SEO is within the power of everyone, including webmasters without experience and without a large budget. Together with our affiliate Vladimir Druganov, we looked at 10 free SEO tricks for your travel website using real examples. The results from the examples were achieved for free or almost free, so you should not compare achievements with paid methods promotion. You can use these features in addition to your independent website promotion strategy.

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Positions and traffic are the main markers of SEO promotion effectiveness. To make the picture objective, we will look at more complex examples - requests with high competition and a commercial component. We have two topics and two pages:

Both topics can be monetized using the CPA model - selling insurance and offering a service for checking the possibility of traveling abroad. In both topics, “there is money”, which means there is competition. You can see it without tools, just look at the output.

Positions in Yandex:

Traffic over the last 12 months:

Google Positions:

It is possible to be nice to Yandex and Google at the same time, and moreover, the basic principles of promotion are similar. However, the situation when one search engine prevails over another is very common. Including in our examples, the example of a page in the TOP of Yandex is practically not represented at the beginning of Google results for similar queries, and vice versa, the example of a page in the TOP of Google has modest indicators in Yandex. Let's look at the tricks for each PS separately.

5 tips for free promotion under Yandex

SEO starts before the page is even created. The first thing you need to do is find out exactly how users search for information. To do this, use Yandex.Wordstat or look at the tips in the search bar. For example, this link will tell you exactly how people search for a product. For example, you will find out that they specify the query “health insurance”, and people also care about price and answers to various questions, for example, “do I need insurance”, etc.

Use the resulting keywords inside the article, focusing on the density indicator. Density keywords- an indicator of how often keywords are used in the text. There are special services for checking:

The younger the site, the more careful you need to be. For projects under a year old, it is worth staying within 3%. For older sites, the bar can be raised, but you should not go beyond 6%. If you overspam keywords, you can get sanctions from the PS for trying to manipulate the search results. In our example, the page has the following density indicators:

Only the lazy did not say that the article should be unique. But don’t forget that the article also has headings. They must also be unique. Moreover, on the site, as a rule, there are two headings at once:

• Title - displayed in a tab in the browser;
• Heading on the site - displayed on the page;

Use them for promotion. To do this, use keywords inside the title, and place the most frequent and important ones at the beginning of the title. Try to choose unique text; don’t copy the same headline for the hundredth time.

Title and heading can and ideally should differ from each other. In this case, the title on the site should be framed in

. When creating the title of an article, do not forget about live readers, since the search robot is not the only one who will interact with the page. We have already written about applying knowledge in practice.

The same applies to subheadings within an article. Break the information into logical blocks, separating them from each other with meaningful subheadings.

Use everything possible ways providing content:

• Text;
• Images;
• Video;
• Tables;
• Bulleted lists.

We mentioned this. Nothing has changed: Yandex, like people, loves various forms of presenting information. In addition to this, it is worth considering:

• Give images ALT + Title;
• Specify the name of the picture in Latin, which includes the key;
• Tables are difficult to unique, but it's worth it;
• Try to use your keywords in bulleted lists.

Don't forget to use manual internal linking. Link to the page you need from other pages on your site. Use both anchors, for example, #buy insurance in the USA#, and non-anchor links - #by link#, #previously written#, etc.

5 tips for free promotion on Google

Google loves long reads. Large articles that cover the topic from all sides. However, Google doesn't like volume for volume's sake. There is no algorithm for how many characters an “ideal” article should have. Alternatively, you can spy on the volume of competitors who are already in 1-3 positions for the request you need. Ultimately, it is important to find a balance between volume and benefit; you must always pursue the main goal - the article should completely answer the user’s question.

The article should give the user the answer to all questions so completely that the reader does not Google anymore. If you find yourself in the TOP or near it, and traffic comes to you, but the reader quickly closes the page, returns to the search engine and looks for the same question again, then it’s a matter of time before Google removes your page from the TOP.

When a user selects a result on a page Google search and clicks on the link, he does not immediately get to the site. First, the search engine redirects the user to a special tracking page and only then to the website. This happens quickly and automatically. Artificial cheating behavioral factors won’t work in the long run, so focus on the quality of your content.

Keep your material updated. Google will notice any change in character, and this will be another plus for you. If your site's system allows it, then not only refresh the page, but also change the publication date or add an update date. Doing this without updating the content is pointless; updating the information is more important than changing the date.

An example of a page about traveling abroad: last year the amount of debt changed from 10,000 rubles to 30,000, after which a person may become prohibited from traveling abroad. Many sites remained with the old numbers and gradually their positions sank. By promptly replacing numbers and facts in the article, you can bypass even more eminent competitors.

