Even the most attractive and useful website can get lost in the mass of competitors and not be seen by search engines if it isn’t properly optimized for SEO.

What does SEO mean? Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the act of making a website better for search engines so that it shows up higher in search results. SEO is a set of tools that assist a website get to the top of search results, get more visitors, and get potential consumers to visit. We’ll go over each step of website SEO optimization in detail in this article, so you may use what you’ve learned.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Climbing the Top of Search Engines with Website SEO and Optimization.

Let’s talk about the good and bad things about SEO that you could come across when you promote your website.

Pros:

Paid advertising stops bringing in traffic right away when the campaign ends, yet this type of advertising has a long-lasting and cumulative effect.
Can work well for very small markets and in advertising auctions that are too hot (when there are a lot of advertisers and the cost per click goes up).
SEO is a lot more profitable than contextual advertising in the long term.

The bad things:

Usually, it takes at least a few months for the work to show results.
There are a lot of things that affect rankings, and Google modify their algorithms all the time.
In competitive niches, it’s hard to do better than the big players and aggregators.

With SEO, you can’t pay for impressions and get a high ranking in search results right away, like you can with contextual advertising. You will need to do a lot of work on the project here. You will need to look at your competition, gather keywords, and add content to the site. And you’ll have to wait patiently for the first results as well. So, we suggest that you not put things off and get started right away.

Step 1. Check the Project

A website audit is like a doctor’s visit. If you don’t figure out what’s wrong and why, the treatment could be useless or even detrimental. SEO is the same way. Without a first audit, promotion might not work.

So, the first thing you need to do is figure out what the site’s strengths and shortcomings are, what problems are keeping it from ranking higher, and what path it should go in to improve.

During the audit, you should check:

Indexing. Google have special robots that scan the web all the time for new pages and websites. Search engines won’t know about your site if it’s not in this index, thus you can’t expect any search traffic. Adding pages to search engine indexes, or indexing, is very vital for promoting a project.
Mistakes in technology. These could be broken links, duplicate pages and title tags, robots.txt files that aren’t set up right, redirects that aren’t set up right, or .htaccess problems. In the “Error Correction and Internal Optimization” section, we’ll go into greater detail about some of these.
Safety. The site must use the safe HTTPS protocol, which means that an SSL certificate must be installed. It’s also crucial to make sure there isn’t any bad code on the site. Search engines will push a site with malware to the bottom of search results or possibly delete it from the index completely.
Speed of loading. It’s better if sites load quickly. One explanation for high bounce rates is that pages take a long time to load. People quit the site because they become impatient of waiting for material to load. Search engines don’t like these kinds of sites and may lower their rankings in search results.
A website that works on all devices. Statistics for 2025 show that more than 80% of customers use mobile devices to get online. If a website isn’t responsive, it’s hard to read on a phone or tablet since the text gets all messed up. There is almost no possibility that a user will stay on a site like this.
Structure. A well-designed structure is a great way to make the user experience better and get better results through internal optimization. A logical order of blocks makes it easier to use. This makes it easier for users to discover the information they need and stay on the site longer.
Links within the site (interlinking). These links take you to other pages on the site. They make the user experience better, speed up indexing, and make sure that search engine rankings are spread out correctly across all pages.
Links from outside. These links go to your project on other people’s websites. Google check the quality and relevance of their links. Don’t put links on sites that aren’t trustworthy or link to a food blog from a vehicle site. Search engines trust you more when more relevant resources connect to your project.
Keywords and content. Website texts should be original, have a clear structure, and answer questions from users. The distribution of keywords across pages should be even, but it shouldn’t make the text harder to read.

It would be a lot of work and take more than one day to check all of these factors by hand, of course. That’s why we’ve put up a list of automatic audit services for you.

