DIY (Do It Yourself): SEO GUIDE SEO is a very fast-paced and dynamic. It is very important to stay well informed about the latest SEO practices Every SEO professional should watch out for the emerging trends, algorithm changes and technological advancements. If you haven t been keeping an eye on for any reason, don t worry. We ve got you covered. In this guide you ll learn about everything you need to do in order to improve your search engine presence which will ultimately give you more exposure and traffic for your business or website: What is SEO & It s Importance How to do Keyword Research On Page Optimization Best Practices Off Page Optimization Strategies Common Technical SEO Mistakes And How To Fix Them
Additional SEO Considerations By the time you reach the end of this guide you will have a firm grasp on search engine optimization and why it is so important, and how to get the best result in ever-changing seo environment. 1. What is SEO & its Importance? You would have likely heard of SEO, and if you haven t then here is a quick definition according to Wikipedia: In simple terms, SEO is the process of getting the top position in the search engines by enhancing your content. But I don t think this would have answered some important questions for your business and website: How can you enhance the SEO of your business and website? How much time should you spend on doing SEO? How can you differentiate between good SEO advices from bad ones?
What s likely interesting to you as a business owner or employee is how you can actually leverage SEO to help drive more relevant traffic, leads, sales and ultimately revenue and profit for your business. That s what we ll focus on in this guide.
Why is SEO important for your website? People search for anything and everything. The amount of high quality and targeted traffic which a business can get from search engines is unthinkable. The majority of search engine users are more likely to click on the top pages of the search results. So, you can get maximum traffic and potential customers for your business. Internet Users fully trust the search engines and if your website is present in the top of search engines then it will increase your website credibility. SEO can put you ahead of the competition. If two web sites are selling the same thing, the search engine optimized web site is more likely to have more customers and make more sales. 2. How to do Keyword Research This is the first and the most important step in search engine optimization. In this, you have to determine the terms which people are searching in the search engine and the keywords we want to rank for. There is a list of few factors which you have to keep in mind while finding the keywords to target for: 1. Search Volume The most important factor in keyword research is finding how many people are actually searching for the particular keyword.
The more people searching for a particular keyword the more customers or audience you would get. If the search volume is very less for a particular keyword then it is not suggested to target that particular keyword. 2. Relevance
If you are selling t-shirts then you would not like to show up in the searches which are not related to your business, like dog food. 3. Competition
As with any business, we have to analyze our potential competitions in the business. In SEO, we see the competition of our keywords which we want to rank for. If we are new in the market then we don't want to compete with the biggest companies. As a new business, we should target low or medium competition keywords and try to rank them. Firstly, you need to understand who are your target customers and what kind of searches are they making.
If you are not sure about your target audience and what are they searching about then you have to look at few questions: What kind of products they search for Different types of problems they face Who all are buying the products from your competition and what kind of tools they use. Then, list down the keywords which you got after brainstorming and input them in the keyword tools. Here is the list of best keyword tools available in the internet: Google Keyword Tool Uber Suggest Word stream Keyword Tool KWFinder Moz s Keyword Explorer SEMrush 3. On Page Optimization best practice
When you complete your keyword research then you would have got a list of keywords that you want your website to rank for. Your next step would be to optimize each page of your website targeting a particular keyword. Here s an info graphic by Rand Fishkin of a perfectly optimized page:
So, now I ll list down 10 on page factors which you should keep in mind while optimizing your content: 1. Blog Post Title This is the most important factor in on page SEO because it will make or break your content. The more attractive and optimized a title would be the more people will click on it and the more it will rank higher.
You should try to start your title with your keyword which you want to rank for but if you can t start by your targeted keyword then at least you should have a place somewhere in its title. One thing which you should keep in mind that don t place your keyword in the title more than once. Search Engines would consider it as a spam and will definitely penalize your website. 2. Permalinks Structure The structure of the URL of your website plays an important factor in onpage optimization. The targeting keyword should be present in the URL and it should not contain special characters, symbols, brackets, commas, semicolon, etc. Example of a good permalink: 3. Heading Tags Use heading tags to highlight various headings and subheadings and other vital points.
In WordPress the title tag is automatically set to H1 so we don t have to use it further again. For other breaks and to highlight important points use H2 and H3 tags. We should not overuse H2 and H3 tags as Google algorithms does not like that and it might penalize your website. 4. Keyword Density Keyword Density is the percentage on how many times a keyword appears on a web page. An ideal keyword density would be around 1.5% and you should mix it with some LSI keywords.
