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Testing on SEO Part 2

Claudia Colorado
Globant
Published in
13 min readMar 14, 2022

In the article Testing on SEO Part 1, we talked about what it means to implement an SEO strategy, to improve the ranking of a website in search engines and thus allow more people to find it.

This second article will address other important aspects that should be considered when conducting tests and validating that good practices are being carried out for the SEO implementation.

To know these other aspects to include in SEO strategy and its testing process. We will go deeply into essential concepts such as backlinks, their types and advantages, the correct implementation of images and videos, and recommendations on some free and paid SEO tools that will allow a more friendly SEO implementation.

Backlinks: Also known in SEO as “inbound links” or “external links,” backlinks are links that point from one webpage to another. Backlinks are one of the most important off-page SEO positioning factors to increase website traffic from Google. In 2016 Google confirmed that content and backlinks are essential signals used to position websites; Google’s algorithms for this positioning are based on two fundamental aspects: trust and popularity.

If we talk about trust, it is necessary to pay attention to the links since Google and other search engines use them to understand the page authority. The links are constituted in the online website’s reputation. A website link A to website B is seen as a sign that it is a reliable source. For example, if five people who do not know each other recommended a particular hotel as the best in the city, you will likely trust that it offers a good experience since several people endorse it.

On the other hand, if we talk about popularity, Google interprets backlinks as popularity votes for a site or a web page. So, again, there is a strong relationship between the sites, with a more significant number of links pointing to them and the highest rankings.

Not all backlinks have the same weight; Google prioritizes backlinks from trusted and authorized websites over those less trustworthy or even unknown. This trust comes in the form of PageRank, one of Google’s algorithms that evaluates the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to a page to determine a relative score for the importance and authority of that page.

Types of backlinks

We have already alluded that backlinks are not all the same. Below are the different types that are important to know and understand:

  • No-follow Links: Links are like votes to trusted resources, but what if you don’t want to grant your vote of guarantee to a website but still need to link to it? No-follow links use the attribute rel = “nofollow” to inform Google and other search engines that they should not pass “trust” (PageRank). A No-follow backlink looks like this in HTML code:
  • <a href=”https://www.domain.com/" rel=”no-follow”> no-follow link </a>
  • Since No-follow links don’t pass PageRank, they won’t help you rank higher in the SERPs.
  • Do-Follow links: A do-follow link transfers trust (PageRank). Therefore, it does not have the no-follow attribute added. Since there is a no “do-follow” attribute. A do-follow backlink looks like this:
  • <a href=”https://www.domain.com/"> do-follow link </a>
  • Sponsored or paid links: Sometimes, you can pay a blogger or influencer to promote a part of your content or publish a review of one of your products. If money or a product or service has been exchanged for a link, an attribute, Rel = “sponsored,” must be added to inform Google. It is important to note that paying money or giving gifts to get a do-follow link to your website from another violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively affect a site’s ranking in search results.
  • The rel = “sponsored” This attribute prevents your site will be ranked harmful to use these links. A sponsored backlink looks like this in HTML:
  • <a href=”https://www.domain.com/" rel=”sponsored”> sponsored link </a>
  • UGC Links: Using another of the new attributes launched in 2019, UGC (User Generated Content) links come from forums and blog comments. The attribute informs Google that the link has been placed by a user and not by the webmaster. A UGC backlink looks like this:
  • <a href=”https://www.domain.com/" rel=”UGC”> UGC link </a>
  • High authority links: As we have already mentioned, not all links are the same and that Google’s algorithm is oriented towards those it trusts more than others it does not know. High authority backlinks are those that come from trusted sources. ; for example, it makes more sense for Google to trust a link from Amazon or an established website that has earned the trust that Google requires.
  • Toxic links (unnatural links): “Bad” links are often referred to as toxic or unnatural links. These bad links can damage your website’s ability to rank in Google. They usually come from suspicious or unsuccessful bad quality websites and may affect your website and affect any ratings. Also in this category are links that violate Google’s webmaster guidelines, which exist solely to manipulate search engine rankings. For example, it could translate to paid links that are not marked with no-follow or sponsored attributes, those from low-quality directories or bookmarking sites, widely used as footer links, or many unnatural links that use exact coincidence texts.

It is possible to obtain more information about auditing backlinks and identifying possible toxic or unnatural links using the Semrush tool, specifically with the Backlink Audit functionality. It allows you to analyze and eliminate toxic links that point to your domain, decreasing your ranking.

The following image shows a backlink analysis dashboard using the trial version of Semrush. For this example, any page.com is used.

Backlink review result for an xxx.com. website using the SEO tool Semrsush Trial version

Advantages of SEO Backlinks

1. Improve Organic Ranking: Backlinks help you get better rankings in search engines. If any page content has organic links to other sites, that content will naturally rank higher with search engines. The goal should then be to create links to individual posts/pages alongside those leading to your home page.

2. Faster indexing: Backlinks help search engine robots discover links to your site and crawl effectively. Especially for a new website, it is essential to get backlinks as they help in faster discovery and indexing of your site.

