As you know SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a technique to optimize website design, content, and links in the right way so that your website looks user and search engine friendly. In other words, It is a practice of improving the quality of website and quality of traffic through search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) or referral websites. Google and other search engines define some rules that can be followed by each site owner to optimize their websites for users and search engines.
The major benefits of SEO
- Increase website ranking on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
- Boost the website speed and user experience
- Help to make it mobile and user-friendly
- Organize website design and content
- Mention your website on another site
- Help to promote branding
- Cost-effective and long-term results
- Increase website traffic and conversions organically
Google has rolled-out many SEO updates in the last few years such as
Google Panda Update: Announced on February 23, 2011, Implemented to stop content spam, Get rid of auto-generated and duplicate content, poor quality and scrap content.
Google Penguin Update: Rolled out April 24, 2012, this update for stop the webspam, keywords stuffing, buying link for manipulating search ranking and demotions or promotions of organic rankings for a website due to link spam.
Google Hummingbird Update: Announced on August 20, 2013, implied to improve the accuracy of the content so that users can get a relevant result to their queries.
Google EMD Update: Launched on September 27, 2012. Exact Match Domains aimed to prevent poor quality sites from the ranking that have the keyword match in their domain names.
Google Payday Update: Announced on June 11, 2013. This algorithm is launched to identify and penalize the websites that use spam techniques to improve their search engine ranking and traffic.
Google Pigeon Update: Propelled on July 24, 2014. This update aims to deliver improved, useful, relevant and accurate local search results.
Google Mobile-Friendly Update is introduced on April 21, 2015. Google rolled out this update to give a boost to mobile-friendly pages because mostly users search and surf websites from their mobile devices.
Google Pirate Update is introduced on August 10, 2012, to control the pirated content like music, movies, illegal torrent providers, copyright content, etc. This update hits millions of websites that were not taking piracy seriously.
If you want to gain ranking and user experience, please don’t follow old on-page and off-page SEO techniques such as bulk & low-quality link building, keyword stuffing, content spinning, bulk article submission & more because those techniques are never going to work these days.
On-Page SEO Techniques or Factors 2021
1. Meta Tags
- Title – 70 characters long (Include the main keyword in the starting, add modifiers and long-tail title)
- Meta Description – 320 characters length
- Meta Keywords – 3-5 terms (Optional)
- Canonical Tags on every page
- Meta Goe tags
- Meta Author and Publisher
2. Heading Tags:
- H1 – one tag per page (Main heading with the keyword)
- H2 – two tags per page (Subheadings)
- H3, H4, H5, and H6 – no limit
3. Image Optimization:
- Alt and Title tag in each image
- Image URL should have a file name
- Caption on the image
- Add a video or audio file if required
4. Content Optimization:
- Each page should be 300+ words content.
- 1-2% keyword density and keyword position in Title, heading, and content
- Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Keywords and content to determine page relevancy.
- No duplicate, no grammatical error, and high-quality content
- Use call to action, bold, italic, bullet points, and tagline within the content
- The webpage should not have thin, poor quality and irrelevant content
5. Website Design Optimization
The website should have the following section in its design:
- Responsive design
- Website Logo
- The phone number at the top
- Slogan
- Main navigation bar
- Slider banners
- Content and images
- Proper footer design
- Social media icons
6. Schema tags:
Include schema codes according to your business niches like a Local schema for location-based business, Products Schema for e-commerce websites, Article Schema for blog posts, Review schema for rating and voting.
7. Open Graph Tag:
OG tags are used for Facebook connectivity.
OG Title, OG description, image, site name, facebook id, and etc. tag should be added to each page.
8. Twitter Card:
Twitter card tags are used for twitter profile connectivity to the website.
9. Domain Names and HTTPs / SSL:
- Purchase Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) E.x. .com, .com.au .org, .net, .info .biz and .edu.
- Boost your rankings with HTTPS / SSL as a ranking factor
10. Website URL Rewriting and Redirection:
- Keyword in landing pages URLs (it is a good idea to optimize landing pages URLs with a keyword)
- URL structure should be SEO friendly (No dynamic and parameter in the URL)
- Redirection of 404 error not found, empty pages redirection, non-working URL
11. Internal and External Linking
- Link your website pages, previous posts, and images to the relevant anchor text
- Add an external link to give a reference to any topic and quality info
12. SEO Files
- Create and upload Robots.txt,
- Sitemap.xml and ROR.xml,
- Goe tags or geo sitemap file
13. Google Analytics and Webmaster
- Add Analytic and Webmaster tracking code to a website
- Connect both Analytic and Webmaster to each other
- Activate E-commerce, Setup Conversation Goals, Event tracking and also track website search bar in Google Analytic
- Submit sitemap to webmaster tool, Set your website targeting country, and website preference (www or non-www)
- Find and remove all the HTML and URL not found errors into the webmaster
14. Developing Tasks
- Boost Site Speed – Website loading speed must below the 4 seconds.
- AMP tags – You can also use AMP tags on your website for fast loading on mobile devices
- W3 Validation – HTML / CSS JavaScript coding errors removing
Off-Page SEO Techniques or Factors 2021
Most of the techniques are the same but the work has shifted from quantity to quality.
- Directory Submission on high PR, updated and local website.
- Business listing on local websites for increasing citation and local keywords ranking
- Guest posting on relevant and region-based high authority websites
- Content submission on top article websites.
- The blog posting on blogger, WordPress, etc.
- Bookmarking submission of blogs, articles, and website
- Blog commenting on relevant blogs
- Forum posting on relevant and popular forums
- Classified ad submission on top class websites.
- PPT, PDF and Video Submission techniques
- Product or services submission on the relevant website
- Profiles creation on news websites and other portals
- Backlink creation on Resource, Reference, and useful link pages
- A backlink from Testimonial and Review submission
- Infographic creation and submission of relevant websites
- Email marketing for lead generation and brand awareness
- Banner posting on high traffic and engaging websites
- Press Release publication on news and PR websites
- Broken link building – finding broken links and replacing them
- Question/Answer link Building from Quora and Yahoo
Social Media Practices
Social media help to increase your brand awareness, generate traffic and impact search rankings. Increase your profiles and pages on the following website and share quality content like blog posts, products, services, images, videos, etc. regularly.
- Google+
- Youtube
There are many more SEO ranking factors that help to improve and increase website ranking. SEO is time consuming and technical work. It is not easy to find digital marketing professionals who can boost site ranking, traffic, and conversions. You can also contact us for SEO services or ask if you any questions regarding digital marketing. I hope this article will help you to understand the basics of search engine marketing.
