SEO TUTORIAL

SEO TUTORIAL

This tutorial includes all topics of Search Engine Optimization such as

• black and white SEO techniques,
• how search engine works,
• SEO market research,
• content research,
• On Page Optimization techniques,
• Off Page Optimization techniques,
• Social Media Optimization,

What is Domain?

Domain name is the identity of one or more IP addresses,

i.e. the domain name "google.com" points to the IP address "74.125.127.147".

It is easy to remember a name rather than a long string of numbers.

A domain name cannot have more than 63 characters excluding .com, .net, .org, .edu, etc.

The minimum length of a domain is 1 character excluding the extensions.

It is entered in the URL after the protocol and subdomain as shown in the example below.

Eg: https://www.google.com
https: ( Protocol)
www. (Subdomain)
google.com (domain and domain suffix)

What is World Wide Web?

World Wide Web(WWW) is a like a huge electronic book whose pages are stored on multiple servers across the world. These pages are connected by links called "hypertext".

Unlike a book, where we move from one page to another in sequence, on World Wide Web we follow a web of hypertext links to visit the desired page or information.

So, it is a network of online information which includes web pages, pictures, audios, videos and other online content which is formatted in HTML and accessed via HTTP.

World Wide Web was designed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991.

It is different from the internet as internet is a network connection that enables users to send mail or access the World Wide Web.

See the following image to understand how the World Wide Web works:

Difference between Search Engine and Portal

Search engine -It is a program which is designed to enable the users to browse information or content on World Wide Web.

It helps retrieve the desired information in minimum time.

It allows you to input specific keywords or phrases and retrieves a list of items matching those keywords and phrases.

Thus, it does not provide information straight away; it just retrieves pages which are related to keywords or other search terms.

Popular search engines are Google, Bing, and Yahoo! Search.

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Portal-It is a private location on the internet which acts as a point of access to the information available on the World Wide Web. .

A portal is accessed through a unique URL, unique username and password,

i.e. apart from URL, personal login is required to see the content on a portal.

Popular portals are facebook.com, gmail.com and twitter.com

RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Keyword Research and Analysis

Keyword Research and Analysis is a high return activity and an important part of the SEO.

Right keywords can place your website on the first page of search results whereas irrelevant keywords can increase the gap between users and your website.

Keyword Research and Analysis enables you identify the information your target audience is searching and the keywords they are using for their queries.

After researching and analyzing the keyword demand you not only get the relevant terms and phrases for SEO but also understand the users in a better way. It helps you build a better website with relevant keywords and phrases.

Your webpage has to compete with millions of webpages to achieve the higher ranking. So, optimizing your content by incorporating the right keywords in the pages is a necessary SEO practice. If you are not using the right keywords your website might never show on the first page of search results.

How to find the suitable keyword

Before using the keyword research tools you need to understand your product or service and the target audience. If you know your product or service in a better way you can create better keywords.

Next is to access the value of the keyword. To access the value of your keyword you can follow the steps described below:

Few questions: Ask yourself a few questions such as is the keyword relevant to your content? Will the visitors get the right information with this keyword? Will this traffic increase revenue? If the answer to these questions is yes then the keyword is full of value.

Search the given keywords in major search engines: In this step, you will get to know about the other websites which already rank for your keyword. It will deepen your understanding about the competition and tell you how hard or easy it will be to rank for the given keyword or phrase.

Buy sample campaign: You can buy sample campaign at Google Adwords, Bing Adcenter, etc. You will get test traffic which you can direct to your webpages and see how many of them click and how much time they spend on your pages. It will tell you if you need to change your keyword or can continue with it.

Competitors' Website Analysis

Analysis of competitors' website is an important part of SEO search and analysis. By analyzing competitors' websites you can get ideas to improve your own web marketing strategies.

There are various competitor-analysis tools designed to compare the search friendliness of a website against the websites of its competitors. These tools are based on various SEO metrics and are quite easy to use,

i.e. some tools require you to enter your webpage URL, the competitor URL and the targeted keyword and the tool will tell you how well you are ranked against your competitors for that keyword.

Few important steps to analyze competitors' website:

1)Find out your SEO competitors: Generally, the sites which rank well for your keywords are your competitors. The other simple way to find out your competitors is to search your keywords with Google and look for the sites that pop high in search result page.

2)Visit competitors' site: After you have made a list of your competitors the next step is to visit their sites. There are many things to be noticed in their sites like the quality and quantity of content, keywords or phrases, type of website (dynamic or static), etc.

