WEBSITE SEO SUPPORT
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the discipline of improving your website’s visibility on search engines. Google being the standard, but Bing has very recently forced itself onto the scene. Google has a very high search intent, that is why you would want to focus on it.
From our experience however, SEO is much broader than just catering for google. You now even have to cater for TikTok search.
SEO involves continuously optimizing several aspects about your website. Elements like title, content, site structure, keywords… all to make the site more relevant and attractive to search engines and, ultimately the people searching on them.
Effective SEO helps websites rank higher in search results, driving organic traffic and increasing the chances of reaching your target audience.
This article or dictionary is a document that was hand written, no AI, on everything we have learnt about SEO, to date. Sources being TikTok, Wix, Audible books, YouTube videos, X posts… the list goes on. As we hear new information, we document it below, for anyone to see. The documentation reasoning is 4 fold:
1. We want to learn more about SEO in order to support our current customers better
2. We want to convince potential customers that we know a few things about SEO, and will incorporate what we know onto their websites
3. To remember everything we’ve learnt
4. To assist the guy that does not want to pay anyone with some topics they can look into, but we are pretty confident that the detail found here will be right up there with the best
Website Squadron SEO Mission
Every SEO strategy needs to have a goal in mind. Website Squadron is a new company.
Our first goal as of October 2024, is to show up on Google when someone searches for “Website Squadron”. This article will document what we are doing, in order to accomplish that goal. SEO experts we have asked this question, said it can take months for this to happen.
Here is a record of all the SEO actions we incorporated onto our website:
On 25 October 2024, 28 days after registering our domain on Google Search Console, are are on page 12 without a favicon because of facebook, and got an e-mail from Google that we have received 20 clicks.
On 3 November 2024, we achieved a little certificate from Google saying that we have had 30 clicks to our website, still not ranking.
On 4 November 2024, we listed our website on Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools, as we got wind that chatGBT search uses Microsoft for it’s suggestions.
On 13 November 2024, we re-structured our site into more pages, to increase speed and to set the state for more pages to rank on in the future.
On 15 November we brought up our mobile PageSpeed Insights from 8% to 22%, resizing images and placing intense visualizations on other pages.
If you need assistance with your website’s SEO, we’e=ve documented clearly what SEO strategies our packages include. They are SEO Rookie Package and SEO Sergeant Package, and if you want us to eyeball your website, we will gladly do it with our SEO Prospect Package, if you send us a request on our Contact Form.
We want to support you in your website goals, but, if you decide to go at it alone, this article will, on a high level, give you the knowledge Website Squadron has.
On Page SEO
URLs
They are also called slugs or links in WordPress.
Attempt to build the url to reflect the title, keeping them close to the same, in order to tell users what the page is about.
The URL’s should include the keyword for your page.
Use the – for spaces between your keywords.
301 Redirect
Search Engines will pass on built up domain authority from your original web page to the new web page and drop your original web page out of the index.
Open Graph Tags
These make your social media shares look good.
We have a detailed guide on what Open Graph Tags are and how yo use them.
All our Website SEO Support packages includes the management of your Open Graph Tags.
Meta Description
It is a brief summary of maximum 156 characters of a webpage’s content. It is important to fill all available characters, or Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools will complain.
The meta description is below the title, in search engine results, and should convince users to click.
It should be different depending on what web page in your website you are on, and what keywords you hope to search engine optimize for.
The focus or primary keyword/s should be at the beginning.
Example:
<meta name=”description” content=”Website Squadron deploys end-to-end website management—domain, hosting, development, SEO, and Google Ads—to keep your website mission-ready and growing.” />
When building a WordPress website, make use of Meta Tag Manager to accomplish this.
Word Count
Pages that have more words, rank better.
Keep the words on your pages around 2000 words.
Place your words in sliders and dropdown to not make your web page look stuffed with words.
The following has an impact: Title, Meta Description.
External links
External links are links from your website as the source, to other website as the destination.
