Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SIDDHARTHA SHEKHAR SINGH

Definition of SEO?

SEO is a Process of improving the ranking of a website on internet search engines. 

SEO is a technique which helps search engines find and rank your site higher than the millions of other sites in response to a search query. 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the activity of optimizing Web pages or whole sites in order to make them more search engine friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) • is the process of affecting the visibility of a website in a search engine's “natural” or “organic” (not paid for) search results.

What is SEO?

SEO Stands for Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is all about optimizing a web site according by Search Engines.

SEO is to improve the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines.

SEO is the art of ranking in the search engines.

SEO is marketing by understanding how search algorithms work and what human visitors might search

How Search Engine Works?

Crawling - is the process of fetching all the web pages linked to a web site. This task is performed by a software, called a crawler or a spider (or Googlebot, as is the case with Google).

Indexing - is the process of creating index for all the fetched web pages and keeping them into a giant database from where it can later be retrieved. Essentially, the process of indexing is identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page and assigning the page to particular keywords.

Retrieving Results - The last step in search engines' activities is retrieving the best matched results. Basically, it is nothing more than simply displaying them in the browser.

Major SEs that index pages using spiders: Google, Altavista, Msn, Aol, lycos.

“Spiders read only text, nothing else”

Examples popular Search Engines

Search engines are programs that search documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. A search engine is really a general class of programs, however, the term is often used to specifically describe systems like Google, Bing and Yahoo! Search that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web.

Google

Yahoo

Bing

MSN

Aol

Ask Jeeves

Alltheweb

Altavista

Importance of SEO for business

It gives companies the ability to :

Drive high quality customers to their website.

Increase sales leads from customers looking for their products and services.

Build their brand online by communicating marketing messages to their target audience.

Increase their profile against their competitors.

Target a global audience via international search engines.

What is SEO Algorithm?

Top Secret! Only select employees of a search engines company know for certain.

Reverse engineering, research and experiments gives SEOs (search engine optimization professionals) a “pretty good” idea of the major factors and approximate weight assignments.

The SEO algorithm is constantly changed, tweaked & updated.

Websites and documents being searched are also constantly changing.

Varies by Search Engine – some give more weight to on-page factors, some to link popularity.

Type of SEO?

On Page Optimization: In search engine optimization, on-page optimization refers to factors that have an effect on your Web site or Web page listing in natural search results. These factors are controlled by you or by coding on your page. Examples of on-page optimization include actual HTML code, meta tags, keyword placement and keyword density.

Off Page Optimization: In search engine optimization, off-page optimization refers to factors that have an effect on your Web site or Web page listing in natural search results. These factors are off-site in that they are not controlled by you or the coding on your page. Examples of off-page optimization include things such as link popularity and page rank.

On Page SEO Elements:

URL Structure

Meta Tag H1 Tag

Alt and Title Tag

Keyword Research

Canonical Issue

Internal Linking

Robots.txt Generate

Sitemap

On-Page SEO Checklist:

Canonical Issue

Always start with keyword selection, research and testing

Meta Description tag

ALT tags

H1 tags

URL structure

Internal linking strategy

Content

Keyword density

Site maps, both XML and user facing

Usability and accessibility

Track target keywords

Expect results in 3-6 months

Avoid On-Page SEO Mistakes:

Duplicate content

URL variants of the same pages

Off-site images and content on-site

Duplicate title tags

Hidden text

Hidden links

Keyword repetition

Doorway pages

Mirror pages

Cloaking 

Canonical Issue

When we talk about canonical issues, what we mean is does your site properly handle www versus non-www URLs. As a quick test, type http://yoursite.com into the browser. Be sure to leave off the www. Does the URL redirect to the www version? If not, you are susceptible to a canonical issue. (Unless you choose to display your site without the www, in which case, the site should redirect the www to the non-www version)

Search engines have a hard time understanding that http://yoursite.com and http://www.yoursite.com are the same thing. To a search engine, these two URLs look like two different sites that have exactly the same content, which they then penalize. This situation can be easily avoided by using a canonical redirect.

