Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

 

Index:

 Section 1:                                                                                       

Reason for this Blog

Section 2:                                                                                          

What is SEO?

General Information about SEO.

Section 3:                                                                                          

Brief explanation about KEYWORD.

Section 4:                                                                                          

Deployment of SEO with Do’s and Don’ts along with SEO types.

Section 5:                                                                                          

Tools use to make a website visible to search engines.

References:                                                                                       

 

Section 1: ====================================================================================

Reason to write this blog:

I decided to have a website, which can be gone through by special people as well others, with my little knowledge, I have come across that, if we follow SEO rules, it will help people with special need as well.

I believe, if a team (or person) building a website, they should have the basic knowledge of SEO, this will help them to build a website, which can be read by SEO and on top of that, it will also help people with disability to go through a website easily.

I may be wrong, this is my way of thinking, if you have other means of providing solution to needy people, please feel free to give a suggestion and negative comments are welcome as well.

 

If you have questions like as follows:

• Basically, what is SEO?
• How can I quickly understand SEO?
• Is there quick information about SEO for a dummy person like me? I am talking about my-self.
• Actually, what does SEO do?
• Why do I need SEO?
• What should I do to implement SEO?
• What are Do’s and Don’ts of SEO?
• What tools are used in SEO?

Then please start reading for your answers, I hope will be able to give bit info about SEO.

 

Section 2: ====================================================================================

 

WHAT IS SEO and why do we have to implement it on a website?

It is simply a process of making a website or webpage into a readable form (in a natural way) so that search engine can easily read a website and put into his search list.

GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT SEO: (ref: 1 to 6)

 

Few rules which SEO follows to rank your website: (from now on, I will use word, site instead of word website)

1. Relevant content (Engaging and relevant content).
2. Suitable titles (Suitable title tags, URL).
3. Logical structure (Header tags).
4. Suitable synopsis (Meta description).
5. Neat and readable content (User Friendly, Responsive design & Site speed).

 

Few processed or configurations which put off SEO:

1. Page load time (very important issue to look into).
2. Average session duration.
3. Bounce rate (i.e. : people leave just after visiting a site).
4. Based on cookies i.e.: (malware or spyware).
5. Wrong link (Internal site links or external sites links) building (i.e. linking to a suspicious site and broken links in the site).

Section 3: ====================================================================================

 

Brief explanation about KEYWORD:

Before, I start further down about SEO, I would like to explain  briefly about Keyword, because it will be in our discussion a lot and it is the one of the main foundation of SEO.

The most important SEO process is to find the right KEYWORD (A keyword defines your site or a page or what you do/offering, let’s say, it is the main pillar of your site.

For example: when you say someone, “I love you”, guess which word defines everything which you like to say or transfer or give or provide in this sentence

(explanation: I = You are, You = Audience and Love = Keyword).

FORMULA: TO FIND A KEYWORD:

KEYWORD = High Volume + Low Competition + Relevant

Values:

High Volume = Word, which is used in search a lot (make sure it is not seasonal / trigger by an event).

Low Competition = Word, not used a lot by your competitors, and especially, which has been found in the first 10 results of Google search.

Relevant (Core factor of the formula which I believe) = Must represent your site or page or work in a natural way (in a human language) and be honest in your choice.

Plus: for an e-commerce site: Use of common intent keyword such as, Discount, Deal, Buy, Coupon, Shipping etc. in the meta tags and salesperson can be asked for his/her keyword to attract customers.

There are two types of Keywords:

1. Primary and Secondary
2. Primary (representator or nature of your content) (discussed above in the keyword definition, commonly used in title main tag).
3. Secondary: Similar/relevant words to primary keywords (called as LSI Keywords) (which can be used in meta tag of the site/page).

 Tools to find keyword will be discussed later.

 

Section 4: ====================================================================================

 

Deployment of SEO with Do’s and Don’ts along with SEO types. (ref: 1 to 6)

 

Do’s:

 

Types of SEOs: (there are two ways of making site or page readable or visible to search engine).