Use your main keyword in the first paragraph and once in the last paragraph and some use it whenever the content makes sense. 5. Meta Tags You should add useful and relevant Meta tags in each of your blog posts. You should also keep your keyword in the meta description but don t overuse it. Search Engines picks the keywords from Meta description but it must be userfriendly so that the user clicks on the post.
Meta tags are useful for not only Google but also other search engines also give weight to it. 6. Image Optimization Image optimization is very necessary part of On-Page optimization. Images help in getting a huge amount of traffic from image searches. So, that's why we should place your keyword in the image title and in the alt text..
Images also create engagement and the more engaged a user would be the more he will stay on the website. Therefore, it will decrease bounce rate of the website and improve overall ranking. One more important point related to images is that large images slow down your site. So, you should compress your images using various tools available so that the images do not affect your site s speed.
7. Word Count Blog post with less number of words usually does not perform well in the search engines. The main reason is that with less number of words the post does not look much informative. You should write at least 500 words blog post so that the post looks informative. There is not a maximum limit but you should write a well-researched post.
Analyze other posts for your target keyword and check how many words they tend to use and write a longer and better post than your competitors. 8. Internal Linking Internal linking is the process of placing your links of the related post of your website in the blog post. It not only helps in passing page ranks from other pages from your website but also keeps the user longer on your website. Search engine thinks that you are providing extra relevant information beyond what is displayed on the page.
You should not overdo it, only link to the pages when you think it s necessary and relevant. 9. External Linking Other than linking your own blog post you can also link other websites. But you should only link to other websites when you think the link is important and useful to link in your post. Link to only trusted websites only and if you have doubt about the authority of the website use a no follow tag to avoid the link juice to pass. You should use a do follow link for trusted websites and a no follow link to less trustworthy sites.
10. Engaging Content Source - http://heroicsearch.com The final and most important point in on page SEO is to write engaging content. If you try to write thin outdated content and try to trick search engine then you will surely fail. Try to write in as detailed as you can and engage your audience with everything you have.
Ask your audience for what they want to read about and try to answer their queries. If you will not write engaging content then the user might not read your post and will move out of your website which will increase the bounce rate of your website and thus it will affect your ranking. So, these are the 10 vital points which will make your on-page much better and more likely to increase your ranking. The most important thing to learn from above points is: You can t trick or fool a search engine. 4. Off Page Optimization Strategies
Off Page, Optimization Strategies refers all those things that you can do on our website which will boost your search engines ranking. It also increases visibility of your website. On page SEO only helps in getting the visibility in search engines but off page SEO techniques will help to increase your website position in the search engines and will also create your brand trustworthiness and credibility. Here is the list of 10 Off-Page Seo strategies which you can use to boost your website rankings: 1. Social Media Engagement Strategy: Social Media Engagement is one of the best methods to increase your website s popularity.
It is highly recommended to engage with your social media audience and to connect a huge number of people through various social media platforms. If you will get a good number of social media subscribers then you can get a decent amount of traffic without the help of the search engines. Top Social Media Sites: www.facebook.com www.twitter.com www.plus.google.com
www.linkedin.com www.pinterest.com 2. Social Bookmarking Sites: Social Bookmaking Sites are the best platforms where you can promote and get traffic back to your website. When you bookmark your page in one the social bookmarking sites you not only get huge traffic but also you get a good amount of backlinks.
Top high PR Social Bookmarking Sites: https://delicious.com http://stumbleupon.com http://digg.com http://slashdot.org http://diigo.com http://technorati.com/ 3. Forum Submission Forum Submission is also one of the good off-page technique which will get you tons of visitors and also very good quality backlinks. Participate in forum sites which are related to your niche and engage with the members of the forum. Ask questions and also answer others thread and share your feedback and suggestions. This will make you an authority within the forum which can help you getting traffic and establishing your website.
Top high PR forum submission forums: www.warriorforum.com www.drupal.org/forum www.forums.mysql.com www.webhostingtalk.com www.imtalk.org/ 4. Article Submission
Submit your articles to article submission directories and make sure they are of high PR. Give links of your website to get backlinks. Choose the right category and provide a highly engaging title. Your content should be unique or else the directories will reject your articles. Top high PR Article Submission Directories: www.ezinearticles.com http://hubpages.com/ www.evernote.com http://www.magportal.com www.carbonmade.com www.sooperarticles.com
5. Blog Directory Submission Blog Directory Submission in one the best method to create high-quality backlinks. The trick is to pick a good powerful directory submission site to choose a correct category. It takes time to get good results here but once you get the result it will benefit you for a long period.