This analysis will tell you how professional your competitors' sites are and how much efforts you need to put into your site to surpass them.

3)Check competitors' backlinks: Here you will examine the backlinks of your competitors. You need to find their number, origin and anchor text, etc. If there are backlinks from some popular sites you can contact their webmasters to get backlinks from them.

Some of the popular tools for backlink analysis are Backlink Anchor Text Analysis and Backlink Summary.

4)Analyze competitors' presence on Social Media: Social Medias are extensively used to increase traffic on a site. Visit some of the popular social bookmarking sites to see the posts of your competitors; check the quality and popularity of their posts.

Twitter and Facebook are two popular social networking sites where you can check if your competitors are active or not.

SWOT Analysis of a Website

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

These factors are used by organizations to evaluate their business and viability as an enterprise.These factors can be used to evaluate the current and future growth of a website.

Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors which are under the control of an organization.

Opportunities and threats are the external factors which are beyond the control of an organization.

After the SWOT analysis, you can find the strengths and weaknesses of your website as well as the opportunities and threats to your website.

The SWOT analysis starts with setting specific goals and objectives for your website. These goals should be measurable and realistic,

i.e. increasing profit by 10% in the coming year, increasing click-through rate by 15%, decreasing shopping cart dropping rate by 5%, etc.

After you identify your objectives and goals you can start with the following steps of SWOT analysis.

1) Strengths

These are competitive advantages that help your website gain a competitive edge over other similar sites.

e.g. Relevant and unique content, user-friendly design and quick sign up and check out process, etc. can be the strengths of your website.

2) Weaknesses

It refers to the features of your website that slow down your progress or prevent you from achieving your objectives and goals. To identify your website weaknesses you can compare a feature of your website with the same feature of competitor website.

If your competitor executes this feature better than you then consider this feature as your weakness which should be improved.

3) Opportunities

It refers to the external elements which can help you improve your website performance and popularity. These elements are beyond your control and if exploited wisely can help you achieve your objectives and goals.

Some of the common opportunities for the websites are new technology to improve visitor experience, web 2.0 trend focused on social networking, internet on mobile phones, online transactions, innovative marketing strategies, etc.

4) Threats

It refers to external factors that may prevent a site from achieving its objectives and goals. These factors are beyond your control and if you ignore these threats your website can't make progress.

Some of the common threats to a website include new entrants (websites), software piracy, unfavorable government regulations, changing customer needs, competitors imitating your ideas and features, fraudulent activities, etc.

How to Choose Best Keywords

Keywords are the words or phrases used by people in search engines to find the desired information. Relevant keyword and phrases help increase profitable traffic to your website.

So, keep the following points in mind if you are looking for best keywords and phrases.

1) Long-tail keywords: It usually refers to 3 to 5 words phrases. Such keywords are considered ideal for SEO as people in purchase stage of buying cycle tend to use longer phrases to search products or services.

The long phrases are also found to be less competitive than shorter keywords and help you attract targeted traffic.

2) Latent semantic indexing: Here we incorporate related terms along with main key phrases, e.g. if a page contains information about cars then search engine tends to see related terms like models, makes, car parts, etc.

So, if the search engine finds more semantic words on your page they will assume you more relevant and authentic.

3) Recent trends: Always keep an eye on recent trends. You will get to know what is popular on search engines and if you find any trending search query related to your niche then you can effectively newsjack it to increase traffic to your site.

4) Location based keywords: You can add country, state or city name to your main keyword to stand out from the crowd. It will help you achieve higher ranking in local search results.

5) Identify competitors' keyword: You can use some of the popular keywords of your competitors to pull some of their traffic to your site. You can take the help of online services such as Keyword Spy to identify their keywords.

SEO Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research provides you meaningful keywords that enable your webpages to rank higher in search results. Thus, it can be considered the base of SEO is keyword research.

Some of the popular tools are described below:

1) Google Keyword Planner

It is one of the most used keyword research tools. It's a free tool which is integrated with Google Adwords. This tool requires you to create an Adwords account before you start using the tool.

It gives you an idea about the competition level for each keyword and offers you filters and match types to find out profitable keywords.

2) Google Trends

It is also a free tool of Google which is designed to compare the traffic for a set of keywords.

It allows you to enter multiple keywords, search history and category and use filter by location. You just enter the data and it will display how high a particular keyword ranks along with the reason for its popularity like press coverage, social media, etc.