Try to keep pages up to date. To automate, set up Google Alerts on topics that interest you and receive a summary of queries once a week.

Make sure your articles are commented on. If you don’t have an audience yet, then do it yourself (from different profiles). Alternatively, you can order comments for your site on special exchanges. This is especially important to do the first time after the material is published. It is important to keep comments as realistic as possible, use keywords inside and imitate live communication.

Information that search engines have stopped taking meta tags into account pops up with enviable regularity. Here, webmasters and SEOs are divided into two camps - some do not believe in their benefit, others continue to fill out the Description / Keywords fields on each page. Google announced 9 years ago that the keywords meta tag does not affect search results in any way. Sosnovsky’s experiment proved in practice that filling out these fields can also be neglected in the case of Yandex. Therefore, this can indeed be neglected, but in 2019 it cannot be neglected:

• Availability mobile version website;
• Page loading speed;
• Full translation of the template;
• Removing unnecessary links or closing them in nofollow;

How to promote a website yourself and for free

The famous phrase of Bill Gates - “Content is king”, said back in 1996, has not lost its relevance in 2019. Content is still important for successful SEO. You should provide the reader with useful information that fully covers the topic and answers the user's question.

If you have a limited or no budget, then focus on content. Take note of our material. The ability to purchase links will improve your position. Both sites in the example also receive backlinks using different methods, but in this case the links are not the basis for promotion.

In 2019, it’s worth taking a closer look at LSI copywriting. This method replaced classic SEO copywriting, where exclusively keywords were used and their density was constantly measured. LSI copywriting is built on the content and meaning of the text, where, in addition to keys, various synonyms, word forms and other words and phrases that are close and characteristic of the topic in their context are used.

For example, going back to the insurance example in the US, the words “medicine”, “disease”, “pills”, etc. These are precisely LSI copywriting techniques.

Share your observations and best practices on free SEO promotion of projects in the comments.

Of course, if possible, then you need to promote the site yourself. It will be significantly cheaper and generally produces long-term results. In this article we will look at the main points and nuances of how and where to start promotion. The emphasis is on free promotion, but you can use the services of a company that offers professional SEO website promotion services.

A lot of information has been written about how to promote websites on the Internet, but there is no magic algorithm by which you can achieve results quickly and without the basics. The only thing we can definitely do well and we know that it will bring a 100% plus: writing interesting content presented in a high-quality form for the user. And then there’s work to constantly improve this content.

Sorry, but the site requires permanent work. If you stop working on adding new materials and leave the old ones without improvements, then after 6-12 months a smooth slide down the positions will begin.

What is the purpose of SEO website promotion?

The main goal of SEO promotion is to improve the visibility of the site (positions) for key queries in order to increase targeted traffic. What I want to emphasize is that you only need to search for thematic keywords. Non-targeted traffic will bring nothing but extra numbers to the traffic counters.

The purpose of website promotion is not only to improve visibility, but to generally improve the project.

Before you start reading the manual, I want to make a note that the time frame for website promotion is many months. You shouldn’t hope for quick results: what are the real time frames for promotion?

Promoting a website from scratch - step-by-step instructions

1. A good domain is the foundation for the further success of the project

It is advisable to start website promotion by choosing a beautiful name, or rather a domain name. It is important that it has never been filtered by search engines before. The search engine's domain history is saved. Perhaps the sanctions that were previously imposed will be transferred to your project. If the domain is clean and has some age (for example, a couple of years), then in general this is a positive thing.

When choosing a domain name, you should consider the following nuances:

• The domain must be in Latin (i.e. it is not advisable to buy Cyrillic versions of s.rf, .rus)
• The domain must correspond to the language zone (for Russia this is .ru, but .com is also allowed)
• The domain must have a keyword or occurrence
• Absence of a dash in the name (of course this is not critical, but it is better not to use a dash)
• The domain name is short and memorable
• Check in the web archive and in the search whether this domain has already been registered previously (just in case)

It is also very important to register a domain in your name with real passport data. Otherwise, the domain may be lost during data verification, which sometimes happens.

Why is it worth thinking about a good domain right away? Because changing the address afterwards is more problematic. Setting up a 301 redirect when changing the URL is not difficult, but moving is a small risk. It's just that search engines are missing something that's not quite right.

2. Technical characteristics of the site

The site must meet basic technical requirements. For example, loading times should be better than most other projects. This mainly depends on the engine, hosting and server settings. The faster the speed, the better.

2.1. Site engine

Engine choice is a huge topic of discussion. All CMS have their own problems and advantages. An ideal website can only be completed with the help of a developer and optimizer with additional costs for development.

A good engine should at least have functionality that allows you to change the tag