SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a term widely used across the worldwide web. Here in this post, we cover the basics of SEO, right from what it means in layman terms, it’s different types, techniques, measurement, and how it works, giving examples wherever necessary.
Why SEO
- Increase visibility on search engines.
- It will help you rank higher for relevant keywords.
- It helps to increase organic traffic to your website.
- It will help people to find your website.
- It can convert a local business into a global business.
What is SEO?
SEO is search engine optimization. It is a way of getting organic traffic from search results of any search engine.
Note: Depending upon the keyword search engine rank website based on what content they consider most relevant to users.
Once your website ranks on the first page of search engine results, you will get more visibility, which will also result in high traffic and more conversions.
What is keyword research?
- Keyword research is one of the important steps in SEO.
- Keyword research is a process to identify popular words and phrases used on search engines by users who are looking for content.
- Keyword research is done on the basis of high search volume, high relevancy, and less competition.
- There are two types of keywords:
1. Short tail keywords
2. Long tail keywords
Short-tail keywords
- Short tail keywords are more generic.
- They consist of less than 3 words.
- Short tail keywords have high search volume, high competition but less conversion rate.
- For example, it includes “restaurants”, “shoes”.
You can use short-tail keywords if you are trying to dry a lot of visitors to your website.
Long-tail keyword
- Long-tail keywords are very specific.
- They usually consist of more than 3 words.
- Compared to short-tail keywords, long-tail keywords have relatively less competition and search volume but a higher conversion rate.
- When visitors land from a long tail keyword they are usually ready to make a purchase.
These keywords are used for targeted pages such as product pages and articles.
How does Search Engine work?
- Search engines send spiders to crawl websites.
- Spiders scan websites and store the content in the search engine’s index.
- Finally, based on the search query the most relevant website will appear on SERP (Search Engine Result Pages).
Spiders are there to scan a website and copy the entire website’s content.
Types of SEO
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO (link building)
On-page SEO
- On-page SEO is the method of optimizing elements of web pages.
- It is used to gain more relevant traffic to your web page.
The number of elements that we can manipulate to increase traffic on our website.
- Schema
Schema is also called schema markup which is microdata that you can add to your website in order to give an enhanced description to users on a search engine results page.
Below are some examples of schema:
Ratings and reviews, image thumbnail, product availability, price with a currency symbol, site links.
2. Title tag
- A title tag is the title of a web page that appears on a search engine results page.
- This text summarizes the website’s content so it’s important to have a relevant title tag that describes what your content is about.
Optimal format
Primary keyword-secondary keyboard | Brand name
Example
Men running shoes online – Puma brand | amazon.com
Google displays only the first 50- 60 characteristics of a title tag.
3. Meta description
- The meta description is a short description that summarises the content of your webpage, so it’s important to have a unique description for every page on your website.
- It appears underneath the URL on SERP.
This description can be between 50-300 characters.
4. Header tag
- Header tag is used to identify headings and subheadings of web pages.
- The header tag goes from H1 – H6.
- H1 is the main heading of a web page where H2 to H6 are the optional subheadings.
5. URL
- A URL specifies the location of a web page on the internet.
- It is important to create SEO friendly URLs as they bring traffic to your website.
- URL consists of a protocol domain and subdirectories (specific, folder or subfolders)
- A well-structured URL always provides both users and search engines clear information on what the web page is about.
URLs must be shorter than 2083 characters
According to Backlinko analysis, short URLs tend to rank better than long URLs
6. Image alt text
- Image alternative text is also called alt tags for text tags.
- It is displayed on the web page where an image fails to load on a user screen.
- Search engines also use these to drive meaning from images
Keep your alt text your than 125 characters.
7. Internal link
- Interlink is a type of hyperlink which goes from one page of the domain to the other page on the same domain.
- It improves the indexing of a website.
- It helps in spreading link juice.
8. Sitemap
- Sitemap is a hierarchy list of web pages that is assessed by search engine spiders.
- It helps to improve search (for users) and indexing (for crawlers).
There are two types of sitemaps:
1. HTML sitemap
2. XML sitemap
HTML sitemap
- It’s written in a hypertext markup language.
- It is designed for users.
- It helps to explore a website easily.
XML sitemap
- It’s written in extensible markup language.
- It is designed for search engines.
- Fast indexing of websites is done using XML sitemaps.
9. Page speed
- Page speed can be also known as page load time.
- It refers to the time taken to load the content of a web page.
- Slow page speed results in a high bounce rate and low average time spent on the web page.
Fast site speed will always help you to get a high rank on Google.
Tips on how to increase your page speed:
- Use a simple website design.
- Optimize images.
- Improve server response time.
- Optimize your code.
10. Featured snippet
Featured snippet is the search result that is shown on the top of search engine organic results.
Some of the commonly featured snippets are:
- Paragraph
- Table
- List
Paragraph snippet is the most popular featured snippet.
Off-page SEO
Off-page optimization is the technique of promoting your website using link building.
What will be the benefit:
- Improve the credibility of your website
- Increase the domain authority.
- Increase referral traffic.
- Improve your page rank.
You can use Moz.com to check the domain authority.
According to Banklinko analysis if web page with more backlinks ranks higher than a page with fewer backlinks. (But remember quality above quantity)
You can use Google search console.
Link building- off-page SEO
- Off-page SEO’s most effective method is link building.
- Link building is all about the practice of navigating links from other websites to your own.
- To gain organic search ranking you have to build external links to your website.
Andrey Lipattsev has mentioned that link building is one of the company’s top three search ranking factors.
