SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization which is used to improve traffic on the websites. It is the process of improving the online visibility of your website on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, which increases the number of visitors or helps to get more leads onto your web pages/website. It is a strategy which helps a website to get top ranking in search engines. SEO simply contain little modification of pages of the website according to their proper SEO format.
Search Engine Optimization is an activity which is done after website development, it is a technical process which we use to improve our website’s visibility on the search engine result pages. It is a method of driving more audience who visit the website and convert them into customers.
Types of SEO
There are 3 types of SEO techniques:
White hat SEO technique follows all the guidelines of Google and algorithms of Google to optimize a website and it targets the human audience.It contains high-quality content, HTML optimization, link acquisition campaigns and restructuring of a website. Peoples who invest for long-term for their websites believes on white hat SEO.
Blackhat SEO is a technique which does not follow the google guidelines and algorithms. It only focuses on search engine ranking, not on the human audience. It includes keyword stuffing, hidden text, hidden links, and cloaking. Blackhat SEO is used by those peoples who want quick growth on ranking but it not long lasting.
Grey hat SEO is a mix-up of white hat SEO and Black hat SEO. It may be both useful and harmful. This technique mainly targets to attract users or encourage the users to stay on the website. It includes HTML, CSS, quality content separate page for each keyword etc.
Following are the processes of SEO which we implement during the website optimization.
Two kinds of processes in SEO :
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
On-page SEO – On-page SEO is the process of optimizing or modifying individual web pages to get the better rank of the website on search engine result page. Creating title, Meta keywords, Meta description and a unique content with their proper character length and format is the activities of On-page SEO, here are some on-page optimization factors you should keep in mind while optimizing your websites. Below are the brief descriptions of the activities of On-page SEO.
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Title Tag – It is displayed in the top bar of internet browser.
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Meta Description – It is the description of your web page which appears on search engine results.
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Meta Keywords – List of all the keywords related to your web-page.
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Keyword Density – The density of keywords in the Website content should be 2-5%.
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Header Tag – It differentiates the heading and subheadings of the page from the rest of the content.
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Image Optimization (Alt Tag) – Tagging images lets the search engines know what the image is about.
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Url Optimization – Clean, simple, keyword related, static URLs are easier to optimize.
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Page content Optimization – The content of the page must include the targeted keyword for that page.
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Google Analytics – Installation required for tracking traffic data.
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Google Webmaster Tool – Installation and verification required to view your website the way Google views it.
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Bing Webmaster Tool – Required to view website the way Bing views it.
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301 Redirect – Set up a 301 redirect between HTTP:// and http://www versions of your domain to let search engines know that they both are the same.
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Robot.txt – Control which pages on your website the search engines can and cannot crawl.
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HTML Sitemap – Help search engines crawl every page of your website.
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XML Sitemap – Give search engines, page information of the page they want to crawl and decide site content hierarchy.
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Link Hierarchy – Control the Pagerank flow, the number of pages getting indexed and better user experience.
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Internal Linking – Spread link juice throughout the website, establish information hierarchy and navigation.
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Broken Link Check – Fix broken links by creating correct redirects. (Use online free tools )
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SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) – Ensure user privacy.
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Loading Time Check – Maintain the ideal page load time of 3 seconds or less.
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Menu Readability – Improve user experience.
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Mobile Device Compatibility – Along with the computer, mobile and tablets compatibility is a must.
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RSS Feed – Help search engines find and index your new page/content faster.
Off-page SEO – Off-page SEO refers to techniques that can be used to improve the position of a website on the search engine results page (SERPs). Many people associate off-page SEO with link building but it is not only that. In general, off Page SEO has to do with promotion methods – beyond website design –for the purpose of ranking a website higher in the search results. Below are the brief descriptions of the activities of Off-page SEO.
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Social bookmarking– Social bookmarking submission is an activity of optimization which enables you to save your links on online bookmarking sites. In this, we submit URLs of your website on social bookmarking sites which helps to generate traffic and also increase ranking on Search engine result pages. The links which we bookmarked on social bookmarking sites are considered as quality backlinks on the search engines.
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Guest Blogging– It is an activity of commenting on another person’s blog to build relationships, authority and it also helps in link building of your website.
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Blog Creation & Posting– Blog posting is another activity that is done in SEO which helps to get more traffic to your website. We regularly create & post blogs on the various blog posting sites which are liked and shared by website visitors that will increase your rankings on search engine result pages.
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Directory Submission– This activity includes submission of your website into a specific category of a web directory. Some directories provide free submission and some are paid i.e., charge a fee to list your website in the directory.
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Forum Submission– In forum submission, we take part in the online discussion and post new suggestions answers in forum websites, we only need to sign up on that websites. This platform allows posting new answers or replying to the old ones which boost traffic to your website.
