People don't like waiting, and neither do search engines. Every user expects a fast-loading page and will be disappointed if this expectation is not met. And Google takes a similar view here: why waste valuable resources on slow pages? With a slow website, you risk the success of your SEO work. Essentially, you should pay attention to the following points and check them regularly:

Eliminating resources that block the rendering of your website

Deferring images that are not visible (off-screen images that appear "below the fold")

Reduce the loading effort for the main thread (save time by reducing parsing, compiling and executing JavaScript)

Provide modern image formats to enable faster loading of images

You can get an initial overview with the "PageSpeed Insights" tool:

The advantage of this tool is that it gives you clear instructions on how to improve the speed of your website. If necessary, you can also call up a lot more information on the respective PageSpeed aspects.

As with PageSpeed Insights, the "TestMySiteWithGoogle" tool provides an overview of the most important PageSpeed aspects of your website. This tool also provides you with recommendations for optimizing your PageSpeed. In addition, you can have a free report summarizing the analyses and recommendations sent to you.

Just how important the topic of "mobile" is in connection with SEO should be clear from the statement that Google is taking the step towards "mobile first" and no longer wants to differentiate between the desktop index and the mobile index. Tool providers such as SISTRIX are also following suit and analyzing a special visibility index for mobile devices. You should therefore be prepared for this and ideally be mobile-optimized when launching a new website. The "MobileFriendly" tool tests your website for mobile optimization.

Rules of thumb for good mobile usability and therefore SEO basics are

Fast loading time

Recognizable font sizes

"Sausage finger" usability

Sufficient spacing between the various page elements

If you would like to learn more about mobile and usability in addition to search engine optimization, we recommend you take a look at our blog here.

You want people to find certain content, so make it as easy as possible for them. Again, search engines like Google want exactly the same thing. Make sure your website has a clean information architecture and a flat hierarchy, as this will definitely have a positive effect on your SEO results. In practical terms, this means

Share content with search engines

Make every piece of content accessible with 3-4 clicks

As banal as it sounds, check whether your website is approved for search engines at all. It is often enough to set or forget a small tick and the page will be removed from the Google index. Keyword: noindex.

A so-called "site query" with Google can help:

The 77,000 results shown here in the example correspond to the number of pages that are in the Google index. If this number differs significantly from the number of pages you have stored in your CMS or store system, you should go one step further and crawl your entire website. Crawling means using a tool to try to follow every single link on your website. With a crawl, you can also find out the click depth of your website, i.e. how many clicks are needed to reach your content. A very good and inexpensive tool (even completely free for websites under 500 pages) for crawling a website is the so-called "Screaming Frog SEO Spider":

If you find that the majority of your content can be reached with more than 3-4 clicks on average, you should optimize your internal linking. A good example of internal linking in terms of SEO is a typical Wikipedia article that links to other important content within the same website:

A flat hierarchy as well as a well-structured information architecture through internal linking increases the chance of successful search engine optimization and thus of happy visitors many times over. You can find more practical application tips for the Screaming Frog SEO Spider from the morefire blog here.

The most important thing here is that you use "speaking" URLs. So-called speaking URLs consist of readable words or keywords instead of long ID numbers or cryptic characters. The advantage from an SEO perspective is higher click-through rates within Google results, which describe quite precisely what the searcher can expect on the website. In addition to speaking URLs, you should also adhere to the following rules in order to successfully optimize your website for search engines:

Keep your URLs as simple and short as possible

Use keywords

Do not use special characters

Use the minus sign as a separator

Only use lower case letters

Do not use filler words

This is what a user-friendly and SEO-compliant URL could look like:

Unlike title tags, meta descriptions are not visible to visitors to your website. The HTML meta description can only be seen in the source code or in the Google results. Although meta descriptions have no direct influence on your SEO ranking, they should be maintained individually for each page of your website. The reason for this is that search engines display the meta description within the search results lists. This means that you can use an optimized meta description to directly influence the click-through rate in Google results in order to attract more visitors to your website. An indirect ranking factor, so to speak, when it comes to search engine optimization and the organic visibility of your website.

The following rules apply to meta descriptions:

Minimum 80 characters, maximum 150 characters including spaces. If you exceed this value, Google will simply cut off the meta description and replace the last characters with (...).

Keyword at the beginning of the first 80 characters and ideally again within the second 80 characters. The keywords are highlighted in bold in the search results.

Write in a promotional and informative way. Also use a clear call to action to have a positive influence on the click rate within the Google results.

Use special characters to draw the attention of searchers to your snippet. As always, the same applies here: Don't overdo it, otherwise we'll have spam

After the visitor has clicked on your SEO snippets within the Google results, the user has finally reached your website. As with usability and speed, it is now a matter of meeting their expectations. The first point of reference is the headline. It is important to stick to the hierarchy of h1 - h6. Logically, the most important headline goes in h1, the least important in h6. It is crucial to note here that you only use as many levels as make sense for the corresponding element. In practice, h3 is often sufficient as the last level. Stick to the following rules and it will work equally well with users and search engine optimization:

Consistent with title tag and meta description

Short and memorable

Informative

Since Google is (still) primarily a text-based search engine, the first step is to write texts that keep the user on the website. To be successful in SEO, you should therefore adhere to the following rules when writing texts:

Every text should be unique on the web.

Every text should offer the user added value.

Structure your texts sensibly.

Address your visitors directly and use identifying language with "we" and "us".

Describe in your content how you can help your visitors. Avoid phrases like "We are the best ...", but write something like "... this is how we help you with ...".

Last but not least: include the appropriate keywords in your texts. However, don't just stick to any key figures, such as keyword density. Write texts that are easy to read for your visitors so that they stay on the website long enough to fill out the contact form or buy your product.

Your website content should not be all about you as a company. Instead, focus on your potential customers, deliver content with know-how and added value! And to ensure that your site does not degenerate into an unattractive wasteland of text, it is just as important to provide your visitors with additional content as well as good texts. So offer your visitors more than just your products.

If you have followed all nine SEO rules above, it should not be a problem to have your content linked from other websites. This is because Google treats such a link (also known as a backlink) as a recommendation. Websites that have more good recommendations than others are therefore logically classified as more relevant and generally have better SEO rankings. When it comes to backlinks, however, the following clearly applies: quality before quantity. One link from a reputable and well-visited website is worth more than 100 links from flimsy, rather dubious websites. If you are trying to promote your content through links from other websites, ask yourself the following questions when selecting these external sites:

Would I trust this website with my credit card number?

Would I recommend this website to my friends or family?

Of course, you should ask yourself the same questions about your own content J. And an important warning, never pay money for a link. Google's Webmaster Guidelines prohibit buying links, as Google sees this as an attempt at manipulation. Updates such as the Penguin update or manual penalties imposed on certain websites in the past have shown that Google takes a hard line on this. A well-known online store for furniture was penalized by Google for almost 3 years, as the following graphic shows. Anyone can imagine what this has meant for business. So be careful!

We hope that our 10 SEO rules have shown you that search engine optimization is not voodoo or witchcraft. Good organic visibility on Google always involves a lot of hard work. You should always start by thinking about the user who has the need to find something and has certain expectations associated with it. Perhaps the term Search Engine Optimization is no longer up-to-date these days and SEO should be interpreted as Search Experience Optimization. Be that as it may, if you meet user expectations, search engines will reward you with extremely valuable traffic to your website.