Google’s 2025 SEO Algorithm Update: Key Changes & Strategies

The SEO landscape may feel like a constantly shifting puzzle if you’re a marketing manager. With Google’s evolving algorithms, staying ahead requires strategy, adaptation, and insight into the latest trends. The 2025 Google algorithm update will be no different.

Expected to launch mid-year, this update is set to focus on user experience, AI-powered search intent analysis, deeper content relevance, and more rigorous ranking criteria.

This article explores the key changes you can expect from Google in 2025 and provides practical preparation strategies. By aligning with these requirements, you’ll ensure your team stays ahead of the competition and maintains visibility in search engine results.

1. AI-Driven Search Intent Optimization

Google’s sophisticated AI models, including MUM (Multitask Unified Model), now interpret user queries in powerful ways. These advancements allow Google to look beyond keyword matching and deeply understand the intent behind searches.

What This Means for Marketing Managers:

• The traditional keyword-first approach will no longer suffice. Instead, content must directly address search intent—whether informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial.
• Tools like Frase.io and SurferSEO can help you analyze search intent, structure content effectively, and design content that resonate with users.

Pro Tip: Use AI-powered research tools to pinpoint intent-based content gaps, build topic clusters, and provide more precise, contextual answers to user queries.

2. Core Web Vitals Enhancements & UX Signals

Page Experience will become even more important in 2025 as Google adjusts its ranking signals for improved user satisfaction. This includes major refinements to Core Web Vitals such as LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift), and the introduction of Interaction to Next Paint (INP), replacing First Input Delay (FID).

How to Prepare:

• Optimize Page Speed by reducing image sizes, lazy loading non-essential assets, and minifying CSS/JavaScript.
• Conduct regular audits using tools like Google Lighthouse to identify and fix UI/UX issues.
• Focus on making pages visually stable and highly responsive across all devices, especially mobile.

Why It Matters: Click-through rates and conversions plummet when visitors encounter lagging pages or poor layouts. Prioritizing UX is critical for traffic and user retention.

3. E-E-A-T Enhancements (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust)

E-E-A-T is central to credibility in Google’s eyes, and the 2025 update will reward websites that demonstrate stronger expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.

Best Practices for E-E-A-T:

• Showcase Author Expertise: Include detailed author bios highlighting credentials, industry experience, and professional achievements.
• Use well-researched, fact-checked content with linked citations and reputable sources to boost authority and trust.
• Provide external references or social proof, such as partnerships and positive customer reviews.

Pro Tip: Create topic hubs and pillar pages that reinforce your brand’s leadership on specific subjects.

4. Structured Data & Schema Markup Expansion

Google’s ability to parse structured data ensures that sites implementing schema markup will have a competitive edge.

What You Should Do:

• Implement common schema types, such as FAQ Schema, How-to Schema, and Product Schema.
• Use Google’s Rich Results and Schema testing tools to validate whether your structured data is error-free.
• Focus on JSON-LD format for efficient schema implementation.

Why It Matters: Featured snippets and enhanced SERP visibility build user trust and drive significant organic traffic.

5. AI-Generated Content Must Add Value

Avoid Penalties:

• Always fact-check AI-generated content and ensure a human editor reviews it for readability and accuracy.
• Avoid over-reliance on AI-written content; instead, supplement it with unique insights, case studies, and research.
• Use AI responsibly by adopting tools like Frase.io to optimize content structure and research, not replace human touch.

Pro Tip: Blend the efficiency of AI tools with the depth of human expertise to create impactful, SEO-optimized content.

6. Mobile-First & Multimodal Search Adaptation

Steps to Stay Multimodal:

• Ensure your website is fully responsive and optimized for mobile.
• Optimize your images and videos with appropriate alt text, keywords, and structured data.
• Add video transcripts and captions to make multimedia content accessible and indexable.

Pro Tip: Prepare for Google Lens queries by creating high-quality keyword-optimized imagery on your website.

7. Conversational & Voice Search Optimization

How to Adapt:

• Incorporate question-based headings, utilizing formats like “What is…”, “How to…”, or “Why does…”.
• Answer queries clearly and concisely to maximize your chances of being featured in People Also Ask sections.

Why It Matters: Positioning within voice search results can drive significant local and informational traffic to your site.

8. What Google’s 2025 Changes Mean for Marketing Managers

Key Takeaways:

• Prioritize search intent and user experience.
• Leverage AI tools for research, content optimization, and structured data implementation.
• Build credibility with authoritative, well-researched content from experts.
• Think beyond just the written word—images, videos, and voice queries are integral to future SEO success.