Services for auditing

The Google Search Console dashboard. Helps you uncover important mistakes and examine things like how well your website is indexed, how responsive its layout is, and many other things.
SEO experts name it “SEO Spider” or “Screaming Frog SEO Spider.” A PC has the application installed on it. Looks for broken links, duplicates, temporary or permanent redirects, and examines metadata, the robots.txt file, and the whole structure of the website. The free version may scan up to 500 URLs.
SiteAnalyzer. An SEO analyzer that doesn’t cost anything. You may do a comprehensive technical assessment of your website with it. Checks for broken links, redirects, duplicate meta tags, and headers. It can also make a sitemap. You don’t have to install it; just download it and run it from the archive.
PageSpeed Insights shows how fast a page loads on all devices and gives tips on how to fix problems that slow it down.
Majestic SEO: Tells you about links to your site, like the anchor text. Good for finding bad link sources and monitoring the quality of links that come in.

These are just a few of the many tools for auditing websites. There are a lot of these kinds of services, but they all accomplish very much the same thing. So, you can pick the one that is easiest and cheapest for you.

Step 2. Fixing mistakes and improving the page itself

We go on to the second step, which is addressing technical problems and optimizing the page, after the audit. At this point, it’s crucial to fix any problems that were found during the audit. Just click on the symbol for an error to see what caused it. Most services will show you a short explanation and occasionally even give you ideas for how to repair the problem.

You can fix it yourself if the problem is with the text or the structure of the website. Call an expert if the mistakes are hard to fix and you don’t know what to do.

File robots.txt

Setting up the robots.txt file correctly can often fix problems with duplicate content and indexing. It is a text file that tells search engines which pages they don’t need. But indexing decides which pages to include and which ones to leave out. You can use robots.txt to stop indexing on certain pages or whole areas of a website.

No one robots.txt file works for every project. The structure of the resource and the platform the website runs on will determine what it contains. But there are certain general rules on which pages and sections should not be indexed in robots.txt. Here are some of them:

Pages that can be printed.
Files and directories on the system.
Pages that are blank and have no content.
Pages that have forms for signing up and logging in.
Pages for listing, filtering, and comparing products.
Duplicate pages that can’t be removed.

Most of the time, website builders and content management systems (CMS) make a robots.txt file for you. However, you can inspect and change it by hand to leave out pages and sections that are causing problems.

Map of the site

The next file that is important is sitemap.xml. It has a list of all the pages on the site that should be indexed. A lot of people use sitemap builders that can make a sitemap on their own. If this feature isn’t available, you can utilize internet tools like SitemapXML or Sitemap Generator to make a sitemap.

We suggest testing the accuracy of the sitemap after you make it. It has to follow these rules:

You need to encode the file in UTF-8.
There can be up to 50,000 links in one sitemap.
A single sitemap can be no bigger than 50 MB.
There are no pages in the file that return a 404 response code.

You can make more than one sitemap for your site if it has more than 50,000 pages. Then you may make another sitemap.xml file and link to all of the sitemaps you made.

Put the sitemaps you made into Google Search Console. You also need to put a link to the sitemap.xml file in your robots.txt file.

Step 3. Research your niche and look at your competitors

After the audit is done and any mistakes have been found, we may start looking at the niche and the competition.

First, figure out what kind of project you’re promoting: informational (like blogs and sites with articles) or commercial (like stores and corporation websites).

Look for competition on sites that sell and offer the same things that you do. Blogs would be your competition if your site had informational material. For example, if you operate an internet store that sells spare parts, you’ll be up against other stores that sell the same parts.

Searching for 10 to 15 keywords that you want to rank well for and looking at the sites that come up in the search results is the quickest way to uncover competition.

We suggest looking at:

Age of the website;
How many pages are in the search results;
Links to the webpage from other sites;
Optimization within;
Quality of content;
Business considerations.

You can use any of the audit services we talked about previously to examine these settings.

