SEARCH ENGINE

OPTIMIZATION
THE COMPLETE GUIDE
TO REACH TOP
GOOGLE RESULTS
ANDRÉ MOUSINHO RAPHAEL SATHLER
SEO Specialist Designer
[email protected] [email protected]
INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................... 4
WHAT IS SEO?...................................................................................................................... 5
BLACK HAT VS WHITE HAT............................................................................................12
HOW TO START AN SEO STRATEGY?...........................................................................15
HOW TO DO A KEYWORD SEARCH?.............................................................................21
TYPES OF KEYWORDS.....................................................................................................27
KEYWORD TOOLS..............................................................................................................30
WHAT IS ON-PAGE SEO?.................................................................................................32
TITLE TAG............................................................................................................................42
WHAT IS OFF-PAGE SEO?...............................................................................................53
WHAT IS LOCAL SEO?......................................................................................................68
CONCLUSION......................................................................................................................73
ABOUT ROCK CONTENT..................................................................................................75
 4

Introduction
SEO is a key Digital Marketing strategy. Your site, blog, or e-commerce become more well-known, resulting
in authority in the market, a greater number of visitors, and
After all, who wouldn’t want to show up within increased conversion opportunities.
the top organic search results on Google?
Best of all? You can achieve all of this without having to invest in
paid advertising.
It’s where users find the most visible links,
as well as those most frequently accessed
Through optimizations on your own pages and connecting to other
by users — who generally don’t go past the
sites, you can improve your users’ search and navigation experience.
first page of results to find what they’re
looking for. With this complete guide to SEO, you’ll learn all you need to know to
reach the top results on Google!
And having a good SEO strategy can get
you there! Ready to get started? The time has come to master SEO!
 5

What is SEO?
Source: Backlinko

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a set of optimization For every search, Google organizes the results by ranking the
strategies for sites, blogs, and pages on the web, which aim to best answers first. The numbers below show just how much
improve your position in organic search engine results. users trust the judgment of search engines:

Every second, millions of searches are being processed by # The first three organic links receive approximately
search engines — principally Google, the most popular search 30% of all click-throughs.
engine worldwide. # Only 0.78% of users access a link on the second page
of results.
Users are looking for answers to an incredible range of
questions from their daily routine, from the best-rated hotel for Take a look at the graph above to see the correlation between
an upcoming trip to an explanation of the theory of evolution. position ranking and the number of clicks:
 6

Every search presents the opportunity for your This involves not just having great content, but offering
brand to offer the best response to what users are usability, communicating marketplace authority, and
looking for. helping Google read your pages.

With this as your focus, you have a better chance These are the goals of an SEO strategy.
to increase your visibility and clicks, receive more
organic traffic, and escalate results with your online SEO plays a role in SEM (Search Engine Marketing),
presence. which covers all search engine strategies, including
paid ads and sponsored links
But, to achieve this, you need to
prove to Google that you have the On the other hand, SEO only makes use of organic
best answer and deserve to show up strategies and doesn’t encompass media purchases.
among the first position on the SERP
(Search Engine Results Page). This results in a higher return over investment (ROI) and
lower customer acquisition cost (CAC) by employing SEO.
 7

WHAT ARE SEARCH ENGINES?

Search engines are systems or algorithms to crawl, index,

and rank web content to display it in an ordered way based
on user searches.

When we refer to search engines, we’re not just talking about

Google, but also Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu and others.

Even YouTube and Pinterest can be thought of as search engines

since they’re often used to discover content.

But Google is the clear category leader, with almost 92% of the
search market share.

Each search engine has its own methodology and ranking criteria.
But the end goal is always the same: offering the best results to
what users are looking for.
 8

HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES WORK? These processes of crawling and indexing are continuously taking
place. The bots are always finding and organizing the content on
Have you ever considered exactly what Google does when you the web. But the order in which they display their results to users is
search for something? Despite only taking milliseconds, there’s defined through ranking.
a long process to be able to display a list of results that answer
your question. Ranking occurs every time a user searches something — this is the
focus of SEO.
In general, search engines have three stages:
According to the keywords used in the search, Google quickly goes
First, search engines crawl through web content using bots, also through its index to find pages that coincide with those terms and
known as spiders. At Google, it’s known as their Googlebot. These respond to the question.
bots follow the connections of links across the web, searching for
new and updated pages. Thus, classification is determined by the best relationship between
keywords and a series of ranking factors that make up the search
After that, the crawled pages are added to the algorithm.
search engine’s index, which serves as a vast
library for the web’s content. They serve to offer better user experience and, as a result, increase
your page’s position in the search results.
There, pages are organized according to the information the bot
collected about them, such as loading time and keywords. We will focus on these factors in detail next.
 9

GOOGLE’S ALGORITHM
AND UPDATES

Google’s algorithm is the combination Panda (2011): penalized pages with low-quality content that made
of operations that define how links are use of bad practices, including excessive keywords and link farms.
classified on the organic search results page.
Its function is to create a hierarchy of pages Penguin (2012): penalized sites with low-quality backlinks and
to provide results in the most relevant began to value those receiving contextualized links from high
order for each user. quality and authoritative sites.

