SEO Tutorial for Beginners

SEO Interview Questions:

Introduction to SEO:

Search Engine Optimization in short form SEO is the process of optimizing web pages or websites in search engines in order to increase visibility of the website in the search engine result pages (SERP). For optimizing we need to make our website search engine friendly, and then we can get higher positions in search results.

This tutorial explains some SEO methods to improve the visibility of your web pages for different search engines, especially for Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

What is SEO – Search Engine Optimization?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is process of optimizing a website in search engines. SEO is a technique for:

• Making a website search engine friedly to rank well in search engine results.
• Improving the organic traffic to a website from search engines.
• Understanding how search engine works to search a keyword and predicting what web users might search.
• SEO is a part of search engine marketing (SEM). SEO is also referred as SEO copyrighting, because most of the techniques that are used to promote sites in search engines, deal with text.

If you plan to do some basic SEO, it is essential that you understand how search engines work.

HOW Search Engine Works?

Search Engines performs several activities to show the exact results as per the user requirement. Functions are like crawling, Indexing, Processing and Retrieving results.

What is Crawling?

It is the process of fetching all the web pages linked to a website. This task is performed by a automated program, called a crawler or a spider or a robot or Googlebot, in case of Google.

What is Indexing?

It is the process of creating index for all the crawled web pages and keeping them into database from where it can retrieve later. Essentially, the process of indexing is identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page and assigning the page to particular keywords.

What is SEO Copywriting?

It is the technique of writing text to the web pages that is provides the information to the readers and also target specific keywords. Its purpose is to rank highly in the search engines for the targeted keywords.

Along with text, SEO copywriting usually optimizes other On Page elements for the targeted keywords. This includes Title, Description, Tags, Header Tags and Alt Text.Search engines need genuine and unique content for achieving high rankings for the website.

What is Search Engine Rank?

When you search any keyword in search engine search box, it displays a huge number of results found in the data base. A page rank is measured by the position of web page displayed in the search engine results. If a search engine is putting your web page on the first position, then your web page rank will be #1 and it will be assumed as the page with the highest rank.

SEO is the process of developing and improving a website to attain a high rank in search engine results.

What is On Page and Off Page in SEO?

These are the two ways of optimizing the website. Both are necessary to attain high rankings in search engines.

What is On-Page SEO?

It includes providing good title, description and putting keywords of the web page. It is also adding unique content in the web page with keywords giving appropriate page title, headings and etc.

What is Off-Page SEO?

It includes process of Link Building.It is for increasing link popularity by submitting to different popular sites to get a quality backlinks, search engines and etc.

What is a Keyword in SEO?

Keywords are the phrases of words used by users in the search engine search box to find the results via search engines. SEO keywords are the key words and phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your site via search engines.

The following concepts related to keywords, help in optimizing the keywords on a web page.

Keyword Frequency:

This is calculated as how often does a keyword appear in a website title or description. You do not want to go overboard with frequency, however, since on some engines if you repeat a word too many times, you are be penalized for "spamming" or keyword stuffing.

In general though, repeat your keyword in the document as many times as you can get away with, and up to 3-7 times in your list of meta tags.

Keyword Weight:

It refers to the number of keywords appearing on your web page compared to the total number of words appearing on that same page. Some search engines consider this while determining the rank of your website for a particular keyword search.

One technique that often works well is to create some smaller pages, generally just a paragraph long that emphasizes a particular keyword. By keeping the overall number of words to a minimum, you can increase the "weight" of the keyword you are emphasizing.

Keyword Proximity:

It refers to the placement of keywords on a web page in relation to each other or, in some cases, in relation to other words with a similar meaning as the queried keyword.

For search engines, that grade a keyword match by keyword proximity, the connected phrase home loans will outrank a citation that mentions home mortgage loans assuming that you are searching only for the phrase "home loans".

Keyword Prominence:

It is a measure of how early or high up on a page, the keywords are found. Having keywords in the first heading and in the first paragraph (first 20 words or so) on a page are best.

Keyword Placement:

Where your keywords are placed on a page is very important. For example, in most engines, placing the keywords in the Title of the page, or in the Heading tags will give it more relevancy. On some engines, placing keywords in the link text, the part that is underlined on the screen in a browser, can add more relevancy to those words.

