The internet has a lot of information to offer, and there are places to get literally everything, human beings need. But just consider the internet without a search engine. Dark everywhere! That’s literally the thing. You just can’t think of the internet without a search engine, which delivers results as per our searches to make the internet a practical and useful place for all of us. But when you are looking up on the internet for some information that you need, provided that is not something very uncommon, it isn’t a single website that offers you the thing. Different websites offer you information on the same subject, but the way it is presented is a subject to vary.
Just because different websites offer information on the same subject, we get millions of search results, after we search for the reason why our cats purr when they are around us. But we generally look at the first 2 or 3 results, or all the results from the first page at most, and then change our keyword to find more relevant results, if we don’t find what we are looking for with the initial keyword. That being said, the results that appear on the top undoubtedly enjoy more clicks than those that appear below that. But how Google place results on the top! What are the criteria for that! There are definitely some criteria, and making your website aligned to those criteria is termed search engine optimization or SEO in short.
Different types of SEO
While discussing SEO, the first thing worth discussing is the SEO techniques that most web developers, web marketers and the businesses follow. They are, the white hat or the fair SEO technique, and the other is the black hat or the rather unfair SEO technique. There are different factors, which Google and other major search engines follow to find out the websites, which offer contents that are worth being on the top or enjoy the top rank. Keeping the technical jargons apart, the websites which offer rich and easily readable content with relevant keywords, websites that are mobile friendly, and the contents that have a good number of backlinks are often offered at the top of the results. Now when it comes to SEO, you can accomplish all these things fairly, as well as unfairly. It’s just like how you play the game of chess.
SEO Categories On-Page and Off-Page SEO
SEO is divided into off-site SEO and on-site SEO. On-site SEO optimization includes website structure design, website code optimization and internal link optimization, website content optimization, website user experience optimization and so on. Off-site SEO optimization includes external link optimization of the website, link building of the website, and external data analysis of the website.
Off-site SEO
Off-site SEO can also be said to be off-site search engine technology, named from the impact of external sites on the search engine rankings, these external factors are beyond the control of the site. The most useful and powerful external site factor is the backlinks. Undoubtedly, backlinks play an important role in the inclusion of a site into the search engine results page.
So how do you generate high-quality backlinks?
1. High-quality content
The best way to generate high-quality backlinks is to write high-quality content, and your website content gives readers a desire to read. You can exchange links with other websites, you can also register programs that automatically generate links, and can go to other sites to buy links (research for authentic source only).
2. Send emails to websites related to your content
I don’t advocate sending emails to other sites to exchange links, but I suggest that if you write a quality article on a topic and feel interested in other sites, send a short courtesy to those sites. The mail lets them know your article and will be valuable. Don’t feel embarrassed even if they don’t have a link. You will find that if they click on it, they generate direct traffic for the link so that your site will get a good score in the search engine.
3. Classification
Another way to generate high-quality backlinks is to submit your URL to the catalogue. Many webmasters are convinced of the effectiveness of this method. When starting a new site, the first step they do is to do the work around the site submission portals and select the appropriate keywords to submit to the relevant page for links. There are many categories, most of which are free.
4. Social bookmarking
Add the website to Google channels, Yahoo collection, Reddit and other social bookmarks
5. Create a descriptive blog to create a link
One of the most effective ways to get external links is by posting a blog post.
6. Forum posts or signature files
Post an original post with a link in the forum or write a URL in the signature file
On-Site SEO
Rich website keywords
Adding new keywords to your article will benefit the search engine’s “spider” liable for crawling article and their indexing, thereby increasing the quality of the site. But don’t pile up too many keywords. You should consider what keywords people search for in search engines and use them in a natural way.
Keywords need to be mentioned frequently in your article, you can follow the following methods:
- Keywords should appear in the title tag of the web page.
- Keywords should be in the URL.
- Include keywords in the link text of the webpage links. (See: How To fix Image Alt Tags Error in WordPress)
- Display keywords in bold (at least try to do it once).
- The keyword should be mentioned in the tag H1 and H2.
- Image ALT tags can be placed with keywords.
- Keywords should be included in the entire article, but it is best to put it in the first sentence of the first paragraph.