Future-Proof Your SEO Strategy Today

Want to optimize your SEO today? Contact us for an SEO audit to help you stay ahead of Google’s evolving algorithms.

The post Google 2025 SEO Requirements: What to Expect & How to Adapt appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Image alt text (or alternative text) are short descriptions (about 125 characters maximum) of images on a web page. You’ll notice them when an image is slow or doesn’t load, they’re the red text describing the image.

Alt text is used by search algorithms when indexing and ranking your page, so they’re great for SEO. Further, the upcoming Mobile-first and Page Experience algorithms will require alt text to improve search rank. Alt text is considered part of image optimization for SEO.

And, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires alt text on websites among other rules. Chapter 5, Section 3 C. II. states “If images are used, including photos, graphics, scanned images, or image maps, make sure to include a text equivalent, by adding “alt” tags or long descriptions, for each.” You should read Chapter 5 to identify other ADA website accessibility requirements. Class action lawsuits have been filed against companies over alt tag non-compliance, including Target, Beyonce, Winn-Dixie, Domino’s Pizza, Nike, CVS, Harvard and more. You can use the Google Accessibility Chrome extension to check your page’s accessibility.

This article is intended to outline best practice examples of image alt tags to help you implement these tags properly on your website.

How to write alt tag text

Creating great image alt text for web pages begins with keyword research. Keywords define the content of the page, and selected images support the content and should be focused on the researched keywords. Don’t stuff keywords into alt text or select an image that doesn’t match the keywords or description; that’s considered black hat SEO and websites/pages are penalized with low or no search rank.

When it comes to writing the best alt text we recommend Google’s images best practices guidelines page as a resource (read the page for more image SEO tips). A few tips from that resource page on image selection are:

• Provide good context: Make sure that your visual content is relevant to the topic of the page. We suggest that you display images only where they add original value to the page. We particularly discourage pages where neither the images or the text are original content.
• Optimize placement: Whenever possible, place images near relevant text. When it makes sense, consider placing the most important image near the top of the page.
• Don’t embed important text inside images: Avoid embedding text in images, especially important text elements like page headings and menu items, because not all users can access them (and page translation tools won’t work on images). To ensure maximum accessibility of your content, keep text in HTML, provide alt text for images.

Best practices in writing alt tags include keeping the text less than 125 characters, front loading the keyword, and creating a full, easily understood sentence that includes words describing the action in the photo if there is any.

Here’s Google’s example starting with bad, better and best for writing alt text:

• Bad example (missing alt text): alt=””
• Bad example (keyword stuffing): alt=”puppy dog baby dog pup pups puppies doggies pups litter puppies dog retriever labrador wolfhound setter pointer puppy jack russell terrier puppies dog food cheap dogfood puppy food”
• Better example: alt=”puppy”
• Best example: alt=”Dalmatian puppy playing fetch”

You’ll see that the “best” example:

• Front-loaded the main keyword “Dalmatian puppy”.
• Described the image in less than 125 characters.
• Created a full, easily understood sentence (don’t write cryptic descriptions).
• Included the image action, “playing fetch”.

When writing your alt text remember to do your keyword research first, write the page content, find images matching keywords, keep the descriptions short, accurate and human readable. Also, test your pages for accessibility.

by Andy Hoover of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

The post Writing Image Alt Text for SEO: Best Practices for 2021 appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Blogs used to be a major SEO ranking factor, but are primarily now used for informational purposes, like answering searcher’s questions on topics. Publishing blogs covering issues & topics within your market are still very worthwhile as they can drive well-qualified traffic to your website. SEO is required to rank your blog well organically, and that is the primary role SEO takes in creating your blogs.

Search engine optimization (SEO) for blogs is intended to increase traffic to your web page. Search engines (Google, Bing, Baidu,….) have guidelines their search algorithms look for to assign page rank for blogs, or any web page. Page rank is where your web page appears in search results when searchers use a search engine to research a topic; you want your blog to appear on page 1 of search results as close to the #1 organic position as possible. Organic means non-paid results, usually paid results appear above non-paid.

Writing a blog for SEO isn’t much different than SEO for a product or service page. You need to follow SEO rules or guidelines set by search engines. When a search engine crawler visits your website, it uses an algorithm to give your individual pages organic search rank. Google is the most used search engine in the United States and other search engines use similar rules, so if you use Google’s rules you’ll meet standards for other US search engines.

