digital marketing services – Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What is a search engine? Google is a Search Engine. Bing is a Search Engine. Yahoo is a
search engine. Search Engine is a website that provides search results related to your
queries. Google Search Engine uses its Search Algorithms or programs to come up
with relevant search results.

Google sends a program called Googlebot to crawl (Read)
every website. It reads your website content and stores (indexes) it in Google’s databases.
When someone enters a search query in Google Search, Google executes the algorithms to
evaluate indexed content from the database and decides on the relevant search results to be
displayed to the user. Algorithms are nothing but functions or programs in other words.
There are various search algorithms developed by Google. I will explain about few key
algorithms in brief.

Panda: The panda algorithm is used to evaluate the website content and make a decision on
sites with poor-quality content. It helps Google rank websites with high-quality content
higher in search results. Google updates this Panda Algorithm from time to time.

Penguin: Having genuine referral links to your website from good quality websites is the
key to success for your Search Engine Optimization strategy. These referral links to your
website are also called Back Links.

People do acquire false backlinks by way of doing
link exchange or by acquiring links for money to push their website in Search Engine
Results Page (SERP).

The Penguin algorithm is used to evaluate such activities and find such
websites with false backlinks. This helps Google provide quality search results.
Hummingbird: Hummingbird algorithm provides Conversational Search results. For
example, ask these questions to Google.

Hummingbird algorithm can understand and provide the answers to you (In addition to the
search results).
That’s the power of hummingbirds.
Pigeon: Pigeon Algorithm is used to provide relevant and accurate Local Business Search
Results. For example, here is the search result page for “pediatrician in anna nagar”

SEO On-Page and Off-Page

Online presence is not a one-stop act. Being very active in this Internet World is highly
necessary to maintain consistency. Having just a website is not going to bring you
traffic.

Promoting it constantly alone brings your website further up in the search results.
Hence optimizing your website to achieve a top slot in the search results is
necessary for your business to fare better.

We classify SEO activities into two
On-Page (Tuning your website)
Off-Page (Activities you do outside your website)

On-Page
On-page, optimization is the process in which you tune your website to improve the user
experience and site performance.

For example, It is important to have a better Title and Meta Description to have a
meaningful website description in Google Search.

It is important to reduce the Flash and Script issues to improve the performance. It is
important to follow W3C Standards to reduce coding errors.
Off-Page
Creating awareness of your brand is how people come to know about your website. People must hear out your business and the positives you have to offer. For
example You may form online communities and forums to contribute.

You may want to register in local business directories. You may want to contribute by
writing articles about your business on various other sites and educating the ones who are
new to the field.

As you contribute through various means, your business will reach a
wider audience and when the contributions are well performed a viral sensation about your
business is achieved. This is an added advantage for your website ranking in Google.

On-Page

Analyze Flipkart On-Page Activities st
I searched for “buy samsung galaxy s5” in Google Search
and Flipkart.com showed up in 1 position in Organic Search Results
Take a look at Flipkart’s description from the search result below:

“ Samsung Galaxy S5Price in India – Buy Samsung … – Flipkart”
“BuySamsung Galaxy S5for Rs.31999 Online, Also getSamsung Galaxy S5Specs &
Features. Only Genuine Products. 30-Day Replacement Guarantee”

Google usually fetches this information from Title and Meta Description tags from the
webpage and displays it in search results. It is important to mention your unique selling
points, brand, call to action, and core keywords in the Title, and Meta Description.

It should be unique and attractive for every web page to get the user’s attention. This is one of the key on-page activities you should follow. Let’s analyze Flipkart’s on-page further by opening this specific page. You may want to take notes and try to follow best practices.

We are on the Samsung Galaxy S5 webpage on Flipkart. Let’s take a closer
look at the on-page strategy that helps them rank higher for the keywords searched by
me (buy samsung galaxy s5) and also how they engage their visitors.
We are going to look at and observe a few things:

The Keyword Presence: “buy Samsung galaxy s5”

Engaging components to make visitors stay on this page and take some action.

Tags Analysis from the page’s HTML Source
URL: URL contains this specific keyword “Samsung-galaxy-s5”. Your URL should be
user-friendly and search-engine-friendly. Use a meaningful URL. Name your folder and files
based on your Product / Service. Structure your folders with proper category names.

Bread Crumbs has the keyword “Samsung-galaxy-s5”. If your website does not have
Bread Crumps, ask your web developer to implement it.

Page Header has the keyword “Samsung-galaxy-s5”. You need to make sure your core

keyword for the page should be in the header.

Samsung Galaxy S5 Images in various angles for User Engagement. It helps users stay on
this page.
Note: You will learn how these images help in SEO On-page when we go to HTML Tags
section below.
Reviews and Ratings: Builds Trust and User Engagement.