- Put keywords in meta tags (meta tags).
- Recommended keyword density is best between 5-20% depending on content length.
Niche website
If your website is written about the same topic, then it might get a better ranking. For example, a niche topic’s website will rank higher than those that cover multiple topics. Create a website with more than 200 pages, the content is the same niche, the ranking of this website will continue to improve because in the theme your website is considered authoritative.
Site design
Search engines prefer a friendly web structure, unmistakable code and a clear navigation site. Make sure your pages are valid and visible in mainstream browsers. Search engines don’t like too many Flash, iframes, and java scripts, so keeping your site clean and tidy will also help search engine “spiders” crawl faster and more accurately to your site’s index. See: Add Accelerated Mobile pages to WordPress in just 1 Minute
Internal link to the site
The search engine works by crawling the web page information through the “spider” program, tracking the content you write and searching for the web page through the link address of the web page, extracting the hyperlink address. Many SEO experts recommend that the site provide a site map, and there is preferably one or two in-depth links between each page on the site. The first step for the site is to make sure that the navigation page contains the directory page, and that each subpage has links back to the main page and other important pages.
Regular update
The more frequently a website is updated, the more frequently a search engine spider crawls. This means that new articles on the site can appear in the index within a few days or even hours, without waiting a few weeks. This is the best way to benefit from the site.
External links
External links will increase the ranking of websites in search engines. Links to other related sites in the article are useful to readers, and there is some interesting evidence to support this theory. Too many export links will affect your website, and it should be “moderate is the key.”
Choose your domain wisely
There is a lot of knowledge about choosing a domain name. The important point is to try to choose a domain name that includes keywords. But there is not hard and fast rule for this but if you are planning to start a new niche website then take care for this.
The subject of each article
The more compact a topic is on a page, the better the search engine ranks it. Sometimes you find that you have written a long article covering a few different topics, and their relevance is not high, so the ranking on the search engine is not good. If you care about the ranking of search engines, it’s best to divide such articles into several more closely related articles.
Write an article of appropriate length
Articles that are too short can’t get a higher ranking and generally control at least 300 words per article. On the other hand, don’t make the article look too long, because it will not help you maintain the density of the keywords, and the article seems to lack compactness. Studies have shown that long articles can dramatically reduce the number of readers, and they choose to close the article when they first look at it.
Avoid content duplication
Search engines have severely warned about the same content on multiple pages in the usage guide. Whether these pages are owned by you or owned by others. Because a series of spam sites are constantly copying web content (and stealing other people’s website content). There is some controversy about what kind of content is copied, in fact, depends on whether the content is available for your website.
Submit to search engine
If you do all the things that SEO should do on the site, the site has not yet appeared in search engines. That’s because search engines haven’t started to include them. Each search engine allows users to submit their sites. This thing typically takes 3-5 days.
See: Optimize Your SEO Techniques By Using Best WordPress SEO Plugins
White hat and black hat SEO explained
SEO is further divided into white hat SEO and black hat SEO, white hat SEO is a regular and reasonable operation, black hat SEO is a cheating method.
If you want a long-term success for your website, you should better go for white hat SEO. White hat SEO, however, might take some time and your website or content might stumble at the back for the first few months, but if you are offering quality content, working on it fairly, chances are there, Google or other search engines will reward you for your hard work with a better page rank.
While on the other hand, those web-marketers or businesses, who are looking for a shortcut often go for the black hat SEO techniques, which rely mainly on bots to get their ranking. Black hat SEO too can sometimes have an impressive number of backlinks, but most of them aren’t organic, and the websites offering the backlinks too, don’t have a good reputation.
Google or other major search engines have a good number of algorithms, as I already said, to rank the webpages, and the contents. Black hat SEO is all about showing the SEO algorithms that it deserves a good spot in the search results, paying the least importance to what the real viewers say about it.
But the search algorithms change with time, and those that practice black hat SEO, in that case, may end up penalizing themselves for their practices, end up getting the rank they deserve, or they can lose their websites at all, in the worst case.