3) SEMRUSH

It is designed to offer more than just keyword search. In this tool, you don't need to enter seed keywords like other tools, i.e. you just need to add your and competitor's URL, the tool will provide you all the keywords that are ranking for competitor's site.

You can identify the keywords that you are not targeting. In the paid section of search you can find out the keywords your competitors are planning to bid on; you can use these keywords for your organic benefit.

4) Keyword Spy

It is an SEO optimization tool designed for keyword research. It allows you to spy on competitors' keywords, to create targeted campaigns and to see their rank based on geographical location. Its free version offers several features.

Domain spy tool is one of them which allows you to type the domain into the search box and provide you the data such as on what keywords a site spends most, how much a site is spending in paid search and who are the competitors, etc.

5) Keyword Discovery

It is one of the best keyword tools. It collects data from more than 200 search engines including the popular ones like Google and Yahoo. It provides regional or country specific databases, industry related keyword lists, online shopping keywords lists, etc. The tool also features various research options like filters, misspellings, keyword permutations, trends, etc.

6) Keyword Tool.io

It is a basic keyword research tool which can be useful if you are looking for long-tail keyword suggestions for your keywords. It's a free tool.

It's basic version can be used even without creating an account. The basic version uses Google Autocomplete to create a list of related long-tail keywords. But, it does not provide information about search volume and cost-per-click for this information you have to upgrade to Keyword Tool Pro.

7) WordTracker

The tool helps you find best keywords related to your search keywords and also shows how much traffic a keyword gets. It is generally used by small organizations.

It helps them to research keywords, develop a planned SEO platform and build new links.

8) Moz's Keyword Difficulty Tool

The tool is designed by Moz. It helps analyze the competitiveness of a keyword. When you enter a keyword, it shows the top ten ranking for that keyword.

Then, it assigns a difficulty score for the keyword based on the webpages that are ranking for this word. It also allows you to export data into a CSV for deep analysis.

SEO Guidelines

Content Guidelines

The success of a website mainly depends on the quality of content it offers to its visitors. In SEO, quality content refers to a content which not only appeals to readers but also to the search engines.

Some important guidelines to create quality content

1) Choose the best keywords: Your pages must have the keywords related to your product, services or concept as from the keywords the search engine gets to know about the nature and type of your website.
Accordingly, the search engine ranks your website in the result pages for the related queries. So, conduct a thorough keyword research before you start writing content. You can take the help of various keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, SEMRUSH, etc.

2) Original/unique content: Incorporating relevant keyword is not enough; your content must be original and unique. It should not be copied from any other site otherwise your website will be penalized by the search engine.

3) Have enough words: Your webpages must have enough words. They should not be filled with lots of images, symbols and negative space. Pages with less content and more images are not considered optimized for SEO and rarely found on the first page of the search engines.

4) Optimum keyword density: Avoid keyword stuffing; overusing keywords will not please readers or the search engine. They will understand your intentions that you are only concerned about rankings not about the quality of content. So, maintain an optimum density of keywords for better results.

5) Short paragraphs: Big paragraphs do not appeal users, so even if you have provided relevant information the users may not even read your page. The paragraph sizes restricted to four to five lines are considered ideal for SEO.

6) Bullets and numbering: Most of the readers generally have short attention span and are not willing to read the entire page. They look for bullet points to get the meaningful information in less time, so whenever possible use crisp and concise bullets or numbering to make your page more attractive and readable.

7) Relevant linking: Your content should be hyperlinked to the relevant pages. If your content is linked to a page which is offering different information then it would annoy the readers and you could lose your credibility.

8) Proof read content: Even if you have good typing skills or experience in writing you could make mistakes while writing. So, carefully proof read your content at least twice before publishing. It will help you eliminate all the errors in your content.

Content optimization

Content optimization: is a process of making your webpages more appealing to search engines and users.
It is not only restricted to using best keywords in your pages but also focuses on various other parts of your website like the quality of content, broken links, title tags, meta tags, etc.
Once your content is optimized the search engine can easily find and index your website and show up it in the initial pages of search results.

Focus on the following areas for better content optimization

1)Title Tag: It refers to the title of your page or post which is incorporated in the head of the HTML code of a page. It appears at the top of the page on the result pages or when you promote your page on social media. The title tags which are concise, accurate and relevant are considered best for content optimization.
According to SEO experts, an ideal title tag should be between 50?60 characters long, correctly describe the content on the page and must have targeted keyword at the beginning of the title tag.

