SEO, or search engine optimization, is a widely used term related to websites and internet-based marketing strategies, aimed at improving a website's visibility and achieving higher rankings on search engine results pages. Through SEO, the goal is to make a website understandable and attractive to search engines, so they position it higher due to its better content and value.

When done correctly, SEO helps a website gain more organic (free) visitors by increasing its visibility in search engine results.

How to do SEO?

Good SEO results come from planning and a strategic approach. It's important to view the website as a whole, because that's exactly what search engine crawlers do. This is well illustrated by a situation where a website has multiple pages optimized for the same keyword, and subsequently rankings drop. The reason is that the search engine crawler gets confused - which of these pages provides the most value for the given keyword?

To avoid such situations, the work needs to be planned and executed systematically.

SEO checklist: how to get started

This is a simple overview checklist that provides guidelines on where to begin.

To walk through the checklist, let's take an illustrative example. Let's assume the website you're doing SEO for is an auto repair shop that offers various services: repairs, bodywork, cleaning, and tire services. For simplicity, let's consider that the website's main purpose is to showcase services.

1. SEO keyword and competition analysis

Familiarize yourself with what's happening. You probably already know the general keywords and topics to optimize the website for, but the more information and data you have, the better. Also look at competitors for the same keyword - how much text content do they have on the page with a good position? How have they formatted the page title?

Find synonyms and different ways people search for the same thing. Do they search in plural or singular? For example, "tire change" or "tire changing." For analyzing keywords and competitors, in addition to using search engines, there are several tools that significantly improve work effectiveness. If Google Search Console has already been added to the website, you can get important information about searched terms from there. You can also use, for example, the Google Ads keyword planner or paid tools like Ahrefs or Semrush. For free recommendations, try Neil Patel's tool made with Ubersuggest, if the website already exists.

2. Setting up the website structure

Once you have a solid set of keywords, it's time to review the website structure. The goal is to distribute keywords across pages so that important information is clearly distinguishable and possible to optimize. A simple structure for an auto repair shop website would be:

  • Home
  • Repairs
  • Bodywork
  • Cleaning
  • Tire services
  • Contact

First, why aren't the services consolidated under a single page? Since the topics are significantly different and there's no duplicate content problem as a result, separate service pages can be much better optimized for the necessary keywords.

Let's distribute the main keywords by topic:

  • Home (should answer what kind of company it is): Auto repair shop, auto repair shop in Tallinn, car workshop.
  • Repairs: Car repair, car fixing, car maintenance, auto repair work + service-specific keywords like oil change
  • Bodywork: Car bodywork, paint work + service-specific keywords like dent removal
  • Cleaning: Car wash, interior chemical cleaning, wheel cleaning + service-specific keywords
  • Tire services: Tire services, tire change, tire changing, tire balancing
  • Contact

*You can also mention the location on all other pages, for example, car bodywork in Tallinn.

In addition to the listed keywords, also add all other synonyms and variants you found during the keyword analysis.

3. Page layout

Once the pages, topics, and keywords are determined, it's time to set up the content layout for each page. Write the texts based on the keywords you found, and think from the visitor's perspective about what information is important to them. For example, for bodywork it would be good to show photos of completed work. For tire changing, a price list, and so on. While content optimization is important, it's always worth remembering that the visitor you attracted with a good search position is genuinely looking for information and actively choosing between different service providers. By offering them valuable information, there's a greater chance they'll choose you.

4. Optimizing content for search engines

Once the pages are thought through and texts are written, it's necessary to optimize the content for search engines. Here are some specific rules to follow:

  • Assign the correct HTML heading tag to each page's headings - the main heading (for example, "Car wash and chemical cleaning") should be H1, "Car waxing" should be H2, etc.
  • Each page should have only one H1 heading
  • Assign correct, keyword-containing alt texts to images
  • Set the correct title and meta description (for WordPress sites, Yoast SEO is a great tool)

5. Do a technical check of the website

Make sure the website is in good technical shape - that it has an SSL certificate, the site is mobile-responsive, and the images used aren't too large. You can use Google Lighthouse for this.

6. Monitor and make improvements

SEO results take time. Therefore, after each change, allow at least 1-2 months to measure its effectiveness. Make adjustments as needed. If rankings aren't improving, take a look at your competitors. Have they significantly improved something?

Google Search Console is great for monitoring. Setting it up is fairly simple - you just need to add one tag to the head code, and if Google Analytics is already added, the domain will be verified automatically if you're logged into Google Search Console with the same account that has access to Google Analytics.

What to avoid when doing SEO

Keyword stuffing

This is a strategy that no longer works. It typically means cramming keywords into many pages. For example, in our case, imagine that on every service page, in addition to the main keywords, there are constant references and links to other services inserted into the texts. Similarly, image alt texts don't contain something like "Car bodywork" but instead "car bodywork, repair work, auto repair shop, chemical cleaning, waxing..."