Top free Blog Directory Submission List: www.boingboing.net www.blogarama.com http://www.networkedblogs.com www.freedirectorysubmit.com www.1websdirectory.com 6. Question & Answer (Q&A) High quality targeted traffic for a website can be achieved from question and answer websites.
Join high PR question and answer websites related to your business, product or website and answer question related to your niche. Try to write detailed informative answers to the queries and your web page to get high-quality traffic back to your website. Question & Answer Websites: www.quora.com www.answers.yahoo.com www.answers.com/ www.question.com http://www.blurtit.com/ http://www.ehow.com/ 7. Video Submission
Video Submission Sites helps in increasing the awareness of the brand. You can make your own video and submit it to video submission sites like YouTube, Vimeo, etc. It is one of the best methods to get high-quality backlinks because most video sharing websites have high PR and DA. Top Video Submission Sites: www.youtube.com www.vimeo.com
http://www.veoh.com/ www.dailymotion.com www.ustream.tv www.vine.co www.break.com www.twitch.tv 8. Image Submission
Image submission is another top off-page technique. Share photos related to your niche on image sharing websites but before sharing take care to optimize your images with proper URL, description, and title tag. Top Image Submission Sites List: www.pinterest.com www.photobucket.com/ www.imgur.com www.flickr.com www.fotolog.com www.500px.com 9. Info graphic Submission
Create a good-looking info graphic related to your product or service. Nowadays, an info graphic is getting viral on the internet. Submit your info graphics on info graphic submission sites to get a backlink to your websites. Top info graphic Submission Sites: www.visual.ly www.infographicsite.com/ http://www.infographiclove.com/
http://submitinfographics.com/ www.infogr.am www.html5infographics.com/ 10. Document sharing Create attractive documents either in ppt or pdf and share them on document sharing sites. Your content should be unique and of good quality else you would not be able to get high-quality traffic and link back to your website.
Top Document Sharing Sites: www.issuu.com www.scribd.com www.dropbox.com www.authorstream.com www.en.calameo.com www.box.net/ Off-Page and On-Page SEO both play a vital role for a website to rank in the search engines. You should properly follow the above strategies to get the best result for your websites. Common Technical SEO Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Technical SEO refers to updates to a website/server which has a harmful effect on search engine crawling, indexation and finally ranking of the website. Technical SEO is composed of page elements, HTTP header responses, XML sitemaps, etc. It does not include analytics, keyword research, backlink profile, etc. The below list contains some common SEO mistakes that are often neglected but are very important to boost your search engine visibility and SEO success. No HTTPS Security In October 2017, Google rolled out a not secure warning whenever a user lands up in an HTTP website.
To check if your website is HTTPs, simply open your domain in Google Chrome. If your site is not HTTPS then it will show a not secure warning which will mostly make a user go away from your website. How to Fix It: To convert your site to HTTPS you need to get an SSL certificate. Once you purchase and install your certificate your site will be secure.
Incorrectly Indexed Site When you search your site in google does your website show up? If your answer is no, then your site must not be indexed properly. If you do not index your site correctly then it won t be shown in the search engines. Type the following into the Google search bar. Site: yoursitename.com It will show you the list of all web pages that are indexed in google for your website.
How to fix it. If your site isn t indexed at all then simply add the URL of the web pages in Google Webmaster.
If your site is indexed but is shows on Google search engine very less than expected, then you should perform an audit of the indexed content and compare with the web pages you want to rank. If your results are different than expected then make sure that the important web pages of your website are not blocked by robots.txt file. No XML Sitemaps XML Sitemaps help Google bot to understand about your site web pages so that they can efficiently crawl your website. Type your domain name into Google and add /sitemap.xml to the end as shown in the picture below. If your website contains a sitemap, you can see a similar picture like the one below:
How to fix it: If your website does not contain a sitemap then you can easily create yourself. You can use any XML sitemap generation tool. If you are using Wordpress then you can use the Yoast Plugin which automatically generates an XML sitemap. Missing or Incorrect Robots.txt If your website does not have a robots.txt file or if it is improperly configured then it will definitely harm your site in the search engine rankings.
To check if your robots.txt file in incorrect, type website URL into the browser and at the end add /robots.txt. If you get a result User-agent: * Disallow: / then there s a problem. How to fix it: If you see Disallow: /, contact your developer to make necessary changes. If you have a complete robots.txt file then you should you should review it line by line.
