"Free" good SEO solutions

modxuser

If you ask me SEO is over rated, I worked for a bespoke SEO/SEM company in the UK for about 3 years

I was responsible for blue chip clients, running their Google accounts, managing keywords on and off-page, as well as code cleaning, optimising copy and optimising keyword density & placement

If you have the money to pay someone on a day to day basis, then yes, it can help, but you need a site that will be updated on a regular basis and with that, it needs to grow

I've been running 2 of my sites since 2007, they are updated on a regular basis, are sites that can be trusted and so far as I can see Google sees them as authority sites. They have been in the top 10 since 2007 for all of the search terms I want them to be found for, that's 14 years

BUT, I don't do SEO on them 🙂 they are well coded, use semantic markup and that's it

mplavala

modxuser In my opinion and experience, well coded + semantic markup is what SEO should be about and that is also what works the best for my clients. That is actually why I love to use Evo, because it is so easy to change the webpage as I need; doing similar feats is largely impossible with e.g. Wordpress.

I have never seen fine-tunings such as keyword densities work beyond what could be considered random chance. If one wants to venture beyond the well coded part of SEO, then there are other things that actually work and make sense: for example at the moment I am working one adding FAQ sections with markup to relevant pages on one website. The reason is simple: average page on that website has 5% click-through-rate in Google, but page with FAQ has about 10% click-through-rate and better ranking. I got the numbers from last 12 month averages and one can see that this effect is not random according to the data. And I think this is what advanced SEO should consist of - crunching the numbers and finding opportunities where one can improve the usability or indexability of the webpage. And this can easily be run every 6 months/once a year to identify opportunities and plan improvements, based on available budget.

Of course, there is then off-page SEO, but this is very hard to pull of in a way that works. Yes, you can be getting some links, but valuable links are hard to come by, especially for business websites. There are sensible things to do, such as searching NAP (name, address, phone) to find mentions of the business and get links, or reverse image search, or just monitoring whether someone didn't copy your content. Apart from that there are link farms and other black hat things that do more harm in the long run. Or you can spam random web forums with links to the website. And I think this is where most time is spent, but usually with marginal gains.

fourroses666

It was a bit general question. I don't have allot of SEO clients yet and SEO software is a bit pricy then. Maybe there is some open source usefull software available which I didn't knew about.

I like to see how a page "scores" on some keywords. So if I overuse the keywords or not, if there are any improvements on the page, and what's the position on Google. Yesterday was checking out Bing but probably Google Analytics is a better statistics holder, although its a big maze.

I like to use Pingdom Tools for page speeds. I think the Google version is a bit off but check it to see if I can improve some. The servers are not located in my country I guess.

History (age of the pages/domain) is a real big deal.

modxuser

You shouldn't in my opinion concentrate on keyword / keyword stuffing

The web has evolved and as such so has the manner of searching, most people don't serach for a specific word, they post sentences, where do you find sentences, in copy

So what has to be done is copywriting and content marketing

esebob

I agree with @mplavala that FAQs can be a great edition. For SEO purposes and in general.
A ld+json structured data snippet that I use for FAQ's:

<script type="application/ld+json">
    {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","mainEntity":
        [
            {
                "@type":"Question",
                "name":"Question 1 here",
                "acceptedAnswer":
                    {
                        "@type":"Answer",
                        "text":"Answer 1 here"
                    }
            },
            {
                "@type":"Question",
                "name":"Question 2 here",
                "acceptedAnswer":{
                    "@type":"Answer",
                    "text":"Answer 2 here"
                }
            }
        ]
    }
</script>

fourroses666

Need to test that FAQ item.
That could result into this?

I have added below script to a site and it adds Stars to it on the Google index.

<script type="application/ld+json">
	{ "@context": "https://schema.org",
	  "@type": "Product",
	  "name": "[*pagetitle*]",
	  "aggregateRating":
		{"@type": "AggregateRating",
		 "ratingValue": "4.8",
		 "reviewCount": "1[*id*]"
		}
	}
</script>

mplavala

Graffx Design Yes, it results exactly into those FAQ widgets in Google. What works for me is to look into Google Search Console to identify webpages, that show on Google often but has little clicks, i.e., the click-through-rate is low. Then you can inspect only that URL and you can find long tail keywords on which the page ranks - use those in the questions. But always keep in mind the searchers intent and make questions that actually help the user. Also note that you need to display the FAQ on the page as well, not only add the schema. If you only add schema, Google ignores this.

