SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a process of optimizing your website so that you rank high on search engines in an unpaid section.
SEO is a very important factor in ranking your website on the first page of Google.
What do you think how many blog post people publish each day.
If we only talk about WordPress users then over 2 billion post publish everyday.
What are your chances to rank on the top of Google search or on the first page of Google.
Ranking on the top of first page is only possible when you optimize your site properly and it is very important to rank higher than your competitors.
It is a fact that the first five result on Google get 67% of its all clicks and you get an idea of why search engine optimization is most important.
Let’s take an example of yours, How many times you search for Google and check for second or third page of Google.
I think never or probably sometimes.
So, Let’s get deep into the SEO and learn more about it.
There are two broad categories of SEO –
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
On-page SEO is a process of optimizing our website so that Google find our site worthy and starts giving rank to our website.
Let’s understand it in an another way, Consider that you are opening a shop, So what you will do for opening the shop.
First of all you will register the name (i.e.Domain) of the shop then you will purchase a real state (Hosting) where you will open your shop.
At last you will make your shop clean and attractive so that the customers like your shop.
Making your shop more attractive is called on-page SEO.
Off-page SEO is all about popularity like how much your site is popular.
More popular site has more authority and the chances of ranking these type of website increases.
The core of off-page SEO is Do follow links.
On-page and Off-page SEO are just like inside and outside of your house.
If any part of your house is not well maintained then it will effect the whole structure of your house.
They’re different but you need to get both right in order to do well with SEO.
Let’s get started with On-page SEO.
Table of Contents
On-page SEO
There are various categories of on-page SEO that you will need to take a look at.
Content
Content is king – Bill Gates
The statement was written by bill gates in 1996 and, and it’s as true as ever today.
Everyone who search for a query in Google search engine they want an overall information about their query.
Google puts all his efforts to resolve that query by giving an useful and related information to his customers.
Google always tries to give you the best experience by directing you to the greatest content it can find.
Like if someone is searching for “Silver Jewellery”.
Google will show all the websites related to that keyword.
If your blog contains a good information about that keyword then google will show your website at the top.
But if user don’t find that content worthy then he will bounce back from your website and it creates a bad impression for your website.
If the bounce rate of your website is high, Google will not rank your website on top further anymore.
So while writing a content keep in mind that you should write a broad and informational content.
When anyone read your article they should get all the information about their query so that they don’t bounce back from your website.
Keywords
Keyword are the word that people search on google, like
- Buy shoes
- Silver jewellery online
- Shirt for men etc.
Keyword research is a most important part of SEO.
Before writing an article on any keyword, research that people are searching for that keyword or not, the volume of that keyword and competition in that keyword.
You can also use LSI (latent semantic indexing) means the keyword that are similar to your seed keyword.
For example if you are searching for “wireless speaker”.
Google will also show you Bluetooth speaker and portable speaker because these keywords are similar to your seed keyword.
How to find profitable keywords
Google provides a free keyword tool where we can do keyword research that is Google keyword planner where you can search for different types of keywords.
These tool is basically used for running ads on Google but it also give a feature of keyword research.
By using this tool we can find the volume of the keyword.
Now if you are looking for how to check the difficulty of that keyword.
Then you can use SERP (search engine result page) Analysis to check Difficulty.
You can use a tool known as Mozbar to find difficulty.
Install this tool from chrome web store, Create an account and you will be able to use tool.
When you enable this tool you will see DA and PA in the bottom of every website.
DA is domain authority and PA is page authority of that website.
According to Moz –
“Domain authority is calculated by evaluating linking root domains, number of total links, MozRank , MozTrust etc into a single DA Score”.
This score can be used when comparing websites or tracking the ranking strength of a website over time.
“Page authority is a score developed by Moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engine result pages (SERP)”.
Page authority scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.
MozRank quantifies link popularity.
MozTrust is about creating trusted links rather than only links.
The websites with high DA and PA are difficult to outrank.
So first of all check the competition of any keyword wisely by checking out competitor’s authority.
You can outrank the websites that have DA<=40.
So look for a keyword on which competitors websites are ranking with low domain and page authority.
Some paid tools to do keyword research, Traffic analytics and Competitors research
- Ubersuggest
- Ahrefs
- SEMrush
These tools provide you an overall analysis of any keyword.
Like Volume, Difficulty, Competitors that are ranking on that keyword, Back links, Traffic analytics etc.
I am also using Ubersuggest to do keyword research and it helps me a lot.
It shows an overview of any keyword that helps you to choose a right keyword on the basis of SEO.
In short, Follow these steps to find a profitable keyword-
- Seed Keyword.
- Verify volume using Google keyword planner tool or other paid tools.
- SERP(search engine result page) Analysis to find difficulty.
Elements of On-Page SEO
Title Tag – Title tags are displayed on search engine result page (SERP) as a clickable headline for a given result.
When we search on Google it shows different headings for different websites, the headings are actually called title tag of the website.
How to Write Title Tags?
- Write unique titles for every page.
- Write title tags that are around 50 characters or less.
- Be descriptive of what’s on the page.
- Use your main keyword in title tag.
