Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO or
engine optimization involves methods to enable a website or content to rank
Bing, Baidu etc. It is responsible for
of
SEO traces its origins in the
engines like
traffic to a website, making it a robust
surged in the
search
higher on search
Google,
generating organic
mainstay
digital marketing strategies.
early 1990s, and its popularity
2000s. Since Google has dominated the search field for over 20 years, now the majority of SEO’s framework revolves around it. No wonder Google currently retains a sweeping 91.56% of the market share by March 2022.
Top 3 search engines by market share
An in-depth understanding of these three basic SEO types (onsite, offsite and technical) is essential for creating a compelling and well-rounded organic search growth strategy.
What is on-site/on-page SEO?
On-site SEO optimizes website content to rank higher and generate more traffic to a website. Usually, on-site SEO includes landing page content, title tags, URLs, slug and internal links. It makes it easier for search engines and users to grasp what the page is about, determine its relevance to a particular query, highlight its importance and help rank on SERPs On-site SEO is important because it enables search engines to comprehend the website, its content, and its relevance to a user’s query. Google constantly updates its algorithms, and optimizing your website’s content must be synced with Google’s quality guidelines. Additionally, on-site SEO is effective and cost-efficient as it’s mostly one time job & offers quick return-on-investment (ROIs)
Expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness or E-A-T is a concept in Google search quality guidelines. It identifies the value, authenticity and accuracy of the contentGoogle rewards highquality content by ranking it higher in SERPs. Contrarily low-quality content is ranked poorly. The title tag is the most important HTML feature that states the web page’s title/name. It basically defines what the particular webpage’s intent. Well optimized title has a trivial influence on organic rankings, and at the same time poor title tags can adversely impact your SEO efforts.
The meta description provides a summary of the web page. The meta description tag of the web page is displayed as part of the search snippet in SERPs, comprising 140-160 characters. They enable the users to assess the quality and relevance of the content. Optimizing meta descriptions yields benefits such as a high clickthrough rate (CTR), identification of result quality, and content relevance. You have spent hours researching and writing an article. You will want a significant number of people to read it. Make sure to add gripping headlines to stimulate users to click on your web page.
Header tags or heading tags are used to categorize and rank headings and subheadings on a website in order of importance. They make the content more accessible for the user to navigate and also make your content packed with keywords for the search engines.
Keyword cannibalisation means when too many identical or similar keywords are dispersed across your content, which confuses the search engines and might cause the pages to compete against each other. Image optimization is also vital for the higher ranking of your content. In addition, it provides better loading time, enhanced user experience(UX) and more ranking opportunities (e.g. Google images).
The regular content audits entails scrutinizing your content and aligning it with your business goals. Auditing content will reveal whether your content generates ROI, if the content is still relevant or outdated, and which content is gaining traction or otherwise.
What is off-page SEO?
Off page or off site is a vital part of an overall SEO strategy as it not only helps the website gain authority references but also rank higher in search engines. It refers to optimization techniques not directly linked to your website to improve traffic generation but gaining the backlinks or votes from other websites. Off-site SEO is crucial to building your site’s domain
authority in a specific niche, which is based on many factors including your link profile, Authority references, etc. Inbound links or backlinks are links/votes from any website to your site. These links ensure your website’s authority and authenticity. Inbound links are incredibly crucial as their frequency can affect your search rankings.
It is a blend of social media and SEO marketing strategies to boost higher search rankings. In addition, it improves online visibility, organic traffic, brand awareness, ensures content distribution, which in turn increases conversion rates & engagement. Social media marketing has monumental effects on crucial factors linke brand loyalty & awareness.
Guest
posting or guest blogging is a content marketing method that involves writing blog posts & articles for other websites. Guest blogging improves SEO performance and generates traffic by referring your website, product or service in that post. While hunting for the guest posts, always remember not all links are equal, meaning few quality guest posts can easily outrank low quality bulk guest posts. Unlinked brand mentions are mentions of your brand on other websites that do not link back to your website—for instance a site may refer to your webpage but have not linked your brand name back to your domain. In that case you can contact the webmaster or author in case that is an article or blog post & request them to link your website there. Influencer marketing is a practice where brands promote their products through endorsements and recommendations from influencers and famous content creators found on various social media and other platforms. You can quickly increase your brand awareness through Influencer marketing.
What is technical SEO?
Technical SEO involves the improvement of crawling, indexing, rendering and website architecture. Technical SEO is important because it enables search engines to identify that your website lacks technical issues. Likewise, they will thoroughly crawl, index and focus on your website structure to boost its search rankings.
Site architecture denotes the framework for organizing, structuring, and interlinking your website’s content. It creates a hierarchy, which allows users to see the content in SERPS according to importance.
Secure Sockets Layers or SSL safeguard your internet connection and sensitive data. SSL certificates are not a direct SEO ranking factor, but it provides the sense of security allowing users to know that your website is safe.
SEO-friendly URLs are simple, short and keyword-rich. URLs are critical because search engines use them to understand your website’s content.
XML sitemaps is a file that enable search engines to access your website’s essential pages. It is an effective and quicker way for websites to share this critical information.
A robots.txt file is used to direct the search engine crawler as to which pages it can acces. It enables the user to manage the crawler for that specific website. Disalowing any URL in robots file does not guarantee that search engines will not index it. At times they tend to index the pages even though they are not allowed in the robots file. Also robots file format & limitations may vary for different search engines. Mobile optimization allows users to access your content from their mobile devices. Mobile devices have increased substantially, and thus mobile optimization is indispensable. It focuses on site structure, site design, page speed times etc. You can always test your website with Google Mobile Friendly Test
Page loading speed is also essential to attract and engage users. Therefore, make sure your website loads in less than two seconds for mobile and less than 4 seconds for desktop. A one-second delay can lead to fewer page views, loss in conversions and diminished customer satisfaction. Thin or duplicate content holds very little value for users. Search engines strive to show high-quality content to users, and it is vital to bulk up the thin content by improving and removing it from the website.
A 404 error page is an HTTP code that states that the webpage you want to access has been moved or deleted. It is advisable to fix the broken links to 404 pages and redirect/divert users to relevant pages. Hreflang tags are used for multilingual websites, and it allows your website to reach an audience in different countries and ensures accurate content based on their geographical region and language. For instance, the hreflang tag for Adidas France website is FR, and the hreflang tag for Adidas Germany website is DE.