Blog SEO Best Practices Guidelines

The following is a list of blog SEO guidelines that can be used for almost any web page, blog or non-blog.

• Content
  • Create original, interesting content focused on your topic. If another source is quoted, use references and point a link to it (make sure you have the author’s permission). Duplicate or “borrowed” content won’t improve your blog’s search rank and can even result in a penalty.
  • No sales pitches! A blog should focus entirely on an informational topic. Save Success Stories and Testimonials for a…Success Stories and Testimonials category.
    • Close with a non-sales pitch invitation…like, “Name has over 20 years’ experience in digital marketing. He can be contacted here (add a link).”
  • Repurpose old blogs: yes, old blogs can be brought up-to-date. Include new information related to the topic, add a video, new images.
  • Questions: searchers using mobile devices frequently use the microphone and ask a question, like, “Where can I find guidelines for blog SEO?”. Research the most popularly searched questions on your product or service and include it as a header followed by a great answer!
  • Research other top-ranking blogs on your topic. You’ll be competing with top-ranked blogs, so why not find out how they did so well? Check the content, METAs, headers, links, etc….

• Keywords
  • When you decide on your blog’s topic, start researching keywords to include. Look for a main keyword (the general focus of the blog) and secondary keywords (keywords that support the main keyword).
  • Tools (free and paid)
    • Google (free): use a search engine like Google. Type in your blog topic, scroll to the bottom and you’ll find a list of common search terms.
    • Google Ads Keyword Planner (free if you have an account). If you have a Google Ads account this is a great place to find keywords and search volume.
    • Google Analytics (free): use this free tool to find search terms related to topics your visitors are using.
    • Google Search Console (free): find more search terms visitors use to find your site.
    • Google Trends: type in your topic or keyword and get insights on how searchers are finding pages with similar topics.
    • Paid tools: SEMRush, Moz, SpyFu to name a few. But try the free tools first.

• METAs
  • METAs are the search engine results you see as a result when you type in a search query into Google,. You will bold title followed by a description. Searchers on average decide which search result to click on in less than a half-second. METAs can be cryptic, they should show main features of your blog including front-loading the main and if possible secondary keywords. Also, create them for mobile search using the lengths listed below.
    • Titles: Include the keyword first, then show main features.
      • Example: Blog SEO | How to Search Engine Optimize Your Blog | Company Name
      • Don’t go beyond 68 characters excluding your company or organization name.
    • Descriptions: also front-load the main keyword. Follow it with as many features as possible within 130 characters or less, and close with a call-to-action (CTA).
    • URLs (slugs): front-load the keyword. Don’t create a long slug, keep it short, descriptive and keyword rich.

• Headings (h1, h2,…h6)
  • Headings help search engines understand the content of your blog or web page. They’re html code that act as headlines. Focus the <h1> on the general page content and main keyword. The following headers <h2>, <h3>,…<h6> should describe sub-topics about your overall blog topic in cascading order. It’s ok to use several <h2>’s and not use all headers. Example follows:
    • <h1>Main topic of the page including main keyword focus </h1>
    • <h2>A subtopic of the page based on the main keyword</h2>
    • <h3>A subtopic of <h2> </h3>
  • Multiple <h2>, <h3>,…<h6> can be used
    • Resource link on Headings

• Internal linking
  • Link other pages on your website to the new blog and add links from the blog to internal pages. This will share “link juice” within your website, increasing organic search rank for those pages.

• Backlinks or external links
  • Backlinks or external links are links from websites other than your own to your website or a webpage. Reach out to sites you believe will be interested in sharing your blog or including it as a reference in their blogs.

• Image descriptions (alt tags)
  • Include images related to your blog topic and write short descriptions using researched keywords. Be sure your descriptions accurately describe the image, otherwise search engines will consider it keyword stuffing, which will cause a loss of search rank.

• Categories
  • WordPress, and most content management systems (CMS), provide categories to organize your blogs or other pages. Use the Category title and description boxes to SEO your blog categories.

• Videos
  • Include a short video describing your blog, or if it’s a “how-to” a longer video detailing each step. Use YouTube’s SEO section to include a keyword rich title and description and provide a transcript of the audio.

• Blog location (bullets not working, insert correct bullets)
  • Make sure your blog is within your website’s domain. Sometimes bloggers use a separate domain or blogging service. Doing this will allow searchers to find your website and you’ll get valuable link “juice” credit from search engines.

Following the above blog SEO guidelines will help your blog rank well in organic search & increase traffic. The same concepts can be applied to almost any web page when SEO-ing your website.

