SEO in 2018 - Best practices

By Jannik Lindner
 Jannik Lindner - Who’s
that?
● Born 1992 in Kaiserslautern /
Germany
● Studied food technology - 2016
● 2016: Started my first blog and
earned first €
● 2017: Co-Founded The Web
Experts, started with Affiliate
websites
● 2018: Managing 70+ Websites
 Table of content
1. How Search Engines operates
2. Why you should do SEO
3. Ranking Factors 2018
4. Search / User Intent
5. SEO Tools
6. OnPage SEO
a. KW-Research
b. Content Marketing
c. Site structure
7. OffPage SEO
8. 5 SEO Quick Wins
9. No-Gos in 2018
 How Search Engines work

● Search Engines have two main functions:

○ Crawl and index the web
○ Providing users with a filtered list
● Complexe algorithm with different variables
○ OnPage factors: Words, HTML, Keyword Density
○ OffPage factors: Backlinks, Citations
● RankBrain: machine-learning (AI)
○ User Signals (Duration, Click Rate, Satisfaction)
There is no fastlane and no
magic formula!
 Why you should do SEO

● A few SEO Basics are easy to implement

● You need to help Google with understanding your website
● SEO is a long term game - no one has patience
● Few people do it very good (USA is 3 years ahead of Germany, 5 of
Spain or Italy)
● SEO can be frustrating
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/
● SEO is (mostly) sustainable
● SEO has a good ROI
Google Ranking Factors 2018
● Search Intent (RankBrain)
● Content Quality
● Content Design
● Backlinks
● Mobile First (2018)
● Site speed (July 2018)

Not the same ranking factors for all websites!

There are over 200 major Ranking Factors
 What is Search Intent?
● Informational Queries - “How to become a Digital Nomad”
● Transactional Queries - “Coworking Valencia”
● Commercial Queries - “SEO Consulting”
● Navigational Queries - “Vortex Coworking Valencia”
● Brand Queries - “Vortex Coworking Valencia”
● News Queries - “Dow Jones”
● Local Queries - “Coworking Valencia”
Shop

Local

Shop

Shop

Information
Which SEO Tools should you
use?
● Google
● Google Keyword Planner
● Google Search Console (!)
● KW Finder and LinkMiner
● Ahrefs (if you have enough $$$)
● Google Analytics / Google Tag Manager
 OnPage SEO

● Content
● Content Design
● Site Structure / Siloing
● Technical SEO / Technical Framework
● Site Speed
● Crawlability (robots.txt, htaccess)
 Keyword-Research
Why?
● Identify potential in your market
One single page can
● Know which keywords gets searches rank for hundreds of
● Develop a Content Marketing Strategy keywords

How?
● Come up with Keyword-Ideas (Seed keywords)
● Analyse your competition
● Use KW Finder / KW-Planner to create new ideas
● List them in an excel spreadsheet and cluster them to topics
Keyword-Research
“Coworking Valencia”
Use Google Autocomplete
Use Google Autocomplete
 Site structure
Basics
● Use a mindmap tool and a keyword map
○ Which page should rank for which (main-)
keyword?
● Use short URLs:
○ www.example.com/online-marketing/05-03-18/5-t
ipps-how-to-perfom-a-seo-audit-in-2018/ :(
○ www.example.com/seo-audit/ :)
● Avoid keyword cannibalism (bloggers!)
● Don’t tackle individual keywords, think in topics!
● Use Siloing
● Breadcrumbs
 If you already have an
existing website

● Get an Overview! Analyse Status Quo (Audit)

● Use a Web Crawler to identify problems
(ScreamingFrog)
● There are simplified tools like Ryte that help you
● Do a site: Search in Google to see all indexed pages
● List all URLs in an Excel Spreadsheet (Export)
Website Audit with Screaming Frog
If you have an existing
website
 Content Marketing
Which content should
you produce?
● Serve the whole customer
journey - Keyword based!
● Prioritise topics into Value A,
B, C -> A = Highest Value
● 10 X Content - only big
brands do perform with low
quality level (forbes..)
 Content Marketing Plan

1. Know your audience (desires, problems)

2. Identify Keywords and cluster them
3. Come up with content ideas

Coworking in Valencia - Ultimate Travel Guide (A)