3. Referral traffic: Backlinks help get referral traffic since it is usually targeted and low bounce rate.

Validate correct use of images

When talking about SEO, much of the attention is around the results of Google text searches. However, one aspect is also essential when testing SEO optimization: “google images.”

The following image shows the score of the SEO test result to analyze the use of images on a xyz.com website using the webpagetest.org tool.

Image review result for a xyz.com website using the SEO tool webpagetest Trial version

In order to achieve positioning in the search rankings concerning image searches, it is necessary to perform the following validations:

  • Validate that search engines can access images: Ensure that the robots.txt document allows search engines to access images on the web. Robots.txt are the files located in a root directory or the first directory or folder in a hierarchy that specify to search engines which directories or files they can access and which they cannot. You can also take advantage of and indicate the sitemap URL under the restrictions or permissions of this file. An illustrative case of these restrictions would be the pages with the company’s contact details. Although they provide helpful information for the user, it is possible that the company in question is not interested in the search engines including it in their results. Therefore, it is sufficient to specify it in the robots.txt files to avoid this.
  • Image file names: Each image on the website must have a name, and if it is a compound name, it must be separated by hyphens. For example, Google does not read spaces and accents: “Globant-converge-2021.jpg”.
  • Images description in Alt Text attribute: Alt-text is the most important SEO factor for images, photos, and shapes. It is a description attribute that must be inserted in the HTML code of an image:
  • For example, <img src = “Globant-converge-2021.jpg” alt =” The Power of reinvention”/> It is crucial to avoid repeating keywords both in the file name and in the alt text of the same image. Google understands this as a form of algorithm manipulation, resulting in penalties for your site.
  • Align the images with the page content: The image context concerning the page’s content also directly influences the positioning. For example, a house image will be better positioned in a text talking about real estate than in an article about technology. Therefore, the images and the text on the page need to be related.
  • Validate the appropriate image sizing: That is another technique that affects the SEO of the page. For this reason, reducing the file sizing is relevant to speed up the loading of the pages. Therefore, use programs that decrease the file sizing without losing the images quality. Tools such as Optimizilla, Kraken.io, imageOptim, and TinyPNG, can be handy to achieve this purpose.
  • Proper format: A compressed format should be chosen so that the images weigh little, such as jpeg or png, avoiding formats with extra metadata such as tiff. For animated images, the gif is the ideal format. On the other hand, PNG works very well for images with transparency, such as logos, and JPEG is a standard format for photographs.
  • The Open graph is essential for SEO: An open graph is an HTML code tag used so that when content is shared, an associated image appears. It looks like this in HTML:
  • <meta property = ”og: image” content = ”https://website.com/image-name.jpg” />.
  • Having the Open graph labels configured guarantees that the associated image will appear every time you share your article.

Validate correct videos implementation

As with images, in the case of videos, it is necessary to consider that search engines are not yet able to interpret the content as the human eye would. For this reason, it is crucial to ensure the following items:

  • Including Video Meta Description, using the keywords
  • Validating Links that the page receives.
  • Checking Links Anchor text of external sites that point to the video
  • Validating the Time of permanence that the user has when watching a video.
  • Reviewing Social interaction received and its effect (likes, subscribers, number of comments, and interaction frequency).
  • Ensuring Save all the videos in the same directory helps make them easier to locate by search engines.
  • Using the video sitemap. It is a document with valuable data for search engines, applicable for finding them quickly.

In the case of videos destined for YouTube and other similar social networks, these are the aspects that must be validated:

  • Write the keywords’ metadata and pay attention to the tag or tag lists. Generally, these listings admit up to 120 characters, and it is advisable to add a link that points to the company’s website.
  • Optimizing the video thumbnail, also known as its thumbnail image, makes it more eye-catching. YouTube currently offers three screenshots of the uploaded video to choose from as possible thumbnail images, and you should select the most attractive one, with the brightest background. It improves the CTR and, therefore, affects the SEO positioning.
  • Creating extra content that encourages visitors to visit the web, such as articles or infographics, add them to the video description, even add embedded text in the video. This action can help us improve the positioning of the web pages containing this content.
  • Use the word video within the metadata since users constantly search for this word.
  • Ensure that the videos do not exceed 5 minutes unless the content requires a longer duration.
  • Include the keywords in strategic sites, for example, at the beginning of the description and the title; this practice can be conceived as Black Hat but offers good results instead of using synonyms or semantic variants.

Tools for SEO analysis

Below are some SEO tools that will allow us to analyze a website deeper and confirm if it is well ranked in Google and if the standards recommended by SEO for its implementation are being followed. However, some of these tools have a cost.

SISTRIX: Useful paid tool to assess the organic website growth in millimetre form; today, it is probably the most accurate to evaluate the SEO impact of certain activities on the web page. Sistrix comprises six individual modules: SEO, Universal, Links, Ads, Social, and Optimizer. It mainly specializes in:

  • Validate Keyword research.
  • Check the visibility index analysis in organic search engine results.
  • Review On-page SEO error audit.
  • Validate the number and quality Measurement of links on a website.
  • Check the investment, ads, and keywords Measurement in Google Adwords.