Why do you use [*id*] in the review count for Schema? This looks strange to me. Also beware that Google is promising to penalize pages that try to fake the ratings!

fourroses666

I use ID to give different results per page. I'm aware about the possibility for penalize. (should have mentioned it)

Yes, sounds very reasonable to need to have a real FAQ page 🙂

nick0

Great information in here, thanks 🙂

fourroses666

If you use PageBuilder you can have a look here:
https://forum.evo.im/d/68-faq-with-pagebuilder-and-schemaorg-for-seo

An other way could be MultiTV..

mplavala

Graffx Design For some reason I can not comment on that post. But concerning URLs in schema, use PHP's native function addslashes to escape them - I used to have the same problem and this helped. Also, a tip from experience, you can leave links in the form <a href="/directory/page"> when pointing to https://example.com/directory/page and Google will handle this just fine.

fourroses666

mplavala

Ah yes, I forgot it is a locked tutorial.
Thanks for the info. Any idea how I can fit that into a snippet? How did you do it?

mplavala

Graffx Design when you output the schema in JSON+LD form, you just need to escape the quotes within the text. Try it manually, change <a href="example.com"> to <a href=\"example.com\">, it will work. To automate, you just need to apply addslashes to the HTML code in the text field in
"acceptedAnswer": {"@type": "Answer","text": "<p>Your text here.</p>"}
I did this using a snippet call within MultiTV template, but I don't like that solution (it is assuming the snippet exists, which is bad practice). I haven't made any better solution yet and I haven't figure out how to run PHP code at some other place, but it works for now and I plan to switch to multiFields anyway.
See this page for a working example.

The snippet I use (use at your own risk):
<?php $input = (isset($input)) ? $input : ""; echo addslashes($input);

fourroses666

Thanks allot! Needed to use the snippet which works!
TinyMCE makes it <a href="\"[~31~]\"">

fourroses666

Seems https://seranking.com isn't that bad.

mamta25

Hey,
To see how your website is doing on Google and which keywords are working, you can use tools like Ahrefs, AEMrush, Google Search Console or Ubersuggest. They help you understand your page performance and show ways to improve your SEO.

Seiger

Use sSeo https://github.com/Seiger/sSeo for Evolution CMS.

Integration with:
- Evolution CMS Resources.
- sLang Seo fields in each lang tab.
- sCommerce Products.
- sArticles Publications.
sMultisite robots.txt and sitemap.xml.
Custom SEO Title, Description and Keywords.
Canonical URL Implementation.
Automatic META Tags Generation.
XML Sitemap Generation.
Include or exclude documents from xml sitemap.
On page Robots index/follow settings.
Noindex for Pagination and Custom $_GET Parameters.
30x Redirects for Resolving 404 Errors.
HTTP(S) and WWW Redirects.
Manage robots.txt file via Admin Panel.
Dashboard and Reporting.

mamta25

One of my friends recently suggested [this article] https://www.techatom.org/blog/best-keyword-tracking-tools/ , and it’s really useful if you want to keep track of your website’s keywords and see how your pages rank on Google. The article goes into detail about the best tools for tracking keywords, how to use them, and which ones work best depending on your needs and budget. It covers everything from checking keyword strength, monitoring page positions, analyzing competitors, to understanding how your content is performing over time. Using the tools mentioned in the article can help you stay on top of your SEO, make better decisions for your content, and gradually improve your website’s visibility on Google. It’s easy to follow and gives practical advice without being too technical, so even if you’re just starting out, it’s very helpful.

saadnaseer

Nice share—this kind of keyword tracking and ranking insight is exactly what helps improve SEO over time. Along with the tools mentioned, platforms like Ranker.ai are really helpful because they combine keyword tracking, competitor analysis, and content optimization in one place.

It makes it easier to see which keywords are improving, where your pages stand on Google, and what changes can boost performance. Using tools like this consistently can make a big difference in long-term rankings and overall visibility.