The concept of SEO has been around for a long time. It is also a fact that it is not going anywhere. SEO plays a vital part in ranking your websites with the search engines. Many people are intimidated by the term SEO and think of it as a complex topic to crack. The vast information spread around the internet also adds to the confusion of the people seeking information on this term.
The abundant amount of information on the web also adds to the confusion of the learners on which method to follow, on which SEO information and blog to trust. This is not as confusing as it seems. This is a simple concept that has become so important that everyone has covered some parts of this topic and thus it seems the information is spread out too much but not in a structured manner.
The first thing when learning about SEO is to know the terms we will be using. The small sub-topics and concepts need to be clear and when you will add up the sub-topics it won’t seem confusing to learn about SEO.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the practice of increasing your website ranking organically on the search engine and getting more visitors. Getting your website to rank higher on the SERP or Search Engine Result Page is directly proportional to getting more visitors organically.
Organic visitors means you are not spending money on paid ads to get visitors rather you are spending time on the quality of your website so that the search algorithms rank your website higher when a related query is made by a visitor. Google shows the most relevant search results which they find informative and answer to the query made by the visitor.
To know how to make your website SEO work, one needs to know how the search engine ranks websites and webpages.
How a website is ranked on search engine?
- Relevant content
- Keywords matching the search enquiry
- Better linking of webpages
- Domain authority
- Good user experience
- Webpages loading time is good
- Mobile compatibility
These factors combined result in a better ranking of your website. SEO is a combination of processes that will help in improving these variables, as a result, which will increase your website ranking.
What are the terms used in SEO?
Let’s just get familiar which the terms that will constantly come up while we are learning about SEO. Then we will learn about them in detail one by one.
- Black hat SEO
- White hat SEO
- Link Building
- Internal links
- External links
- Meta Description
- Title tag
- On page SEO
- Off page SEO
- Keywords
- URL structure
- Backlinks
- Click through rate
These are terms that we will be learning about while we learn about SEO. SEO is the combination of processes that will help your website rank better in the search algorithms.
Now let us get started.
What are the types of SEO practices?
There are two types of SEO practices, namely
- Black Hat SEO
- White Hat SEO
1. Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO practices refer to SEO practices that are not ethical and they violate the search engine’s terms of services. These practices are used by a few marketers for faster results on their website, but they are not good in the long run of the website.
Black Hat SEO practices are known to give results faster and do boost up the ranks of your website initially. But the biggest downside is that the search engine continues to update its terms of usages and ranking algorithms. They catch these types of websites using the black hat techniques and then they will downgrade them in the ranks. So the Blackhat technique may seem exciting at first but it won’t be fruitful in the long run of the ranking of your website.
The few common methods of Black Hat SEO are:
– Keyword stuffing
This means that you are putting a lot of keywords after publishing the blog. You do need keywords in your webpage content and you can stuff at a few places where there is a chance of improvement in the content. But too stuffing keywords in an article after publishing so that the search engine starts catching the website faster is not good. With time the search engine will catch this glitch and fix that, then it can downgrade your website rankings.
– Creating landing pages, articles with duplicate content
Misleading the visitors by creating landing pages articles with duplicate content will not prove any good for your website. You may get a little success at the start but with time you won’t be able to retain that unless you do not have quality and plagiarism-free content on your website.
– Link Manipulation
Link building is a good technique if you are creating backlinks from relevant and trusted websites. This will rank your website higher. But if you are manipulating links and redirecting users through irrelevant sources and misleading the visitors to land on your website then it is not at all good for website ranking.
It is true that you may experience short-term success by practicing the Black-hat techniques and this will excite you. But Google penalties these websites if they catch they are using methods that do not comply with their terms of services. This will affect your website ranking and the website can be downgraded. It is suggested not to follow the Black-hat techniques of SEO.
2. White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO practices refer to the SEO techniques which comply with the terms of services of the search engine and come under the correct methods of usage. Search engine results that will appear through the tactics used by the correct methods of SEO practice without any payment or trickery done are considered as White Hat SEO.
These practices and methods surely increase your ranking and SERP position by maintaining the integrity of your website and keeping them in the good books of the search engine. They surely show you results but it takes some time. You will have to be a little patient to see your website slowly crawl up into the ranks of search engines.
A few examples of White Hat SEO practices are:
– Creating original quality content
While running a website the first thing one must know is that quality content will always outrank their competitors. This is for sure that quality content will rank higher and be given more weight by the search engine.