Best Places to Put Keywords:

Here is a list of places where you should try to use your main keywords.

•          Keywords or other headline tags.
• Keywords in the keywords link tags.
• Keywords in the body copy.
• Keywords in alt tags.
• Keywords in Alt Text·   
• Keywords in the URL or website address.

How to Find Keywords?

There are many different ways to find keywords for your website. Some good keyword ideas are:

· The potential words, people would use to find your product or service.

· The problems that your prospective customers may try to solve with your product or service.

· Keyword tags on competitor's websites.

· Visible page copy on competitor's websites.

· Related search suggestions on top search engines.

· /span>Using an online tool such as Google Keyword Tool

· By analyzing your website carefully and finding out proper keywords. This task can be done by expert SEO copywriters.

· Pay attention to stemming for your keywords - particularly to what the root word is and what Google considers to be a match for that word, when optimizing pages over time.

· You can do brainstorming to identify correct keywords for your site.

What is Word Stemming?

Google uses a feature called word stemming that allows all forms of the word - singular, plural, verb form as well as similar words to be returned for a given search query.

So if someone types in "house plans", not only the pages that are optimized for that phrase but the pages that contain all variations of that phrase are returned. For example, "house plan", "house planning", "house planner".

Hope you have some understanding on keywords and you also know how to identify them and where to use them. The next chapter explains how to optimize meta tags for better results.

What is Meta Tags?

There are two important meta tags:

· Meta description tags

· Meta keyword tags

Some search engines may display the meta description as a part of the search results, but the meta keyword tags should not appear in search results.

The general consensus among SEO experts is that metatags are dead. Even so, many of these same experts continue to use metatags in their own sites.

For Google, adding the description meta tag does not result in a boost in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), but the description might be used for the description for your SERP listings in Google.

Yahoo! says, they use the Keyword Meta Tag when it ranks a page. Hence it makes sense to add one for Yahoo! and any other minor search engines that still use.
What Do the Metatags Look Like?

You can add the following in the head section of the web page:

content="KEYWORD1 KEYWORD2 KEYPHRASE1 etc.

about 30 to 40 unique words">

content="An accurate, keyword-rich description

about 150 characters">

Meta Description Tag Tips:

Important tips for good Meta description tags:

• Use keywords in your meta description tag.
• Try not to repeat the words overly often, but try to use multiple syntaxes of your key words.
• There should not be more than 150 characters in a description metatag of a single web page.
• Use a different meta description tag for each page, as each page is different and stands a better chance of being found if you place a good title and description on it.

Meta Keywords Tag Tips:

Please refer to the previous chapter for identifying good keywords. Use the following tips for preparing good meta keywords tags.

• Use synonyms.
• Use unique keywords.
• No need to repeat any given phrase.
• You can repeat a word any number of time, as long as each time it is part of a different phrase.

Why Content is King in SEO?

Content basically includes what you see on the site: the text,graphics, and even links to other websites. You should not use excessive graphics because they are not Search Engine Friendly plus heavy graphics normally put the users out when they get downloaded, especially over a slow network.

Thousands of articles, books, and forum entries are available on how to make your website search engine friendly, but ultimately, one rule stands above the rest: Unique, high-quality, unduplicated content is the king.

Superior the quality of your content, the higher the ranking you achieve, larger the traffic you gain and greater the popularity of your website. Search engines prefer good quality sites in their index and search results.

Relevant, fresh, and timely content is crucial in attracting visitors to your website. It helps you both draw traffic from search engines and create audience loyalty.

Unique, High-Quality Content:

When people visit a website for information, they want your unique spin on a topic. How is your material or content unique? Is that uniqueness obvious, and easy to find and to understand? Visitors want unique, high-quality site content. It is not only your home page content, but also all the linked pages should have useful and easy-to-understand content.

Now-a-days, search engines have become very smart and they are able to understand complete grammar and complete phrase. Hence while ranking a page against other, the content available on a page matters.

Sites with duplicated, syndicated, or free content are get given red flags by the search engines.

SEO Content Writing (Copy Writing):

SEO Content Writing (also referred as SEO Copy writing), involves the process of integrating keywords and informative phrases which make up the actual content of your website.