The algorithm adopts a series of criteria to Hummingbird (2013): improved results classification by focusing on
achieve this and is continuously updated to the exact match between the keyword and the search intention.
become more and more relevant.
Mobilegeddon (2015): mobile-friendly became a ranking factor.
Through these updates, Google aims not just
to improve the classification of results but RankBrain (2015): added artificial intelligence and machine learning
also to eliminate or decrease the position of to the algorithm to better understand users’ search intentions.
malicious and low-quality content, which can
harm the user experience. Mobile-First Index: began to consider mobile pages as the main
version for ranking.
Thousands of updates occur every year, but
several stand out for their impact on the BERT (2019): incorporated an artificial intelligence system
SEO market. These were the key updates to specialized in natural language processing to understand how
Google’s algorithm in recent years: humans search.
 10

RANKING FACTORS

It’s estimated that Google’s algorithm involves

more than 200 ranking factors. The relationship
between them determines the position on SERPs.

Google doesn’t publically share these factors but

has made some statements which reveal some
secrets. Moreover, the market itself performs
studies to determine the impact of specific actions
on-page ranking.

In general, we know that there are two types of

ranking factors: on-page and off-page.
 11

ON-PAGE OFF-PAGE

On-page ranking factors are located on their own pages. Off-page factors, on the other hand, are elements that demonstrate
the page’s status as a reference but are not located in the content
When on-page SEO gets mentioned, it’s referring to the of the page.
optimization of these elements.
Off-page SEO consists of optimizing the site’s authority to users
Some examples: and other websites, with a focus on acquiring backlinks.

# Content; Some examples of these factors are:

# Title and meta description;
# Heading tag; # Number of backlinks;
# Images; # Diversity of backlinks;
# URLs; # Context of backlinks;
# Rich snippets. # Brand mentions;
# Social signs;
Google evaluates these factors to understand what # Direct search.
information the pages bring and, therefore, how to
index them correctly. For Google, factors along these lines reveal a site’s level of authority.

In addition, the search engine analyses if the page If a page receives many visitors via direct searches for a brand name
is offering a good user experience with relevant and many backlinks or mentions from trusted sites, it’s considered
information. more authoritative in the market.
 12

Black Hat
vs White Hat
Google’s algorithm is always improving the
search experience for users.

This means not just continually improving

search results, but also combating dubious and
low-quality content, known as Black Hat SEO.

Black Hat has been a target of Google since

the early days of SEO.
 13

When the algorithm was still new and had a lot of loopholes,
it was easy to game the system to get a higher ranking, even if
you had nothing to offer.

Common Black Hat strategies included: Source: OptinMonster

# Doorway pages: pages optimized to redirect users Strategies like these still exist. However, Google’s algorithm is
to malicious pages; increasingly complex and more intelligent at identifying Black
# Cloaking: pages which present different content Hat SEO.
to real users and bots;
# Link farms: pages which only contain backlinks For example, a massive increase in backlinks from suspicious
to other pages; domains over a short period of time is an indication of Black
# Keyword stuffing: pages excessively repeating Hat techniques.
keywords;
# Hidden texts and links: pages hiding text and links When this happens, pages are penalized, which can range
from the user, but not from bots; from a temporary drop to a complete ban.
# Comment spam: pages that comment on blogs
to gain backlinks. So, avoid Black Hat SEO.

In the example above, you can see code configured to hide If you want to earn trust from search engines to guarantee
keywords by using text set to a font size of 0 and the same a safe and sustainable position on SERPs, follow Google’s
color as the background: SEO guidelines.
 14

These guidelines coincide with White

Hat SEO, acceptable SEO strategies
recommended by search engines.

These can include, for example,

improving site usability, natural use
of keywords in the content, receiving
backlinks from trustworthy partners,
among other strategies we will
introduce in this guide.
 15

How to start
an SEO strategy?
To achieve the organic traffic you’re looking for, the content
published on your blog must be relevant to someone. You
already know that, but how do people find your content?

Like any marketing strategy, it all starts with planning: what

are the results you hope to achieve through SEO, who are you
trying to reach, how do you intend to get there?

This will pave the way to your strategy’s success.

Also, you should also know that an SEO strategy generally

delivers results in the medium to long term.

Don’t expect the kind of immediate return which can come

from ads and sponsored links. However, SEO usually achieves
a more sustainable return in the long term.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the first steps of SEO.
 16

DEFINE OBJECTIVES

The first step in creating your strategy is to define your objectives in optimizing By setting objectives, you can also identify
your site, blog, or e-commerce. To do this, you first have to know what SEO offers. goals and KPIs.

# Increasing organic traffic; If you’re looking for greater authority, for

# Generate more leads; example, you can use metrics
# Create more sales; from Domain Authority and Page Authority.
# Reduce client acquisition cost (CAC); Set the goals you hope to reach via these
# Educate the market; KPIs and when.
# Increase brand authority.
By doing so, while you execute your
Always seek to align these SEO objectives to your brand’s macro-objectives. strategy and afterward, you can check
If your goal is to increase brand awareness, for example, SEO can help with this these indicators to know if you’re on the
by placing your company’s site among the first positions on Google. right path to achieve your objective.
 17

DEFINE YOUR BUYER PERSONA

Another important planning step is to define your buyer persona.

After all, who is your strategy for? Who are you

communicating with? Who are you bringing to your business?

A buyer persona is the description of a semi-fictitious

personality who represents an ideal customer for your
brand, with real questions, pains, and needs, which you can
help to solve.

