Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of traffic (visitors) to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search engine results page (SERP) of a search engine - including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Ask and other search engines. 

To do search engine optimization, the digital marketing analyst needs to have answers to the following questions:

• What are people searching for? (keywords/labels, file type) 

• Where are people conducting their searches? (location) 

• When are people conducting searches? (date, time)

• Who is using the commercial web search engines? (target audience) 

• How are people searching? (desktop/tablet/mobile, query/browse/ask)

• Why are people conducting searches? (goals, intention, motivation) 

Search engine optimization can be of three types - On-page Optimization, Off-page Optimization and Local Optimization.

On-Page Optimization is done directly in the website and webpages. It comprises of optimization of the content, meta description, title tags, meta tags for text and ALT tags for images.

Off-page Optimization is done outside the website. The various techniques of off-page optimization are social media marketing, blog marketing, search engine submission, directory submission, social bookmarking and many others. This helps to gain traffic through backlinks.

Local Search Optimization is the process of generating traffic from location based searching. The process of local search optimization comprises of creating local business listings in websites like Yellow Pages, Foursquare and Yelp. This strategy is useful to promote the products and services to local customers.

Process of Search Engine Optimization

1. Keyword Research

Experts say that positioning is a battle of getting the right words to create a long-lasting impact in the mind of the prospective customers. Coca Cola created the impact in rural India with "Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola" and Nike created an impact worldwide with "Just Do It". 7UP surprised everyone with the word "Uncola" and Anchor toothpaste snatched away market share from the toothpaste majors by positioning its product as the "vegetarian" toothpaste. In the SEO competition, it's all about getting the right keywords in your website that matters.

There are generally two types of keywords short tail keywords and long tail keywords. Short tail keywords are less than three words and long tail keywords are more than three words. An effective strategy is to insert those keywords in the website that will give the site a better ranking in SERP.

The challenge now is to discover the keywords that will give the site a higher ranking. Of course, a thorough research is absolutely necessary. But to make life easier, a set of tools like Google Keyword Planner, Google Adword Planner, Alexa, Wordtracker and Keyword Explorer are available. The Google Keyword Planner will help you to identify which keywords have high search volumes, high traffic and estimated clicks. You can then optimise your website using the most effective keywords. Target "long tail" and "local city area" phrases, since these specific terms will get you immediate results. Build initial keywords list and key phrase list and then shortlist targeted keywords that are essential for your line of business.

2. Competitor Analysis

There is a very popular saying – “Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer".

Once you have identified the keywords that can get maximum traffic to your website, a general trend is to rush to incorporate them in your website. But, there is a caveat out there. Your competitors might also be using the same keywords or better keywords that will take the traffic away from your site. Hence, a logical step is to do competitor analysis and be a step ahead of the competition. You can also borrow their best practices and improvise on them to build your own best practices.

The best way to do competitor analysis is to type in Google the top keywords that you have identified and see which sites are most popularly associated with them. These are your top competitors. Now, you need to collect exhaustive information about their topical authority, page authority, domain authority and external links volume. Finally, you need to narrow down on the keywords that have high relevance, high search volume and high level of profitability. You also need to do a parallel analysis of your competitor's activities on social media.

There are tools like Alexa, Spyfu, Moat, Quantcast and Ontolo which can help in competitor analysis. These tools are of great help to keep you updated about your website ranking in comparison to your competitor's rankings.

3. Website Optimization

Website optimization is the process of designing the website in such a way that it ranks well in the search engine result page. Website optimization is important to increase the speed of loading, bring traffic to the site and increase the conversion rate, sell through and return on investment. Also, the better your site structure, the better your chance of higher ranking in the search engines.

Website optimization makes the site more appealing to the users. If the site is appealing, it will have higher CTR (Click-through rate) which will lead to a better ranking in SERP (search engine result page). An accurate site structure can reduce bounce rate and improve dwell time, both of which will lead to improved rankings.

The first step is to test the speed of the website loading. If the speed is slow, then a thorough analysis needs to be done to determine the causes and take corrective actions. The web host, also, plays a critical role in determining the speed of loading.

If it is a fresh website, then you can create a site hierarchy. The hierarchy should be logical with as few categories as possible. The amount of subcategories within the main category should be evenly balanced. Then, create a URL structure that follows your navigation hierarchy. While creating the site navigation, keep the coding simple. HTML and CSS are your safest approach. Coding in JavaScript, Flash, and Ajax will limit the crawler's ability to cover your site's well-thought-out navigation and hierarchy. Also, develop a comprehensive internal linking structure.