• While writing your webpage content, the following tips may help you in keeping it better than others.
• The content should be directed for the specified target audience.
• Keyword density is strictly adhered as per search engine guidelines.
• Titles should always be eye-catching, compelling your visitors to read on and want to know what you offer in your website.
• Do not use confusing, ambiguous, and complex language. Use small statements to make your content more understandable.
• Keep your web pages short.
• Organize and distribute the content on the webpages.
• Divide your web page content also into short paragraphs.

Other Advantages of Having Great Content:

It is not only SEO you need to think about. Many factors contribute to make your site popular.

• If your site is having something really unique, then people like to suggest it to their friends.
• Other webmasters like to create a link of your site on their sites.
• Your site visitors start trusting on your site and they look forward for the next content update and keep coming again and again.
• Although you are listed out by search engine, a but net surfer will click only that page whose content snippet looks more unique and interesting.

Conclusion:

Creating, editing, and promoting unique high-quality content is difficult and time consuming. But in the end, the golden rule of SEO is that Content is the King. It is not because of a search engine, but it is for your site visitors. A page that is read by people is better than a page that is read by bots.

So, write your content after a serious thought. Keep your title,keywords, link text, metatags up-to-date, unique, and interesting.

How to Increase Traffic to your Blog

Tips to Increase Blog Traffic:

Every entrepreneur who's ever hosted a blog or website has experienced the dissatisfaction of trying to gain traffic. Though we’d all like it if readers just attract to our website, actually, it takes some work to build traffic.

It’s easy to get dissatisfaction and just give up on blogging, but once you experience the advantages, you'll understand that your blog/website can have a tremendous impact on your business by attracting traffic to your site, helping you build audience and making an impression.

Here are the Few Tips to increase your blog traffic:

Update Content:  The more often you update your blog content with important information, the more traffic it will gain. Google gives high priority to websites/blogs with unique and fresh content, if you want to increase traffic from search engines, add two to 3 articles in a week.

Promote with social media:Share each and every new blog post across your social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and many more. Join in some groups and communities spend your quality time to improve your social network. Share great articles in social media sites and interact with the users about the articles. So that articles can reach to potential readers. Social media will help in getting huge traffic to the blog.

Write Attractive Titles: The titles of your blog posts are more important as it draws the audience attention to read the content. Titles will decide to enter into the blog or not. Pay more attention in writing article titles. They attract readers with information looking for. When you follow the same, your number of readers will increase.

Add Images: Studies have shown that images in blog posts attract the users. Not only does an image make the post more visually appealing, but you can also place the keywords in the Alt Image tag on the image, increasing search engine optimization for your blog. Keep in mind if you add infographic images to blog can help the readers to understand about the article.

Proper Content Linking: Add hyperlinks to the new terms in the content of the blog. If you link another blog or website link to the new term users will understand in detail about the article. Internal linking is also most important for any website.

Keep social sharing buttons in the Blog: Keep social sharing buttons to  your blog, make sure to include social sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Reddit, Google+, Tumblr and the other major social media networks. It is easy for followers to share the post.

Add videos: Create videos and share them in YouTube and in other popular video sharing sites to drive more traffic to your site. Add the written content on your blog with short videos that are useful and entertaining.

Add keywords in the Content: As you all might know SEO helps in driving organic traffic to the website from the keywords. Keywords are at the heart of SEO. One of the easiest ways to generate high traffic to your website is to ensure that every page on your site has a keyword strategy. So for ever blog post you add, choose a keyword that you imagine readers would search for that term to find the post. Add the keyword into title and description of the post and make sure the keyword is repeated in the content at least twice to increase the keyword density. Also keep the keyword in image alt tag and URL of the post. It helps Google to understand what is page is all about ultimately it will show in the Google top search results and will drive organic traffic to the website form the search engines. 

Write guest posts: Locate other blogs that reach your target audience, and offer to contribute guest blog posts. If the site has a substantial audience, you can bet that readers will in turn want to engage with more of your content.

In addition to the tips above, the following smart strategies will also help increase readership:

Present the content in an organized by using proper headings, Subheadings, numbered lists and bullet points so that readers can understand easily.

Promote your blog in your email signature and your bio in any online profiles. Add RSS Feed subscriber to your blog so that users can subscribe for the updates.

Allow readers to post a comment, and then respond to them so that they can understand you are engaged.

Update your blog with fresh content to increase the email subscribers. Finally, consistency is the key to increase traffic to your blog.