It is important to use when you cite or reference some information.
External links help with credibility with both humans and search engines.
Have at least one link outward per page.
Descriptive Image Names
Images on the website are a valuable part of SEO.
This improves image search visibility and helps with ranking.
Adding ALT tags to images provides more context for search engines and accessibility for users.
Sitemap.xml File
The sitemap.xml file provides a roadmap of all the pages on the website, so that search engines have a clear view of the site’s structure.
Ideally, mention the name of this file in the robots.txt file.
We create a sitemap index as a standard, as a the Bing Bot looks for it under sitemap_index.xml.
Robots.txt File
The robots.txt file tells search engine bots which pages they can or cannot crawl on the website.
This file should be placed in the public_html folder.
Site Kit Plugin by Google
This plugin is crucial for measuring the traffic to your website.
It will be the component on your website that makes it slower when it comes to Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
Meta Tags
Meta tags provide search engines with information about the content of each page. Properly configured meta tags improve click-through rates and help boost ranking by making the content more appealing to users searching for relevant topics. Open Graph Protocol is pretty well defined, and is used for facebook, whatsapp and LinkedIn, not Instagram, and X (Twitter) uses twittercards.
Google PageSpeed Insight
The speed of your website is very important, especially for mobile.
INDEXING
Indexing is the process by which search engines like Google analyze, organize, and store information about you website. When a website is indexed, it becomes searchable, allowing it to appear in relevant search results. Search engines use crawlers (bots) to scan the content and structure of each page, understanding its topics, keywords, and context.
Ranking
The position a web page holds in search engine results for a specific query. The higher the ranking, the closer you are to the top. Ranking well on targeted keywords is ultimately what you want.
Readability
Write for a highschool student, like you are writing for someone that is reading about the topic the first time.
Content should be easy to understand, and interesting to a person that wants to learn about the topic.
Consider word complexity, length of sentences and paragraphs, transition words, tenses….
Sentences should ideally not have more than 20 words.
Google Search
To see what Google knows about your website, open Google search, and search for your website like this:
site: websitesquadron.com
VIDEO
Google will index 1 video per page.
When you can, use videos on you pages and posts.
The video can be a YouTube embedded video.
Video helps to break up the content into more bitesize pieces.
Watching a video is a great idea to keep people on your website.
Local SEO
Have your keyword in the URL.
Have your keyword in the title.
Have your keyword in the H1 tag.
Have your keyword in the first paragraph
Have 800+ words of content.
Have a paragraph about the city you want to rank for, places of interest, places to visit.
You can check out Website Squadron local listing making use of the Website Squadron Google Business Profile link.
Sitemap.html
Often overlooked is the HTML sitemap.
This is a great tool for humans, to navigate your website.
A good place to put it is in the footer.
Done correctly, this will assist a lot your internal linking on your website.
We make use of a plugin called WP Sitemap Page.
Microsoft Webmaster Tools
With the increasing popularity of chatGBT and search GBT, letting Microsoft know about your website through Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools is as important as letting Google know about your website.
Microsoft even have a features where you can import all the websites under your control if you log in with Google.
Microsoft does not take individual URLs to be indexed, and rely on your website’s sitemap, or sitemap index.
It is therefore crucial that you do the SEO basics correct, as per our SEO Prospect Package, on every page. Every page.
IndexNow
IndexNow is a WordPress plugin for websites owners to instantly inform search engines about latest content changes on their website.
It lets search engines know that a URL and its content has been added, updated, or deleted, allowing search engines to quickly reflect this change in their search results.
They claim it will let crawlers crawl your website faster.
It is used by Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex, Yep.
Footer
Having a footer with a lot of keywords and links is beneficial for SEO. This is known as a keyword heavy footer.
A good idea it to incorporate the Sitemap.HTML into your footer.
Google Business Profile
For customers to find you locally, set up a Google Business Profile to ensure the business appears in local search results.