Every page on your website should have some link to and some link from another page on the website. Your navigation should accomplish internal linking to the main categories and subcategory pages. Internal linking tells the search engines what pages are important, and how to get there. The more internal linking you have across all pages, the better.

Site structure is a product of careful thinking, intentional design, and accurate organisation. The best time to develop a strong site structure is before you create your site. However, if you're redesigning your site, you can rework the design and reorganise some navigational elements to improve structural SEO.

4. Content Optimization

Content in a website comprises of text, images, videos, and news. Content optimization is the process of including relevant keywords and phrases and modifying meta tags and image tags in such a way that it gets higher accessibility among search engines. Content optimization is a crucial step in the content marketing process.

a) Text Optimization

The text comprises of keywords, title tags, meta descriptions, meta keywords and URL. One of the most important elements of website optimization is the title tag. In HTML code, the tag "(title)" is used to set off the page's title tag, which tells the audience what the page is about in just a few words.

Title tags are used in a number of places to describe the content. For example, they are used by search engines as the link text for each search result they display. Additionally, they are often used on social media networks to describe the page when someone shares the content. The title tag, also, appears at the top of the browser when the page is viewed, and if the browser is tabbed, it will be the name of the tab for the page being viewed. As a result, title tags are not just important to search engines; they serve as meaningful ways to describe your page's content for your audience.

Meta descriptions are typically displayed in search engine results pages (SERPs) as the descriptor text for each result, making it a key piece of information for your audience. The meta description should accurately describe what visitors will find when they click to your content. Successful meta descriptions concisely state the purpose of the content page and include applicable keywords. There is a limitation on number of words that can be used in meta description. Normally, about 150-160 characters are allowed. Any text that goes beyond that will likely be cut-off. It is good practice to include meta keywords in meta description.

URLS are, also, a great resource in optimising text. A keyword rich URL provides search engines with even more descriptive information about your content. So, in addition to optimising content tags, your URL structure should be optimised to ensure that it is straightforward, meaningful, and contains the appropriate keywords that are relevant to your content. When appropriate, you may want to incorporate long tail keywords into your URLs, so users seeking more specific results may find your content more easily in their searches.

b) Image Optimization

The next step is to do image optimization. As consumers frequently search for images, the visual content you display on your website also needs to be optimised for discovery. Not only are images included in specific "image" searches on search engines, but they can also appear in the main "web" search results if the search engine determines that your image is relevant to a particular search term or phrase. In fact, your images may appear on a SERP even when your other content pages don't. 

Unlike text optimization search engines can't derive full meaning from image-based content. Though they largely rely on the context of the page (i.e., the text, and the text related tags) an image appears to identify its relevance to a search query, the meta tags that are used for each image also play an essential role in determining its contextual meaning. Types of meta data that can be optimised for images include source (i.e., file location and name), ALT, and title tags. To achieve the best results in search, all of these image tags must be optimised. It's important to choose simple, yet keyword rich phrases in your ALT tags to describe your website images.

Similar to ALT tags, image tags designate the words that should appear when a user scrolls or hovers over an image. They also help your audience understand the context of the image, so the tag text you choose should describe the image accurately and contain relevant keywords.

You also need to check the images that might be slowing down the site. The unnecessary characters like whitespace character, newline character, comments and block delimiters should be removed from HTML, JavaScript and CSS.

5. Search Engine Submission

Search engine submission is the process of notifying search engines of the existence of website content so that they include the site in their indices and search results. Search engine submission is an effective tool of web promotion. It refers to the direct submission of a website to a search engine. It is a form of internet marketing that helps a webmaster increase the rankings of a webpage or pages.

The search engine submission process is done through two methods primarily. The first method is submitting one page at a time by using various webmaster tools such as Google Webmaster Central or Bing Webmaster Tools and by generating an up-to-date sitemap file along with a robots text file. The second one requires submission of the entire site by submitting the home page and home page only to as many search engines as possible which is a mass submission process. This type of search engine submission requires that the webmaster submits the website's home page and then the rest will occur automatically after your site has been listed in multiple search engine databases and indexed by these search engines.

There is a need for search engine placement with high rankings, since there are several other websites with the same operations competing for the same business. This requires that, besides using search engine submission, webmasters must utilise search engine optimization as a means to increase their ranking and outperform the competition. This process enables them to improve the placement of their sites with higher rankings by utilising various methods of search engine optimization, tactics and strategies.

