Search Engine Optimization as a method of website promotion

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National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Politechnic Institute”

Search Engine Optimization as a method of website promotion

Tetiana Fisenko PhD in social communications, Associate professor at the Department of Publishing and Editing,

Oksana Baliun PhD of historical sciences, Associate professor at the Department of Publish ing and Editing

Anna Grigorenko Master of the Department of Publishing and Editing

Abstract

The research paper is devoted to the study of SEO as a method of website promotion.

The research paper aims to develop an SEO strategy for a commercial site. The paper considers a model of analysis of SEO examples for competing sites. The results of this study revealed the strengths of SEO sites of competitors and include them as examples for the implementation of SEO on the site of the restaurant “Shoti”

Also, before creating the strategic part of the project, a study of the preferences of the main target audience was conducted. The developed strategy was created considering the existing experience of promoting the site of the restaurant “Shoti” and the preferences of potential audiences.

Part of the study is devoted to predicting the effectiveness of SEO by commercial sites. The level of relevance of SEO as a means of promotion in modern conditions is determined.

Keywords: SEO, marketing, promotion, advertising, commercial strategy.

Introduction

The problem statement. Currently, the promotion of commercial projects in the webspace is carried out by various means. Social networks, marketplaces, and sales in messenger applications have greatly changed and redistributed the channels of commercially useful traffic. This state of affairs requires marketing professionals to constantly update the tools. In such circumstances, the means of promotion may be excluded from the overall strategy not because of their ineffectiveness, but because of the emergence of relevant. New means of promotion are emerging due to technological changes in search engines, but their effectiveness, compared to those that have become traditional, needs to be tested over time. Yes, SEO as a means of promoting a commercial organization's website has already become somewhat archaic - it is often ignored, choosing simpler, and often cheaper in the short term promotion tools such as SMM, targeted and contextual advertising, and more.

SEO contains a wide range of detailed processes, which often complicates the process of its implementation, especially in the direction where there are already a significant number of competitors. This general redistribution of resources of commercial organizations has exacerbated the situation of monopoly in search engine results and only increases the confidence of marketers about the economic inexpediency of SEO. We believe that any means of promoting a website is relevant to the particular circumstances, and SEO, in particular, is appropriate to use if market conditions are favorable. It is also important to understand that in each case, SEO can be a more or less useful means of promoting the site. Assess the relevance of SEO for each site - the primary task of SEO-specialist, for the implementation of which uses a significant number of services.

Analysis of recent studies and publications. The theoretical basis of the study is represented by works in the field of Internet marketing in general and the promotion of websites in particular, advertising and PR on the global Internet. During the work the results of research of such scientists as L. Busche [1], A. Ahola [2], N. Drokina [3], N. Ilyashenko [4], V. Tereshchenko [5], M Shinenko [6], P. Bhandari [7] and others.

V. Tereshchenko points out: “According to the modern presentation of sear ch engine optimization theory, SEO is based on three “whales”: 1. Internal optimization (keywords, link anchors, human-readable URLs, meta tags and micro-markup, etc.); 2. External optimization (links, etc.); 3. Behavioral factors (convenience and intuitive interface, attracting users to the site of their content, readable texts, videos, games on the site, news on the topic)” [5].

N. Ilyashenko defines that “one of the most relevant elements of Internet marketing today is SEO-optimization, which is a set of measures to raise the position of the site in the results of search engines for certain user queries” [4].

Researcher N. Drokina argues that “for a site to be effective, it must have interesting content, work quickly on different devices and in different countries. SEO-optimization comes to the rescue in this” [3].

The research goal is to identify how effective SEO optimization is as a site promotion technology. The research process included the following tasks: defining the basic concepts of search engine optimization, as well as providing a classification of search queries; assessing the importance of search engines and their algorithms as part of search engine optimization; conducting an initial SEO audit of the website competitive environment (based on the restaurant “Shoti”); describing the semantic, technical aspects, as well as links as factors in the ranking of the website by search engines; establishing the ability to predict the effectiveness of SEO for commercial organizations' sites.