Take all your Instagram posts and post them here, with good descriptions.
META Title, TITLE or Title Tags
The title tells visitors what the web page is about.
The meta title, title or title tag are the same thing.
It is the main clickable link in search engine results, and will be the text that is clickable.
Title tags also appear on links, like when the page is shared on social media under the picture.
In a browser, the title is the text that will appear in the tab header.
It should include primary or focus keywords placed at the beginning.
Keep it concise and under 60 characters, and aim for having it exactly 58 or 59 characters.
When you subscribe to one of our Website SEO Support packages, we will make sure that your titles adhere to these specifications.
Example:
<title>Website Management – End-To-End – Website Squadron</title>
When building a WordPress website, the <title> will be the Site Title plus the Tagline, for the Landing Page.
For all other pages, it will post fix your Site Title to your page title.
Ensure that you always brand your title, as search engines might ignore your title if you don’t.
Microsoft makes these suggestions about meta descriptions:
1. Ensure all URLs have meta descriptions that are not too short.
2. Aim for a length of 150-160 characters to ensure it provides enough information without being truncated in search results.
3. Update the meta descriptions on your website.
4. Use Bing Webmaster Tools to monitor the performance of your pages.
5. Regularly review and update your meta descriptions to ensure they remain relevant and effective.
Anchor Text of links
Anchor text of links, or links, are words, or a word, clickable, that links to another web page or website. They are very important for SEO.
They should always be descriptive, not “click here” or “learn more”.
Search engines and users use this text to learn what the other pages is about.
These tags contain both the URL (the destination) and anchor text (the visible, clickable part of the link).
it is a good idea to put them in the footer of your website.
Example:
You can learn what Website Squadron can do in terms of search engine optimization for your website.
Bullets and lists
They improve readability by breaking down content into digestible chunks, making it easier for users to scan and engage with the information.
This can lower bounce rates and keep visitors on your page longer, which are positive signals for search engines.
Additionally, lists increase the chances of being featured in Google’s snippets, especially for queries like “steps to do X” or “top 10 Y,” as search engines prefer well-organized content.
Bullets and lists also allow for natural keyword placement and semantic grouping, helping search engines understand the context of your content better.
On mobile devices, lists are more user-friendly as they are easier to read on small screens, enhancing your mobile SEO.
They also support accessibility since screen readers can easily interpret them.
Well-structured lists are more shareable, encouraging backlinks and improving domain authority.
To maximize their benefits, use descriptive headers, keep lists concise (around 5–10 points), and structure them properly with HTML tags like
<ul> or <ol>.By leveraging lists effectively, you can create content that appeals to both users and search engines, improving your site’s overall performance.
Internal Links
They are crucial for SEO because they help search engines understand the structure of your website, distribute link equity (ranking power) across pages, and improve crawling efficiency.
Strategically placed internal links enhance user experience by making navigation intuitive and directing visitors to related or high-value pages, increasing engagement and reducing bounce rates.
The anchor text (the clickable name of the link) is especially important, as it provides context to search engines about the content of the linked page.
Using descriptive, keyword-rich anchor text improves relevance and ranking potential, while vague or generic phrases like “click here” offer little SEO value.
Properly implemented internal links strengthen your site’s overall authority, improve indexation, and can drive significant traffic to key pages.
Avoid orphan pages, pages that have no other pages linking to them.
Have 3 to 5 internal links to other pages on your website.
Avoid words like “click here” or “show more”.
Google Search Console
Once you have a website and a sitemap.xml structure, you need to introduce them to Google, Google then knows about your website.
This is done through the Google Search Console.
Google calls this indexing.
It is also worth noting that you should index all the pages you want to rank for.
Ensure you sitemap is up to date.
H1 to H3 Tags
Proper use of H1, H2 and H3 tags is essential for SEO to understand the content hierarchy.
H1 is the most important text on your page.
H2 tags should not be very long.