Add to COMPARE: User engagement
Cross-selling products: For engagement and to sell related products. This also helps in
Internal Linking of other web pages. It is a good practice to link a webpage with one or
more other web pages on your website. It helps in passing the value (link juice) of your
webpage and improves your SEO on-page.

immediate action.
Unique Selling Points: “Cash on delivery”, “30-day replacement guarantee”, etc. Helps
they make a decision

Combos: Cross Selling other products like accessories. Note down the Keyword usage
“Recommended combos for Samsung Galaxy S5”.
Other related products listing: It helps in internal linking and Cross-selling

Content Strategy: Look at the keyword presence in “Key Features of Samsung Galaxy
S5” and they support this header with relevant content description
A similar strategy is followed for “Specifications of Samsung Galaxy S5”.

Try to provide enough content descriptions for your Products and Services. It also helps
you in increasing the mention of your core keywords.
Content is the main key for your on-page activity.

Reviews & Ratings: As people start
reviewing your products and services, it helps in content strategy as they share their
experiences about the product or service. It also helps in engaging and trust building.
Tip: Ask your web developer to implement Rich Snippets for your Review Rating
program. Google understands Rich Snippets and it improves the chances of showing your
ratings in Google Search Results.

The “Recommendations based on your browsing history” section helps Flipkart in user
engagement by showing items based on the pages viewed. It also helps them in Re-Targeting or Re-Marketing their products or services.

The footer page is the place where you can have internal links to key web pages on your
website. Note some key links in Flipkart: Privacy, Terms, Cancellation, FAQ, Payments,
etc. It builds trust in your system.
You may even mention your certificates, associations, and any other key information
to build trust.

Trust is the main factor that you need to build to make users perform expected actions on
your website. Most online businesses fail because they fail in building trust. It takes
time to build trust for a new online business. Think differently here.

HTML Tags:

Let’s take a look at HTML tags for this Flipkart page and their SEO On-Page activities. To
view HTML Tags, you need to open the Page Source. Right-click on the page and click on
“View Page Source” if you are using Chrome Browser or “View Source” in Internet
Explorer

It opens up the HTML source of this Samsung galaxy s5 page on Flipkart. Let’s analyze key SEO On-Page Tags:

Title Tag:

the tag defines the page title. Usually, this field is left unnoticed or it is filled up with some junk content or just the website namesake title for all web pages on your website. You should not do that.

This field is key for your SEO activity and any Search Engine like Google reads this field when it crawls and indexes your webpage. Google usually shows your title in Search Results. The title tag should be unique for every webpage on your website. Let’s check what’s there on the Samsung galaxy s5 page on Flipkart.

They have their core keyword for this page “Samsung galaxy s5” mentioned in their title
tag and also their brand name Flipkart.com. Make sure to mention your core keyword or
topic discussed in that specific webpage in your title tag. Try to restrict the length of the
Title field to around 65 to 70 characters. If you have a long text in Title Field, it will be
truncated when Google shows it in Search Results Page.

Whom should I inform to change my Title tags for all web pages on my website? Good
question. If you know web development, you may do it on your own. Or ask your web
developer. If your website portal is built using famous applications like Magento or
PrestaShop or OpenCart or WordPress, you will get SEO Plugins for your portal. You can
use those plugins to enter your Title Tags for every webpage.

Meta Description Tag:

One more key field always left unnoticed is Meta Description. This field should be filled
with a summary of your webpage content. This field should be unique for every webpage.
Try to restrict the length of this field to 155 to 170 characters. Google usually shows
this field on Search Results Page. Let’s take a look at Flipkart’s meta description

They have a complete summary mentioned here. It has got the keyword, price, unique
selling points, and call to action.
Here are the Google Search Results with Flipkart’s Title and Meta description for Samsung
galaxy s5 page.
You should use Title and Meta Description fields as good marketing material to attract
the user’s attention. Spend some time and effort creating your title and meta description
for all your web pages.

Image Alt and Source Tags:

Here is one of the Samsung galaxy s5 image alt and src tags from the Flipkart page. Alt: It
is called alternative text for the image. You need to describe the image. Here in this case
“Samsung Galaxy S5(Electric Blue)”
Src: Image Source. It contains the image location and the file name. The image file name
should be meaningful. Here in this case the file name is “Samsung-galaxy-s5-sm-
…jpeg”

It helps Search Engines understand the description of your image.

Tips:

Create Products or Service specific web pages on your website. For every product or service,
have a webpage and describe it. Your keyword and content strategy are very
important for every webpage you create. Instead of creating webpages targeting generic
keywords, identify niche keywords or long tail keywords or acronyms and form your
content strategy for your webpage.

For example, a person who does not have any idea
about Inverter would search for generic keywords like UPS, Inverter, etc. Don’t target
them. A person who is about to buy an 850 VA Sine Wave inverter from APC would be
searching for “best price for APC 850 VA Sine Wave Inverter” or “ APC 850 inverter
price”.

When you target these people and design your web pages, you will have less
competition and also get more sales.
Do not include all products and services in a single webpage. Your visitor may not like
that. It also confuses your visitors.