The results and discussion

The Internet greatly expands the capabilities of the user, and this process will continue to evolve. A company that wants to learn more about it or sell its products on the Internet, should create its website [8, p. 19]. Such websites consist of several links that provide information about the company or store, and the products offered. The consumer can view images of the product, detailed information about it (eg, composition, size, etc.).

Before creating a site, you should first analyze the tasks that it must solve, both from the point of view of the company and the potential consumer. The goal of all companies is to make a profit. To do this, an appropriate step is to increase the visibility of your company. To achieve this goal, companies use not only websites and pages on social networks but also various media tools.

The site of the restaurant “Shoti” performs several communication tasks:

- the restaurant site creates the image of a solid company;

- the user understands that the restaurant uses modern technology;

- the website of the restaurant contains all the information about the company, its products, services, business interests, customers, which gives the customer (possibly a potential buyer) confidence in the company;

- the restaurant site is the most optimal, cheapest, and rather mass way of advertising;

- the restaurant's website increases the likelihood that a wider circle of stakeholders will learn about the company, and this can help in finding new customers and business partners.

If the company does not have a website and does not promote it, then the business will feel the negative consequences of ignoring these technologies, because the customer will not know what services and products the company provides. Sometimes, marketing strategies are based on the assertion that personal contact, or so-called “word of mouth” may be enough for a successful business, but the likelihood of contact is reduced if the company is unknown. Thus, the development and creation of the company's website is a responsible stage in business development. However, it should be noted that several issues can occur when promoting a website:

- non-target audience. Many features were used to attract visitors, such as redirecting traffic from other sites and placing banners. There were many visitors to the site, but they were not its target audience;

- spam. The effect of sending spam alerts is possible only for a short time;

- ignore search engine optimization. SEO is also often used to promote a website. This method is quite effective and requires minimal costs [9, p. 379]. However, only a highly qualified specialist can arrange links and select meta tags. The company's website must change promptly, and always be easy to use meta tags;

- use of illegal methods of promotion. For a website to rank as high as possible in search engine results, illegal methods are often used to deceive search engines, but this process usually does not take long. Then the site is banned, it is removed from the indexing of search engines. After using this method of promotion, you can forget that the real customer will get to the company's page;

- forgotten site. Many pages of a website can look like a regular series of pictures without any relevant information, and promoting such websites does not make sense until the content is completely updated.

Therefore, before ordering promotion specialists, you need to improve the entire site. The solution to this problem is quality development and the creation of sites. For the site to be truly visited by real buyers and give an effect, the development requires the involvement of media professionals who have the practice of creating advertising and PR texts, as well as web designers who will make the site pages visually attractive. commercial site engine optimization

Almost every site on the Internet needs to be promoted and attract more users. Attracting users allows you to use the site more efficiently [10, p. 154]. Carrying out these activities to attract users requires considerable costs. For the promotion to be effective and give a positive result, it is necessary to know the most acceptable ways to conduct it. Analysis of site traffic statistics allows you to achieve better quality promotion in search engines and other systems.

Counting site visits are provided by using statistics. With the help of a special script, data is collected on on-site visits, the number of time users spends on it, where they went from, which page they visited, on what query and from which search engine, etc. Collecting all this data will allow the restaurant to identify its strengths and weaknesses, draw conclusions about the site and take action on the need to correct errors that users do not pay attention to.

Thanks to the collection of site statistics, it was determined how much the site is visited, how they react to it, how it is perceived by users, what needs to be changed for the better and it has become more popular and popular [11, p. 79]. Pages that are rarely visited need to be modified and made more interesting, and the most popular ones need to be supplemented and expanded with thematic information.

Taking into account all the above requirements and the number of tasks performed, it can be argued that the restaurant's site provides an increase in sales and profitability of the company. The website of the “Shoti” restaurant is focused primarily on potential buyers, so it has a menu of dishes, complemented by attractive photos.

The advantages of the “Shoti” restaurant website are:

- user-friendly interface;

- menu with colorful images;

- convenient navigation system;

- convenient calculator for calculating the total cost;

- convenient sending of the order application.