How SEO is accomplished
As I already said, the SEO algorithms change with time, and if you want to be an SEO specialist, you will have to race against time and have to keep a constant eye on the changes to work on your website so that it complies with the latest changes in the algorithms. But I am not here to discuss the latest changes in the algorithms so that you can make your website get the best rank obviously because I am not an SEO specialist. But there are always some basic things, which are worth keeping in mind.
The SEO algorithms basically find what your article is all about, by having a look at the keywords in your article, how easy it is to read, and similar other things. For example, if you are looking for the reasons, why your cat purr, while it is around you, your article should have the keywords, which are associated with it. You have to decide, what your content has to offer, to the readers, and link your article to the different keywords, which is relevant to your content. So you will have to do keyword research and find out the most relevant keywords. Stuffing your article with unnecessary keywords, and pushing your article for keywords that it doesn’t match with may lead to numerous troubles, and you may end up losing your website in the worst case.
If you are having a website, you should post articles or contents to it on a regular basis to engage your viewers and eventually make a fan base for your blog or website. You should post articles on regular basis, maybe once in a day or week, or so. Would you ever visit a website which doesn’t have fresh content for you every day! Obviously no! So keep posting new things and make your website a hot one.
If your website or some article on your website has something great, and you want the top rank, you can ask the admin of other websites to provide backlinks, and Google or other search engines will positively reward you for that. More backlinks means, other websites are recommending your website to its viewers, and that is only done, if your website has something great to offer. It is the reason, why more backlinks will undoubtedly lead to better page rank.
Not resorting to black hat SEO techniques is yet another way to get your website or content to number one. Apart from that, there are some small other things, which is worth keeping in mind. As most users nowadays access the internet from a smartphone, having a mobile version of your website will get you a bonus at least from Google or other popular search engines when it comes to page ranking. Your website should also be secure, and should better offer an HTTPS connection and that will surely help you get better page rank. But your key should be to offer genuine and quality content to your viewers for better page rank.
How SEO helps in marketing
When it comes to marketing, SEO can surely help you flourish your business, if it has an online presence, needless to say. If you have any product to offer, your first task would be to provide the details of it on your website and provide a link on the website for the customers to purchase it, if it is an e-commerce website or the instructions to purchase the same.
Now you already know, what your product does, and who are the prospective customers, who will be interested in the same. Now depending upon the utilization of your product, you will have to do research on the search keywords, which are associated with the product that you have to offer.
After you are done with that, try to write up a description or name for your product which contains the keywords, so that people find your product when they search for the same online.
Let me explain this to you with an example.
Just consider, you are selling homemade ornaments. Once you have finished making your website, you will have to do research on, what most users will search for so that they can find your product. A few keywords, which are relevant to your searches can be ‘homemade jewelry’, ‘beautiful jewelry’, ‘cheap jewelry’ and so on. So you can write up your description in a way that it contains the major keywords.
Your description can be like
‘Get cheap homemade jewelry at the most affordable prices here. Order beautiful jewelry collection to rejuvenate your looks in the next party you visit. For a complete list of homemade jewelry products like wedding jewelry, party jewelry, you can visit our complete homemade jewelry catalog’.
This description contains most keywords, which are relevant to your product or product line. So you should write the description in an appealing way that will not only attract customers but will also urge Google and other search engines to fetch you satisfactory page rank.
Once your website gets enough number of visits, and people actually purchase jewellery from your website, it is profitable for you. Even if the users do not purchase anything from your website, they might urge their friends and relatives to visit your website at least once, which will yet again increase the number of page visits.
If you are lucky enough, and your products are really impressive, others will recommend your website to their viewers, which will lead to more backlinks that will eventually help you accomplish a better page rank within a short time.
A number of marketers today use SEO for marketing their products, and thus, SEO has a leading role today in marketing. SEO for marketing is not just about bringing your page to number one, but it is all about making your product known to the prospective customers effortlessly. SEO for marketing along with digital marketing has all the necessary potential to increase your sales and have the numbers going up.
So may it be your new website or blog, or your new business, SEO is the key to your success, provided you do it effectively and play it fair. You can do SEO by yourself, or can hire some SEO specialist, who can help you in the same. It is completely up to you, how you want to play fair and win the game.
Hope the information was pretty helpful for you. Do you have any questions in your mind about SEO? Feel free to comment the same down below.
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