Types of link building:
1. Dofollow
2. Nofollow
Dofollow: Dofollow links allow search engine crawlers to follow the link for a good post over SERP and pass the link juice to the destination domain.
Nofollow: Nofollow link does not allow search engine crawlers to follow the link. Also, it does not pass on the link juice.
Some of the popular ways of link buildings are:
- Guest blogging
- List your website on reputable and trustworthy directories.
- Testimonial link building
- Content promotion on social media.
It is vital to get links from an authoritative web page then multiple links from low-quality web pages.
Types of links:
1. Inbound links
2. Outbound links
Inbound links: Inbound links come from an external website to your own website.
Outbound links: Outbound links is the link that will direct a user from your own website to an external website.
Duplicate Content: This is the same content appearing in more than one URL.
There are three ways to fix the issue:
- Use 301 redirect to the original URL (the easy way)
- Using rel canonical attribute to the original content (temporary way)
- Use Google search console tool (good way)
Google algorithms
- Google algorithms use advanced concepts to retrieve data from its index and deliver web pages based on the searched query.
- It uses a combination of algorithms to deliver the best results
- Some of the popular algorithms are:
* Google Panda
* Google Penguin
* Google Rank Brain
Google changes its algorithm from time to time if you will check in Google algorithm change history they have changed algorithms 500 to 600 times.
Google Panda
- Google Panda algorithm was released in February 2011.
- This algorithm emphasizes on delivering high-quality content.
- It removes web pages (from the index) that have low quality and duplicate content.
Note: It is updated regularly.
Google Penguin
- After Panda, the Google Penguin algorithm was released.
- It majorly focused on combating low-quality links.
- Penguin focuses on specific practices:
* Link schemes
* Keyword stuffing
Link schemes: Penguin decreases the ranking of web pages that are created artificially by using Black hat techniques.
Keyword stuffing: Repetitive usage of the same keyword in an article will get you penalized by Google Penguin algorithm for having low-quality content.
Rank brain algorithm
Rankbrain is used for machine learning to interpret search queries that users search on Google.
Types of SEO
- Black hat SEO
- White hat SEO
- Grey hat SEO
Black hat technique
Black hat SEO is a technique used to improve page rank on SERP by violating search engine rules and policies.
Some of the Black hat SEO techniques are given below:
- Link manipulation
- Keyword stuffing
- Duplicate content
- Sneaky redirects
With a black hat technique, your website has a high risk of being penalized by search engines.
White hat techniques
White hat SEO is a technique used to improve search ranking on SERP it follows search engine rules and policies.
Below are some of the white hat SEO practices:
- Use relevant keywords
- Create high-quality content
- Improve your website navigation
- Speed up your website load time
Gray hat technique
- A combination of black hat and white hat SEO is a gray hat technique.
- It is a practice of improving page rank by following search engine policies, but they are considered as ethically dubious.
Below are some of the grey hat SEO practices:
- Link purchasing
- Excessive internal linking
- SEO Squatting
- Spun content
Website architecture
- Search engines get an idea of the website’s structure.
- It helps in spreading link equity.
If you are planning to develop a website from a prospective you should be focusing on a few things:
- Site architecture and navigation
- Responsive design
- Optimize for the crawlers
- Create a consistent URL structure
- Robot.txt
- A good site architecture makes content easier to find and also helps to gain traffic.
Important features of a good site architecture are: - Build a URL structure that follows your site’s navigation hierarchy.
- Code your site. navigation in CSS or HTML programming language.
- Build a comprehensive structure of internal linking.
- Create breadcrumb navigation which will improve the website’s internal linking structure.
Local SEO
- local SEO is the method of optimizing a website to gain traffic from location-based searching.
- It helps to market your product and services to local customers.
- Have a NAP
NAP referred to your organization name address and phone number that you show across websites
It is important for companies that want to rank well organically in local search.
How to measure your SEO performance?
- Organic traffic: Monitoring your website’s organic traffic will always help you to understand how effective your SEO strategy is:
Important metrics
- Organic traffic of a monthly basis
- Organic traffic at a geographical level
- The ratio of new visitors to the visitors returning back to your website.
- The conversion rate for organic traffic.
We can use the Google Analytics tool to analyze all the above.
2. Mobile traffic: In general, the majority of Google searches take place on mobile phones than desktops.
This you can also check on Google Analytics.
- The mobile ranking is different from desktop ranking
- Getting more mobile traffic means your website is responsive and has high engagement metrics.
Using Agencyanalytics.
3. Keyword ranking: Tracking keywords gives you an understanding of where your web page rankings for a particular keyword.
Important metrics:
- Keywords ranking for desktop and mobile across locations.
- Average position of keyword and pages on weekly basis.
- The average click-through rates.
- Top performing, gaining and losing keywords.
You can use *Moz.com
*Google search console.
4. Local visibility
- It is important for people who are maintaining local SEO.
- It is necessary to track specific metrics in order to confirm your traffic is coming from the right audience.
Using Google my Business.
5. Engagement metrics
- It shows how users are engaging with your website.
- They play an important role in determining rank.
Some of the engagement metrics are:
- Bounce rate
- Average session duration
- Pages per visit
By using Google Analytics.
6. Backlinks
The content using more backlinks from good domains will help you improve your SEO performance.
You can use ahrefs.com
Important metrics:
- The domain authority of your own website.
- A number of inbound and outbound links to your website.
- The ratio of referring domains to backlinks.
- The ratio of link distribution
- A number of do-follow and no-follow links.
SEO is a simple concept but needs expertise and experience to implement and get results. If you wish to speak about anything related to SEO or digital marketing of your personal website, blog or business, we are just a click away. Get in Touch