By Andy Hoover
Manager, Search Engine and Social Media Marketing
Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Andy has over 20 years’ experience optimizing SEO and paid digital marketing for SMBs to large enterprises. He can be contacted here.

The post Blog SEO Optimization Best Practices: Guidelines for 2021 appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Google is releasing a major algorithm update in 2021 that will affect search engine rank for businesses. This update will complement Google’s Mobile First indexing switch in March 2021 that assigns page search results rank based on mobile-only ranking factors. Over 60% of US search is from mobile devices, and the share is expected to increase every year.

The focus of Page Experience will be measured by Core Web Vitals metrics found in your Google Search Console. They are defined as:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): “The amount of time to render the largest content element visible in the viewport, from when the user requests the URL. The largest element is typically an image or video, or perhaps a large block-level text element. This is important because it tells the reader that the URL is actually loading.” (Google Search Console Help)

• First Input Delay (FID): “The time from when a user first interacts with your page (when they clicked a link, tapped on a button, and so on) to the time when the browser responds to that interaction. This measurement is taken from whatever interactive element that the user first clicks. This is important on pages where the user needs to do something, because this is when the page has become interactive.” (Google Search Console Help)

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): “The amount that the page layout shifts during the loading phase. The score is rated from 0–1, where zero means no shifting and 1 means the most shifting. This is important because having pages elements shift while a user is trying to interact with it is a bad user experience.” (Google Search Console Help)

How Can I Monitor My Website’s Page Experience Metrics?

The location to monitor your page’s Page Experience is Google Search Console. In the left-hand menu expand the Enhancements list, and at the top are Core Web Vitals. Click on Core Web Vitals and you will see two reports, one for mobile and the other for desktop:

• Mobile (Core Web Vitals)
• Desktop (Core Web Vitals)

Click on Open Report for either and you’ll see how your web pages are performing.

Keeping your Page Experience up-to-date will help with search rank, and along with the Mobile Usability report (just below Core Web Vitals in the menu) you’ll understand how to improve search rank by optimizing your pages for Mobile-first indexing.

What Resources are Available to Keep Up-to-Date on Page Experience Developments?

There are five excellent resources to monitor development of Google’s 2021 Page Experience update:

• Google’s Search Console Core Web Vitals Help (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en)
• Google Webmaster Blog (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/)
• Search Engine Land (https://searchengineland.com/)
• Search Engine Journal (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/)
• Search Engine Roundtable (https://www.seroundtable.com/)

Google’s Page Experience update is coming and will impact your website’s page positions in search results. Now is the time to learn about the new update and begin changes to your website.

By Andy Hoover
Manager, Search Engine and Social Media Marketing
Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Need help preparing your business website for the Page Experience update? Contact us.

The post What is Google’s Page Experience Update and how will it Affect Your SEO Marketing in 2021? appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

One of the ranking factors of Mobile-first search engine optimization (SEO) are voice searches. Voice searches are unique as searchers usually ask a question, like, “Where can I get the nearest pizza?”, or “What should I include in my kit?”. Whether your company is B2C (business-to-consumer) or B2B (business-to-business) searchers can find your site by asking questions about products and services. How can you monetize voice search on your revenue generating pages? Read more.

Making Money from Voice Search Terms

Remember your FAQ page? What if instead of landing on your FAQs searchers went directly to a product or service page? Your web page would answer their question and offer a product or service, with a compelling call-to-action (CTA); this will help increase your leads, sales and ROI. How are questions added to pages? Keep reading….

There are several ways to add questions to pages. One is within content, as in the above paragraph. You can add questions to the META titles or description, the slug, headlines, at the bottom of the page, almost anywhere. But, you want the questions and answers to be conspicuous. Stick to headlines, or a cluster of Q&A’s at the bottom of the page. Now you know where to place your page-by-page Q&A’s, so how do you get the questions?

Three quick sources for questions:

1. Search on a keyword. Google and other search engines sometimes list the most popular questions just below the first search results.
2. SpyFu (the free version). Type a keyword into the Keyword Research box and check the Questions box on the right-hand-side.
3. If no questions are found in search or tools, ask your teams (sales, front-end, etc…). They’ll have great insight!

Keep the question answers to two or three keyword rich sentences. Use the keywords focused on your product of service page’s content. You should see an increase in traffic to your pages.

By Andy Hoover, Manager, Search Engine and Social Media Marketing for Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Andy has over 20-years’ experience with SEO and paid digital advertising, successfully creating, implementing and managing campaigns for SMBs to Fortune 500’s.