2)Meta description: It is the information which Google displays on a result page under the title tag. It is a brief summary of the information contained in your page; users get a preview of the page before they click it. The meta description must contain the relevant keywords as search engine highlight it as descriptive text when a user performs a query using that keyword.
Try to keep the length of your meta description around 150 characters including spaces for better results. Meta description is written by you and if you don?t write meta description the Google will compose the meta description from the content of your page.

3)Meta keywords: You can leave them blank as since 2009 they are not in use. If you use them your competitors can get a clue about your targeted keywords. You can use them if your internal site search needs them.

>4)Fresh content: Fresh and unique content appeals both the users and the search engines, so keep updating your site regularly to optimize your content. Add new pages, articles or update your existing content to reflect changes and updates.

Design and Layout of a Website

The design and layout of a website may be appealing but if it is not SEO-friendly, it cannot achieve higher rankings in search engine result pages. The search engines cannot interpret the content just like us and the visitors; a webpage may not look the same to a search engine as it looks to you. So, keep the following guidelines in mind before you start thinking about the design and layout of a website.

1) Keyword Placement

You should use the targeted keywords and phrases at the right places throughout the site, i.e. body text, headlines, headers, meta description, links, etc. Proper keyword placement is important for every page but it is more important on the home page as it is a gateway and introduction to the rest of the pages of your site. Also, use proper words for links; instead of using "see more", "read more" or "click here" use the words that describe the link itself.

2) Navigation

The navigation must be user-friendly so that users can easily find the desired information in less time, i.e. moving from one step to another step should be simple and quick.
Some of the useful practices to optimize your site are;

• The primary navigation should be at or near the top of your page.
• Add navigation options in the footer of web page.
• Add breadcrumb on every page to make users aware of their navigation path.
• Add a search box near the top of your page to enable users search by keywords.
• Offer limited navigation options on a page and limited steps in the navigation.
• Don't modify the website template in every category as it could make the navigation difficult for the users.

3) URL's and Filenames

URL should be SEO optimized so that search engine can easily identify it. There are a number of ways to optimize a URL such as;

• Incorporate keyword in the URL so that it could clearly tell what is on the page
• Minimize its length to make it easier for the users to copy and paste
• Don't use URLs that contain random letters or numbers

And to optimize the filenames you can add relevant keyword in the filenames of uploaded items, e.g. media, html, documents, etc. Also, you should use hyphen (-) instead of underscores, spaces or plus sign to separate words in the URL.

4) Images

Website images are an important aspect of SEO and should be optimized for faster loading and search engine visibility. Some of the practices to optimize images are;

• The size of images should be small, i.e. 30 ?100 kb size and 72 dpi resolution are considered optimal for website images.
• Images should be placed in context to the information on the pages, i.e. there should be relevant content around an image.
• Use proper alt tags for the images as the search engine can only see words, not the images. So, instead of using alt tags like "image" or "screenshot" use a phrase that contains a keyword or describes the image.

5) Simplicity

Visitors come to your site to complete some task or to find specific information, so avoid unnecessary design elements that could make it harder for the visitors to accomplish a task or find the information. Some instructions to enhance simplicity in a website are;

• Don't add too many colors, i.e. according to SEO experts use maximum of five colors in your website.
• Choose easily readable typefaces and use maximum of three different typefaces and maximum of three different sizes for each typeface.
• Add graphics only if they help users perform a specific action.
• Add suggestion plugins to help users find pages with specific information.
• Avoid horizontal scroll and pop ups as they could annoy the users.

ON PAGE SEO

What is On-page Optimization

It refers to all measures taken by SEOs within the website to improve the ranking of a site in search engine result pages. These measures are related to content and HTML source code of a page, e.g. meta tags, keyword placement and keyword density, etc.

SEO Page Title

Page title refers to the title tag displayed on the title bar of your browser window. It is a part of meta tags in the HTML inside the "head" area.
The page title tells users and search engines about the type and nature of the information available on your page.
Some important instructions to write optimized title tags are listed below:

• Length: It should be a maximum of 60 characters long, i.e. Google usually displays the first 50 to 60 characters of a title tag.
• Keyword placement: Place the targeted keyword at the start of your title and keep the least important words at the end.
• Keyword separation: Use vertical lines or pipes to separate targeted keywords and phrases, i.e. avoid the use of commas, underscores, dashes, etc.
• Don't repeat title tags: Write different titles for different pages, i.e. don't place the same title on multiple pages.
• Simple: Your targeted keyword or phrases should be simple and short, i.e. avoid the worlds such as if, and, then, but, etc.
• Website or company name: Don't use website or company name in the title tag unless it is very popular or part of your important keywords.

