SEO is a process of optimization of a website to improve its visibility in search engines. Search engine bots or spiders crawl zillions of pages every day. Then they rank those pages based on popularity and relevancy. Whenever a query is made search engines process that query and supply the best possible results against that search or query.This process of crawling, indexing, and showing in the search results of the pages is done with the help of some algorithm. This algorithm helps search engines churn out the relevant and best possible results for the searches made by the users.
What search engine optimization does is optimize the website to get maximum traffic from the search engines.
Why do websites need SEO?
Almost all the people who use the internet use search engines to find something. Most of the internet traffic is generated by the search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. So it is essential for the success of your website to get listed by these search engines and get traffic from them.
Search engine traffic is free to get. Since visitors from search engines come searching for certain keywords or terms or phrases, your site has to meet that quarry. It is seen that search engine traffic converts to a customer very easily. More often than not search engine visitors are willing to buy the things that they are looking for.
This is why you need to work an extra bit to get the attention of the search engine spiders and get a good ranking in the search engine results.
How To Do SEO?
SEO mainly involves two methods On page SEO and Off-page SEO.
What Is On-Page SEO And How To Do It?
On-page SEO is an SEO technique to optimize your website internally for Search Engines. Here are the few techniques use in On page SEO:
1. Write High-Quality Keyword Rich Unique Content:
The first step in SEO is to create keyword-rich unique content for your website. Search engines love the website that supplies regular original content. Stay away from copy pasting from other sites or plagiarism. If you can not write yourself hire someone else for that job.
You need to know how to do keyword research. Only keyword-rich content gets a good result. To learn how to do keyword research read the article Keyword Research -Beginners’ Guide.
2. Cross-Browser Compatibility:
Your website has to be compatible with different browsers. You can test that with some online tools.
3. HTML, CSS Validation:
HTML and CSS of your site should validate. Though it’s not an absolute necessity, it’s better to have a valid code. Bad code can prevent search engines to read your page properly.
4. Link To Trusted Sites Only:
Do not link to a site with a questionable background. If at all you absolutely need to link to them, then use a no-follow tag.
5. Title Tag Optimization:
This is the most important thing about on-page SEO. Optimizing your title should be your priority. This is what comes first in the eyes of the searchers. Make it something interesting to click through.
- Include your targeted keyword in the tile.
- Keep that keyword near the beginning.
- Keep it around 60 characters.
6. Canonicalize Website URLs:
Decide which format of URL you want in your website or links –URL with ‘www’ or without ‘www’.This doesn’t have much significance in terms of ranking, but the idea is to be consistent in your URL format.
7. Image Optimization:
Use an alt tag in all your images across. It should look like <img alt=” image name”>. The idea is to give names to all your images.
Make your image URL descriptive. Use image-name.png rather using 123. png.
8. Interlink Your Pages:
Interlinking your pages is a must. This helps search engine spider all your pages. That means more of your pages are indexed and you get better results.
9.Header Tag:
Use header tags(H1, H2,H3, etc.) on your page.Use your targeted keyword in these header tags.
10. Using Keywords:
- Use your keywords in the title tag.
- Use your keywords at the beginning of the first line of the page.
- Use your keywords in the last line of the page.
- Use your keywords in the header tags.
- Use keywords throughout the page.
- Make your keywords bold, italics, and underline.
- Use different variations of the keywords in the content.
- You can use up to 6% of keywords of the total word count of your page. But, for Google, it is better to keep it below 2%.
- You should use the main keyword in the URL of your page. This is important for better results.
- Having keywords in the domain name still helps.
11.Meta Description:
Optimize the Meta Description of your pages. Meta Description is something that comes in the search results. So write it with a lot of thought. Do not fill this with keywords, that’s not going to help.
12. Get Rid of Broken Links:
Broken links can do serious harm to your site. Either correct them or replace them or get rid of them. You can find many broken link checker tools.
13.HTML & XML Sitemap:
If you do not already have one create a sitemap for your website. You can find more about this on the Google webmaster tools site. Visit here!
14. Anchor Text In Links:
Use anchor text for the inbound links on your site. This helps search engines read the links better.
15.Website Speed:
Make sure your site loads fast. Get rid of unnecessary JavaScript, Frames, Flash, Video, and Images. They make your site load slow.
16. Optimize 404 Pages:
You should optimize your 404 error page. You can include some texts, links to popular posts, a site search function on this page.
18.Keyword Meta Tag:
It does not have any value in the eyes of Google. But for Yahoo and Bing, it still has some value. So if you’re optimizing for that engine then you can use the keyword Meta Tags.
19.Use Robots.txt:
What this robots.txt file does is that it gives instructions to the search engines not to crawl certain pages on your website. This helps you to hide certain pages from search engines.
20.Easy Navigation:
Make site-wide navigation on your site. Make it easy for the readers to find other pages on your website.
There are hundreds more factors that determine the ranking of search results. And interestingly even SEO experts do not know all these factors.Only Google knows that. But, one thing can be advisable not to do any blackhat method. That’ll surely hurt you if not today, or tomorrow. Always remember SEO is no quick-fire method to success. It takes time to get desired results.
What Is Off-Page SEO And How To Do It?
off Page SEO involves optimizing the website of the pages to get better search engine results. To learn everything about this read the article – Link Building- Beginners’ Guide