Every page must have a single H1 tag that accurately represents the main topic, followed by H2 tags that break down subtopics and relevant sections.
This helps search engines and users alike to navigate and understand the content more easily.
Do not ask questions in the H1 tag, make only statements.
Do not use only capital letters in the H1 tag.
Image Alt Text
Image Alt Text tell search engines what the image is about. They describe the image.
They allow us to put additional context to the content of the website.
They should ideally be used to describe the image to someone that is visually impaired. The more words the better.
If you subscribe to one of our Website SEO Support packages, we will ensure that all your images have alt text for the keyword you want to rank for.
Images
Images are essential for SEO success, as they enhance user experience and make content more engaging and visually appealing.
Incorporating one image for every 200 words is a best practice to maintain balance and engagement in your content.
Never publish a page without images, as they are crucial for breaking up text, retaining user attention, and improving the overall visual flow.
Avoid using generic stock images, as they often fail to add unique value or authenticity; instead, opt for custom graphics or original visuals that resonate with your audience.
Whenever possible, use the WEBP image format to improve loading speed, as faster-loading pages contribute to better rankings and improved user experience.
Ensure every blog post includes at least one relevant image to provide additional context and value.
Always add descriptive, keyword-rich alt text to your images, as this improves accessibility, enhances SEO by providing search engines context about the image, and can lead to backlinks through image-based searches.
Optimize your images by compressing them without sacrificing quality to further boost site speed and performance.
Use descriptive file names for images (e.g., “seo-tips-graphic.webp” instead of “IMG123.webp”), as search engines consider file names in rankings.
Where appropriate, include infographics, as they are highly shareable, visually appealing, and excellent for generating backlinks and driving additional traffic to your site.
By carefully optimizing and integrating images into your content, you create a richer user experience, improve your SEO performance, and increase the chances of ranking higher in search results.
Keywords
Customers find your website online by typing in keywords or key phrases. The foundation of SEO is identifying customer centric keywords.
Under SEO, “keyword” means a single or a multi word phrase.
Define keywords that match your business value proposition with high volume, high value keywords used by your customers.
Create a keyword brainstorm document, and turn that into a structured keyword worksheet.
To find keywords, open Google Search and pay attention to the pulldown menu called Google Suggest or autocomplete. They are based on actual user queries.
Look for helper words like cheap, rate, best, how much, comparison, average, cost….
After you searched for a keyword, look for related search words on the same Google results page.
Use a tool and type in a seed keyword or starter keyword, and focus on the helper words.
Have around 3 keywords per page.
Low keyword difficulty can be beneficial for building Google trust because targeting less competitive keywords establishes authority and gains trust with search engines.
Jake The Marketing Wizard suggests putting your keywords in the URL slug, title tag, meta description, H1 tag, first paragraph, subheadings (H2, H3, H4), last paragraph, images alt text and throughout your content. He suggests 1 keyword per 150 words.
Content
Content is the most important concept when it comes to SEO.
Your content should be useful.
You should strike a balance between making great content that users can read, but, at the same time, make it easy for the bots to read too. A good example are images, colours, fonts, videos, formatting. Humans like these if they fit together, whereas search engine bots don’t care for them much, they care for words. Long form words to be exact.
The idea is to write high quality content that keeps users on your page longer, and search engines interpret this as high quality content.
Content should answer a question or solve a problem for the user.
Place the date that the content was created, as well as the last updated date somewhere in the article.
Make only 1 page per topic.
Have 2 to 3 keywords per page.
Focus on quality and consistency over time, posting no more than 2 pages or posts per week.
Content is important, but, in order to succeed in SEO, you need to create content that appeals to what is called “linkreators”.
Schema Markup
Schema Markup with Location refers to structured data added to a website’s HTML to provide search engines with precise details about the business’s physical location.
This helps improve local SEO by ensuring search engines like Google understand and display your business’s location information accurately in search results.