Not only do search engine crawlers dislike this, but put yourself in the visitor's shoes again. Imagine you went to look at a car bodywork page, but every so often you're offered links in the text to car repairs or interior chemical cleaning. From this, one can conclude that the text supporting the insertion of links to other services is no longer on-topic either.

This doesn't mean you can't link to other services - of course you can. But it needs to be logical. Link in the text only when there's a logical reason to do so. Or why not as a "See also" section at the end of the service description.

Buying backlinks

Here we don't mean genuine, meaningful backlink acquisition through content articles, but rather backlink schemes. This is a fairly certain way to rapidly reduce your website's trustworthiness.

E-commerce SEO

For e-commerce, SEO follows the same principles, but an important difference lies in the store's structure. Specifically, an e-commerce store has, in addition to static subpages (e.g., Services), product pages and archive pages (e.g., category pages).

Product vs. product category?

A common question is which is more important - the product page or the product category page. Assuming your product categories contain multiple similar products, the answer is that the product category page is more important. This is confirmed by, for example, the largest e-commerce website Amazon or the local Euronics.

To illustrate this, let's bring another example: we're looking for a new television. We enter the keyword "televisions" in Google and get several results, all of which direct us to the television category page. That's also where we wanted to end up, because now we can start browsing the product range and comparing different options.

However, if we enter "Samsung Frame," that's a clear signal to the search that we want to see that specific product. We're no longer interested in viewing all TVs - we want to see the products.

In other words, the category page should be optimized for the category, the product page for the product.

Optimizing the product category page for SEO

The best way to optimize a product category page is to add a text block to the page, usually below the products. There you can write optimized text about the category and products. Why not also answer questions like "How to choose a television?" Be sure to also add a correct H1 heading and a search-friendly title and meta description.

Pagination

On product category pages, you also need to consider pagination - how the visitor navigates through the product selection. Should you use page numbers at the bottom, "Previous page / Next page" buttons, or infinite scroll? There's no single right answer, but with infinite scroll, keep in mind that search engines may not index products that aren't immediately visible. Therefore, infinite scroll is more suitable for e-commerce stores whose products aren't specific (e.g., generic t-shirts, mugs, and other recurring products). But when we're talking about specific products that visitors may know exactly, such as televisions or smartphones, infinite scroll is not recommended.

Avoiding duplicate content

If you choose button-based navigation, the URL changes - often something like /2 is added when navigating to the second page of a category. Does this mean that the heading and SEO text from the first category page are now duplicated on subsequent category pages? Technically yes, but this problem is generally solved using canonical links.

This means the search engine knows that .../product-category/televisions and .../product-category/televisions/2/ etc. are the same page, just with new products. This way, all products are still indexed, but the main category page is taken into account when indexing the category page.

Optimizing the product page for search engines

When optimizing a product page, it's important to give it an exact title and a product-specific description. Product image alt texts should also be set correctly and product-specific, so the photos appear in image search results.

How to measure SEO results?

There are various analytics platforms available for measuring SEO scores, which compare website properties and status against different criteria. The score you get largely depends on the mathematical specifics of the analytics tool used. That's why an SEO score for the same website can differ when using different tools.

However, Google Search Console is a good free tool that provides a fairly accurate overview of what's happening on your website. This includes which keywords are getting you clicks and what your average position is for them.

What else affects SEO?

Domain age and trustworthiness
Generally, the older the domain, the more trustworthy it is. As a result, older domains often have better search positions.

Website speed and technical health
Website speed, as well as SSL certificate presence and mobile responsiveness, are very important factors.

Backlinks
Links from other websites, or backlinking, also help improve page position. This requires someone else to reference your website or article on their own site. However, quality and quantity both matter here. Links from high-authority sites are significantly more effective, and the more you have, the better.

SEO is an investment

While SEO is essentially about improving page position in search results through free methods, its implementation requires considerable resources. These may include hiring various specialists, purchasing articles from copywriters, or the cost of your own time. On the other hand, resources invested in search engine optimization are somewhat more beneficial than paid methods.

  • The impact of paid advertising is mostly short-term - While SEO efforts and articles accumulate "quality" for the website over time, with Google Ads, for example, the website is only visible high in search results during the ad campaign
  • Ad-blocking software usage - Ad blocking is becoming increasingly popular today, which is why SEO is an extremely more sustainable and forward-looking investment, as its results cannot be blocked.
  • People click on organic results, not ads - Most traffic from search results goes to the first organic positions. Fewer than 20% of people click on Google ads.

Although SEO requires greater and longer-term effort, it is worth the investment in the long run.