– Make your website mobile friendly
If your website is not mobile-friendly, then you surely are missing a ton of traffic to your website. At the present time around half of the internet, surfing is done via mobile. So search engines rank websites higher that are mobile compatible. Spend some time optimizing the mobile user experience of your website and it will surely seek better results.
– Use relevant keywords and create keyword rich Meta description
Keywords are the terms that can be used as a search term by users and when those terms match in your content it ranks them higher. Relevant keywords will help the search engine crawl your website higher for the related search queries. Meta descriptions are the little descriptions written below the headline while a search appears on the search engine. When you have keywords related to the search in your meta description, chances are more of your website showing better ranks.
The White Hat SEO practices will improve your website ranking. This will help your rank better in SERP which will give you more traffic automatically. The White Hat practices are the one which is recommended to be followed. Now we will learn in detail about the White Hat SEO methods and techniques. We will learn about the techniques that you can apply to your website to get better results and a higher ranking on SERP.
Types of SEO?
There are two types of SEO that one has to do on their website for getting organic results.
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
Let us learn about both types of SEO in detail.
1. On-page SEO
On-page SEO is the process in which you take care of the factors of your webpage and the element in it. We will be optimizing the elements of page one by one to give the search result a better understanding of our content and website. All these elements are present on every webpage of the website and we will be optimizing each of them to the best possible way.
Each element of the SEO will be done one by one and we will take a step at a time. Let’s start with the first step we need to do.
Keyword Research
As you will already have an idea about what your website is about. You will then narrow it down it to each webpage. We will think of one webpage at a time. So let’s say we have a page with one post on it. So we will research related keywords about the post. The most relevant keywords we will pick. We will research keywords and keep our focus on creating the content around those keywords.
The process of keyword research revolves around a few important factors. They are
– Competition analysis
You will look up the keywords competitors. The ranking of your competitors in those keywords and how better you can do the same.
– Volume
The volume of that keyword is already present on the web. This will give you an idea of how large a topic you are competing in.
– Relevancy
This is the most important factor to take care of. You will need to keep the keyword most relevant to your post or webpage content. Relevancy is a major factor that will help your keyword rank better in the search engine.
You can also use tools available for keyword research like Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SemRush, etc. After you are done with your keyword research the next steps will be optimizing the webpage elements. The webpage will revolve around the keywords you choose. The better keywords will help the page shape better, so the keyword analysis should be done wisely.
Title Tag
The Title Tag is the headline that will be displayed while the search results show up. After completing your Keyword Research, you will now be using them in a way to fit in your title. The Title Tag should also be within 60 characters so that the complete title will show up in the search result. If it is longer than the complete title won’t fit on the search result page.
As marked in the red box, the headline which appears when you make a search query on the search engine is the title tag of your webpage.
The better you use the Keywords in your title tag, the more are the chances that the search engines will rank the webpage for those related queries.
Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description of the website gives the search engine a better picture of what the page is about. This will give the search engine an insight into your webpage and the more similar it will be to the search query made by the visitor, the higher will be the rank of your page.
You need to write the meta description with the mindset of the visitor. Including similar phrases as per the search query made is beneficial. As the meta description shows up in the search result this will give the users small information about the answers they are looking for. This can also result in many people clicking on the website because the information they are looking for might be on your webpage.
This little description below the title tag is known as the meta description of the website. The meta description always shows up in the search results along with the title tag.
This is an important part of SEO and can be done easily using an HTML tag if you are creating an HTML website. In terms of a WordPress website, these small SEO modifications can be easily done using a plugin such as AIO SEO, Yoast SEO, etc. These plugins will have pre-made columns to add the title tag and meta description tag while you create content for any page.
Header Tags
Header tags are categorized from H1 to H6. H1 being the highest and H6 being the lowest in font size. The Header tag helps you break down your content into different parts. If you write a post over a thousand words and use just one Headline then it will be difficult for the reader to break it down and understand. Not only difficult for the reader but also tough for the search engine to break down into understandable sections for the search query for the users.
A good webpage contains a main headline for the post, a few sub-headlines dividing the different sections of the content. This is beneficial while writing good articles. The reader gets a better understanding of the post and makes it easier to read and learn.
In an HTML website, you can simply use <H1> to <H6> tags in front of the headlines to define them. In WordPress, it is way easier. You have the option to make a headline tag and then write your headline. You can choose from H1 to H6 depending on whether the content is the main headline or a sub-heading of the post.