SEO Crawl Budget
Search engines use crawlers or robots to visit your site and analyze its pages. Each crawler is allocated a specific amount of time to explore your website, known as the crawl budget.
The bot relies on your robots.txt file and sitemap.xml as a guide to navigate your site and understand its purpose.
If you use “premium” SEO plugins, they often assume all your website’s pages are equally important—which may be true—but there’s a catch. Without properly structuring your pages with titles, meta descriptions, H1 headers, and more, you waste the bot’s limited time. The bot then reports back to the search engine that your site is poorly structured and not worth prioritizing.
A common mistake is having a well-formatted home page that explains all about the company but neglecting the pages that showcase the company’s core business—its products or services. These pages often lack the necessary effort to inform search engines about what the products or services actually do.
As a result, companies end up spending a lot of money trying to rank on search engines—money they wouldn’t need to spend if they had followed the basics when creating the web pages.
That’s when they call in Website Squadron to fix it for them—for a small fee, of course. 😊
Keyword Density
Keyword density is the amount of times you use a keyword on your page, in relation to all the words on a page.
Say you use a keyword 10 times, and your page has 2000 words, your keyword density will be 0.5%.
We website like WM Tips Keyword Density Analyzer can help you with your analysis.
Use variations of the keyword, putting the words in different order.
You cannot control Off Page SEO.
They consist of link building, content marketing, Local SEO Google Business Profile and Citations, Social Media and Review.
Off Page SEO
Linkreators
The key to SEO success is creating content for “linkreators”.
Linkreators are people that run websites in your industry, or, a related industry.
Not all the content on your site should be dedicated to them, but, you have to create some content specifically for them.
To cater to linkreators, create topics that cates to the “next best thing”.
There is a big difference between content that gets shared on social media, and content that gets linked to.
Social shares or signals, do not affect rankings.
Without any links, you have very little change to rank on Google’s first page.
You can find linkreators in search engines, using informational keywords, that should show up news sites, or blogs. Take the top 10 to 20 sites you find, and add them to your list of linkreators.
If you are in an industry that does not have bloggers, build lists that are the “best of…” or “top 10 of… ” pages.
Semrush caters for this topic, and they have reports to assist. At the time of writing, their cheapest plan is $140 a month.
You should find a way to see all the sites that link or a site. Find the linkreators that link to the linkreators.
Backlinks
A backlink is a link from one website to another and is an essential component of SEO. Backlinks forms part of link building, and act as references for search engines, signaling that the linked website provides valuable content. When a website links to your website, it boosts your site’s authority and can improve its ranking in search results.
To assist companies with their SEO, we have created a directory of people and businesses who has published content that we found very helpful, we call it the Wingmen of Website Squadron.
If you are a web design agency, and you have several websites that you manages, do not link to your website from their websites. These backlinks will not count, as search engines know they are on the same server.
Backlinks from untrustworthy sources could end up hurting your domain authority.
There is a strategy out there to buy backlinks, but this is against Google policy, it is called Link Spam. Google explicitly states that you are not allowed to buy or sell backlinks. To quote them through:
“Google does understand that buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web for advertising and sponsorship purposes. It’s not a violation of our policies to have such links as long as they are qualified with a rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" attribute value to the <a> tag.”
Google has recently confirmed that Backlinks are still one of their top 3 ranking signals, and, there is a correlation between how many sites link to your website, vs how high your site will rank on Google.
One should attempt to get a backlink from a high quality source like bloggers in your industry.
Links matter, they form the foundation of their algorithm.
Creating these backlinks should be a very important part of your SEO strategy.
Tips and Tricks
About pages do not rank.
Each page should have its own set of keywords you home to rank for. Home page can be your company name, but products and services should focus on that. Rank for one unique keyword per page.
SEO FAQ
What does SEO Mean?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of enhancing your website in such a way that it achieves higher rankings across various search engine results pages (SERPs). This includes major platforms like Google, Microsoft Bing, TikTok and Instagram. TikTok and Instagram are search engines too.