Is your business website meeting goals? It’s time for an SEO audit. Contact us and we’ll give a free audit with consultation.

The post How Can Your Web Pages Rank Well for Voice Search SEO? appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

This SEO Guide will help you reach your target organic search audiences.

This SEO guide can improve your web page’s organic search position for top revenue generating keywords. The higher your pages appear in organic search for those keywords the more qualified traffic you get from in-market searchers needing your products or services. This translates into increased leads, sales and revenue.

With this guide you’ll learn step-by-step about key SEO factors that’ll boost your organic page rank, including:

• Keyword research: how to find the best audience targeted keywords for each page.
• How to combine keywords into phrases for incorporation into page content.
• How to write META tags: learn how to write eye-catching, compelling META Titles and Descriptions (your search result has less than one second to get the attention of in-market searchers!).
• Image alt-tags: keyword rich descriptions of images.
• Headings: each section of a page should be divided into sub-sections with keyword rich headings.
• XML sitemaps: get your product and service pages indexed on search engines with XML sitemaps.

What are the Goals of an SEO Guide?

• A short step-by-step guide on SEO for startups and small business web sites.
• Make changes to your website to improve your visibility in Google and Bing.
• Find the top keywords that have lots of traffic for your topic.
• How to add those keywords to your page.
• Your audience can find your page in Google.

How to do SEO Keyword Research

Find the Keywords

The first step is to find keywords that are both relevant and have lots of traffic. We will do this by using several tools and steps. At the end, we will have one spreadsheet with seven or eight worksheets. One of the worksheets will be the final collection of top keywords.

How can Google Ads Help with Keyword Research?

There are several research options to develop a keyword list in Google Ads. We recommend using both to compare results, the first (Discover new keywords), and then the second (Get search volume and forecasts).

1. Discover new keywords

Open Google Ads | Tools | Keyword Planner and select “Discover new keywords”.
(see Figure 1 below)

Figure 1: Select “Discover new keywords”

• Select if you want to start with seed keywords (Start with Keywords) or a website address (Start with a Website— see Figure 2 below).
• Set the location and language. If you are interested in keywords for France, set the Targeting to France. Set Languages to French. If you’re interested only in Canada, don’t set the location to “All Locations”. That will include data for South America, Africa, and so on, which will mess up your data (see Figure 2 below).

Figure 2: Important: Select your default language and country.

• If you use Start with Keywords: add up to 10 keywords and use a domain (website) address (either yours or a competitor’s).
• If you use Start with a Website: enter your website address or a competitor’s. Select the entire website, or a specific page to research one product or service.
  Click “Get Results”
• Set the Date Range to the last four years to get the most data (see Figure 3 below).

Figure 3: Set your “Date Range” to at least 4 years back.

• Click Download Keyword Ideas in the top Left corner to get your keywords.
• Add each spreadsheet of keywords to a main spreadsheet.

2. Get search volume and forecasts

Once you’ve developed a list of keywords from “Discover new keywords” you can “See search volume and other historical metrics for your keywords, as well as forecasts for how they might perform in the future.” (Google Keyword Planner)

• Click on “Get search volume and forecasts” (see Figure 4 below).

Figure 4: Check search volume and forecasts for your keywords.

• Copy and paste your keywords from “Discover new keywords” and any other lists into the box or upload your keyword list file (see Figure 5 below).

Figure 5: Copy and paste or upload a file with your keywords here. Then click “Get Started”.

Click “Get Started”

In the next screen you will see forecasts of how your keywords within a campaign will perform, negative keywords and historical metrics (a dash “-“ means there’s not enough data) (see Figure 6 below).

Figure 6: Performance forecasts, negative keywords and historical metrics for your keyword list.

Competitor Research with Google Ads

Instead of keywords and your company’s URL, you can insert your competitors’ URL into the Google Ads Keyword Planner tool. This shows what Google thinks your competitor’s website is about.

• Make a list of five similar competitors. They should be in your market and generally about the same size as your company.
• Go to Google Ads | Tools & Settings | Keyword Planner (see Figure 7 below).

Figure 7: Use Keyword Planner to check your competitor’s keywords.

• Repeat steps 1 (Discover new keywords) and 2 (Get search volume and forecasts) from above for your five competitor’s websites.
• Copy the five spreadsheets into your main spreadsheet. Copy each spreadsheet and paste it as a worksheet. Name the worksheets Competitor-1, Competitor-2, Competitor-3, and so on. Use the names of your competitors.
• If a website is new or Google’s computer doesn’t understand it, there may not be keywords for it or Google shows wrong keywords.
• You should check your own website. If the displayed keywords are relevant, then you’ve done a good job. But if Google shows irrelevant keywords or very few keywords, then your site’s content is unclear.