Currently, the administration of the site is working on its search engine optimization. With the help of open sources, we obtained its numerical indicators, such as statistics of visits, statistics of the relevance of the request, statistics on the number of online visits to the restaurant manager, statistics of site visits, customer turnover, statistics of complaints and more.

Thus, from the data in Table 1, you can see that at the beginning of the site promotion the number of visits to it through search engines was 5.5 times less than in September and August.

Table 1. Number of conversions to a search engine site for a month

Table 2 shows the number of direct visits to the site, ie when the user did not search by keywords or name in the search engine and typed in the address bar the address of the site. As can be seen from the table, the number of such transitions has also increased significantly. It is important to note that such a rapid increase in traffic indicates that the work on optimizing the site is effective, and information for potential customers has become more accessible.

Table 2. Num jer of direct visits to the site per month

The data in the tables show that the optimization and restructuring of the site help to increase the share of site traffic. Looking at Tables 3.1 and 3.2 in more detail, we can assume that the increase in the number of users who directly enter the site address in the browser was due to an increase in the number of users who follow links from search engines to the site in the same months. This is because when switching from a search engine, the consumer receives information about the company and remembers the site to which they go, and then uses it, not search engines.

Directly at the direct transition to a site depth of penetration is equal to 3 pages. This is because the direct transition first opens the main page of the site, and the user needs to make several transitions to obtain the necessary information. When switching from the search engine, for example, when entering the keywords “Georgian restaurant contacts”, the search engine will direct the user immediately to the contacts tab bypassing the main page. The depth of penetration when going directly to the site is optimal, so if this figure was higher, it could be said that the usability of the site is unsuccessful and the user can not find the necessary information. Thus, considering the depth of penetration of the site, we can say that users are interested in the company and search for the necessary information without closing the pages of the site immediately after opening.

Another factor that demonstrates the convenience and attractiveness of the site is the length of the user's stay on it. According to the statistics of the site of the restaurant “Shoti”, when switching from the search engine, it is 1 minute 30 seconds, with direct measures, the average duration of use of the site is 2 minutes 6 seconds. These figures are average, but users browse the site long enough to be able to claim about their company and its services. The most visited pages of the site are sections with promotions and services of the restaurant, as well as contact information.

During the study, the site of the restaurant “Shoti” and elements of the process of its optimization was considered: the transformation of the structure of the site, ways to increase citations. The company's website can be called informative, relevant to the topic, modern, with additional online services aimed at user convenience.

Based on the findings and statistics, several recommendations were developed for the “Shoti” restaurant.

It is necessary to further optimize the semantic core, ie the list of the most popular queries for which the user can try to find the site. Expanding the semantic core will increase the amount of work for search engine optimization, it will be necessary to pay even more attention to the content of the site and the organization of a lot of links. Increasing the semantic core will allow marketers to provide information in a less standardized form, as vocabulary opportunities for writing texts will expand [12, p.141].

We need to continue working on filling the content of the site with keywords and optimized titles. You should pay attention to the density of keywords. The user needs to find at least one keyword entry on the page. In this regard, the best method is to study the texts of competing companies that occupy the first places of search results or, for example, search engine leaders in another region. At the same time, marketers who compile texts for placement on the site must reflect in the textual and illustrative content of the criteria of the table of comparative competitive analysis of the restaurant “Shoti” taking into account the semantic core of the site. That is, first of all, we should focus on the company's strengths compared to competitors, taking into account keywords for queries from the semantic core. The desire to draw attention to competitive advantages should not hinder the implementation of SEO promotion and reduce the ranking of the site in search engine rankings. Conversely, SEO promotion should not limit informing customers about the benefits of the company. With this distribution of queries from the semantic core on the pages of the site, search engines will increase their level of trust and move higher to the top of the search results.

In addition, it is advisable to continue a comprehensive multifaceted study of the site, based on the analysis of the psychology of user activity to optimize the interface of the resource in terms of functionality. In particular, to increase the comfort of using the site should increase the number of titles and descriptions, work on navigating the site. It is also necessary to improve the structure of the site: its usability, setting up internal links, changing the management system, and more.

