What is SEO? A Basic Introduction

Are you one of me?....

Always wanted to learn something deep about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) 

But end up just with the basic definition and confused SEO terms like SEO operators, SEO Algorithms like Panda, Core, Rank Brain and so on.

Then don't worry you have clicked exactly right topic which will answer all your questions and will help you make a proper SEO map in your mind that will lead you to improve website ranking on the GOOGLE

Excited to read more?

Here, we go

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

In simple words, I will frame SEO as a method of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine.

Why is SEO Important? 

‘Search is the biggest source of traffic and SEO is vital for that’

As you can see, nearly 60% to 70% of all traffic on the web starts with a Google search. And if you add together traffic from other popular search engines (like Bing, Yahoo, and YouTube, Duckduckgo), 76.6% approx. of all traffic originates from a search engine.

Types of SEO:

1. Black Hat 
2. White hat
3. Grey hat

White Hat SEO: White hat SEO also called Ethical SEO. It refers to the usage of optimization strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience opposed to search engines and completely follows search engine rules and policies.

Black Hat SEO: Black hat SEO processes of using unethical, unapproved, or even illegal tactics to grow a site's traffic and rankings through search engine optimization against the law. Black hat SEO practices can seriously hurt a site's traffic and credibility, and even get you banned from search engines.

Grey Hat SEO: Grey Hat SEO is the practice of using technically legal methods to improve your site rankings, but which are ethically dubious, and could one day become blackhat. 

Got the Basic Idea about What SEO is and What are its Types?

Let’s Dive into more deep details. While reading about SEO one generally comes across the two popular terms or optimization techniques related to SEO

ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION and OFF-PAGE OPTIMIZATION

What is On-Page Optimization?

When we talk about Keyword optimization, Content optimization, Meta description, URL’s, Title tags, Speed Optimization, SSL/HTTPS, AMP, Schemas, and so on. Then, we are directly talking about On-Page SEO. So basically, On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized.

On-page SEO factors:

• Keywords:  Keyword optimization is still a cornerstone of SEO today. The focus has shifted more towards long-tail keywords, which fits accurately in the search patterns of today’s internet world. Think of your audience and the keywords they’re searching for, and try to create and optimize your website content around those keywords according to keyword Proximity, Keyword density and keyword prominence.

• Meta Tags and Body Tags: Meta tags are snippets of text that describe a page's content; the meta tags don't appear on the page itself, but only in the page's code. We all know tags from blog culture, and meta tags are more or less the same thing, little content descriptors that help tell search engines what a web page is about. 

• Alt-Text: An alt tag, also known as "alt attribute" and "alt description," is an HTML attribute applied to image tags to provide a text alternative for search engines. Applying images to alt tags such as product photos can positively impact an e-commerce store's search engine rankings.

• Canonical Issue: A canonical issue arises when 301 redirects are not properly in place. This means that your website can be accessed by search engines from several different URLs. This means that the search engines can then potentially index your site under different URLs, meaning that it will look like a site of duplicated content.

• Presence of SiteMap and Robots.txt file: A sitemap is an XML file that contains a list of all webpages on your site. It may also contain additional information about each URL in the form of metadata. And just likerobots.txt, a sitemap is a must-have. It helps search engine bots explore, crawl and index all the webpages on a site through the sitemap.

• Website Architecture and Navigation: One should be properly able to find out the required web page in one or two clicks.

• SSL/HTTPS: In 2015, Google stated that their HTTPS ranking boost may serve as a tie-breaker if the quality signals for two different search results are equal in everything else. Meaning, if your website is equal to your competitor’s website in terms of speed, title tags, content freshness, etc. but your competitor’s website is HTTPS and yours isn’t, Google will most likely rank theirs ahead of yours i.e Google will improve their ranking.

• Internal Linking: Placing links to your other website pages, is a great way of improving your website architecture, internal links can prove as one of the most useful weapons in your SEO arsenal. Not only does it make it much easier for your visitors to navigate around your site and find all of your content, but it also ensures that your site gets properly crawled allowing the search engines to find all of your pages. It also helps to build the relevancy of a page to relevant keywords and phrases, whilst it is also one of the factors that help you in telling how to improve google ranking.

Some SEO tools that help you in analyzing your website performance

• GT METRIX- GTmetrix was developed by GT.net as a tool for our managed hosting customers to easily determine the performance of their sites.
• SEO Site Checkup - To Check if our website is optimized or not
• Broken Link Checker: To check if there is any broken link
• Siteliner: To check if there is any kind of duplicate content on the website

What is OFF-Page Optimization?

The measures that can be taken outside of the actual website in order to improve its position in Search Engine Rankings is known as Off-page optimization. These are measures that help create as many high-quality backlinks (incoming links) as possible.

Know more about OFF Page Techniques in our next upcoming Blog.