More Keyword Research with Google Ads

Google Ads has another tool to show keywords: the Search Terms report (see Figure 8 below).

• Set the calendar to All Time.
• Select Keywords | Search Terms.

Figure 8: Use the Search Terms Report to find additional keywords.

• This shows you a table of keywords that brought traffic to your site. This includes keywords in your Google Ads account. It also includes keywords that are not in your Google Ads account.
• Click the down arrow to download the table as a spreadsheet : to the upper right, just above the table (see Figure 8 above).
• Keep the following columns: Search Term, Added/Excluded, Campaign, Ad Group, Clicks, Impressions. You may delete the other columns.
• Sort the list by impressions.
• Copy this spreadsheet into your main spreadsheet.

How can Google Analytics be used for SEO Keyword Research?

Still here? Okay, next tool. Let’s use Google Analytics to get more keywords. This shows more keywords that people use to reach your site. For this to work, you must first install Google Search Console and tie it to your analytics Account. View the following links to set up Google Analytics, Google Search Console (GSC) and how to add GSC to Google Analytics. (note: Google Analytics will fully incorporate GSC, but until then these instructions are necessary.)

Setting up Google Analytics:

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008015?hl=en

Setting up Google Search Console (GSC):

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34592?hl=en

Adding GSC to Google Analytics:

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1308621?hl=en

• Open Google Analytics | Acquisition | Search Console | Queries.
• Sort by clicks (click the heading “Clicks”).
• You’ll notice that the top keyword is “(not set)”. For no real reason, Google won’t show you a bunch of keywords for your site. But you get these from other tools, don’t you? So, what’s the point for Google to not show these? Whatever.
• At the right-bottom of the screen, it shows that you are viewing the first 10 rows of 2,000 rows. Set this to show as many rows as possible.
• Download the spreadsheet. Keep the columns “Search Query, Clicks, Impressions”. You can delete the rest.
• Add this as a worksheet to your main spreadsheet.

Note: Look at the top 10-30 keywords. You may think your website is one thing but most visitors come to your site for an entirely different topic. You may want to expand the top pages or add additional pages based on those keywords. Write metatags for those pages that include the search terms that people are using.

Level of Indexation

While we’re in Google Search Console, let’s look at the Index Coverage report. This tells us how many pages of your website have been indexed by Google.

• Go to Google Search Console | Index | Coverage (see Figure 9 below).
• At the top, the Index Coverage report shows “All known pages”. These are the pages Google has found on your site. They are broken down into four categories:
  1. Error: “These are pages that couldn’t be indexed for some reason.”
  2. Valid with warning: “These are pages that have been indexed, but there are some issues, and we’re not sure if they are intentional on your part.”
  3. Valid: “These pages have been indexed.”
  4. Excluded: “These are pages that were intentionally not indexed.”

Figure 9: Use Google Search Console to make certain your pages are indexed in Google.

• Compare the Valid number with the number of pages on your site. If you have 70 pages, then 60 / 70 = .857 X 100 = 85.7%. This means 86% of your site has been indexed, and are considered valid by Google.
• I’ve often seen indexation levels at 15% or 20%. That’s pretty bad; most of the website is unfindable. You should have 95% or greater indexation.
• To get high indexation, create an XML site map, image site map, mobile site map and news site map. Wait a few days and check your indexation again.
• Of course, nothing with Google is this easy. Just because your webpage is in Google’s database doesn’t mean your page will be found. You have to be in the database, and you need to have traffic to the page.
• If the page doesn’t have traffic, the page is spammy (you use too many keywords and so on), or the page has errors that need to be corrected, or the page has duplicate content (80% or more of the text is a copy of other pages), then your page will be in Google’s index, but Google will lower its ranking so much that nobody will see it.

Final Step: Combine the Worksheets

By now, you have ten or fifteen worksheets in your spreadsheet.

• Create a new worksheet and name it “Top-Keywords”.
• Copy all of the worksheets into the Top-Keywords worksheet. You may end up with several thousand keywords.
• You now have a list of all of the keywords for your industry/market.
• You only need the columns Keyword and Average Monthly Searches.
• If there are keywords without data for Average Monthly Searches, make a copy of those and use Google Ads | Tools & Settings | Keyword Planner | Get search volume and forecasts to get search volume data.
• Sort the list by “Avg. Monthly Searches”.
• You only need to look at the keywords with lots of monthly searches.
• Go through the list and pick out the keywords that are relevant to your project.
• Combine Keywords in Phrases.