SEO Meta Description

Meta description is a short paragraph which is placed in the HTML of a webpage. It is a kind of advertising copy that briefly describes the content of your page.
Meta description appears under the URL of your page in search engine result pages. It is also known as a snippet.

The meta description is an important part of search marketing, i.e. a relevant and compelling description draws users from search engine result pages to your website which improves the click through rate for that webpage.

Some instructions to write optimized title tags are listed below:

• Keywords: Incorporate the most important keywords in your meta description.
• Readability: It should be simple and relevant, i.e. it should read like a human-written sentence and keyword stuffing should be avoided.
• Compelling: It should be as compelling as possible, i.e. it should clearly describe the content of the page.
• Length: It should be up to 135 to 160 characters long else search engine will truncate it, so keep the important keywords in the first or second line of the description.
• Don't repeat: Write different meta descriptions for different pages else search engine may penalize you for repeating the same description on different pages.

Meta Keywords

It refers to a brief list of most important keywords and phrases of your webpage. They are not visible to the users like your meta titles and meta descriptions.

Meta keywords are placed in the HTML code of the webpage. They tell search engines which keywords your page is optimized for.

To write meta keywords scan the copy on your page and make a list of important words or phrases then shortlist ten to fifteen keywords which you think accurately describe the content of your page.

Some instructions to write optimized meta keywords are listed below:

• Use a maximum of ten to fifteen meta keywords for a single page.
• Use a comma to separate the meta keywords and don't leave space between them.
• Don't repeat any meta keyword or phrase.
• Incorporate most important words at the beginning of your meta keyword list.
• They should be specific and relevant to the page, i.e. they should accurately reflect what you are talking about on the page.

SEO Headings

Heading tags refer to the headings of the different paragraphs or sections of a page. A heading differentiates a particular section or paragraph from rest of the page and makes it more readable and organized.
There can be a maximum of six heading tags which ranges from H1 to H6 and forms a top-down hierarchy, i.e. HI is at the top or more important and H6 is at the bottom or least important.

The headings should be used in order from top to down. You cannot skip any of the heading tags in between the sequence otherwise it will break the heading structure which is not recommended for on-page SEO,
i.e. H1 tag should be followed by H2 tag not by H3 or any other heading tag.

Some important instructions to optimize the headings

• Never miss the H1 tag on a page as the search spiders tend to look for h1 tags to get the idea about the content of the page
• Don't overuse H1 tag, i.e. it should be only one for each page.
• Use targeted keywords or phrases in the headings; avoid words that are not relevant to the page.
• Use targeted keywords in the beginning of the headings.
• The headings should be followed by a body of relevant content.
• Maintain the order of heading tags; H1 should come first in the page then H2, H3 and so on.

SEO Optimized Domain Name

Some important instructions to optimize domain names:

• Choose a .com extension: Most of the SEO experts believe .com is the best choice to end a domain name, i.e. users are more familiar with .com extension and most of the renowned websites also have a .com extension.
• Choose suitable words: A domain name can be based on brand or keywords. If your brand is unique and popular you can incorporate it in the domain otherwise incorporate your targeted keywords that reflect your business.
• Length: Shorter is better in Domain names as shorter URLs are easier to remember and there are fewer chances of spelling mistakes when they are entered in a browser window. The users also prefer to click shorter URL links on search engine result pages than the longer URL links.
• Be relevant: Choose the right words that effectively communicate your message. The users must know from your domain name what kind of products or services you are dealing with.
• Easy to spell or pronounce: It should be easy to spell and pronounce, so avoid hyphens, intentional misspellings or misspelled words.
• Be unique: A unique name enables you stand out from the crowd, so try to create unique and distinctive domain names, e.g. google.com, facebook.com, yahoo.com, etc.

Canonical Tag

Conical Tag is an HTML element that is used to prevent duplicate content issues. It specifies the canonical URL "the preferred version" of a web page and tells search engines that the similar URLs are not different; they are one and the same.

How canonical tag helps improve SEO of a site

It is very helpful in cases when you have multiple similar versions of a page or your content is accessible through multiple URLs. It enables you choose one version as canonical URL; you can create canonical URL for each set of similar URLs. After your canonical tag is ready, the search engine will consider all the links to similar versions as links to the canonical version that helps improve SEO of your site.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are the HTML tags which provide information about the content of a webpage. They tell what the page is about, who has created the page, when it is updated, keywords used to represent the page,etc. This information helps search engines index the webpage so that users looking for that or similar information could find it.