HOW to Improve SEO Ranking From Google Paradigm Shift

About close to a decade ago, SEO was simpler than it is today. Not to say that it did not require hard work to rank your site on the first page of Google. However, those were simpler times. Through some link building, content sharing and even some not so ethical tactics, people could get their sites to the first page within a few weeks for their desired keywords. Fast forward to 2019 where Google themselves have declared that their algorithm looks at over 200 signals to determine how to rank a particular website. 

There is no possible way for any SEO analyst in the world to be able to hit the mark on every single one of those 200 signals. I would suggest you do not even try to because it would be futile. So the question arises, how do we rank our site higher in search engines, particularly Google in today’s changing paradigm of search?

What Factors to Still Look After

While I mentioned above that going after all the 200 signals that Google’s algorithm considers before ranking a page is futile, there are some signals that we should not ignore. No matter how much SEO may change, a few factors whether basic or advanced remain the same. These are the factors I will be sharing with you all in this article. 

1. Targetted Keyword Research

The very first step in SEO always begins with keyword research. Keywords still are an important factor when optimizing a site as per SEO guidelines. Targetted keyword research ensures that you are using the right keywords as per your target region and target audience. You should first determine the geographical region you wish to target with your site. 

For local SEO, you need to determine what terms are the people in your city searching for and which of them would be relevant to what you have to offer them through your site. You need to know your audience. Whether they are going to be searching for your business on mobile devices or desktops. Google’s keyword planner gives you details about the searches based on device usage, which can be helpful. 

2. Appealing Page Titles

After your keyword research is over, the next step is to use those keywords to create meta titles for your pages. Do not simply put emphasis on the home page of the site but all internal service or product pages as well. The focus keyword of your every page should ideally be placed at the beginning of the title rather than the ending. 

Not only will this help your page rank for that keyword but also, appealing and relevant titles are what make searchers click on your links in the search results page. Remember that there is no point in ranking on the first page of Google if no one ever clicks on your result. Appealing title tags go a long way towards increasing organic traffic to a page.

3. Mobile Optimization

Google’s new and improved search console now crawls your site’s pages using mobile-first indexing algorithm. Which means that it first checks to see if all your pages are optimized for mobile devices. The desktop versions still matter for the sake of user experience but Google has clearly stated that since a majority of internet users are using their smartphones for conducting searches, it wants every site to be optimized for those devices.

Mobile optimization includes page speed on the site on mobile devices. These page speeds can be checked using Google’s own page speed insights tool. Apart from good page speed, the responsiveness of the pages is an important factor and has been for many years. 

4. Internal Linking

This is also one of those SEO best practices that we have been following for many years now. It is still very much relevant today as it was ten years ago. What has changed is that since Google has made it incredibly difficult to gain backlinks for exact match keywords from third party sites, you can still use exact match keywords during internal linking. 

For example, if one of your main keywords is “web design company”, then you can create a blog post in which you can insert that keyword and link it to the page you wish to tank for it. When Google’s bots crawl that blog post, it will indirectly help your main web page as well. It is even better if you share that blog post on third party sites. It will help you pass on link juice indirectly again to that page.

5. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)

One of the ways to rank your site higher at least in mobile search results is using Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP was a project started by Google itself in 2016 that would give users with slower internet speeds using mobile devices load pages faster. It is meant to improve user experience and again shows the emphasis Google putting on the mobile experience.

However, even though it is believed that implementing AMP can help a site’s mobile search rank, implementing it can be very complicated. There are many intricate issues with HTML coding, CSS and Javascript that are involved. 

6. Targetted Content Strategy

It is no surprise to anyone by now that content plays a very significant role in search engine optimization. In fact, in the entire digital marketing, there is nothing you can achieve if your content strategy is not strong. In SEO, you need to target your content at the exact audience you wish to bring to your site. Your potential customers. This involves a mix of several things. First is the use of proper keywords in the content that your prospective customers are searching. 

Then, you need to create a list of topics that would be relevant to your audience. Your content should give them answers to common industry-related questions. The more popular the question, the more traffic you can drive from that content. With a perfectly optimized blog post, you can get it to rank for the target topic or keyword clusters. 

7. Link Building

No article about SEO is complete without the mention of link-building. The old ways of creating backlinks are dead and buried. Forum commenting, blog commenting etc is only going to get your site penalized for spamming. The new way of link-building revolves around relevance and content. The focus has shifted from targeting keywords to targeting topics to rank for. 

Firstly, get your site listed in all relevant business directories that suit your business’ industry. Then, focus on gust posting on sites that are in the same niche as your site. The more relevant the content, the better it can help your site. Do not use exact match keywords but rather a long term search terms that relate to the topic you want to rank for.

Conclusion:

These are just a few of the important SEO factor you must keep in mind if you wish to rank your site better in Google’s search results. SEO is always changing and evolving. Keep your eyes and ears open for new updates from Google’s end and make changes to your strategy accordingly.