Look for keywords that can be combined into a phrase. For example, you have keywords such as “best charity” and “donate money”. You can combine these into one phrase (“donate money to the best charity”) which covers both keywords. Combine as many keywords as you can.

Which Pages for SEO?

If you have 10-15 pages, you can do the SEO work in a few days. But if you have 50,000 pages (or 1.5m pages…), that’s too much. And there’s no point in doing all of those pages. Some SEO companies will offer to fix all 50,000 pages, but that’s a waste of your money. There’s no point doing SEO work on pages that don’t appear in search engines. Do SEO only on pages which bring new users. How to find those?

1. Go to Google Search Console | Performance | Pages tab. Check yes for all of the boxes (Clicks, Impressions, Position). Select the Pages tab. Set the date range as far back as possible (see Figure 10 below).
2. The graph shows your website’s pages in Google. These are the pages that people see in Google. Download the list (click the down arrow icon).
3. Now go to Google Analytics | Behavior | Site Content | Landing Pages.
4. Sort the table by New Users. These are the pages where new users come to your site. Download this table.

Figure 10: Also use Google Search Console to determine which pages to SEO.

1. Combine both of these tables.
2. Look for pages with lots of impressions, lots of clicks, and high ranking (position 1, 2, or 3). Make a list of those pages.
3. Do very good SEO work on these pages.

• Go to Google Ads | Tools | Keyword Planner.
• Instead of pasting keywords into the first box (“Search for New Keywords Using a Phrase, Website, or Category”), paste your competitor’s URL in the box “Your Landing Page”.
• Copy the five spreadsheets into your main spreadsheet. Copy each spreadsheet and paste it as a worksheet. Name the worksheets Competitor-1, Competitor-2, Competitor-3, and so on. Use the names of your competitors.
• If a website is new or Google’s computer doesn’t understand it, there may not be keywords for it or Google shows wrong keywords.
• You should check your own website. If the displayed keywords are relevant, then you’ve done a good job. But if Google shows irrelevant keywords or very few keywords, then your site’s content is unclear.

How do I Use Keywords in Meta-Tags?

Before we take the next step of reviewing competitors’ meta-tags, we have to make a new worksheet.

• Make a worksheet for your meta-tags and name it “Meta-tags” (see Figure 11 below).
• Create the following columns: URL, Name, Keyword, TITLE, Chars, DESCRIPTION, Chars, and Heading. The column “Name” is for the name of the page. The column “Keyword” is for the top keyword for the page.
• The Chars columns are special columns: they tell you how many characters you have for the TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags. You can only have 68 characters (including spaces) in the TITLE tag, so it’s useful to know the number.
• To use this, click in the cell and enter the formula “=SUM((LEN(D2)))” (without citation marks). Where it has D2, enter the TITLE cell’s information (column and row).
• For example, D2 is column d, row 2. Type a few words into the cell for TITLE (where it says “Official Site” below).
• If you did this right, the Char cell will show the number of characters (13) in the TITLE cell.

Here’s an example of the meta-tags worksheet:

Figure 11: Create a Meta-tags spreadsheet.

• At the top center of the screen shot, you can see the formula for cell E2. It shows the number of characters in the cell D2. Cell G2 uses the same formula to count the characters in cell F2.

How Can I Research My Competitors’ Meta-Tags?

• Open the worksheet named “Meta-tags”.
• Open your competitor’s website in a browser.
• Right-click and select View Source to see the HTML code.
• Use Ctrl-F (find), search for TITLE, and copy the title tag.
• Use Ctrl-F (find), search for DESC, and copy the description tag.
• Do this for five to ten of your competitors.
• You can know how your competitors are doing SEO. If the DESCRIPTION tag is blank or the TITLE tag and DESCRIPTION tag are poorly written, then they’re not trying. Very likely, they have low traffic. That’s good news for you.

How do I Write the TITLE Tag?

• Write a TITLE tag that encourages visitors to come to your webpage. The TITLE tag states the benefits to your visitors. Use the keyword first and then the name of the webpage.
• Google allows around 68 characters (including spaces) in the TITLE tag. Sometimes, it’s more and sometimes, it’s less.
• The TITLE tag should open with the top keyword, state the URL, and add a city or telephone if relevant.
• Use the pattern.
• For example, <TITLE>San Francisco Crab Dinner | Franciscan.com | Pier 43 | 415.362.7733</TITLE>.