SEO entails targeting the most relevant and impactful search keywords, search phrases or hashtags for your target audience.
The primary goal of SEO is to rank first on SERPs in order to secure first-page first-position visibility, thereby driving increased organic traffic to your website.
How to do SEO for beginners?
Craft a Strong Title: Ensure your website title is close to 59 characters and accurately represents your content.
Meta Description: Use a plugin to create meta descriptions around 160 characters for better visibility in search results.
H1 Header Tag: Match your H1 tag with the title and meta description for consistency and SEO optimization.
Robots.txt: Create and upload a robots.txt file to guide search engine crawlers.
Sitemap: Generate a sitemap.xml or sitemap_index.xml file and upload it to the root directory for easy navigation.
Indexing: Use Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools to index your site pages efficiently.
Learn SEO Fundamentals: Focus on concepts like Open Graph tags for enhanced social media sharing, targeted keywords to attract your audience effectively, backlinks to improve site authority, mobile-friendliness to ensure an optimal user experience across devices, and more
How do I SEO my website?
Use SEO-friendly permalinks that include relevant keywords to improve visibility.
Hyperlink related pages within your website to enhance navigation and ranking.
Focus on writing high-quality, user-focused content while avoiding keyword stuffing.
Optimize your images by adding descriptive alt text, compressing them, and using the WEBP format for faster loading.
Improve your website’s performance by using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify and resolve speed issues.
Ensure your website is mobile-friendly with a responsive design to cater to all users.
Keep your content updated regularly to maintain relevance and freshness.
Leverage a sitemap.xml and a well-configured robots.txt file to ensure search engines can crawl your site efficiently.
Monitor your website’s performance using tools like Google Search Console and Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools to track indexing, rankings, and fix any issues.
If applicable, set up a Google Business Profile to boost your local SEO and improve visibility in local searches.
What is a SEO job?
They analyze search engine data to identify growth opportunities, optimize website structure and content to achieve higher rankings, and improve user engagement.
SEO Specialists stay current with the latest search engine algorithm updates and industry trends, ensuring the business maintains a strong online presence and competitive advantage by continuously integrating these advancements.
This web page was written by Christiaan Gouws, and was last updated on 11 October 2024
For more information about Website Squadron, check out or FAQ.
For more information about Google SEO, check out the Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide.
- Title on each web page
- Meta description on each web page
- H1 Header on each web page
- Open Graph Meta Tags for each web page
- Image sized for 1 social media platform
- Robots.txt management
- Sitemap.xml management
- Google and Bing indexing
- Google Business Profile setup assistance (optional)
- Monthly Google Analytics report
- All SEO Rookie Features
- Continuous keyword analysis
- 2000 words of content per web page
- Images sized for Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok
- Internal links to other web pages on your website
- Image Alt text
- Python crawler ensuring no broken links
- Bi-weekly website traffic reports
- Domain (maximum .com)
- e-Mail Addresses (maximum 3)
- Landing Page (optional)
- Digitization of Logo & Favicon
- Search Engine Optimization
- Google Business Profile Assistance
- Contact Form
- Title on each page
- Meta description on each web page
- H1 Header on web each page
- Open Graph Meta Tags for each web page
- Image sized for 1 social media platform
- Robots.txt management
- Sitemap.xml management
- Google and Bing Indexing
- Google Business Profile setup assistance (optional)
- Monthly Google Analytics report
- All SEO Rookie Features
- Continuous keyword analysis
- 2000 words of content per web page
- Images sized for Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok
- Internal links to other web pages on your website
- Image Alt text
- Python crawler ensuring no broken links
- Bi-weekly website traffic reports
- Domain (maximum .com)
- e-Mail Addresses (maximum 3)
- Landing Page (optional)
- Digitization of Logo & Favicon
- Search Engine Optimization
- Google Business Profile Assistance
- Contact Form