Traveling Valencia alone - Best places to meet new people (B)
The Ultimate Coworking Space Guide for Entrepreneurs (C)
5 Best Cafés to work from in Valencia (B)
 Content Design
● Font: At least 16 px
● Logical Heading structure (H1, H2, H3..), question words (what,
why, ..)
● 3-5 rows then hit the enter button
● Subheading after every 5-6 paragraph
● Boxes, tables, interactive elements (share, rate, surveys,
comments)
● Summary of several parts
● Author Box
● Table of content for long-form Content
Content Design- Good Example
Content Design- Bad Example
 Concept E-A-T
● Properly main focus of Google’s
latest update in August 2018
○ Expert
○ Authority
○ Trust

Google hates sites with

fake information, they
want users to trust the You should have:

pages to which they sent ● About Us Page

them ● Transparency
● Reviews
 Final optimization
Speed optimization
● Reduce image size to
minimum (WordPress -
ShortPixel)
● Get rid of unnecessary stuff
like plugins, fonts, CSS,
whatever
● Use a cache plugin
(wp-rocket), invest in a good
web host (serverpilot.io, …)
● HTTPS (SSL) Encryption
 Final optimization
Pay attention to your crawl budget!!
https://vortexcoworking.es/coworking-valencia/img_1930/

Wordpress (CMS) SEO Health

● No thin content pages indexed (Archives, categories,
Tags, Author pages)
● Yoast SEO Plugin
Improve Meta Tags
Improve Meta Tags
 Improve Internal Linkings

● Internal links should navigate the User

● They help Google understanding your site
● They transfer “Link juice” from external
Sources
● More important subpages on your site
should have more internal links to them
than other pages
 SE0 = Ongoing process

● Use the Google Search Console to identify

top & low performers
● Promote your content actively
● Improve existing content instead of
creating new one
● Delete or migrate non-performers
● Local SEO: Get reviews for your service /
product
● Check for 404 errors and manage your
301 Redirects -> WordPress Plugin:
Redirect
Analytics - Organic Search
Analytics - Pages Report
GSC - Analyse your performance
GSC -Analyse your performance
GSC -Analyse your performance
 OffPage SEO
● Number of Backlinks
● Quality of Backlinks (Trust)
● Backlink Profile of your competition
● Anchor Profile

● MOZ Domain Authority 0 - 100

● Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) 0 - 100
● Majestic Trust Flow
● ….
 Linkbuilding 2018- Become
an authority
● 30 % Content, 70 % Backlinks
● You have to be an authority in your niche!
● Imagine Backlinks as a referral - the more
people with authority link to you, the more
you will be recognized
● Danger of manual / algorithmic penalty -
avoid spammy links and pay attention to
your anchor profile
 How to build high quality
links?
1. Buy them
2. Build them yourself
3. Build Linkbaits or Linkable Assets

What is a high quality link?

● Does the site look real or spammy?
● Does the site get real visitors? (Use SimilarWeb or Ahrefs)
● Are there a lot of external links to commercial pages?
● Domain Rating / Domain Authority / Trust Flow
Analyse your direct competition
And compare them to your site
How to build great Backlinks for free

● Use your unique expertise to promote yourself as a guest author

● Analyse the Backlink profile of your competitors
● Massive outreach to magazines & blogs in your industry, create
win-win situations and build up connections
● Build Linkable Assets

Use Google Search Operators

● keyword + inurl:”blog”
● keyword + intext:”guest post”
● ...
 Linkbuilding Basics

● Watch your anchor profile -

max. 4 % hard anchors
(“coworking in valencia”)
● Analyse Link Profile of the
linking site
● Disavow bad links
● Look at the link velocity of your
competitors
 5 SEO Quick Wins 2018

● SEO Quick Win #1: Keyword / site structure /

cannibalism / Crawl Budget
● SEO Quick Win #2: Identify Low hanging fruits
● SEO Quick Win #3: Optimize your snippets
● SEO Quick Win #4: 404 Reclamation
● SEO Quick Win #5: Increase page speed
 6 Ways that do not work in 2018

● Write 300 words content and hope for rankings

● Buy 50 Backlinks for 20 € on Fiverr
● Keyword-stuffing
● Rank for an “produkt + buy” with informational content
- Google RankBrain
● Page load time above 5 seconds
● Website is not responsive
 The best SEO Resources

● www.ahrefs.com/blog/
○ https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-basics/
● www.backlinko.com
● www.authorityhacker.com
● www.moz.com
● Google Quality Rater Guidelines
● searchengineland.com
 ¡Muchas gracias!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jannik-lindner-aa56b9107/
www.thewebexperts.de