They should be based on real customer data obtained through

surveys, questionnaires, and interviews.

Building your buyer personas should take into consideration

the different demands a customer may have throughout the
stages of the funnel.

This can be observed in the keywords used to search, more

general at the top of the funnel, and becoming more specific
towards the bottom.

You’ll soon have a better idea of making the most of keywords.

 18

SEO TOOLS TO START WITH GOOGLE ANALYTICS

To start with an SEO strategy, you need to know the Google Analytics is a widely-used data analysis tool that provides
basic tools. a vast array of resources to evaluate the performance of digital
strategies. For SEO, it can assist in a variety of ways:
They help to diagnose where you’re starting from, base your
planning on, make initial optimizations, and begin to track # Understand your audience better to build your buyer persona;
the impact of each action. # Identify your most visited and best-performing pages;
# Monitor organic traffic numbers;
For the most part, we’re talking about two indispensable # Identify which channels generate the most traffic (email,
SEO tools: Google Analytics and Google Search Console. social, organic, etc.);
# Understand engagement (rejection rate, pages per visit,
Google offers both for free, and they will play a huge role session length);
in measuring your strategy. Let’s get to know them better! # Monitor conversions generated through the SEO strategy.
 19

This is only a sample of the analysis available with Google Analytics,

covering from the planning stages to the implementation of SEO.

But you find much more data in the tool to help with your strategy.
 20

GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE

Google Search Console is a tool to facilitate communication

between the site and Google, which offers valuable SEO
reporting. Some of the resources include:

# Discover if there are any issues on indexing your site;

# Know if your site has been hacked or penalized
by Google;
# Monitor the average position of your pages on SERPs;
# Identify the organic click-through-rate of your pages
on SERPs;
# Identify which keywords place your site on SERPs;
# Identify which sites backlink to yours;
# Solicit rejection of dubious backlinks to your site
Source: ExpanderDigital
from Google.

Google Search Console is a little more technical, with

a greater focus on webmasters.
This tool can also generate insights to optimize your content,
But the interface is user-friendly, so anyone can use it to in addition to being the principal source for identifying which
diagnose and direct more complex demand to specialized searches bring traffic to your pages and the click-through-rate
professionals. on your main keywords.
 21

How to do a
keyword search?
A keyword search aims to identify the search terms that have Afterward, this list needs to be organized.
the greatest potential for your strategy, according to search You can separate the most used terms at
volume, conversion, and competitiveness. each stage of the sales funnel and sort
the list based on the greatest potential for
It’s one of the key planning tools for SEO strategy and Content your strategy.
Marketing. After all, it’s how you can identify optimization
opportunities and set content creation priorities. Let’s say you’ve just launched a blog on your site and have
identified the keyword that will direct the most traffic to it.
A keyword search usually starts with a list of terms related to
your sector, product, and brand. You can start with it and create a post optimized for this
keyword to attract more visitors.
You can get ideas from Google Analytics and Google Search
Console, which we previously discussed, or keyword tools, Next, you’ll understand better what keywords are and what
which we’ll learn more about below. kind of term you can work with.
 22

WHAT ARE KEYWORDS

Keywords are how the users express their questions and that It’s important to know that Google employs artificial intelligence
activate indexed pages in the search engine. to understand the intention of a search, the way humans
communicate, and the variations that exist for a given term.
When a user searches for a specific term, Google looks for the best This means that if you want to optimize a blog entry for “carry-
matches within its page index and displays these search results. on luggage”, for example, you don’t need to worry about using
this exact phrase in your text, much less repeat it endlessly.
The order in which they appear is the result of ranking factors, as
described above. You can use synonyms, such as “cabin baggage” or “hand
luggage”, resulting in a more varied and engaging text.
Therefore, keywords are essential in SEO strategies, as they reveal
what our buyer persona is searching for. So, even if the user types the term incorrectly or a variation
of it, Google will understand the user’s search intention and
They define the purpose behind optimizing a page, so Google display your page to them.
indexes it correctly according to its content, presents it to the users
seeking that topic, and ensures that the content is relevant. Thus, you don’t need to worry about a keyword’s exact match.
 23

TYPES OF SEARCHES

During the purchase process, people may

use different types of searches to resolve
their questions.

To create your SEO and content strategies, you

need to understand the intention behind each
search to align what users are looking for with
what your brand can bring them.

Let’s take a look at the main types of searches.

NAVIGATIONAL TRANSACTIONAL

Navigational search queries are when a user already Transactional search queries are related to
knows which site they’re looking for and will rarely purchases. For example, users may be looking to buy
change their ultimate destination. a product, find a store’s address, or compare prices.

It’s as if they use Google as a shortcut, instead of This type of search is valuable because it can lead
remembering a whole URL or to find suggestions directly to a sale, as the user is already at a more
related to that site. advanced stage of the process.
 25

INFORMATIONAL

Informational search queries

are when users are looking for
information on a subject, product,
or brand.

At this point, they don’t know

what they want yet, as they’re at
the start of the purchase process.
 26

OTHER TYPES OF SEARCH

There are additional types of search a user may perform,

such as:

# news;
# institutional;
# music;
# academic;
# punctual information (weather, date, etc.);
# images;
# videos.

Notice that, for each type of search, Google is constantly

LOCAL seeking to provide more specific results.

