In this era, where internet usage is high, online presence of your business is a great strategy to promote it and target your customers. But, if you don't know how to get your website to appear on the first page of Google, then the whole idea of your business presence on the internet can prove to be wrong. This is where . Search Engine Optimization comes in handy.
Search Engine Optimization
When we think about SEO, the first thing that comes to our mind is 'getting your website ranked high in Google'. Yes its ultimate goal is what we think i.e. 'Ranking'. So, what exactly is SEO? In a simple words;
"SEO consists of all the best practices that we need to follow in order to rank our web pages higher in search engines like Google." Our pages get high ranking in SERP (Search Engine Results Page) by optimizing our pages
Now you must be wondering what should be the next step to promote your business after creating a website? And we have also found out that we need SEO to rank our website at the top of Google search results. And if you don't want to apply your own learnings about SEO on your site, then you better hire SEO Services of any top SEO agency. Below are some ways that we can follow to improve our ranking on Google:
- Focus on the performance of your site. slow loading website don't get ranked on Google.
- Improve your On-Page seo. We will talk about it later in the topic
- Your content on the site must be updated. Google likes sites with fresh content.
- Try and create content that solves the queries of the readers. This implies that your content should provide the reader with what exactly he is looking for.
- Install SSL certificate on your site
- Upload content that has infographics. Give alt tag to each image you use on the site
- Acquire backlinks from the sites that have good domain authority. Backlinks from the sites that are performing well on Google will improve your ranking.
- Submit the sitemap of your website in Google Search Console
We will talk about these methods in this post. So let's get started!
We need to do three types of SEO to rank our website on Google. Following are the three types of SEO:
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Technical SEO
Before we apply SEO techniques, we need to know that how the Google's search algorithm work. So first, we will see how the Google Search Console Algorithm works.
How Does Google Search Algorithm Work?
Have you ever wondered how does Google know which data to show in result of a search? Besides, when there are millions of web pages present on internet, it gets more difficult to decide which data to show. There are three things on which Google decides which web pages to show on first page of the search results page.
Crawling
Search engines like Google use bots and spiders that crawl web pages when a user types something to search for something. These crawlers are scanners that scan the HTML codes of web pages and collect data similar to what was searched for.
Indexing
After the crawlers scan the web pages, indexing takes place. Web pages with similar data are grouped together. All scanned (crawled) pages are indexed in Google's database.
Ranking
Now comes the last step. Of the indexed pages, Google decides which pages to rank on the first page of search results. Here, web pages whose content is more relevant to the user's search (using keywords), rank higher. However, before ranking, quality of content, completeness, readability, clarity of content, and other factors are looked at.
After the working of search algorithm, we will talk about the types of SEO.
Types Of Search Engine Optimization
Basically, search engine optimization has three types which are On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO and Technical SEO. With the help of these types we drive organic traffic to our websites. We can easily improve our search engine strategy by dividing SEO in three types. Now we will talk about these types in details.
On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO is all about content on your page. It helps search engines to understand what kind of content is present on a web page. On-Page SEO also tells tells you whether a web page is capable of being ranked or not. To improve our on-page SEO, we need to consider following factors:
Keyword Research
On-Page SEO optimizes the content on that page by attaching a separate keyword to each page. Keyword is a word or phrase for which we want to rank our web pages in Google and keeping in mind our keyword, we optimize our content. These words or phrases actually tell us about the intent of the user. For example, when a user searches something on Google, the words that a user uses tell us what that user is actually looking for. Keyword tells the search engine what kind of content is in the page so that when a user searches with that specific keyword, he may find the webpage with that keyword in it. Google provides a free keyword research tool which we call Google Keyword Planner You need to take care of following things while you talk about keywords:
- Make sure that your keyword is in the title of your page
- The keyword should also be included in your page url
- H1 tag you use on your page should also have the main keyword that you assigned to that specific page
- Add keyword to the first paragraph of your page
- Keep in mind how many times you need to add the keyword in your content. Experts say that you should use 1-2% keyword in your whole content. This means that you should use keyword after every 100 words.