SEO QUAKE: A free plugin that offers essential SEO metrics. For example:

  • Reviewing the main metrics at a glance.
  • Running an SEO audit of a web page.
  • Determining the keyword density.
  • Checking statistics on social networks.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS: This tool allows analyzing and viewing the website performance, obtaining information on the conversions of visits, and technical analysis reports (advertising, social networks, content, among others.

GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE: Google’s free tool allows you to analyze web traffic; although it is not exclusive to SEO, it provides interesting data; since being from Google, you have access to complete information from your search engine. Among its functionalities could be highlighted:

  • It allows removing harmful URLs and backlinks from the website.
  • It provides detailed reports regarding search analytics, crawls errors, and searches on your website.
  • Allows you to change domains.
  • It visualizes common SEO problems (for example, optimization failures).
  • It performs inbound link analysis.
  • It allows you to export SEO data, such as keywords, site maps, sitemaps, and crawl errors by search engines.
  • It controls the impressions of a website (that is, the number of times that the URL of the said site appeared in a user’s search results).
  • It makes it easier to know the number of clicks. (It means the number of times users have accessed the web).
  • It identifies the average position that the URL in question has reached in the search results for a particular keyword. For example, if this URL appeared in position 3 in one search and position 7 in another, your average position would be 5 [(3 + 7) / 2].
  • Calculate the click rate (click-through rate, or CTR). This variable is calculated by dividing the clicks obtained by the impressions and multiplying the result by 100.

GOOGLE TRENDS: This tool makes it possible to detect search trends at a national and international level: observing which are the most active searches depending on the geographical area, the trend lists of the most viewed videos on YouTube.

GOOGLE PAGE SPEED INSIGHTS: One of the essential aspects of improving the user experience is increasing the loading speed, enhancing web positioning or SEO. With this tool, you will be able to analyze and optimize the page speed of your web page or blog.

GOOGLE MOBILE-FRIENDLY TEST: Users increasingly access the internet from their mobile phones. Therefore, your customers will also be browsing your website from their devices. This Google tool allows optimizing the website to make your users’ experience just as good on any device.

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS: In the profile, you can add all the information about your company that may be attractive to potential clients. Plus, through Google My Business, you narrow the distance between you and your users, creating the kind of dialogue that catches the eye of search engine algorithms.

GOOGLE BUSINESS REVIEW LINK WHITE SPAR GENERATOR: It is essential that your customers find you quickly and that your users have a place to share their experience with your company. This tool allows you to create personalized links to send to your clients and have them write their opinions directly on your Google profile.

AHREFS: It is a paid SEO tool with many useful functionalities. It is known mainly for its link-building analysis. It allows seeing the project links and information related to the link types (do-follow, no-follow, creation periodicity, location, anchors, etc.). Even compare them with the competition. Also, it can highlight the keyword analysis, with some extra valuable information such as the click-through rate. The location of the best content through variables such as shares in social networks or impact on link building is quite helpful for:

  • Great power to carry out keyword research processes
  • Ideal to know the pages with more authority within your page
  • It allows you to detect negative SEO attacks on your page.

SEMRUSH: A model freemium tool, free features include keyword research or competitor analysis. With the paid option, you can also enjoy the advantages of SEOquake, an affiliated Chrome extension with a multitude of features.

SCREAMING FROG: One of the most used tools for SEO audits. In the free version it is possible to analyze up to 500 URLs and eliminate all SEO errors from a website.

SERPROBOT: Knowing where a website ranks in search engines is essential to control the SEO strategy, which is exactly what this tool offers. This way, it can be determined precisely what works and needs improvement on the website.

OUTDATED CONTENT FINDER: As the name says, Outdated Content Finder helps to find outdated content on your website to be updated.

COPYSCAPE: Recommended to control possible plagiarism cases and to find out who shared your content, identifying if they link to your site or if it is necessary to ask them to do it or not.

OPEN LINK PROFILER: Useful to check the webpage backlinks by entering a domain in the search bar.

SEO ANALYZER: It allows you to check backlinks, heading structure, page loading speed, analyze SEO on-page, analyze ranking, and competitors.

WEBPAGETEST.ORG: It is a free tool that allows, among other things, to test the website’s performance.

Conclusions

As indicated at the beginning of the article, we continue talking about the importance of SEO for positioning a website. But in this opportunity, we detailed other vital aspects of an SEO strategy, such as backlinks and how a professional implementation of these can help rank a website much better.

Incorporating images and videos were also explained in detail because it is essential to use good SEO practices to include them on the website. These are a necessary part of the web page’s content and are also important when generating traffic and obtaining good rankings by Google.

Free and paid tools make SEO review easier, as it is time-consuming manually and cannot generate the expected results. This blog shows some of them, but the possibilities are even more potent.

References

Globant
SEO
Seo Testing
Seo Tools
Quality Engineering

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Claudia Colorado
Globant

Written by Claudia Colorado

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