Local search queries feature a geographic component, For product searches (transactional), we receive offers from
within a determined region. Google Shopping. When looking for a certain song, results
include the lyrics and a music video on YouTube.
These can include, for example, users searching for
restaurants, cinemas, stores, hotels, schools, or offices, The goal is to improve the search experience with more agile
among other establishments with a physical location. and precise results for users.
 27

Types of keywords
Along with types of search, we also need to consider the types of
keywords that are used to find results on the web.

There are two types of keywords: head tail and long tail.

They refer to the two extremes you can see in the image below
and correspond to different stages of the process.

The farther to the right the keyword lies, the more specific it is
from a user closer to the purchase decision.

For an SEO strategy, it’s important to work with both types of

keywords to reach potential clients at all stages of the process.

We will now look at each type.

 28

HEAD TAIL

Head tail keywords are broad, generic, and generally used

at the start of the purchase process. At this moment, the
consumer doesn’t know what they need yet, and thus start
with this type of search, before becoming more specific.

Generally, head-tail terms are high volume, resulting in a

lot of traffic, but also attract a very wide audience with few
conversion opportunities.

They also tend to face a lot of competition for the top search
positions, making a high ranking more difficult.

In this case, examples include:

# Marketing;
# Personal marketing;
# Digital Marketing;
# Business marketing;
# Traditional marketing.
 29

LONG TAIL

Long-tail keywords are more specific and are usually used at In addition, as a result of less competition, a higher ranking
the end of the process. is easier to achieve.

The customer has already researched what they need to meet If a user is interested in Digital Marketing, for example, they
their needs, are familiar with the solutions on offer, but still may now search for more specific terms on the topic.
seek information before making their final decision.
The specificity of terms will depend on the need the person
In contrast to the head-tail, long-tail keywords don’t usually needs to resolve, for example:
generate as much traffic as they are less searched for.
# Digital Marketing consultancy prices;
On the other hand, they tend to attract visitors further along in # Where to take a Digital Marketing course;
the purchase process, as well as more conversions. # The average salary for Digital Marketing professionals.
 30

Keyword tools
Are you looking for help to find terms and identify the best Source: Ahrefs

opportunities? This is where keyword tools come in.

# Google Ads keyword planner: to check search volume
They are essential for planning an SEO strategy, as they help and cost per click;
to find ideas for keywords, understand the potential and # Keyword Tool and Ubersuggest: to create lists of
competitiveness of each, and organize them according to their keyword ideas;
optimization priority. # Google Search Console: to check with words are already
used to direct traffic to sites and opportunities;
There are several tools for this, both paid and for free. # Google Trends: to determine search trends by theme.

Free tools help to perform specific search actions, including: Google Ads keywords planner is shown in the image above.
 31

Here’s an example of a
keyword search on SEMrush.

Paid tools are complete, with powerful keyword search features.

They suggest terms based on volume, clicks, difficulty to rank, and other
data. The main platforms are:

# SEMrush (starting at US$99.95/month);

# Ahrefs (starting at US$99/month);
# Moz Keyword Explorer (starting at US$ 99/month).

You can access some of the resources for free, but a paid plan allows you
to take full advantage of the platform.
 32

What is
on-page SEO?
In this section, we will explore the key optimization
factors for an on-page SEO strategy.

It’s worth remembering that “on-page” refers to the

factors that an administrator can optimize on their
own pages to improve a visitor’s experience and
make it easier for Google to read the site.

These optimizations should be integrated within an

overall Content Marketing strategy since they largely
make use of what’s published on the blog.

Get a sense of the key on-page SEO factors.

 33

USER INTENT

SEO is not about what people are searching,

but what they want to find.

To do this, on-page optimization should focus

on the user’s search intention, which varies from
search to search, so your pages and content
correspond to what they hope to find.

This is where Google’s focus on giving users what

they’re looking for comes into play. For example,
natural language processing and analyzing user
location are elements that help determine
their intention.

So, the challenge for an on-page SEO and Content

Market strategy is understanding the search
intention the way Google does, to deliver to users
what they’re looking for.
 34

And the best way to understand a user’s

intention is by using Google itself!

Let’s take a closer look at some example:

Following your keyword search, you

should use Google to analyze the highest
ranking results.

After all, these are the pages that Google

considers the best answer to the user’s
intention. Note that the top results are educational, with a focus on teaching what
SEO is and how to use it.
Let’s examine the results page when we
search for “influencer marketing”: To rank higher, you need to have content along these lines.
 35

But what if my intention were to find a “Batman costume”? Pictures, exactly! Products and images.
What am I trying to find?
Can you imagine someone renting
or buying a costume without seeing
it first?

So, to reach the top of this result,

you must use images.

Always use the first results for a

specific keyword to identify how you
should approach the subject and what
else you can add to it.

Get ahead of them with content that’s

even more optimized and complete!
 36

CONTENT LENGTH

The length of content generally affects its ranking, It’s a broad search term, facing a lot of
but it’s not a direct ranking factor in the algorithm. competition and receiving a high volume of
searches, which demands extremely thorough
Longer pieces tend to be complete, have more content as a result.
details, and go deeper into the subject matter.
As a result, they better answer users’ questions. On the other hand, a blog post about blocked
actions on Instagram is far more specific, with
But this isn’t necessarily a rule. For a given topic fewer hits and competitors so that it can be
or buyer persona, the ideal length will be different. shorter and more direct.