Meta tags are placed inside the head of HTML, i.e. meta tags. Users browsing your site cannot see them but the search engine can see them to get a brief idea about your keywords and to know what your site is about.

• Title tag: It is the title text which appears in search engine listings on the title bar of the browser window.
• Meta description tag: It is the brief summary of the content of your page. It appears below the URL of your page in search engine listings.
• Meta keywords tag: It is the place where you put all of your important keywords and phrases that describe the content of your page.

Images and Alt Text

Alternate text or Alt text is a feature added to an image tag in HTML. It appears in a blank image box when the image cannot be displayed for some reason like slow connection, broken URL or user is using a screen reader.

Alt text is designed to optimize images for speed and SEO. It helps search engines know what an image is about as they cannot see or interpret images.

Some benefits of putting Alt Text are given below

• If an image fails to load or does not render on a page due to any reason then alt tag will appear to tell what the image is about. It helps users understand what kind of image was there.
• The search engines are designed to understand text on pages, not for the images. So, if your image is accompanied with alt tag the search engine will know from the alt tag what the image is showing and it will provide right images to the users.
• You can include your main keywords in the alt tag if they are related to the image. It will improve your image search ranking for that keyword.
• Alt tags are very helpful for visually impaired as they mostly use screen readers to browse webpages. Alt tag helps screen readers to identify and interpret what is being displayed in the empty box on the screen.

Internal link Building

A text link from one page to another page on the same domain is known as an internal link and creating such links is called internal link building. It is an important SEO technique that enables you to link a new post to another old or popular post to increase the traffic to the new post as well as to provide users more relevant content.

Some key benefits of internal link building are:

• User-friendly navigation: It helps improve navigation; when you are reading a page you can also access other similar pages through text links.
• Help provide relevant data: It enables you tell users and search engines that there is more or additional information on other pages of the site about the text they are reading. Thus, you can make sure that your users do not miss any relevant information.
• Decreases bounce rate: By using text links you can /engage users for a longer duration on your site; the user would like to read other related posts or content on other pages using links.
• Helps utilize link juice for other pages: It helps you connect your pages with higher page rank or authority to a relevant content on another page which is low in ranking or not so popular. Thus, you can pass link juice from one page to other pages so that they could perform better.

Site Map

It refers to the map of your site which shows the detailed structure of your site like its different sections and the links which connect them. The role of site map is to help users and search engines find information on your site.

A site map can be a static HTML file or an XML file. Sitemaps based on HTML file are traditional sitemaps. They were designed to outline the first and second level structure of a site so that users can easily find information on the site. These are mainly concerned with users.

On the other hand, XML sitemap is primarily designed for the search engines. It includes all the activities of a site like along with the main URL it contains all other URLs with their meta data. It also tells how important a URL is, when it was last updated, its relation with the site, etc.

Hidden Text

Hidden text is the textual content that search engines can read but your visitors cannot read or see. It is also called Invisible or fake text.

Using such text can improve ranking of a page but this technique is against the guidelines of search engines and is considered a black hat SEO technique.

All major search engines treat hidden text as search spam. They can easily detect their presence and may ban your site temporarily or permanently.

Web Hosting

Web hosting refers to a service provided by the web host to websites to make them available for the users on the internet. It gives you space on its server that allows you to post your website on the internet. Without a web host or web hosting your site can not be viewed by the users, so after making a site you will need a web hosting service.

The web host stores your website or webpages in high-powered computers which are known as Servers. When the users type your URL the internet transfers your website files from the web server to their computers.

Thus, Server and Hosting check is an important on-page optimization factor and you need to be very careful while choosing a web-hosting company.

A right hosting company doesn?t do anything special to boost your rankings but it is aware of SEO and will not do anything that can harm SEO of your site.

How a hosting provider can affect your SEO

SEO is a set of activities or factors that help your website gain more exposure to search engines. Some of such activities or factors are directly affected by your web hosting company, e.g. Speed, Uptime, Security and SEO knowledge.