 

1. On-Page SEO – 2. Off-Page SEO

 

1. On Page SEO: (this optimization is related to your website internally).

 

1. Deep search of keywords for your site/page (use above formula).
2. User – (hyphen) in URL (universal resource locator) or every file name instead of _ (underscore).
3. Use primary or secondary keywords in URL.
4. Use short / simple / human language readable URL (i.e. permalinks).
5. User Title Tag (keep it up-to 50 to 60 characters) – include primary keywords.
6. User Meta Tag (keep it up-to 100 to 165 characters) – include secondary keywords (unique for each page).
7. Headers Tag (heading) stick to H1 and H2 (these are the size of the fonts).
8. Should have engaging, up-do date, latest content or information for your audience. (add subscription option to a site)
9. Good internal link structure. (for example, user does not have to go home page every-time, use natural simple language in the links, if you can understand then user can understand and so on search engines.
10. Avoid over optimizing of anchor text.
11. Build a site map in xml format for search engine (will discuss in tools section) and have one in HTML format for humans/visitor of your site.
12. Must be user friendly:

(

• Have a URL structure that follows your site navigation hierarchy.
• Build a comprehensive structure of internal link.
• High quality contents,
• Fonts try to use, Sans – Serif family (easy to read and image friendly)
• Relevant images with good resolution, “all images and videos with full Alt tags text and descriptions”)
• Web resolution to 72 PPI (Pixel per inch),
• Product size image to 700 x 700 Pixel, Banner image size 1500 to 2500 Pixel, Keep image size less than 1000 Pixels, (300 PPI should give a clear picture on screen),
• Keep file size from 80 to 100 KB (web page file size, not just image file size)
• Make sure your website loads with-in 3 to 4 seconds, whereas Google says it must load within around 200 millisecond.
• Site maps: list of all pages on your site in a document, html sitemap for human and xml for crawler (search engine)

).

1. Must be mobile / cell phone compatible / friendly or say responsive website. (Cell phone uses are increasing day by day and this factor has to be considered, WordPress website are the easiest way to handle this issue, by using any page builder like DIVI or many other, which gives an option, during site deployment to see how the same website will look on mobile and tablets and can adjust display format accordingly and easily (or just shirk the browser width to have a quick look).
2. For ecommerce site: clear check out page , products should be categorized strategically (if many category, make it easy for customer to back to home page and navigate in-between category instead of clicking back page) , be specific of what you are offering, provide complete description of the item or service, use number and simple words also to add some catchy words, like cash back, discount and intent keyword as describe above (intent keyword).
3. For ecommerce site: Share customer reviews and rating, must include negative comments, negative comment provide a comparison scale to customer and will help him to make a decision.
4. For ecommerce site: Include benefits of the product, such as, warranty, return policy, offer, review, short and full description, stock info, images and video of the product if possible.
5. For ecommerce site: Optimize home page to drive traffic to product page.

 

2. Off Page SEO: (this optimization is related to your website using external links).

 

1. Link Building: Link site to external Blogs, Social media platform, community and beyond, such as, Quora , reddit, Wikipedia, where people share information and ask question, also a good source of getting keywords.
2. Link your site to relevant sites on the web and good to have high domain rank website linked.
3. Allow guest to blog on your site to target visitors.
4. Promote your product and content on social media and keep it up-to date.
5. Participate in different forums to engage with your target audience.
6. Have a live chat option if possible on your site.
7. If data needs to be copied, change wording to your own and must provide reference of the website from which data was taken (if possible).

 

Don’ts:

1. Try to avoid keyword which has very high competition.
2. Avoid coping same meta tag description on each page.
3. Avoid linking to blacklisted sites, sites with pop ups , Malware and Spyware.
4. Remove All BROKEN links.
5. Avoid linking your site to low domain rank website.
6. Do not duplicate title on multiple pages.
7. Do not copy and paste other website contents.
8. Avoid keyword stuffing.
9. Fix slow loading website (for example, remove un-used coding, java scripts, pages, have image size and page size as mentioned above).
10. Avoid having subdirectories.
11. Avoid using dynamic parameters in URL and Tags i.e ===4@.
12. Avoid complex web design and reduce as few plugins as possible and remove all unwanted plugins.