Here at Rock, for example, we post super in-depth Accordingly, the best length is the one that best
content, like this article. answers the user’s question.
 37

VOLUME OF POSTS Likewise, having a large number of posts when you launch your
blog, and then not keeping it updated brings no advantages.
Publishing quantity also tends to favor classification, as the
more content you publish, the greater chance you have to Content creation needs to be an ongoing process in order to
rank high. attract a loyal audience and show Google that what you have
to offer is fresh and relevant.
However, you can’t just focus on the number of posts, ok?
Along the same lines as the volume of posts, there’s not
Make sure you have a balance between quality and frequency. an ideal frequency. You have to identify what your topic and
buyer persona demand, as well as evaluating your business’s
There’s no point in publishing hundreds ability to produce this content.
of pieces that aren’t relevant and don’t
solve users’ questions — in fact, it’s The most important thing to remember is that quantity and
counterproductive. quality work together!
 38

WRITING FOR SEO

How do you need to approach writing your content?

Quality is the number one priority. The content needs to be

accurate, clear, current, relevant, trustworthy, and, of course,
address the user’s intention.

This will generate engagement and increase the likelihood

of receiving backlinks — weighty factors in the ranking
calculation.

So even though Google increasingly understands and values

natural writing, there are some strategies to optimize your
content to reach higher positions, while also improving the
reader’s experience.

To achieve this, it’s crucial to pay attention to an article’s

scannability and semantics.
 39

SCANNABILITY

Scannability is how a text presents a dynamic reading

by making use of resources such as subtitles, lists, bold,
and images.

Have you ever opened an article, been faced with a solid block
of text, completely lost your desire to read that content, and
simply closed the page?

This is what makes scanability so important.

Source: Successful Web

It improves the reading experience, engages the user, and
even communicates information to Google.

By creating subtitles, for example, both readers and bots are

able to understand the structure of the piece.
 40

KEYWORD USE
AND SEMANTICS

The use of keywords throughout your writing is important for Take full advantage of a term’s semantic field, its variations,
Google to index the page with the terms you want correctly. synonyms, and relationship with other words. By doing so, it
becomes easier to read and helps Google to understand the
Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean just repeating one word topic of your page.
the whole time, ok?
Let’s compare two pieces that have the objective to reach the
Google understands how humans use language and aren’t first results for “Digital Marketing”.
looking for exact keyword matches.
The content on the right has a better chance for a high
This is what makes semantics ranking, as it covers indispensable topics directly related to
so important for SEO. producing a Digital Marketing guide.
 41

Here’s another example focused on “SEO”.

Again, the piece on the right displays better optimization, with

several natural variations of the term, improving the reading
experience for users and bots and increasing its chances of a
higher position.

Furthermore, it’s important to place these terms where Google

will value them the most.

The title, heading tags, URL, and the first paragraph are some
examples of where bots tend to focus first.

So make sure to place keywords in these locations.

 42

Title tag
The title of the page that you see on the SERP, in browser tabs,
and when you share links on social networks is the Title Tag.

Title tags are fundamental for Googlebot to grasp the key

theme of the page, and also for users.

After all, the title is the first contact a reader has with the
text and can affect whether they click through to read it or
not. With this direct influence on your click-through-rate, this
tag is one of the most important on-page factors.

Therefore, as part of your SEO strategy, this tag should feature

your keyword, but also incentivize your user to access your page.
 43

META DESCRIPTION

Meta descriptions are the description of a page that appears

in search engine results, a snippet of the page with the title
and URL.

They also serve as a way to encourage users to access the

page, so they should be persuasive and descriptive about
what is offered.

Note that meta descriptions are not a direct ranking factor,

meaning Google doesn’t consider them in its algorithm.

But it’s still important to ensure your keyword shows up in

it, as it will appear in bold if it coincides with what the user
searched for.

Meta descriptions attract more clicks, so indirectly influence

your results.
 44

HEADING TAGS

Heading tags are code markup, which identifies titles

and subtitles in the text.

The H1 tag identifies the title on the page, yet differs from
the Title Tag.

If the goal of the Title Tag is to get users to click through,

H1 aims to get users to read the text. It also doesn’t have
the character limit of a Title Tag.

Take a look at this example:

Title Tag H1
 45

There is a structured order to heading tags,

with H2, H3, and so on.

These heading tags identify subtitles and show

the structure of your text, useful both for Google
and for your user.

Using these increases scanability.

It’s important to use keywords, and semantically-

related terms within these tags since Google
analyzes subtitles for its indexing and ranking.
 46

URLS FOR SEO

URLs are also targets for Googlebot. A descriptive URL is much easier to understand
— not only for bots but also for users.
Page URLs are crawled to get a sense of their central focus
since they generally use terms that summarize their content. Here are some good practices:

# Easy to interpret;
They need to be clear to users and readers. Check out this
# Short and friendly;
table I made with some of the most common URL mistakes:
# Contain the keyword;
# Match the title;
# Avoid articles, linking verbs and other complements.

Some examples of good URLs:

# “sitename/blog/digital-marketing/”
# ”sitename/storytelling/”
# ”sitename/courses”
 47

IMAGES FOR SEO Consider this example:

Google still can’t completely understand the content of an

image and needs your help to understand what it represents.
What can you do?

Use image optimization for SEO.