• Website speed: It is an important SEO factor that affects on page SEO, if your site loads fast the users will be more satisfied and there will be more conversions. A web host with adequate resources and better datacenter infrastructure and hardware can help improve speed of your site; you just need to have a well-coded site, optimized codes and images.
• Website availability: It is another factor that affects on page SEO as search engines avoid redirecting users to unavailable sites. They can remove such sites from their index temporarily or permanently. It is the job of web hosting provider to ensue your website is available all the time otherwise it can harm your online reputation.
• Website security: You should take every possible measure to secure your site and the hosting provider should also do the same thing. An unprotected site is more prone to hacking and malware infection and if any such thing happens it may result in domain blacklisting and de-indexing.
• SEO knowledge:Your hosting provider must be aware of SEO and its basic rules so that they can identify the tasks that are not good for SEO and can avoid them.

Robots Meta Tag

Robot Meta Tag is used to give instructions to the web spiders. It is implemented on a page to page basis by incorporating a meta tag in the head of an HTML file. It was proposed in 1996 at the W3C workshop and its use was described in December 1999 in Appendix B of HTML 4.01.

Robots meta tag plays an important role in on page optimization as it is the robots meta tag who tells the search engines how to treat the content of a page. Basic Syntax: It has a very simple basic syntax.

In the syntax, you can put different values as a place holder as we have written "instructions to be followed" as a placeholder. The different values can be index, noindex, follow, nofollow, all or none-thing.

301 Redirect

302 Redirect is an HTTP status code. It is a web server function which manages the complete or permanent redirection of a page. It tells the users and search engines that the original page is no longer available and all the information is shifted to a new page.

Thus, 301 redirect helps a website to redirect its users and search engines to its latest version from its old or original URL.

404 error

The 404 error message is an HTTP standard response code which indicates that client is able to contact the server but the server is not able to find the page requested by the client. Thus, it simply means that the webpage you are trying to reach cannot be found on the server. Errors 404 usually arise due to a wrong link on your site or if you have removed the requested page.

OFF PAGE SEO

Off-page Optimization refers to all the measures that can be taken outside the website to improve its ranking on search engine result pages.

It is a long-term process which is mainly focused on acquiring backlinks to your webpages from the social media, authority sites and social bookmarking. Thus, in off-page optimization we are supposed to create as many quality backlinks as possible using different techniques outside the website.

SEO PageRank

PageRank is an algorithm used by Google for link analysis. It was invented by Larry Page and Sergey Brin; the owners of Google. It was developed by Google to rank pages on their merit and not on meta tags as people had started misusing meta tags to improve their rankings.

It is an important off-page optimization factor. It decides how easily and quickly your users can find your webpages on the world wide web. If your PageRank is good the user will find you easily as the search engine will keep your site higher on the search engine listings.

Some important link building strategies to improve your Google PageRank:

• List your site on renowned and popular directories and stay away from link farms that are not useful.
• Be a part of online forums and share valuable comments with backlinks to your site.
• Publish relevant articles on trusted and popular article submission sites like EzineArticles and Associated Content.
• Find out popular sites and encourage them for link exchange
• Be active on social media; use different techniques like Social Bookmarking, Twitter profile links and Google+ shares for building links.

SEO Link Popularity

Link Popularity is an important Off-page SEO strategy. It refers to the total number of links that point to a website. These links are of two types; internal and external. Internal links are the links from your own webpages and external links are from other webpages or websites.

The high link popularity shows that more people are connected to your site and it contains useful content and information. So, it is one of the important factors for the search engines to rank websites in search engine result pages, i.e. if there are two websites with same level of search engine optimization then the site with higher link popularity will be ranked higher than the other by the search engine.

Directory Submission

Directory submission is an off-page optimization activity. It involves submission of your site to a specific category of a web directory, e.g. if you have a tutorial website then you are supposed to submit your site in the education category of a web directory. Some directories are free and some charges a fee to list your site in the relevant categories.

Every directory has its own guidelines which you need to follow to submit your site. Some basic guidelines that most of the directories follow to approve a site into their database are; Title, Description, Keywords, Url, Category, Email and Site Content. Some directoris

Some of the popular directory submission sites are; www.dmoz.org, www.directorylisting.com and www.seofriendly.com.
There are plenty of benefits of having your site listed in popular directories. Some of the benefits are listed below;

• Fast indexing:The search engines can easily find your site for crawling and indexing.
• Higher link popularity: You get two additional links; contextual category link and unique directory listing link.
• Higher page rank: Quality directories are used in Google Algorithm to calculate Google PageRank.
• Social Media Sharing: Most of the popular directories have social media sharing buttons. It allows users to share your link with other users.
• More traffic: The heavy traffic of popular directories can be diverted to your site
• Brand awareness: Your brand gets more exposure that helps increase brand awareness.

