The significance of SEO must be clear to nearly all companies today. But not all of them are up to speed with the latest news. Which is why Google offers three SEO checklists based on level of experience: for beginners, developers and pros.
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New SEO checklists with tips for three experience levels
A top spot in the Google search results list is one of the most important goals of online marketing – also for the B2B sector. This is why many companies put lots of effort into a good ranking, with the aim to increase their visibility amongst the target group. Successful search engine optimisation (SEO) can help to achieve this. Specialists have the edge over competitors with lesser experience. However: pros, too, can continuously learn more. Particularly because Google is continually reworking their SEO requirements to cater better to users’ search intentions.
This is why the Internet giant regularly reworks its tips for better visibility. What’s new: the tips from the main hub, Google Search Central (formerly Google Webmaster), are staggered according to their content in line with the level of SEO competence within the company. As a result, there are SEO checklists for three different profiles, namely entrepreneurs or marketing experts, developers as well as SEO experts. Here is a short overview:
- Entrepreneurs or marketing experts interested in SEO are guided slowly through this topic by Google with a low-threshold starter guide. Special know-how is not required – only the willingness to find out more about the topic and possibly adjust the company’s own website. The SEO checklist for beginners starts with links to the registration page for Google Search Central and continues by covering the basics of the search function, ending with the invitation to learn more about SEO or the Search Console. The goal is not necessarily to support the entrepreneur or marketer in creating their own websites – this can be left to experienced designers. But they should understand the functionalities to be able to leverage Google better for their purposes.
- With the SEO checklist for developers, Google is addressing people who create and administer websites and want to make these even more search-engine-friendly. They can discover, for instance, how targeted their online offer is from Google’s point of view, how the Googlebot can check each of their URLs and follow all the websites’ links, sitemaps and redirections. What’s more, the SEO checklist shows how text can be used best or how Google can optimally take new or changed content into account.
- SEO experts are, from Google’s point of view, people who are already familiar with the functionality of the Google search function and want to further optimise the performance of their website. The SEO checklist offers them a guide for advanced users on how to get started. Topics include “Control how Google crawls and indexes your site”, “Sitemaps”, “Migrating a page or a site”, or “Manage the user experience”.
Case studies show: this is how you can significantly increase traffic
Google shows us just how helpful SEO tips can be (including the new SEO checklists) based on a handful of real-life examples:
- The South Korean online job board Saramin was able to use SEO to significantly increase their rate of organic search visits. For instance, the number of visits doubled between 2018 and 2019. This was achieved by taking several steps, starting in 2015. Saramin began to remove unnecessary meta tags from its pages. In the end, the responsible team worked through the developer handbook and the helpful articles about Google’s search function. What’s more, it used several Google tools, such as to test the effectivity of structured data or the functionality for mobile devices.
- The online magazine StyleCraze, which covers topics centred round beauty, health and well-being, recorded similar success. The goal was to improve the preview for step-by-step guides. This was managed thanked to how-to developer documentation and the test tool for structured data, both from Google. The result was an increase in the click through rate (CTR) by 1.2 for the guides.
- Monster India is part of the Monster.com global job exchange. The platform wanted to improve its databases for applicants and CVs. The company first relied on the help of more structured job posting data for classifieds. After the success of the pilot project, the principle was expanded to cover all classifieds on the portal. The result was a 94 per cent increase in organic visits to the respective pages as well as a plus in applications of 10 per cent.
News centred round the Google search
In addition to SEO checklists and the above-mentioned cases, Google Search Central offers a blog providing the latest news about the Google search. It focuses mainly on changes to documentation, upcoming virtual events as well as videos on the Google search function, the Search Console and SEO.