This strategy allows you to provide textual data about the

images. This can include alternative text (alt tag), filenames,
image captions, image URLs, and the context (the text around
the image).

The important component here is the alt text, which is Through these elements, Google can understand what is in
fundamental to the experience for individuals with visual the image, index it correctly in Google Image Search, and it
impairments, as a screen reader reads the alternative text becomes another source of traffic.
to describe the image to the user.
Other aspects concerning image optimization for SEO include
The alt text should always be a description of the image the size and format of image files so that they can be quickly
and contain the keyword. loaded and indexed.
 48

INTERNAL LINKS

The network of your site’s internal links also plays a role in

on-page SEO.

The primary function of links between internal pages is to guide

navigation and lead the user (and search engines) to other
relevant content.

But they also have a technical SEO function. The network

of internal links helps Google to find your content and better
understand your site, as it reveals the hierarchy between pages.

For example, the closer to the homepage and the more internal
links, the more important the page.

This link building strategy strengthens the authority of the blog

through the links and this is how a topic cluster strategy works.
 49

RICH SNIPPETS

Rich snippets are content fragments from the page which In this case, rich snippets provide us with a picture of the recipe,
provide additional information on the SERP. These can include a review, comments, and even how long it will take to make.
site links, reviews, the number of comments, product prices,
and more. Different from the usual results, right?

For example, here is the information provided through rich Rich snippets offer extra information about your pages
snippets when searching for “red velvet cupcake recipe”: to bots and users and highlight your link on SERPs, which
tends to increase your click-through-rate (CTR).

To display rich snippets, they need to be created with

structured data, as organized content is easier for the
Googlebot to read.

This can be accomplished by programmers or even by using

plugins, useful for WordPress sites.
 50

Two sites can help you implement rich snippets.

The first is Google, which offers a list of rich snippets where

you can identify the type you want to use, and they show you
the code to use.

The other site providing similar functionality is Schema.org.

Access it at Google Developers. Here’s an example with a recipe snippet.
 51

FEATURED SNIPPETS

Have you noticed how Google provides ready answers on its These are known as featured snippets and are excerpted
SERP for some searches? highlights of pages that provide direct results in
paragraphs, lists, or tables.

This is great for the user’s search experience! After all,

they get the answer they’re looking for even faster.

But if fewer visitors reach your pages, what’s the impact

on your traffic and results?

Keep calm. Featured snippets are a great opportunity

to increase your authority on a specific topic and
can lead to more traffic from the SERP, as the excerpts
include a link to where they came from.

On-page SEO strategies need to be competitive to reach

this “zero result” on Google.
 52

EAT

This acronym has become the focus of SEO experts. EAT

stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

Google adopted these terms to orient its assessment of

search result quality.

They were introduced in the documentation that guides the

evaluators who manually analyze the relevance of search
engine results.

They reveal what Google considers important when

evaluating the quality of content.

# The expertise of the author;

# The authority of the author, the content and the site;
# The trustworthiness of the author, the content, and the site.

As a result, you can follow these guidelines in your content

and SEO strategy to align with Google’s way of thinking.
 53

What is
off-page SEO?
Now, it’s time to examine the factors beyond your pages with
off-page SEO. What steps can you take to have more authority
in the market and show Google that you are a reference?

Here you need to consider that, unlike on-page SEO, with

off-page SEO, you don’t have complete control over the
optimization.

The choice to include backlinks to your site, mention or

directly search for your brand depends on others.

What you can do is increase your chances of this happening.

You can adopt link building, guest posting, redirects for broken
links, in addition to other strategies to reinforce your backlink
profile and create greater authority for your page.

Next, let’s learn some more about each of these strategies.

 54

WHAT IS LINK BUILDING

Links are the building blocks of the Link building is the construction of a network of links that point
internet. They connect one page to to your pages (known as backlinks) and strengthens your authority
another and allow users to navigate on the web.
and discover content.
Google’s algorithm understands that the more high quality
Just like users, bots also travel this backlinks your page receives, the greater its relevance to
interconnected network to index new the market.
content and understand which pages
are the most important, as one page But keep in mind that quantity and quality work together. There’s
transmits link juice and authority no benefit in receiving hundreds of backlinks if they all come from
to another. a single domain, untrustworthy site, or placed out of context.

Here we can see why link building To get a link building strategy to work, achieving high-quality
is so important to off-page SEO. backlinks is a must.
 55

WHAT ARE HIGH-QUALITY

BACKLINKS

As we’ve seen, Google acts to prevent actions that High-quality backlinks:

correspond to Black Hat.
# Are from sites with domain and page authority;
# Are from sites that Google trusts;
Link building was previously used extensively to generate
# Come from a variety of domains;
artificial authority, with schemes from link farms to the
# Are natural in the context of the page;
“super optimization” of anchor texts. # Use anchor text correctly;
# Are in a prominent position on the page
High-quality backlinks run contrary (at the start of the piece, for example);
to these tactics and demonstrate that # Are from sites connected to your sector.
the links you have received are on
merit and are relevant to trustworthy These are the main characteristics you should look for
references in your sector. in backlinks when planning a link building strategy.
 56

NOFOLLOW LINKS

Another important point about backlinks: the difference This can come in handy, for example, in comment
between dofollow and nofollow links. sections or for links shared on social networks, which are
frequently used for spam for building artificial authority.
By default, all links are “dofollow”. This attribute tells
bots that they should crawl the link and share authority But this doesn’t mean that nofollow links have no role to
from one page to the next. play in off-page SEO.