In particular, point out the tools that specialty websites use. For instance, the website of a business that installs plastic windows might offer a useful calculator for getting rough cost estimates or a blog with useful articles and recommendations. Pay attention to intriguing solutions and utilize them in your project. This will improve how users act and how high your website ranks in search engines. We don’t think you should just replicate what your competitors do. You may take their ideas and make them even better, though.

Competitor analysis will assist you figure out who you’ll be up against in search results, whether it’s little initiatives or big companies. Then, make your website better so it can compete well.

Step 4. Building Business Factors

After you know who your rivals are, the next stage is to look at and improve your business aspects. These are the different parts of a website that make it easier to find and buy goods or services.

The following business factors stand out:

Lists of prices for goods and services. We probably don’t like it when a website doesn’t list costs. This is a hassle and makes individuals waste time phoning, getting in touch with managers, or to go to competitors right away.
Buttons that say “Buy” or “Order.” Ordering should be as easy and quic k as feasible. If it’s not, the user can lose interest in the company. Put the button in a place where people may easily locate it.
Information about delivery. Give details on how the product will be delivered and how much it will cost. Make a new page for this and briefly repeat what is on the product card.
Ways to Pay. List the ways you can pay for the goods. The more choices, the better. If this isn’t possible, just put the payment information where users can easily discover it, such next to the price of the item.
Blocks of trust. These are things like customer feedback, licenses and credentials, corporate information, and a section with frequently asked questions (FAQs). This kind of material makes users more likely to trust the firm and helps them get over their objections.
The list goes on. Competitor analysis can help you find business aspects that are important to your area.

Step 5. Making a plan and a semantic core

The semantic core is a group of keywords that will be utilized to help search engines find a website. Building a semantic core is one of the most significant parts of SEO promotion for a website, therefore let’s talk about it in more detail.

Plan for Promotion

Choose an SEO promotion approach before you start gathering keywords. It depends on the kind of project and what you want to achieve:

A site for blogs or articles. The main keyword will be questions that give information. For instance, “how to use a slow cooker correctly” or “why does my phone’s battery die so quickly?” The main goal is to get people to visit your site, which you can then make money from by selling ads or offering your services.

Websites for businesses and online stores. The main keywords will be business-related questions. “Buy headphones with a microphone” is one example. The idea is to get them to buy your product. If the site has a blog with posts, you may also employ informational keywords to get more visitors.

At this point, we go back to the audit of our competitors. Learn about the tactics they utilize and the search terms they rank for. All work on SEO and promoting a website is like brainstorming, because you need to carefully look at the websites you’ll be competing with.

Let’s imagine you run a business that offers web design services. In this scenario, you may use a mix of informational and commercial keywords in your promotion strategy:

Use commercial keywords like “order” or “buy” to promote pages that describe your services. These are likely to be very competitive inquiries, and it will take months to get high rankings for them.

To get more visitors to your site, add a section with helpful articles that will be promoted for informational searches and show that you know what you’re talking about. These are usually easier to rank well for, especially if you can offer original, high-quality material.

You should think about what your target audience is interested in. If you want to get clients for your website design business, write content that will intrigue them and make them want to buy. You may, for instance, make a list of helpful tools for designers or give advice on how to make websites easier to use. Look at other websites, blogs, and social media groups that are comparable to yours for ideas.

Researching Keywords

First, look for keywords. These are the main terms that tell you what the page is about. Other keywords will add to and build on these. “Website design” is one example of a keyword. You can use it as the title of a section or category on the site. A keyword makes a string of other keywords. For example, “make a website” or “order a website design.”