Social Bookmark Submission

Social bookmark submission is an off-page optimization activity that enables you store your links on online bookmarking sites. These links or bookmarks are the tagged pages on the web that can be accessed from any computer with internet access. Thus, every such bookmark acts as a backlink that helps improve SEO of a site.

These stored links are considered quality backlinks as in most of the bookmarking sites you can give a title to your URL and can also add related description and keywords. Thus, title is stored with the link which acts as an anchor text for the backlink. You can also incorporate your main keywords in the title to transform your social bookmark into a keyword-anchored backlink.

Some of the popular social bookmarking sites are twitter.com, pinterest.com, digg.com, delicious.com and reddit.com.

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Social bookmark submission benefits

• Increases website traffic: It helps you get lots of free website traffic as bookmarking sites are visited by hundreds of visitors daily. If your content is good these visitors will click on the link and visit your site for more information.
• Free online promotion: You can promote your products or links free of cost as social bookmarking sites do not charge for their services.
• Quality Backlinks: It helps build permanent and quality backlinks as most of the social bookmaking sites allow webmasters to create backlinks for their sites.
• Improve Google PageRank: The backlinks generated by bookmarking your webpages on social networking sites help improve your Google PageRank.
• Faster indexing: Social bookmarking sites are known for fresh and useful content and are frequently visited by search engines. So, if your content is useful and users are sharing it then the search engine will index you link quickly.
• Portability and Security: It enables you to secure and remember your favorite webpages. You can access your stored webpages online from anywhere with any computer. Thus, you will not lose important information that you have stored in social bookmarking sites.

Blog Submission

Blogging is an important off-page optimization activity. It enables you offer your users fresh content on a regular basis so that users keep visiting your site. Today, it has become an important SEO activity for the website owners who want to convert their visitors into actual customers. Blogs are also popular as weblogs.

Blogging is a continuous process. You need to write and post the blogs at regular intervals. Your blogs should offer unique and useful information so that they could attract users as well as the search engines.

Benefits of blogging

• Improves SEO: You can offer your users fresh and meaningful content by blogging consistently. The search engines also love to index fresh content where you can incorporate your keywords to get more exposure on search engine result pages.
• Improves relationship: It helps you connect with your readers by asking relevant questions, feedback or comments at the end of the blog. You can also share your product and business updates with your clients and potential customers to maintain relationship.
• Free marketing: If your blogs are useful the readers will share it with others. They can share your link, tweet it or email the information to others. Thus, indirectly they are doing the free marketing for you.
• Helps Build authority: It gives you the opportunity to share industry related news and information which helps you establish authority in your niche.
• More Inbound links: Blogging is one of the smartest ways to generate authoritative links to your website. Your meaningful blogs are resources for other writers who can mention your website in their articles which will generate inbound links.

Article Submission

Article submission is an off-page optimization activity. It refers to attracting traffic by submitting SEO optimized articles to popular article submission directories. It is a long term SEO activity which helps increase backlinks and boost pagerank of your website or blog.

Keep in mind that articles should be submitted in the relevant categories of popular article submission websites. Also, you are required to produce quality articles only then you can reap maximum benefits of this activity. You can consider the following points to produce quality articles;

• The article should be unique and informative.
• Incorporate main keywords in the article but not to the extent of keyword stuffing.
• The article should have optimum length; between 500 and 700 words.
• Title should be unique and must have the main keyword so that web crawler can easily identify and index it.
• Write short paragraphs and use subheadings and bullets to make your article more presentable.

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Article Submission Benefits

• It is a simple yet effective way of building backlinks.
• It helps generate long term backlinks from popular websites.
• It boosts the marketing results and popularity of your product or brand on the World Wide Web.
• It helps you establish yourself as an expert in the industry.
• It allows you provide valuable information to customers that helps build trust of your potential customers.

Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal Linking refers to creating reciprocal link between two websites, i.e. it is created when a website 'A' links to website 'B' which in turn links to website 'A'. It is an agreement between two websites where each website is hyperlinked to another website.

It is usually done between the sites that provide related services or information. The purpose of reciprocal liking is to provide readers a quick access to the related sites and to boost search engine rankings of the sites.

The reciprocal links should be built between related websites otherwise it will irritate your users that will harm SEO of your site, e.g. A car wash and dent repair company in the same city may link each other sites to attract more customers.