Fixing canonical issues means that you do a canonical redirect so that if someone (search engine or human) tries to go to the wrong version of your URL, they will be redirected to the correct version.

URL Structure

URL in use keyword according to the page.

URL length is 90-100 character.

Not use space( ) or Underscore(_).

URL in Use hyphen (-).

Keywords Research & MetaTag Generation

RESEARCH ON KEYWORDS : Find the best keywords that describes your business and products offered. The mostsearchable keywords terms by surfers.

IMPROVE KEYWORDS PROMINENCE, DENSITY & PROXIMITY: Keywords at the beginning of your page. Total keywords contained within the total text the closeness between two or more keywords.

META TITLE: Make attractive and easy to understand title tag. Title length is 60-70 char maximum.

META DESCRIPTIONS: Describe about your business wisely so that surfer understand well about your business. Description length is 160 char maximum.

META KEYWORDS: Generate keywords set after research has been done. These keywords best describe what the surfers searching for. Keyword length is 255-300 char maximum.

H1 & H2 HEADING, ALT TAGS & ANCHOR TEXT

H1 & H2 HEADING FORMAT: Applying H1 & H2 Tags in your source, will be helpful for achieving high ranking.

ALT TAGS: Most sites contain images, it will be advisable to put ALT Tags for all these images to make sites more Search Engine Friendly.

TITLE TAGS: its use in image and hyperlink.

KEYWORDS RICH ANCHOR TEXT: Anchor text for both external links and internal links is the powerful element for Search Engine Positioning.

Off Page SEO Elements:

Google Listing Search Engine Submission

Directory Submission

Article postings

Classified postings

Business Listing

Social Bookmarking Submission

Blog Posting

Image Submission

Video Submission Press Release PDF & PPT

Submission

Off-Page SEO Checklist:

Always start with keyword research, testing and selection 

Use Keywords in link anchor text

Obtain links from high ranking publisher sites

One-way inbound links (not link exchange or reciprocal links) 

Different keywords in your link-ads from the same site

Gradual link building technology (no growth spikes) 

Use relevant keywords near your inbound link (contextual relevance)

Deep linking (from multiple pages to multiple pages) 

Target a large list of keywords (5-500+)

Link from sites with a variety of Link Ranks 

Track all active keywords and refine strategy as required

Discontinue campaigns if ranking does not improve

Expect results in 1-2 months (Bing) 1-9 months (Google, Yahoo)

Avoid Off Page SEO Mistakes:

Duplicate keywords in link avderts

Site-wide links causing link growth spikes

Using on-page SEOs to do the work of specialist off-page SEO's

Placing random links without keywords near your link adverts

Link farms (sites with 100+ outbound links per page)

Using irrelevant keywords in your link-ads

Garbage links

Link churning

Hidden inbound links 

Link building

What is Link Popularity?

Link Popularity refers to the number of links pointing To your site FROM other sites on the Web.

Building links is one of the most important factors in getting top placements on the major search engines

Why are links so important?

Now a days, inbound links are the one of most important factors for getting a high keyword ranking, the most search engines are ranking their search result based on the link popularity from your site. Not the quantity of links, but the quality of those links is important.

INBOUND & OUTBOUND LINKS

Inbound links

A Link from a site outside of your site.

Inbound links means send visitors to your site, generally this is seen as good think for seo.

Outbound Links

A link to a site outside of your site

Outbound links means send visitors away from your site.

Generally avoid those thinks

For example( link exchange)

How to Succeed Online

Identify your target audience.

Discover your competitors.

Find out keywords, that your target audience use.

Build content, site structure and internal navigation with respect to SEO and important keyword.

Avoid Black Hat SEO

Monitor your traffic

Evaluate results and do improvement