Semantic Core Collection Services

4 useful tools and services for gathering keywords:

Ahrefs. It looks at competitors’ keywords, does an SEO audit, and shows links coming in and going out. Finds out how competitive searches are and how much traffic may be garnered by putting them at the top.
Semrush. Looks at search results and keywords to see how your website’s ranks compare to those of your competitors for the same keywords. It can make and send reports, and it features a feature that groups queries. You have to pay for it, but if you’re not happy with how it works, you can get your money back within seven days.
KeyWord Tool is useful if you want to make your website easier to find on Google. It gets keywords and suggestions from both Google and Bing. It can get up to 750 tails for each query for free.
Serpstat is a professional SEO tool that helps you gather semantic cores. It shows terms and suggestions from Google, and other search engines. It can also group inquiries and do a lot more. You have to pay for this program, and you can only use it on one PC.

Step 6. Grouping Queries

Query clustering helps you organize your website and improve its content and meta tags. You shouldn’t skip or forget this vital step in SEO promotion.

Once you’ve gathered the semantic core, you’ll have a list of keywords to use to promote your website. But it’s still not ready to use because it’s not finished. Now, the collected questions need to be grouped into semantic categories, with each group getting its own page to promote.

For example, a business sells household chemicals. The website has a product catalog and a section with useful articles. We started selling Persil laundry detergent, and we picked up seven queries that could help promote this product:

Buy Persil capsules.
Buy Persil capsules online.
Buy Persil washing powder.
Persil powder for automatic washing.
Persil powder for automatic washing.
Which is better to use for washing—powder or capsules?
How to use laundry capsules correctly.

First, we will separate business-related questions from information-related questions. The terms “buy” and “purchase” are examples of commercial searches. These are the first five keywords in the list, and they are well suited for improving product pages. Questions #6 and #7 are for information; we will use them to write blog posts.

Step 7. Making Meta Tags and Page Titles Better

Meta tags are HTML tags that show information about what a page is about. You can’t see them on the webpage since they are inside the … container. The Title and Description are two of the most important meta tags for promoting a website and improving its SEO.

Meta Title

This tag sets the title of the page and shows up at the top of the tab in the browser. It also shows up in snippets of search engine results and is thought to be one of the most essential parts of page SEO.

A decent title for SEO is:

You shouldn’t use the same title on more than one page. You can do this by adding your company name to the title.
It is short, to the point, and informative, and it fits the content of the page. It doesn’t have any spam or extra information.
It has the most important keywords that the page is trying to get people to click on. It is also easy to read and doesn’t just list random words.
The best length is 65 characters or less. Search engines will cut off the title in search results if it is too long.
It is catchy since it shows up in the search snippet and has a direct effect on the click-through rate.
It doesn’t match the H1 on the page that is being promoted.

Meta Description

The description is an HTML meta tag that tells you what the page is about. The text in the Description usually shows up in search engine results as a short description under the page title.

Suggestions for making the description better:

Doesn’t quite copy the Title.
The best length is between 70 and 200 characters.
The text is clear and consistent, which shows what the page is all about.
It is different for each page and does not copy the Description from other sites.
Keywords are not just listed separately by commas; they are naturally and organically included to the text.

A good description can help more people buy things from your website. It lets people see what’s on the page and determine whether or not to go there.

Important: The text in the excerpt doesn’t always match the Description. If the search engine thinks the revised description is better, it may immediately replace it with the information from the website.

Header

In HTML, H1 is the first-level heading tag. It shows the title of the page and usually has a keyword in it.

H1 is important for SEO since search engines utilize it to figure out what a page is about and what it has on it. It’s also crucial that the H1 is different from the Title and Description and doesn’t copy them.

There should only be one H1 per page, unlike H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6, which can have more than one.

Step 8. Making Original Content

Expert content brings in free traffic and makes users trust and stay loyal to your site. So, businesses have a “Blog” area on their website where they post helpful content.

Tips for making content:

Your website’s articles should be easy to find when people search for them.
Look at the length and quality of the texts that your competitors have that rank high in search results. Also, look at how they employ keywords.
The text shouldn’t be duplicated or rewritten from the first page of search results, and it shouldn’t include anything new. Search engines have learnt how to find these kinds of articles, therefore they probably won’t rank them well.
Use a range of sources, especially ones from other countries, when you write. Your text should be better and more useful than the ones that are already at the top.
Make sure your articles are well-organized by breaking them up into logical paragraphs and subheadings, highlighting important points, and adding pictures, infographics, and videos.

