Introduction to search engine optimization
As more websites are being published to the web, Google being the most popular and most widely used search engine by the people to reach sites related to their needs. More than 80% of the users don’t even bother to look through the second page of the google search results and rather like to search by changing their search terms. Due to this, the competition for appearance at first place in google search results is increasing. The earlier the website is displayed in search results the more it will be accessed by the users. There are techniques used by experts to have a website get higher ranking in the search results out of all other results. Most popular set of these techniques is called Search Engine Optimization(SEO).
SEO is one of the most important aspects of a marketing strategy. It is a set of techniques that can be used to improve your website ranking in search engine results. To be on the first page of search results means that you are recognized by search engine’s ranking algorithm as a relevant, legitimate and high-quality website. This also makes the users trust the earlier search results more than the later ones.
Search engine optimization techniques includes updating the website for search engine relevance (on-page) and also be available through different mediums to the search engine (off-page). The search engine optimization techniques are further divided into two sets of techniques.
- On-page SEO
In on-page SEO we work on the website code mostly the HTML and improve it according to the search engine rules so that the search engine will be able to easily get the information from website and index on basis of its ranking algorithm. The more the code is in accordance to search engine algorithm’s rules the higher it will be ranked. - Off-page SEO
In off-page SEO we do not touch the website code but we use techniques to help search engine find our website links on other websites. That way search engine algo will count the links to our site as its importance and reliability. Some other off-page SEO techniques include the optimization of server and resources etc.
Now that we are familiar with the types of SEO techniques we will further go a bit into On-page SEO and off-page SEO techniques to get you started with it. The techniques we will be going over here are
- Keywords (on-page)
- Internal Links (on-page)
- Backlinks (off-page)
Keywords
When you search for search engine optimization, the first thing that anyone mentions is about keywords. That your website must contain search terms as keywords etc. This is true but where the keywords are to be placed on website? This is sometimes not properly addressed. Here we are going to discuss about this. The keywords are the terms used when searching on search engines. For example on Google when we type anything for search, google breaks it down into keywords according to its algo then performs search in its database and after getting results it further ranks the websites based on other stats. To search for the most popular keywords or terms, or checking if terms you have used as keywords are being searched you can go over to Google Trends and check for it.
For the keywords if we use many keywords without context on our websites then google would consider it as keyword stuffing and would decrease the website rank. Keywords are to be placed as meta tags in website head tag. Also could be placed as images alt and title tags. Then in website body we write text which contains keywords in between and sentences that would synonymize to the keyword/search terms meanings. If our website is like a CMS or Blog then our posts are to contain the search terms in the sentences but not so many times that the sentences lose meaning. This is also helpful in driving more traffic and keeping the users interested in your website.
Internal links
Having links between website pages is a very good place for link building. If a link is on multiple pages the search engine takes it as important link in your website and gives it higher ranking than other links in your site. If a page is not linked with any other page on your website and also is not on your website sitemap then google wouldn’t consider it as related to your website because it wouldn’t be able to find it. So it is very important that your website has internal linking.
It is much more important if you have a blog because in the blog you might have related articles or articles that would refer to other terms about which you have already written a blog post. In such cases it is better to link those posts so that google will also contain your links as related link to other topics as well.
Backlinks
After keywords the second most popular technique in SEO is backlinking. Backlink is a reference to your website found on other websites. As google go over websites it keeps all links found on the websites in its database and uses for making the search results most relative to user search terms. Backlinks from related websites/posts is a great way of letting google know of your content’s credibility and importance. As much as backlinks help in website rank increase it might also have adverse affects on your website ranking.
Why would that be? This might be the first question you get in your mind. Well you know about the websites being ranked so if a higher ranked website has link to your site/post then google would consider your website as having good content but if you are linked to by a lower ranking or blacklisted website then it would decrease the credibility of your site and also effect your site’s ranking in google search results. So before using those backlink tools found on the web be ready for better or worse situations as it might have bad ranking or good ranking sites.