Search engine submission, also, has the benefit of promoting your website on the internet within a short period of time. This will attract more traffic to your website by improving your online visibility. Furthermore, this allows the search engines to become aware of your online presence for user activity and potential sales. If you start to experience higher volumes of search engine traffic after the search engine submission process has begun then it shows that the search engines have indexed your site and visitors are now able to access it which can lead to gains on your investment.

6. Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a way to bookmark our favourite webpages online to read them anytime and anywhere if we are connected with the internet. Social bookmarking occurs when we bookmark some webpages in our browser, so that we can read them later without surfing the internet again.

Social bookmarking plays a big role in SEO. The webpages we bookmarked at social bookmarking sites is considered as a quality backlink in the eyes of search engines. And we all know that the quality backlinks help us to increase blog traffic and Google Page Rank. That's why SEO professionals include social bookmarking in their search engine optimization practices.

Some of the ways that social bookmarking helps businesses include:

• Building relevant incoming links

• Draws visitors

• Draws new clients or customers

• Helps people find the business

• Helps businesses find other businesses

• Draws a lot of traffic

To do social bookmarking for SEO, you have to collect a list of top social bookmarking sites so that you can easily start your work on them. The most popular social bookmarking sites are Pinterest, Delicious, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Scoop.it. Pinterest is best for promoting visual content. Delicious is best for collaborating with other users to find or share content. Reddit is best for finding offbeat content. Scoop.it is the best overall social bookmarking site. StumbleUpon is best for exploring the web and discovering unique content.

7. Directory Submission

Directory submission is the process of submitting your websites to directory sites which classifies information and adds your link to the relevant category. You need to choose the directories that best suit your services. Online directories were used as a means of segregating the websites on the internet before search engines like Google came into existence. Directories like DMOZ and Yahoo directory were some of the very first online directories.

Directory submission is widely practiced by SEOs because it helps in getting a good page rank and good position in the SERPs. If done in the right way, it can be a valuable source of good links to your websites. You need to identify the high quality directories which can still be an effective source of building backlinks.

The following steps must be done to ensure that you are submitting only to the high quality directories.

1. Select a directory that is relevant to your line of business.

2. Check it for SEO friendliness. This can be determined through metrics such as Page Authority (PA), Domain Authority (DA) and Moz Rank. 

3. Check the submission guidelines and follow the rules.

4. Provide details about your website.

5. Get a confirmation about your submission by email.

Confirm Submission via Email Select a Directory Directory Submission Process Submit Website Information to the Directory Check SEO Compatibility Check Submission Guidelines

The primary goal of submitting a website to directories is to receive one-way inbound links from other high-ranking websites. When the submission is done to high quality directories in the right way, it can increase the website's visibility and traffic. When Google search engine spiders comb through the web, they count the number of one-way incoming links to a website. In other words, every incoming link is considered to be a vote of popularity for a website. However, all votes or links are not given equal importance when Google is deciding where to place your website in its rankings for your keywords. So, it is better to check the Page Rank, Page Authority, Domain Authority, Relevance and Moz Rank to determine which directories you should choose to submit your website to get backlinks.

On-page Optimization vs Off-page Optimization

There are two main kinds of optimization - On-page Optimization and Off-page Optimization.

On-page optimization refers to all measures that can be taken directly within the website in order to improve its position in the search rankings. Examples of this include measures to optimize the content or improve the meta description and title tags.

Off-page optimization refers to all the measures that can be taken outside of the actual website in order to improve its position in search rankings. These are measures that help create as many highquality backlinks (incoming links) as possible.

On-page optimization is a foundation for successful SEO. On-page optimization helps you to rank well in the search engines, and also helps in improving the overall readability of your website for your users. On-page optimization is very essential to gain visibility in the search results as without optimising your on-page factors, you won't be found in the search engines. Without on-page optimization of your content which talks about your website, there will be less chances of your website getting authority leading to, you missing out on traffic. If you lack on, on-page optimization, there are less chances of you getting notice, which will again lead to low conversion rate.

Off-page optimization functions outside the boundaries of the webpages. Off-page optimization basically deals in link building for SEO. Off-page SEO is a long-term and time-consuming process. It includes acquiring backlinks to your webpage from the authority sites, social media and social bookmarking. Off-page factors work in the background to improve the search rankings.