Step 9. Behavioral Factors and Making the User Experience Better

Behavioral variables are very significant for SEO. Search engines look at how people act when they visit your site. F or instance, if someone goes to a page and dismisses it within a few seconds, that visit is called a bounce. The higher the bounce rate, the worse it is for website promotion.

Why the bounce rate is so high:

The webpage takes a long time to load. More than 70% of users don’t want to wait a lengthy time for a website to load. It’s easier for someone to go back to the Search results and find another resource than to wait a lengthy time.
Structure that is hard to understand and complicated. In today’s fast-paced environment, not many individuals will go through a lot of blocks and links to reach the “Buy” button. Customers are likely to turn to competitors with simple and straightforward solutions if a website’s structure is too complicated.
Not enough information. If someone is looking for an answer to a specific question and instead gets an article full of fluff and long conversations that have nothing to do with the question, they will just leave the site.
Mistakes in technology. Customers can’t place an order if buttons and links don’t work, the layout is bad, and error messages keep popping up. Don’t let these kinds of things happen on your website.

Time spent on the site, page depth, clicks on links and buttons, and other data are also behavioral aspects. You can use Google Analytics to keep track of these.

Step 10. Linking within the site

Internal linking is when you put links on one page of a website that go to another page on the same website.

Interlinking correctly makes a website’s structure better and helps visitors find their way around. It also makes the site more important and relevant in search engines. In the end, this is good for SEO and search rankings.

Step 11. Plan for off-page optimization and getting links from other sites

“Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.” This saying is really true when it comes to off-page SEO. Links from other sites to a website are quite important for promotion. Search engines look at the sites that link to your resource and use that information to figure out how good the project being shed is.

The linking resource’s authority and the topic it covers are both crucial. It should be connected to or have something to do with the subject of your project. A lot of links from other sites that aren’t related can make search engines think your site is spam or something else. So, link advertising has to be complete and correct. You can’t just do that for no reason. Put a lot of links on different websites to make your project seem more important.

We think you should come up with a plan for getting outside linkages over the long term. Here are some suggestions:

Content of high quality. Write fascinating posts that other projects will want to share. Make sure these sites have a live, indexed connection to your material.
Writing guest posts. You can write professional articles for other websites and get a link to your project in return. Look for trusted sources in your profession and get in touch with the editors to suggest a guest article.
Video. Put videos on YouTube and other sites that host videos to get more links to your website from other sites and reach more people. Videos should be interesting and useful to get people and other websites to watch them.
Social media. There are millions of people who use social media, and a lot of them are happy to share important information with their friends and followers. Therefore, we propose integrating sharing buttons on your website, like we do on our blog.
Take part in conversations. Participate in discussions on other websites and forums, publishing links to your site’s material whenever possible. Be careful and don’t spam. Only post links where they are suitable and will answer user questions.
Often, these tactics are insufficient. Search engines don’t like it when you buy links from other sites since they think it’s fake promotion. But this strategy works really well if you are careful, choose your contributors well, and don’t spam.

When looking donors, be sure to check out each site and don’t buy links from sites that are spammed or don’t matter. These kinds of links will do more harm than good.

In conclusion

SEO takes a lot of work and time. Don’t try to do everything at once; instead, make small changes to your website over time. Begin with an audit and fixing any technical issues. After that, create at least a small pool of keywords and set basic meta tags. Add material to your website slowly and add off-page optimization slowly as well. And keep in mind that you shouldn’t rush SEO, but you also can’t stop doing it.

Need Website Promotion?

Bohdan Prytulyak( CEO )

Founder and head of the PBB Design web studio since 2005

SEO website – promote the website correctly!