One of the important factors influencing the ranking of sites in search engines is the mass of links. It is necessary to continue working with it to increase, both inside the site and on external sources to increase the level of trust of search engines in the site, it's ranking.

It is necessary to pay attention to internal factors - this is the broadest direction of search engine optimization, so you should continue to work with texts, images, and videos. It is advisable to pay attention not only to the acceptability of texts specifically for search queries but also their informativeness for visitors. For example, it would be useful to add a news section to the site, where visitors can learn about interesting facts in the restaurant business.

The quality of the content may be somewhat similar to the text posted on competitors' sites, but in general, the phrases needed to optimize are sufficient. To solve the problem of providing users with the most useful and necessary information following their requests, the company should continue to work to increase the level of uniqueness and usefulness of content.

Users encourage the creation of unique content by increasing their positions. The restaurant is currently actively campaigning for openness and transparency of the service, so it will be advisable to use the visual component of the program of openness and accessibility of the company to customers.

Although the content and illustrative content of the site are relevant to its subject, work in this direction should be constantly continued, as both textual and visual information should be constantly updated and updated.

It is worth expanding the provision of online services for potential and especially for existing customers. This will allow managers to direct customers to a site where there is detailed information about services, promotions, and more. Customers can get acquainted with it at a time convenient for them, and return to the site if necessary.

In addition, the company has its guide, so any customer can use this service to learn more about the company and see how the restaurant's kitchen works outside the customer area. Thus, you can create an additional service on the site, which could be used to book a tour.

An important step is to increase the amount of updated information on the site, it allows visitors who come to it again, each time to find something new, interesting, and useful. This way, customers start visiting the website more often. It is also possible to place an additional service with news about the restaurant, through which customers can read interesting and informative information for them and then return to the site.

When further improving the site, you should take into account both the experience of previous optimization and recommendations for further promotion. This will make the site easier to use, a more modern, and more effective channel of communication.

Also, one of the recommendations for the potential further creation of a new site may be to conduct additional research on consumer behavior to better target their tastes and desires. Since the recommendations within the master's dissertation are given only on the basic parameters, any additional research conducted by the company will only qualitatively improve the analysis.

The results of the research will later help to increase site traffic and, as a result, increase the influx of customers, which is reflected in the recommendations. It is possible to receive quality feedback from users and make changes to the site following the received data. In addition, the company during further research will be able to correct errors during site optimization and identify additional problems in the use of the resource.

European experience should be used to improve the quality of site optimization, ie before the promotion, it is necessary to conduct a detailed analysis of competitors, prices, products that exist in the market, as well as to conduct an internal audit of the company, including communication. Such a comprehensive analysis will contribute to better promotion and optimization of the site, will positively affect the effectiveness of its work.

SEO has the requirements and necessary conditions to increase the ranking, which were discussed in previous parts of the work, while the marketer has other tasks. He needs to continue to support and develop the site, prepare technical tasks for various types of work with the site, with advertising and PR materials on the Internet, to develop a plan of measures to promote sales. In the latter case, the semantic core and the most popular queries can also be used for sales among Internet users.

The choice of SEO-promotion strategy should be correlated with the marketing program of the enterprise, in the development of sales campaigns, concepts of PR materials, advertising, slogans, titles of materials for the site, technical tasks for advertising agencies, designers, and more.

Thus, marketers also need to study the features of SEO-promotion of the company's website, because, without knowledge of the processes, mechanisms, and tools used to optimize, the marketer will not be able to correctly formulate the technical task, he may have problems interacting with optimizers. work on the site and its quality promotion.

To determine the importance of the use of SEO for websites of restaurants, as well as its relationship with advertising in search results, a sociological survey was conducted with a sample of 120 people, which was organized using Google Forms.

The distribution of answers in the survey allows us to conclude the preferences of the audience in this area. Thus, 96% of respondents are looking for information about restaurants on the Internet. At the same time, the most authoritative sources of information about the activities of institutions are websites (76%), social media accounts (16%), information from navigation applications (8%). It is noteworthy that none of the respondents indicated the most authoritative source of information bots/channels in messengers.