How do I Write the DESCRIPTION Tag?

• Use your top two or three keywords to write several phrases.
• Use up to 180 characters (including spaces) in the DESCRIPTION tag.
• Use the pattern.
• For example, <META name=”description” content=”San Francisco seafood at its best! Fresh crab, lobster, oysters, salmon, sea bass, filet mignon, short ribs, and more!
  Tel. 415.362.7733. Call Now!”>.
• Open with the top keywords, describe the benefit for the visitor, and close with CTA (call to action), such as “Call Now, Visit Us, Buy Now”.
• Use lots of the keywords that your audience wants to see.

How do I Write the KEYWORD Tag?

Google, Bing, and Yandex ignore the meta-KEYWORD tag. You don’t need to use this.

Here’s an example: <meta name=”KEYWORD” content=”goldfish, backyard pond, frog pond”>.

You can either put a few keywords there to fill the space or just not use it. It doesn’t matter.

How do I Write ALT Tags in the Images?

The image link has an ALT tag that holds text about the image. You can use this to add a sentence of descriptive text.

• Here’s an example: <img src=”images/goldfish.gif” ALT=”Get goldfish for your pond at Goldfish.com. Los Angeles. Tel. 555.123.4567”>.
• The amount of text should be proportionate to the size of the image. If the image is a small button, don’t add a long paragraph of text.

How do I Write the Page Heading?

Search engines pay attention to a page heading because it has information about the page.

• The heading should use the H1 tag (H1 = heading).
• Use your top keywords as the first two or three words in the heading.
• Here’s an example of an H1 tag:
  <h1>How to Pick Goldfish for Your Pond</h1>.
• The most common problem with headings is use of the wrong tag. Many web designers don’t like the H1 heading because it uses a big font. They choose instead images, SPAN tags, or DIV tags.
• That looks nice, but search engines can’t tell if those images are headings. Body text that uses SPAN will be treated as body text, not as header text. You must use H1 formatting. You can still have your design. Use CSS to modify the look of the H1 tag so it renders the way you want it.

How do I Write the Text on the Page?

The text on the page should be descriptive, informational, and include the main keywords.

• Use your keywords in the first two to three words of the body text.
• Use the tag to mark body text.
• Write naturally. Don’t stuff keywords into a page. Don’t use keyword-density tools. Search engines have tools to detect machine-generated text.

TIP: Don’t open the first paragraph with a sentence that starts with a clause, such as “If you are looking for something nice to put in your pond….” People scan the first few words of the first paragraph. If it’s not relevant, they go back to the search engine. Open the first sentence with your keywords. For example, “Goldfish are the ideal fish for your backyard pond.”

A Few More Tips

How can I Make an XML Sitemap?

• An XML sitemap is a list of all pages at your website. Submit it to Google and it’ll index your entire site.
• Make an XML sitemap of your site with XML-Sitemaps.com.
• Download it to your computer, upload to your server, and submit to Google Search Console.

Why Should I Post My Company’s URL to Twitter?

• To quickly get in Google, tweet your URL in Twitter. Write a short description of the page and add the URL.

How can I Test TITLE and DESCRIPTION Tags?

• You can use Google Ads to test TITLE tags. Create ads with different TITLE tags, show them until you have more than 1,000 impressions for each one, and select the one with the highest click-through rate (CTR).
• You can also test TITLE tags in Google Analytics. In Google Analytics, go to Behavior | Site Content | All Pages, then change the Secondary Dimension to Page Title. The report shows the page’s traffic. Use keywords to write different TITLE tags and see if the traffic improves.

More about SEO

GOOD NEWS: Basic SEO gets you into Google and people may be able to find your site.

BAD NEWS: Google is much more complicated than this.

BETTER NEWS: Most of your competitors are really bad at SEO. So if you do just an okay job, you’ll be ahead of them. If you learn more SEO and do a great job, you’ll be at the top of the search results.

• There is also SEO for YouTube, apps, social media, and mobile.
• We’ve provided this guide to give you an idea of the steps needed to do good SEO. It is a time-consuming project, and there are many technical factors which can affect whether Google can index your website.

Author: Andreas Ramos

Vice President, Digital Marketing

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

For help with your SEO project, contact us at BeasleyDirect.com. We’ve worked on dozens and dozens of SEO audits and improved organic search results 20-50% for our SEO clients.

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