 

Section 5: ====================================================================================

 

(Next session is mainly based on Google search engine and knowledge obtained from moz.com)

TOOLS USE TO MAKE A SITE VISIBLE TO SEARCH ENGINES:

Above we discussed that what should be done and what should we avoid in site for SEO.

In this section we will discuss about the tools which can be used to implement SEO and fix issues using these tools.

Technically Google use three steps to rank a website: 1. Crawling 2.Indexing 3. Ranking.

List of SEO Tools: (Free and Paid)

1. Keyword Explorer tools

• com (Free and Paid) (also good tool to find out keyword rank)
• Google keyword planner (Paid) (need a Google account)
• Google Search Console tool (Free)
• Google Trend keyword tool (Free)
• Semrush (Paid)
• Social platform: Quora, Reddit, Wikipedia (type a keyword and get an idea what other it, similar words people are using in their discussion.
• An excel spreadsheet is attached “here” created using ref: 2 (time slot : 1:46:00) to find which keyword to use or use your own research or any other formula which you will find.
  • Values used in the sheet:
  • Theme (core idea or word of keyword)
  • Keyword
  • Volume (you can get it using Google planner or any other tool)
  • Competition (you can get it using Google planner or any other tool)
  • KEI (Volume vs Competition ration), higher ratio word should be used as a keword
  • Suggested Bid
  • Close variant (related word)

 

Research shows:

Singular word = People who buy

Plural word = People who search

 

2. To fix crawler issue:

• MOZ
• Google Search Console tool
• Screaming frog (Paid)
• Woorank (Paid)
• Deepcrawl (Paid)

 

3. To Solve Off page bad link problem:

• MOZ
• Majestic (Free and Paid)
• Ahrefs (Paid)
• Google Search Console tool

 

4. To find out about High linking domain:

 

• Majestic
• MOZ
• Google Search Console tool

 

5. How to Promote a website:

• Contact blogger
• Search Ads
• Social Media Advertisement
• Slow website and improperly indexing issue:

• Google Analytics (Free and Paid) (need a Google account) (it has lot in-it to discuss for SEO, will do some other time), One of its features has option to information of slow site and suggestion to fix it. It also tell which pages are not index and needs to be fixed.

7. SEO Tools for videos:

Research shows:

• 20% traffic comes using keyword
• 20% traffic comes from landing page
• 20% Using links

Tip:

• Frist 15 seconds of video is important
• Itself YouTube search helps a lot to promote video
• High quality (good resolution + good sound quality)

• Install Google chrome tag plugin it helps a lot
• VidIQ SEO (Paid)

 

8. Tools for rank tracking:

• Google Search Console tool
• Wincher (Free and Paid)
• Ahref
• AMZtracker (Paid)

 

9. Content Optimization tool:

• Moz
• SEO Site Checkup (Paid), Free tools available (sitemap)
• SiteAnalyzer (Paid)
• Organic Traffic Metric Tool:

• Google Analytics

 

11. Site Map:

• SEO Site Checkup
• XML Sitemaps (Free)
• Google Search Console tool (can specify Google where to find xml file in your site)

 

At the end, review your content before publishing and if you can understand then other can also.

Thank you for reading my blog, TIP:  end of this article, is just the start of your SEO learning.

I wish you success in future and please accept my apologies for any error in writing of this blog.

Written by:

Shakeel-ur-Rehman Shaikh

MSc Applied Physics (Electronics)

Copyright: Free to distribute for non-commercial or commercial use

References:

1. https://moz.com/free-seo-tools
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYRkIGaP80M
3. https://fonts.google.com/
4. https://www.nickkolenda.com/font-psychology/
5. https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/optimize-images-for-web/#optimizing-images-photos-a-quick-guide
6. https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/
7. https://search.google.com/search-console/about
8. https://www.semrush.com/
9. https://www.reddit.com/
10. https://www.quora.com/
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
12. https://majestic.com/
13. google.com
14. https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=CA
15. https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
16. https://www.woorank.com/
17. https://www.deepcrawl.com/
18. https://ahrefs.com/
19. https://vidiq.com/
20. https://www.amztracker.com/index_en.php
21. https://www.wincher.com/
22. https://seositecheckup.com/
23. https://www.site-analyzer.com/
24. https://schema.org/
25. https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/