URL Structure
The URL structure of a webpage must be giving clarity about the name of the post or webpage or article. The URL should not be in a numeric or unorganized manner. It should be giving a clear name of the post so that it can be trusted by both the users and the search engine.
You can see clearly how the URL structure in the above search query is clear, authentic, and matches the search of the user. This structure of URL suits the best and is suggested to be used.
In WordPress, you can select the URL structure just by going into Settings> Permalinks and then selecting this URL structure. See the picture below to get a better idea.
This URL structure will give you a clear name of the post and will be easier to catch by the search engine. In this structure, the complete post title can appear which is good for blog posts results in search engine queries.
Image Name and Alt Tag
A website contains images. Images are an integral part to show any information and data. Images related to your webpage or the post should be added. You must choose relevant images and add them to the webpage.
You should think of a good keyword to name the image before uploading them to the website. When you upload the image there is an option to add an Alt tag to the image. This helps the search engine to find the images when running an image search for any query.
The best way to name an image is “on-site-search-optimization.png” where “on-site-search-optimization” is the keyword-related name of the image. This name you must add as Alt Tag when you upload an image on the website. The images support the search analysis of the search engine and also help your visitors with a better experience.
Internal Links
Internal links help you to link your web pages together. This allows users to navigate to another page that might be related to one webpage. Linking is an important factor as it helps search engines learn more about your website. By internally linking your web pages you convey to the visitors that you can get more information by getting redirected to another page.
The links help search engines to get more information about your website content. Internal links improve your website authority by conveying that more and more information is there for the visitors. This also enhances navigation across the pages for the visitors.
Bold Texts
This doesn’t help much with the SEO but it does help your readers. You should not bold a lot of text within and overdo it. A little snippet that you think the reader might find helpful or a sentence giving some gist about the content should be bolded. This is a great way to get readers’ attention to small details present on your website. It can make your readers revisit your website if the information is helpful.
Why you need good Content
All these above on-page SEO factors are good enough to comply with the search engine SEO terms of services. These modifications to the web pages of your website will add value and help in getting better page rankings and good search results. But all these factors are in vain if your website does not have compelling content to support.
Content beats everything. If your website has all the modifications required but the content is not good enough then the success in SEO would not last. You will go up the ranks in search engines and visitors will come to your website. With visitors coming in you must give them the relevant information they are looking for with great content. This will only make your website gain more and more revisits. As a result of revisits, the search engine will rank your website up to your competitors.
Great content is the only way to keep your visitors as well as the search engine happy. Quality content gives your website an upper hand in all the factors. This helps in website ranking for similar keywords.
Many websites are competing for the same keywords across the internet. The website which gives the most relevant information to the visitors tends to rank higher. With good quality content, you can always rank higher and with good content and the above on-page SEO techniques, one can surely rank their website higher than any other in the search engine.
There are tons of types of content one can create. Content creation for any website should be done with good research and competition analysis.
You can create:
– Blogs
– Articles related to your niche
– Infographics
– Podcasts
– Videos
These are some of the examples that you can look at and think of creating content around them. Quality content is the best investment one can do in their website. This with combined with the right SEO techniques can take your website to a lot of traffic. You can start by writing blogs on your website, niche blogs are a good way to get traffic to your website. As your blogs start to rank then you can expand to a variety of content creation.
Sitemap
A Sitemap tells the users as well as the search engine about the webpage navigation across the website. This tells the search engine about the list of pages on your website and helps the pages crawl easily in webpage ranking.
There are two types of Sitemap:
HTML Sitemap
The HTML sitemap present on the website will help your users navigate across the website easily. The better connectivity within the pages and easy scrolling around is always helpful for the visitors.
XML Sitemap
This XML sitemap contains the URLs across the website and how they have been connected all along. This will help the search engine crawl and navigate through your website.
With this, we come to an end of the On-page SEO methods. Following these techniques and applying them to your website will prove beneficial. Always remember that SEO is a long-term process. You cannot expect results in a day. You should keep doing these methods to your website along with quality content and with time you will see your website rank up. It usually takes from 6 months to a year of regularly furnishing your website with good content and the right SEO techniques to see expected results. If you do this continuously then surely you will see your website is ranked above the highest competition websites.
Now let us learn about Off-Page SEO
2. Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO means creating the credibility of your website on the internet. This enhances your page rank, domain authority, and also adds up to the traffic that you get into your website.
