can examine the link anatomy in the Moz - Guide to Link Building content together. Start of Link Tag: The Link Referral Location: The URL pointing to the link. It is the clickable area to switch to the relevant page. Visible/Anchor Text of Link: It is the text that visitors see on the page and click to reach the relevant link. Closure of Link Tag: It is the closure that notifies search engines that the link tag has ended. Google Link Building Algorithm and Link TypesGoogle announced the "PageRank" algorithm, which takes into account the number of links earned by that page to measure the quality of a page. The irrelevant and unhelpful link acquisition from the content resulted in the PageRank metric being manipulated. For this reason, Google published the Penguin algorithm in 2012. With this update, it was announced that low quality link building will not contribute to ranking performance in the long run.Within the scope of link building, link types are basically divided into two. External Links: These are links that point to a different/external domain than the source domain. If a different website links to your site or if you are linking to a different website, this is an external link. E.g; Link Anchor Text Internal Links: Links from the source domain pointing to the same source domain. They are links pointing to other pages on the same website. E.g; Keyword Text Up until this point in our blog, we have summarized the importance of link building in the Google ranking algorithm and the points to be considered until this part. We will continue with details on how to make internal linking to our content. What is In-Site Linking?Internal linking is a method by which you can navigate your visitors among other pages on your site. In other words, a link is output from a page in the same domain to a different page. It helps you transfer your site's hierarchy to search engines.This method does not only provide crawling and indexing of pages. It also enables pages to rank higher. You can improve crawling, indexing, and therefore ranking performance by linking the deeper pages of your site from other useful and appropriate pages.We can list the benefits of in-site linking as follows. It navigates visitors through the site. It improves the crawling performance of the site. The hierarchy of the site is established. The site is more easily understood by search engines. The value of the pages increases. It improves ranking performance among other sites. How to Make In-Site Linking?We can convey the optimal in-site linking structure of a website with the image below. This structure refers to a structure in which there are links from the homepage to all pages. There is a flow throughout the site, increasing the ranking potential of each page.We will first define the term Link Equity within the scope of suggestions on how to do in-site linking. Link Equity (Link Juice, PageRank) is a search engine ranking factor that transfers authority and link value from one page to another. This value consists of various factors such as page authority, HTTP status.Points to consider when linking within the site; Is the Link Related? It is recommended that the other page that you link to any of your pages should be relevant. In this case, you do not manipulate the search engine bots and direct your visitors to pages that are highly relevant to the current page. For this reason, one of the most critical points in in-site linking studies is to make links with high relevance. In In-Site Linking, Do Outgoing Links Go to Related Pages? A visitor expects to reach other relevant pages from the target page they reach. If the number of outgoing links from a page is very high, you should check if the outgoing links are relevant to the topic of the page. You can start by examining the links other than the header and footer links. At this point, your roadmap could be “Which pages the user hopes to reach from the current page?” In Incoming Links, Do Incoming Links Come From Related Pages? If the target page has a high number of links within the site, it means that the page is a source, a high authority and a valuable page. By being detected more intensely by search engine bots, the frequency of crawling is reinforced. At this point, incoming links to the pages should be checked. It should be ensured that the pages with high performance are linked more intensively but meaningfully within the site. Can the link be tracked? Links with nofollow tags are not followed by search engine bots. Such links do not transfer any value. For this reason, it should be ensured that there is no nofollow tag in the links that are requested to transfer value in intra-site linking. In intra-site linking studies, it is recommended to use the dofollow tag in internal links to the site's own domain. Not using any meta tags (like dofollow or nofollow) in link building gives a "follow link" signal to search engine bots. Therefore, you do not need to use an extra dofollow tag in your on-site linking efforts. Where will the link be placed on the page? Links positioned within the content have higher authority than links in areas such as footer or sidebar. These links are areas that can be noticed and clicked more easily by users in intra-site linking. How Many Links Should a Page Have? There is no limit to the number of links to be found on a page. Considering the depth of the site, intra-site linking can be worked on. What should be the HTTP Status Code of the Linked Page within the Site? Pages with 200 and 301 status codes maintain their link authority. The 301 redirected page transfers all the authority it has to the target page. However, in terms of crawl budget optimization, it is recommended to link only 200 status code pages within the site. Links with 301 and 404 status codes should be removed from the site. Does Anchor Text and Link Match? In in-site linking studies, the anchor text gives a general impression of which queries that page is targeting, without the need for a page to be crawled by search engine bots. The anchor text should contain the query targeted with the page. In intra-site linking studies, it should be checked with which link texts the pages gain links. Is the URL Structure of the Site SEO Friendly in Link Building? Search Engine Bot does not prefer to follow URLs that are Directed, Blocked with robots.txt file, Contains keyword stuffing and double content, Containing non-recommended characters (numbers, Turkish characters, etc.), Containing monitoring parameters at the time of crawl. Search engine bots can penalize spam pages to protect their users. Therefore, it is recommended to detect and remove such URLs that are linked within the site. Are Link Headers Used in Your Site Links? In order to measure the quality of the pages, Google measures the performance of the website in terms of user experience under the control of Accessibility with its Lighthouse tool. In the internal linking evaluation, it is known that having the titles of the internal links will enable the search engine bots to understand the link more accurately and easily. For this reason, you should make sure that the links on your website have a title value.References https://mikekhorev.com/seo-ranking-factors  https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link https://moz.com/blog/linking-internally-externally-from-your-site-whiteboard-friday https://moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-link-equity https://moz.com/blog/the-anatomy-of-a-link  https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/