Meta Description – The meta description is the snippet used to summarize a web page’s content. Maximum length of meta description is 160 characters.
Search engines use these meta descriptions in search result to let visitors know what a page is about before they click on it.
Basically meta description is a summary of your whole content, Visitors read the meta description and then land on your page.
Meta description are not very important for search engine rankings, are extremely important in gaining user click through rate (CTR) from search engine result page.
Use Call to Action (CTR) keywords in your meta description.
So that visitors click on your websites URL and you will get more traffic on your website.
Website Speed – Website speed is becoming a variety factor day by day.
If your website loading is more than 5sec in desktop you may probably loose many of your visitors.
And for mobile it is even more less, just 3sec that’s why for mobile, speed is a big ranking criteria.
Speed can effect the performance of your website very badly.
If you have a good content, well SEO optimized site, high DA and PA but if the speed of website is not good then things will not matter anymore.
You can use these tools to check the speed of your website –
- Pingdom
- think with Google
XML Sitemap – Sitemaps are the structure of our website, XML is a format just like doc, ppt, mp4, txt etc.
XML Sitemap allows search engine to crawl the site more efficiently. It tells search engines what content is available and to reach it.
How to create XML sitemap?
Using sitemap generator ( XML-Sitemaps.com) you can create sitemap of your website.
Just insert URL of your website and it will create your sitemap.
Another way, Using plugins like yoastSEO or RankMath you can create a sitemap.
Enable the function of XML Sitemap and this plugins will automatically create sitemap of your website.
404 Error Page – Sometimes people land on a page that not exist anymore maybe that page exist before and then it gets deleted.
So, when someone lands on it (usually via misspelled or removed links) an error page greets them.
404 page informs the Google bot that this page is not exist, so don’t index this page.
Alt Text – This text is usually written behind the image.
When image cannot load it describe it to the user.
It also helps to understand images since they cannot read images.
For example, if you are using an image of a dog and if the image is not loading then it will show a text “dog image” or based on your Alt text.
Off-page SEO
Now, let’s work on outside of your shop.
As you know off-page SEO is all about popularity, so here we will talk about backlinks, authority and some other terms that are related to off-page SEO.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links from a page on one website to another it is also known as hyper-links.
When you open any website you find different links on their page.
By clicking on that links you land on an another page, that links are called backlinks.
Backlinks increase your website authority.
When you connect with a high authority website it passes some authority to your website which helps you in ranking faster.
More the number of backlinks more will be the authority of your website.
There are different types of backlinks, some helps in increasing authority and some increases traffic.
Internal backlinks – When you click on a link that lands on a page of same website that links are called internal backlink.
External backlinks – When you click o a link that lands on page of different website are called external backlink.
Dofollow backlinks – These type of links passes authority to your website.
When some high authority websites passes backlinks to your site and if it is a dofollow link then it will also increase your website’s authority .
Nofollow backlinkks – These links can only increase your increase your website traffic id doesn’t give any authority to your website.
With the help of backlinks you can increase authority of your website by increasing DA and PA. we already know about DA and PA.
Don’t use spamming links, like if your anchor text is about how to gain traffic and the visitors are landed on a page that is totally different.
It increases your site spam score due to which search engines penalize this type of site.
Quality of links – The quality of your links matters much more than the numbers of links you have.
Building quality backlinks is all about reaching out to the right sources and offering value in exchange for a solid link.
- Search engines focus on quality of links not on their quantity.
- Getting few links from high authority website are much important than getting too many number of links from dummy websites.
- Links from other websites are are worth more than a bunch of links from your own site (from one page to another).
High-quality links matter more than low quality ones.
Anchor text – Anchor text is the text that other sites use when they link to you.
Making anchor text more natural, sounds better.
You can either link to a beginner’s guide to create a new blog by linking the words “click here or by naturally mentioning it in the flow of your writing (like I did in the first half of this sentence).
Google PageRank Algorithm
Pagerank is a Google algorithm which is used to determine the popularity of a page.
Earlier, Google shows it publicly but now a days they don’t show it.
But this algorithm effect ranking factor now a days also.
According to Google,
Pagerank was determined by counting the numbers and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important a website is.
More important website are likely to receive more links from other website.
If you get links from too many website that have low authority or you get a link from a high authority website both ways effect your website rank similarly.
TRUST – PageRank , the famous formula that the founders of Google invented.
Trust is getting increasingly important, and most of the recent google updates have hit spammy and obscure websites.
Google shows trust in your websites by following it’s pagerank algorithm, Google see whether your site is legit or not.
I have already mentioned the factors like Authority ( DA and PA), quality of links by which Google shows trust in your website.
Go through all things carefully to make your site SEO friendly and rank higher on search engines.
Conclusion
I hope this guide helps you in realizing how much search engine optimization(SEO) is important.
Follow this guideline, and if you have already taken some decisions about SEO don’t worry.
Start from today, Do keyword research carefully before writing any blog post.
Check the volume and difficulty of the keyword on which you are going to write a blog post.
Maybe the next time your website appears on the top of the Google.
Hey Friend!
I am Ankur Gohite, the founder of Huppdigital. A blog that provides authentic information regarding blogging, SEO, affiliate marketing, and how to make money online.
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