In Off-page SEO you have to do external link building for your website. Getting links from another website redirecting to your website gives the search engine a sense of confidence that your website is credible and helps increase your domain authority on the internet.
Let’s learn in detail about External Link Building
Link Building
Link Building would be the most talked-about category in SEO. This is a process of getting other websites to link your website to them for any keyword or topic. Through this process, other websites will redirect to your website in result giving you the credit for the content or information.
Having links from another website hyperlinking to your website means that your content fulfills the requirement of the reader. The information you are sharing is worth accepting by the internet community and thus they are trustworthy. The more external links are connected to your website, the more the search engine gives weightage to your website in search results.
So how do you get links from another website? Getting links from other websites will surely require you to have high-quality content on your website. A high-quality content that fulfills the visitors’ requirement will be linked easily to another website trying the share the same information.
There are different types of link-building processes.
– Organic Links
These are the best external links that you can get to your website. These will be through any online media website recommending your content or through any other content publisher redirecting their visitors for a piece of information. Getting links organically from different publishers or well-recognized websites will always add value to your website.
– Whitehat
Whitehat stands for the good kind of link building. This does not involve spamming links anywhere and getting external links. These will be through guest blogging or getting in touch with any publishers, attending podcasts, and getting links through them. These are the link-building processes that you should try to create for your website.
– Blackhat
Blackhat link building is the one that you should avoid. This won’t add much to your website value. This type means spamming links all around to somehow get any clicks and redirecting users to your website. This is not at all advised to be practiced.
Building organic links takes time and that is why you must get involved in the process through the Whitehat methods to create quality backlinks for your website. Creating quality external links is a premium service that many agencies and freelancers provide. This is due to the value this adds to any website. The more amount of good quality links you can get is better for website ranking and domain authority on the internet.
You can start building quality external links to your website by following these processes and executing them for your website:
– Guest Blogging
This is one of the largest followed methods of getting quality links to your website. You can submit your guest blogs to the popular website in your industry. By doing so you can get a backlink to your website in terms of the author at the bottom of the post. This is one of the most used and successful methods of link building. You should submit guest blogs to quality websites in your industry from which getting a backlink will add value to your website.
– Infographics
Infographics are a great way to rank up through image search. At the current time, infographics usage and sharing have gone up at a tremendous rate. Many websites can use your infographics for sharing similar related information and in return, this can give you the credits of the infographic which will hyperlink to your website.
-Related Websites
Reaching out to related websites but not the competitive ones. By reaching out to the businesses you work with or are related to your website niche, and asking if they have any linking pages so you can add your website in any way. Through vendors or partners related to your website, you can get backlinks by adding some information through them and reaching out and asking.
– Local Search profiles
Creating local search profiles if it is applicable for your website or niche is a great way of redirecting traffic to your website. This does not add up as external link building but this is generally a great way of getting local traffic if it is applicable to your website. This will help you get some leads and visitors.
– Submit your website to applicable industries
You can submit your website to related industries directories. For example, if your website provides digital marketing services in any particular location, find any blog which writes about Digital marketing agencies in this location. You can get featured in that category and if they add your website up there you will surely get a quality backlink to your website. So this way you can submit your website to the applicable industries-related website and get external links.
– Content
Content is something that will never fade. Quality content will always be sought by others. Other similar information websites will link other websites if they provide good content for any particular keyword. You can get backlinks to your content if it is relevant and of use to other websites.
These are a few of the trustworthy ways of creating external links to your website. This does not happen in a day and takes some time to build links. Building quality links to your website add up to the website value, trust, credibility, rank, and domain authority. With time following the right steps and being consistent you can see your website grow to higher ranks.
Conclusion
SEO is a continuous process. You should keep building quality content and getting the web pages SEO optimized in the best possible manner. Through consistency, you will surely stand out in the sea of millions of websites. You cannot expect results in one day or one week. You should trust the process and do the required SEO tasks to climb up the rank through SEO and get more and more organic traffic to your website.
Over time you should keep monitoring your results. You can do so through Google Analytics, Authority Labs, MonsterInsights, and many other tools available across the internet. You should keep monitoring your results from time to time and see what strategies are showing results. This will keep you updated and you can apply the process better further.
Our SEO learning guide will help you get started with the process and if you follow the correct method you can reap benefits. With time you can see a large amount of organic traffic coming into your website. Remember ‘Old is Gold’; The older your website grows and if you regularly post content and keep updating them and apply the SEO techniques and methods you will see the graph of traffic go up at a rapid pace.