According to L. Bousche [1], a few years ago the dominant belief in SEO was the approach “think like a search engine robot”. Today, as algorithms become more intelligent and more human-motivated, the proposition has changed to “don't think like a search engine”. That is, search engine optimization is taken into account primarily the human factor, user orientation.

According to A. Shenoy and A. Prabhu [13], all SEO factors are controlled by the site owner, including source code. It contains, for example, meta tags, title and meta description tags, titles, internal links, site maps, URLs, content, semantics, and ease of navigation - examples of elements that were also supported by Bouscher in Reputation, Relevance, and Readability. On-page SEO generally focuses on the effective delivery of content to site users. Adherence to the semantics and optimal structure of the web page is essential for the success of the site: they lead to the site becoming systematic, organized and provide better readability not only for users but also for search engines.

According to A. Ahola [2], when a user enters a keyword into a search engine, the goal of SEO is to make one (or more) pages of the site appear among the first results of organic search. Although, as we noted above in the study, keywords are not necessarily the deciding factor in SEO, they are still the best way to achieve search goals.

As search engines today approach people in their “understanding” of content, it has become more important to think semantically, that is, with the subtext or content in the use of language. Focusing on semantics means focusing on what keywords mean to come up with more useful ways to present and insert them. It also searches for other related keywords that users will also think of as they type in the search bar.

Instead of spreading specific words everywhere, new algorithm changes focus on finding out if a page meets the needs of search engines, a principle also known as user search intent. In general, the focus should be on the intention that the user brings to the query, which is more likely to predict exactly what the person wants to know. Simply put, why do people search at all. If the SEO specialist understands who the audience is for any particular piece of content, it is much easier to think of key phrases.

“Shoti” used almost no targeted keywords, which are currently needed for good positioning in search engine results. Therefore, it could be assumed that a potential visitor to the restaurant will not be able to easily find the site “Shoti” when searching related to, for example, restaurants in Kyiv, which is confirmed by situational analysis.

Using Google Ads Keyword Planner, several keywords were generated after the brainstorming:

- Georgian restaurant Kyiv;

- the best restaurants of Kyiv;

- khinkalnya Kyiv;

- restaurants for weddings Kyiv;

- restaurants of Kyiv;

- Georgian cuisine Kyiv;

- where to eat Georgian cuisine Kyiv;

- Georgian restaurants in Kyiv list.

It should be added that so-called long-tailed keywords are the basis of an effective SEO strategy. Long-tailed keywords are keywords or phrases that are more specific and usually longer than the keywords you search for most often. Long-tailed keywords account for 70% of all web searches, and their use is a way for “Shoti” to stay ahead of the competition, as such detailed sentences reflect the natural process of searching the web. Therefore, long-tailed keywords or topics should be paramount when creating blog posts, which should also be created to meet search engine optimization requirements.

Conclusions

Weak aspects of the implementation of the SEO site of the restaurant “Shoti” are recognized in almost all areas. The most critical is the lack of your domain, blog, work with links and content.

It is determined that the high results of competitors' sites in search results are provided mainly by the availability of more content and quality links to the site.

Since it was not possible to use SEO for the “Shoti” restaurant website within the study, the results and tools of such optimization were simulated for the period closest to the study, sufficient for analysis, which allowed us to re-conclude that the current practice of SEO is inexpedient.

As part of the work, a sociological study was conducted, which showed a generally negative attitude of users to the advertising unit of search engines. Authoritative for users are sites whose pages are in the first place in the organic search engine. Evaluating such elements of the site as pop -ups related to usability, users' opinions were divided almost symmetrically.

To provide recommendations, both specifically for the site of the restaurant “Shoti” and in general, a set of steps was proposed, the implementation of which can significantly improve the position of the site in the search results of Google. Specific steps were proposed to work in the three analyzed areas: semantic, technical, and working with links. The use of such measures is relevant for commercial sites of any industry, given the specifics of its operation.

The semantic aspect of SEO implementation can be improved by creating and developing a blog that will be posted on the restaurant's website on the subject of business, technical requires the work of a specialist in site development, and work with links should be done systematically and continuously.

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