Meta Robots NoIndex Set When a NoIndex is not properly configured, then it suggests that certain web pages are not much important to the search engine bots. However, if it is improperly configured NoIndex can damage your website s search engine ranking immensely by removing all pages with a specific configuration from Google s Index. To check, right-click your site s main pages and select view source code. Find the lines in the source code that reads NOINDEX or NOFOLLOW like: <meta name= robots content= NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW >. How to fix it:
If you see a NOFOLLOW Or NOINDEX in your source code then there may be specific reasons. So, you can contact your developer to make changes. If there s no known reason, have your developer change it to read <meta name= robots content= INDEX, FOLLOW > or remove the tag altogether. Slow Page Speed Website Speed is one of the most crucial factors for SEO. If your website loads very slowly than the overall user experience of the site gets damaged. Google and other search engines also do not like websites with low speed and they do not rank these kinds of websites. To check your site s speed use Google Page Speed Insights to detect the speed problems of your site. Make sure to check both desktop and mobile speed performance.
How to fix it: Speed Issues can be fixed by simple solutions but sometimes it becomes a complex problem. Common speed issues can be solved by image optimization, browser cache improvement, improving server response time, etc. Homepage Multiple Versions You might notice that when you type yourwebsitename.com or www.yourwebsitename.com it goes to the same place.
This may seem convenient to you but here Google might be indexing multiple URL versions which decrease your site's visibility in the search engines. How to fix it: Firstly, check how many URL s of your website redirects to the same page. It can include HTTP and HTTPS versions, as well as versions of www.yourwebsitename.com/home.html.
Check each and every possible version. Another way is to use your site site: yourwebsitename.com to determine which pages are indexed and contain multiple URL versions. When you get all the URL versions then, then set up 301 redirects or you can also set your canonical domain in the Google Search Console. Incorrect REL=CANONICAL REL=CANONICAL is very important with the sites which have almost similar web content. Dynamically rendered pages (like category pages) can look like duplicate contents to search engine bots.
The rel=canonical tag tells the search engine which original page is much more important. How to fix it: To fix this error you need to check the source code of your website. Fixes may vary depending upon the structure of your content and web platform. You can also check Google s Guide to Rel=Canonical So, investigate and monitor the above mentioned technical SEO mistakes to improve your search engine visibility. If you follow the above-mentioned methods carefully then it will have huge positive impact on your website. Additional SEO Considerations For almost all business, you need to get the technical SEO aspects right, the list of keywords you want to rank for, and a strategy for proper link building for your site. This is almost everything you need to know about SEO.
However, there are some other business types for which you need some additional SEO strategies. Some business types for which you need a unique approach: Local SEO For small businesses and franchisees getting local rankings for different locations is the most important aspect of search engine traffic. While getting links and shares, doing keyword research and managing the technical aspect of SEO is important.
There are few other factors also which you need to keep in mind while performing local SEO like getting local reviews, local link building, and citations, local interview or columns, etc. International SEO For International businesses, there is a different approach for ranking a particular keyword. It depends on what country you are targeting or for what language you want to rank for.
You should do keyword research for the particular country you want to rank. You should also identify your international web targeting and who is your target audience. Identify the behavior and characteristic of your International audience and about their web queries. Analyze your competitors in the international industry and try to make your product and marketing strategies better than them. App Store Search Engine If you have an app, either as a core product or as a means to engage your customers with your business then having your app shown in the app store searches would be highly beneficial. Difference between Search Engine Optimization & App Store Optimization:
Try to perform various methods and strategies by which you can rank in the mobile app store search engines because you can get your potential customers directly from them. Conclusion So if you are reading this, then you must have got a lot of information regarding how search engines work and what kind of different strategies you
can follow to get your website and business rank in the search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc.. And ultimately getting more traffic and exposure. What should you do next? Every business and website does not have the same goal. Consider the things which your business and website do well. Get resource and have a budget and do things which gives your business the best return on the investment. If you have a large site then try to get the technical aspects of SEO correct and determine the keywords for your business and focus your efforts there. If your business is small then try to rank on geo-focused terms and shore your local SEO efforts. The ultimate objective with any search engine optimization strategies is to get more traffic and exposure for your business or your site's content. Look for your own ways by which you can get the best results for your site and don t go after every SEO buzzwords.
Try to focus on one thing and move step by step instead of taking a big leap and you will surely increase your search engine presence which will ultimately be beneficial for your business. Ok! Now tell me what s stopping you from starting SEO on your website? Are you looking for affordable search engine optimization services? -- Elevera Technologies Quick Contact Email: dropyourmail@eleveratech.com www.eleveratech.com