In contrast, the “nofollow” attribute prevents the bot Even though they don’t spread authority directly to
from following the link and passing authority to the other pages, they generate traffic and develop brand
linked page. awareness.
 57

LINK BUILDING TECHNIQUES

Let’s take a look at which link building techniques

you can employ to strengthen your authority.

Here are a few key ones!

LINK BAIT

Link bait is the most natural and efficient strategy.

It involves creating high-quality content that

receives backlinks organically without requiring
prospecting or partnerships.

To accomplish this, you should invest in creating rich

content, share data from exclusive research, provide
tools and resources as well as other forms of content
that are worthwhile assets to link or share.
 58

GUEST POSTS BRAND MENTIONS

Guest posting involves publishing posts on partner blogs as a guest Brand mentions, even without linking
author. It usually takes the form of trade: you create content for the to your site, are also valuable to SEO.
other blog’s audience in exchange for one or more links to your site. Google analyzes these to recognize if
your brand really exists and how well
If the links employed are “dofollow”, this can attract new visitors known it is.
and lead to a greater authority.
You can also search for any unlinked
But it’s important to engage this strategy in moderation. If Google mentions and identify opportunities to
sees you receiving a large number of backlinks in a short period of receive high-quality backlinks. Simply
time, it may understand this as black hat techniques and punish get in touch with the administrator and
your pages. politely suggest including a link.
 59

BROKEN LINKS

What happens when a site’s URL structure changes or

content is removed? This can result in broken links across
the site.

If you’ve ever clicked on a link and been brought to a 404

Error page, you’ve witnessed firsthand how broken links can
result in lost opportunities and communicate less authority.

But if you come across links on sites with related content

to your own, it’s a chance to recommend replacing those
broken links with ones to your content.

Several tools exist to uncover broken links, such as

Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or Check My Links:
 60

LINK BUILDING TOOLS

There are a variety of link building tools available, both free Examples include using Google Search Console to request
and paid, or with a focus on specific actions or specialization. Google reject backlinks from untrustworthy sites or Google
Alert to notify you whenever your brand is mentioned to
Tools including Majestic, Ahrefs, Moz Link Explorer, and identify backlink opportunities.
SEMrush offer a complete analysis on a page’s backlinks
profile, from the number of connections to the quality of the
anchor text.

Some offer proprietary indicators to aid in this analysis,

such as Majestic’s Trust Flow and Citation Flow or Domain
Authority and Page Authority from Moz.

These tools are paid options but offer some resources

for free.

Furthermore, you can work with more specific tools to focus

on determining outcomes.
Source: SEJ
 61

HOW DOES TECHNICAL SEO WORK?

SEO is a vast universe that includes more technical aspects

related to your site’s structure. Let’s take a look at these
factors and how to optimize them!

Technical SEO is a key part of on-page SEO. It includes all of

the optimizations you can make to the internal structure of
a site — the code and underlying architecture — in an effort to
make it faster and easier to understand, crawl, and index.

In the next topics, we’ve brought the main elements technical

SEO can optimize.
 62

SITEMAP

A sitemap is a document that lays out

the relationship between all of the pages
on a site and information about them,
such as when they were most recently
updated or how often changes are made.

Its function within SEO is to provide this

information to search engines to make it
easier to find and index the URLs.

Although search engines already get this

information through their bots, sitemaps
simplify the process and ensure all pages You can either create a sitemap manually or through tools and
get indexed. plugins, then submit it via Google Search Console.
 63

ROBOTS.TXT UX (USER EXPERIENCE)

Robots.txt is an additional User Experience and SEO are two approaches that support each other.
document located in your site’s We’ve seen here that the priority for search engines is to offer the best
root folder, which lets Google know search and navigation experience to users looking for something.
which pages on your site should
be ignored and not appear in search And this includes the experience on your site.
results.
But what does user experience involve? It covers how sites are developed
You can use robots.txt to prevent to focus on the actions and responses of users to address their needs.
bots from accessing sensitive data,
such as your admin login page According to Peter Morville, president of Semantic Studios, there are
(“/wp-admin/” on WordPress seven essential characteristics to good UX.
sites, for example), or scripts and
stylesheets that aren’t important. # Useful;
# Usable;
It’s important to remember robots. # Desirable;
txt if your pages aren’t appearing # Findable;
in search engine results, as they # Accessible;
may have been added to the list # Valuable;
by accident. # Credible.
 64

PAGE SPEED

How long a page takes to load is one of the main

classification factors.

Google itself openly discussed that speed is a key ranking

factor — for desktop search in 2010, and mobile search
in 2018.

It should be mentioned that speed alone won’t get you to

the top of the results, but you won’t get there without it.

A fast page speed won’t lift you

above the competition, but a slow
one will lower your ranking. This led to Google offering a free testing tool:
PageSpeed Insights.
For Google, the quality of a user’s search experience depends
on the agility of information, as people have become used to It provides a speed diagnosis report with tips on how to
not having to wait for what they want to find. improve the load time through image and code optimizations.
 65

MOBILE-FIRST INDEX RESPONSIVENESS

Since cell phones are more common than computers, mobile Implementing a responsive site design is one of the strongest
search has overtaken desktop search. recommendations for making your site mobile-friendly.

