What is Search engine optimization? Before moving to more detailed elements, let’s start by understanding the concept itself. SEO or Search Engine Optimization refers to the strategies and activities that aim to improve your marketplace’s ranking in search engine results, i.e. your platform will be better ranked by Google and it will have a higher visibility when users carry out searches that are relevant for your site.
Ideally, your platform should be ranked in the first page or even the first three results, as most users don’t look beyond them, but SEO strategies take time so don’t expect to get results overnight. As a way to tackle this obstacle, SEO strategies are sometimes linked with paid for Search Engine Advertising (SEA) strategies. While both are mid to long term strategies, SEA is a cost-effective way of getting results faster. Following platform indicators such as conversion rate or traffic will allow you to keep track of the impact of your efforts, as well as give you insight on how to adjust and improve them.
Which elements impact SEO? An efficient SEO strategy requires high optimization in every aspect, such as using the appropriate keywords, not having a site that is slow, making it responsive to different software, etc. Generally speaking, the quality of your SEO will depend on several factors which can be categorized as content, technical/performance (needs technical knowledge from developers) and netlinking (refers to your platform’s network).
In this article we will focus on content, as search engines will be more interested if you have pertinent content and it will move your site up in the page’s ranking. It has a direct impact in your ranking and it is something you can start working on straightaway. Yet, keep in mind that this is thorough work and not only must you constantly improve the quality of your content, but you must also update it regularly.
This is where Second comes into play, as it allows you to write your own content while also defining your meta-tags, meta-titles, meta-description and slugs. Pay special attention to tags, titles and descriptions, as they will be used to present your platform in the result pages. These will not only be seen by users, but they will also be analyzed by search engine robots so each word must be clear and relevant during a search.
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How to create good tags and slugs? Now that you have a better understanding of SEO, it is just a matter of learning how to use it efficiently and optimize its performance. Your platform’s main pages, such as the homepage and your categories, are the ones that will generate the highest traffic so Second allows you to work on them and set, for example, your own slugs and meta tags.
But, what makes a good tag or slug?
Rules of content: The first thing you need to consider is wording and meaning. Your tags will only be taken into account by search engines if they are useful in offering users results that match their search. In other words, if I type “improve SEO ranking”, Google will analyze each word and suggest search results that include the same keywords used in the tags so your meta tags have to include the keywords that have the highest chance of being searched for by users. As such, you must always keep the following question in mind: to find a site like my own, which search would I carry out on Google? With Google Ads you can even track the traffic generated by each search to ensure that a significant number of searches include the same keywords.
A second approach is to not only consider your own words and keywords, but also the ones used by your competitors. Find competitors that are already out there in the market and use tools such as SEMRush to see which keywords they are focusing on, as it might help you understand which keywords you should be focusing on or, in the contrary, which ones you should avoid. It is not efficient to use the same keywords as competitors who are already positioned first or very high, and who have a very high traffic. Instead of trying to dethrone very popular sites with high notoriety, try to find those keywords with good search traffic but lower competition!
Rules of form: In addition to content, your tags and slugs must abide by certain rules of form.
> Tags: the main point to focus on is the number of characters, as they cannot be cut off in the result pages
For a meta-title, it is recommended to write between 40-70 characters For a meta-description, between 100-230 characters > Slugs:
Avoid linking words such as “and”, “of”, “from”, “but”, etc. Be concise Do not use symbols (/,%,$, etc.) Use hyphens to separate your words (“-”) Off to a great start
You should now have a better understanding of SEO and what it entails. From here, you can start your work and research for your own platform. If you found this article interesting, we recommend you to have a look at our other How-to articles, which will walk you through other important points of your SEO strategy. Best of luck!
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