Robots.txt

robots.txt is a text file present on your website. You should create it and have your web
developer place that in the root folder of your website. robots.txt file provides instructions to
search engines about the content that should not be crawled.

“User-agent: *” – indicates that this instruction is for all search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Search Engines usually send a program called Crawlers to read your website.
Google sends a crawler called Googlebot.

As you have mentioned “User-agent: *”,
means this instruction is for all Search Engine Crawlers. You can even write instructions
for specific crawlers. For example, you can say “User-agent: Googlebot”. All Search
Engines read robots.txt and obey the instruction provided.

There are a few more instructions provided by me in my robots.txt. I have instructed search
engines not to crawl my “/writers/” and “/proposal/” directories as I have confidential
information. I do not want this information available to the public through search engines. Use
“Disallow: {/folder name/..}” command to block it.

Sitemap

As a best SEO on-page practice, a website should need to have a file called sitemap.xml.
This file helps Search Engines like Google to crawl your website better. What does it
have? Let’s take a look at www.locsea.com/sitemap.xml
This sitemap.xml file has all your webpage URLs mentioned along with the change
frequency. It helps Google identify and crawl your URLs

You should generate this file for your website and place it in your website’s root folder. To
generate this file, you should go to https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and enter your website
domain name. Set the change frequency to hourly or daily or weekly or monthly as per
your requirement. Click on start to generate a sitemap.xml file for your website. Download
this file and place it in your website root folder.
You should inform Google about your sitemap.xml location to make Google Crawl it

W3C Validation

It is important to follow W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards for your website.
You should check for HTML, XHTML, and CSS-related errors in your website and resolve
it. To do so, go to http://validator.w3.org and validate all your web pages including your
domain home page.

Every webpage in your website should be validated to make your site W3C
Validated. The steps to be followed to validate your pages are as follows:
Go to http://validator.w3.org/

Enter the URL of your webpage and click on Check. It shows up errors on your webpage.
Send those errors to your web developer to fix them. Please note you should do this for all
web pages including your domain home page.

Page Speed Insights

Page Speed Insights is a tool available from Google to improve the webpage speed
performance.

Type in your webpage URL to be checked, and click the ANALYZE button
Toggle between the tabs MOBILE and DESKTOP Insights, and see through the
suggestions given and optimize the pages according to the suggestions provided to
improve the page speed performance of your website. You should do this for every
webpage on your website.

Improving your page speed helps in loading the webpage faster and hence your visitors
will be impressed. This will improve your visitor engagement and stay on your webpage
for a long time browsing your webpages. Improving the page loading time also helps in
your SEO on-page as Google looks at it as one of the factors.

Canonicalization

It is important to set a preferred unique URL to reach your home page. For example,
LocSea’s home page can be accessed using various URLs as mentioned below:
http://www.locsea.com
http://www.locsea.com/index.php http://locsea.com
http://locsea.com/index.php
What does it mean? 4 different URLs to access LocSea’s home page. It splits up the value
of your home page.
You should decide on a preferred home page URL (say http://www.locsea.com) and ask
your web developer to create 301 re-direct entries in the .htaccess file to point the other 3 URLs to
http://www.locsea.com. If you do this, you will have one URL to access your home page
and it helps in your SEO on-page by improving the value of this page.
Try typing http://locsea.com/index.php and see what happens. It will take you to
http://www.locsea.com.

Customized 404 Page Design

You should create a Customized 404 Page Design to guide your visitors.
Assume you have a webpage URL “www.locsea.com/googleadwordstraining” but your
visitor entered it with a spelling mistake like “www.locsea.com/googleadwordstrateginig”.
If you do not have a customized 404 Page, it shows a “404 Page Not Found” error in your
browser.

The visitor may either go to Google to search for this page or go to some other
website. Instead, to retain this user and improve engagement, you need to have your web
developer redirect such visitors to customized 404 Pages.

You may provide content like this “This page has been moved or you are using an old URL. You may be looking for one of these links below” and provide important links to go through or
provide options to search your website. It helps your visitor stay on your website and look
for other options. Never show the “404 Page Not Found” error page to your visitors

Tips

Learn about Mobile Sitemap and Image Sitemap when you have time. Submitting Mobile
Sitemap helps your website listed in Google Mobile Search.
Your web pages are the key to your SEO success. Identify niche keywords (long phrases,
abbreviations)for your business and design your web pages with the following points: URL
with niche keywords
Header with niche keywords
Your content describing niche keywords
Images supporting niche keywords
If you design webpages targeting niche keywords, the chances are very high for such
webpages to rank higher in Google Search. Usually, people target generic keywords where
competition is very high. They always miss the other part.

On-Page Don’ts

Create your web pages primarily for users and not for search engines. Do not copy and
paste others’ content on your webpage.
Do not use copyrighted content from others
Do not use images owned by others
Do not create web pages with hidden text or links
Do not create web pages with Spelling and Grammatical errors

digital marketing services – Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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