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Business Listing– It is an activity of listing your business in the Business Directory. It includes the submission of all information about your business in their specific category.
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Classified Submission– It is an act of online advertising, this is a platform for promoting products and services. We create ads including all the information about your business and promote it on classified sites. This is known as Classified Submission. It is also very helpful in generating more traffic on websites.
The submission links are easily available on google search engine. You can search for it and start activities to increase the ranking of your website.
Some modern techniques which we can use to improve our ranking i.e.,
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Mobile Friendly: In the current world, more peoples are using mobile devices to make sure that your website is mobile friendly. A mobile-friendly website takes less time to load and users easily get information. If you have a mobile-friendly website then users can easily access website anytime and from anywhere.
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Social Media: Promoting Products or Services on the search engine is the primary method. We also promote through social media which is also very helpful to generate traffic on the website. Social media is a powerful tool which you can use to boost up your website. In the current world, peoples are using social media so you take advantage of this and get more audience to increase traffic.
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Images/Videos: Posting relevant blogs, images, and videos on social media platforms is the best and easy way to increase visitors to your website.You should use more effective images and videos instead of content on social media platforms. If there will be an effective image or video then they spend more time to stay on your website because usually, people don’t enjoy reading long content they always want something new and creative.
As we have seen above the strategies and technique of SEO to link building and improving rank of our website but as we know that by increasing traffic and involvement of black-hat SEO activities people use short methods so they can achieve good results within less time so, to overcome this problem google introduced every year new algorithm through which Google kept tracking the users and website activity and make possible to keep all work user friendly.
How to submit your website to Google Analytics and Google Webmaster?
Google Analytics is the service of Google which is used to track traffic on the website, it shows the statistics and metrics of our website. It helps us to check the number of visitors coming to our website and also check from which country they are coming, which keywords they are using to find our website. By submitting website on google analytics we can easily maximize traffic and conversion rate. Here are the steps of adding google analytics to our website:
- Open Google Analytics on the search engine or open this link www.google.com/analytics/ for sign up/sign in. Then it will ask for your Account name, Website name, Website URL, Category of your website and Time zone. After filling that fields click on the ‘Get Tracking ID’
- On clicking it you will get Tracking ID and Tracking code of your website.
- Copy the Tracking code and paste it into the <Head> section of your website’s source code (HTML/PHP) in every single page.
- After placing the code you will have to wait for 12-24 hours because Google Analytics needs some time to crawl your website.
- Now, your website is successfully submitted to Google Analytics, your website is ready to show Google Analytics Report.
After Logged in to Google Analytics you can check the number of users which are active right now, the number of new users, from which country traffic is coming. you can also check the reports according to any particular date, week or month.
Google Webmaster is a Google Search Console is a set of tools in which we submit a website for indexing and crawling. Indexing is just a process of submitting web pages on google search by which Google will able to find web pages and add it into the Search Engine Result Pages and, Crawling is a process in which Google visits your submitted web pages for the tracking purpose and it is done by Google’s Crawler. With the help of these tools, we can track how Google is indexing our website. We can check the status of indexing, crawling etc. Now, below are the steps of adding website into Google Webmaster:
- Open Google Webmaster or click this link https://www.google.com/webmasters/ and sign in using website’s google account.
- After signing in you will see a button ‘ADD A PROPERTY’. Click on it and paste your website’s URL in the box and again click on ‘ADD’.
- Then you will get a search console screen, there will be two options ‘Recommended method’ and ‘Alternative methods’. Click on Alternative methods and choose HTML tag.
- After choosing HTML tag you will get an HTML code in the box. Copy that code and paste it into your website’s <head> section and save this.
- Again go to the search console screen and click button ‘Verify’. After clicking you will get a message “Congratulations, you have successfully verified your ownership of (website’s URL)”. Now your website is successfully verified by Google.
- Now, https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ go through this link for generating a sitemap of your website. Paste the URL of your website into the textbox and click on ‘Start’.
- Then you will get a sitemap.XML file, download it and send to the developer of your website. He will add sitemap file to your website and it will automatically fetch from google.
- Now go to the Google webmaster and open your website URL, then on the justify, you will see ‘Crawl’ named option. After clicking you will again get the various options, choose ‘Fetch as Google’ option and paste URL of the second page of your website and click on ‘Fetch’ button and repeat the same process for all pages of a website. You can also fetch for mobile phones from the drop-down list by selecting Mobile: smartphones.
Now, your website is successfully submitted to Google Webmaster for indexing. You can check the status of crawling and indexing anytime.
In the current competitive market, SEO is important to maximize the online visibility of the website. If you want more users then it is necessary to get a good position on your website on the search engine pages. If the position of your website is good and it is on high ranking i.e., on the first page of search engine then it will be easy to get more traffic because users usually visit the websites which are on the first page or two. So your website should be listed on first two pages of search engine.