With more traffic from mobile devices, Google began to This technique allows your site to have one single version,
prioritize results from sites that offer a strong mobile which can then adapt to different screen sizes.
experience.
Besides a responsive layout, there are two other techniques
In 2015, Google announced that mobile-friendly had become a you could consider adopting.
ranking factor for search on mobile devices, which resulted in
many sites adopting responsive layouts. # Mobile URLs, with a different URL than the desktop
version (for example, m.domain.com);
A similar impact was brought about with the launch of the # Dynamic Serving, where the two versions have the
Mobile-First Index in 2016, which considered mobile versions same URL but use alternate CSS and HTML depending
of pages first when ranking. on the device.

So if you haven’t yet adopted these trends, it’s important To get a better understanding of how your site performs on mobile,
to focus on improving usability and the experience of your you can check through Google’s mobile device compatibility test
content on users’ mobile devices. to get recommendations on optimizations you can make.
 66

AMPs

Accelerated Mobile Pages is a further

initiative to improve the mobile search
experience.

It’s an open-source code project initially led

by Google, which aims to develop static
content pages that load faster on mobile
devices.

These can be identified on mobile SERPs by

the small lightning bolt icon next to the URL
— and are given preference in the ranking.
Take a look at the following example:
Source: AddThis
 67

SEO AUDITS

An SEO audit is an important step to make sure you take as

part of your technical SEO strategy, especially at the start of
your optimization project.

It can be used to identify problems involving page speed,

usability (especially more mobile), crawling, and other errors
that affect users’ navigation and site ranking.

Here are a few of the elements that an audit can diagnose:

# Broken links;
# Crawling errors;
# Redirect errors;
# Duplicate content;
# Blocked pages (robots.txt, no-index, nofollow);
# Pages that are loading slowly.

Screaming Frog is one of the best tools to solve these issues,

offering in-depth reports on the topic listed above.

But an audit can also involve other tools, including SEMrush

and Google Search Console.
 68

What is local SEO?

One of Google’s priorities in recent years has been Similar to featured snippets, the search engine offers
understanding the intent behind the local marketing. information from Google My Business directly in the search
results in such a way that users don’t need to access the
Search engines understand that searches made at certain brand’s site.
locations require contextual results, offering practical and
objective information as opposed to the list of links traditional Based on this, optimization for businesses with a physical
SERPs provide. location — known as local SEO — has a few specific details
that require attention.
For these searches, Google created local search algorithms
to prioritize results in the region the user is located or What does this mean for your optimization strategy?
included in the search. Find out next!
 69

LOCAL KEYWORDS

To display local results, Google attempts to This is useful for individuals planning trips, for example.
understand the user’s local search intention.
So keyword research for a local SEO strategy should consider these
In the case of searches for “pizzerias”, “pizza variations of search intention, not simply those with your city.
near me” or similar terms, Google takes into
Consider the following cases:
consideration the user’s location when the search
was made and offers businesses in the area. # Terms that identify a sector: e.g., pizzeria, pizza, neapolitan
pizzeria;
But if the user searches for “Boca Raton pizza”, # Modifier terms: e.g., best pizza, cheap pizza;
the SERP will display results for the region in the # Geographic modifiers: e.g., pizza in Boca Raton, pizzeria
search, regardless of the user’s location. downtown, pizza near me.
 70

For your content to make it to the Local Pack, you need to

register your company on Google My Business. This tool
offers several resources for participating in local businesses.

You can submit your business name, address, phone number,

business hours, and also receive ratings, answer users, upload
photos, list your menu, and other specific details according to
your business type.
GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Take advantage of the opportunities offered by registering and
Google My Business is the main ranking factor for local SEO. engaging your users to improve your chances of showing up
in the Local Pack.
At the top of a local search SERP, Google displays the Local
Pack, a box with three specific results for the user, based on Google gives preference to businesses that have provided
information taken from Google My Business. And you should the most information, especially those with a high number of
fight to make sure you show up there! strong reviews.
 71

RANKING FACTORS RELEVANCE

Google uses three key ranking factors for local Relevance includes the relationship between the search
search: relevance, proximity, and prominence. keyword and the product or service offered.

The search engine reveals these criteria on its When searching for pizzas, the user doesn’t want to see
page, outlining recommendations for local ranking. japanese restaurants, right?

A combination of these factors is analyzed to This is why it’s so important to complete your Google My
provide the best results. For example, if a company Business registration with all possible information since that’s
is farther away from the user, but provides delivery, how Google is able to make these connections.
it may rank higher.
If a user searches for “all-you-can-eat pizza”, Google will only
Let’s examine each of these factors in detail. return locations with that option.
 72

PROXIMITY

Proximity refers to the distance business is from the user’s

location or included location included in the search.

Google considers the closest results as better.

 73

PROMINENCE

Prominence assesses how popular the business is in a given region, based

on online and offline factors.

If the business’s online presence isn’t so strong, but it’s

a well-known and trusted brand offline, it can still achieve a good ranking

But it also strongly considers ratings and positive reviews from Google
My Business users, plus the traditional on-page and off-page SEO used by
the site.

The more trust Google gives on your business based on these elements,
the higher your local ranking.

Conclusion
So now that you’ve read our complete SEO guide, you’re ready to optimize
your site and reach the top results on Google!
 74

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