Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process of driving an organic traffic from a search engine to your website by using the various method of SEO. A search engine like Google, Yahoo and Bing have a predetermined set of algorithms that a website has to follow in order to rank their website higher than another website. Search engines gradually update these algorithms to mold according to the time and the trends. This update affects a website performance in the search results. These search engines have a crawler that crawls the website and all the links present in the website and index that website in its own server. When a website crawls your website its automatically detects and matches your content with its algorithm and check if it fits the norms or not. The most famous of all search engines is Google. Almost 80% of the internet user use Google for searching. The primary target of any website is to be first on the search results for certain keywords.
There are two types of SEO used to generate organic traffic.
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
On-page SEO
On- page SEO is a process of optimizing website pages in such a way that the page is ranked higher in the search results. This process uses both contents as well as HTML code optimization to refine the page. There is a lot of techniques to use in order to optimize a website page-
Content
Remember! Content is very important if not the most important part of the website page. When a user searches for his query, the search engine shows the result that is the most relevant answer to the user’s query.
What to do?
There are some guidelines that have to be followed when generating a content-
- Title & Meta Tags– Your web page title is its first impression and reflects the depth of keyword research.
- Keyword density– Keyword density is mentioning your keyword that you want to target in your content so that the search engine can link your content with those keywords.
- Content quality– the Search engine is very determined to deliver their users content for their query that solves the purpose of their search. So the algorithm suggests the developers follow a set of rules to build a quality content that is originality, error-free, relevant, structured and the word count.
- Regular content update– regular content update build a trust in the Google for that website and the articles coming from that website will be ranked higher.
- Webpage Loading Time– Yes page speed matters. Its a part of user experience and slow pages are abandoned by users before they load content. No matter how much valuable info you have in the web page. Check this article on who you can improve website speed.
What not to do?
The guidelines suggest the developers the following-
- Keyword stuffing- It refers to over usage of the keyword in the website page to make it rise up in the ranking. But it may affect your position and may negatively impact your position.
- Duplicate content- search engine hate duplicate content. Google always keep those pages on the top that have their own content. Search engines like Google make the website as the owner of the content and Google makes the owner as an authority and rank them higher.
- Do not use copyright material or have clear disclosure/credit. Too much DMCA removal notice can hurt your website and its confirmed by Google itself.
HTML Code
HTML Coding is yet another aspect that Google uses to know about a page. There are some set of rules that the search engine uses-
- Header tags– Header tag are those tag that is used to define a heading for example- <H1>,<H2> etc.
- Linking-The links in the page are also very important as when Google crawls the page it also crawl those pages that are present in form of links in that page. Links can be both internal (referring to own website) or external (referring to external website).
- Meta description– It is a small summary that Google or any other search engine provides to the user when he inputs some keyword in the search.
- URL structure– URL is the address that the website page is known by. It has to be organized as well as relevant to the search query.
Off-page SEO
Off-page, SEO is a big part for ranking your website higher in the search. It includes building brand name outside the developers own website. Off page is getting a reference form others website to your own website. There is a lot of techniques that an Off-page SEO uses
Link building
Link building is a most important as well as widely used part of the SEO. Link building is done in order to rank and pass the authority to your own website. Types of link building websites include
- Forum website
- Commenting website
- Blogging website- external website for blogging
- Link-exchange- a mutual exchange of website link
- Web directories
- Guest posting
- Image posting
Things to keep in mind while link building
Anchor text
It is the text that displays instead of a big bulky link. The Anchor text is how a Google will be calling or referring your link. It is like naming you to link such that it becomes you links identify.
Follow, No-follow tag
The no-follow tag tells the search engine that the link should not influence the ranking of the website and follow tag influences the web page in terms of ranking as it passes it page authority to the link.
Good link VS Bad links
A good link is that link which is relevant to the website that the link is coming from meaning when a link that is added to others website naturally. If you have a great content and some other website wants its user to have that information then they may link your website in their article. Similarly, a bad link is something that acts like a span and does not appear natural in Google’s perspective these sites can be penalized and may see some drop in the ranking.
Social media
Social media sounds like link-building but it is a little different as all the link that you get from social media is “no-follow” link but it does not make it lower in value as it can drive a lot of traffic to your website. Some of the most popular Social media sites are Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram etc.
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking was the most popular technique of SEO earlier but now this technique is used very less as the increasing use of spamming in the websites. Google wants the website to have a natural external link so they changed their algorithm in order to tackle this kind of spamming. But still there are some social bookmarking sites that offer a good backlinks form the sites but prior to using those links, you should check the websites Page Authority (PA). The higher the rank of the website, the better for the website in terms of ranking and value of a backlink.
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