Note: Make sure you don't stuff the keywords into your content. Only add them if they' naturally fit in your content.
Write Page Title As Appealing As Possible
While optimizing any page, make sure that its title is attractive and interesting enough to compel the user to click on it. Make your page title keeping in mind the search intent of the users. After you're done with your keyword research, its time to decide your page title.
Meta Description
We've just discussed that the page title should be compelling enough for user to click it. The same goes with the page meta description. Meta description is the text that is shown under the link on search results page.
Although this doesn't affect SEO, it's a very useful tool for telling search engines what our page is about and getting the user to click on our link. Make sure your keyword is in the meta description as well.
Internal Links
Internal Linking means linking different pages in the same website. Internal links are considered to be very important in on-page seo. We can make our users navigate to other pages of our website with the help of internal links. Besides, when we add link of a page on other page, we're actually telling that both the pages have related keywords.
Images Alt Tags
When you use images on a website, make sure you give alt tags to all the images you use. In On-Page SEO, the alt tags are very important for images' seo. While adding alt tags to images, consider the following things:
- Give alt tags that are self-explanatory and tell what the image is about
- Using your keyword in the images' alt tags is a good practice
Write Content That Is Easily Readable
While doing on-page seo, another important thing to keep in mind is to write content that is easily readable. When you write page content, make sure you don't write long paragraphs. Normally, a paragraph with 3 sentences is considered standard. Don't write too long sentences. Try writing sentences in active voice. Use Transitional Words as well.
In On-Page SEO, make sure you assign only one main keyword to each page. If you assign same keyword to more than one pages, it will cause Keyword Cannibalization It is the situation where the pages that are assigned the same keyword start eating each other's traffic. This means that Google is unable to decide which page to rank. And ultimately Google doesn't rank the either of the one.
There are best plugins for the WordPress users. Two of the best are Yoast SEO and All In One SEO plugins.
Off-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO involves all the activities that are performed outside the website. We consider Off-Page SEO as Link Building for most of the time.
These are the techniques that improve your relation with other websites. They definitely help your website to rank higher in the Google. When we talk about Off-Page SEO, we find its 2 types:
Inbound Links
Inbound Links are the links that refer to your website from other websites. In simple words, they are the links of your website placed on other websites. They play vital role in ranking of your website. They tell the search engines how trustworthy your site is.
One of the important things about inbound links is that the websites linking to your website should be authentic websites. That is, they are websites that have content that people search for and that are useful to people. Conversely, if our websites link to a website that is not serving the original data, the inbound links may backfire on us.
Outbound Links
Placing the links of other websites on your site is called Outbound Linking. Semrush says that;
"Outbound links are links that point from your website to another website. Such links are often included within content to further enhance the context of your content and provide readers with the More information can be provided on a particular topic."
It's a good idea to include outbound links to provide readers with additional information about a specific topic to improve the reader's experience. It also helps your site rank in search engines. Make sure the links you're including in your blog post or page provide information about the topic you're writing for—both the article (yours and the one you're linking to). ) are related to each other.
You can do the following to improve your Off-Page SEO:
- Write blogs on the platform that allow guest blogging
- Be active on social media platforms
- Use more and more images to provide information
- Joining the forums and platforms that are relevant to your topic can benefit a great deal
If you want to read more about this topic, MOZ can help you out.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is about improving the backend of your website. It is not related to the content on your website. It is all about the structure of your website. It improves the readability of your website content and improves the experience of visitors to the website by helping search engines evaluate the quality of your website.
Technical SEO involves following points:
- Sitemap of your website
- Display of your website on different devices (Responsiveness)
- Performance of your website
- SSL certificate installation
- Indexing of your website
- Crawlability of your website
- Website design
- Security of the website
- Structure of the data present on the site
Technical SEO is something if done correctly, doesn't make any serious impact on the site. But if done otherwise, it can ruin the user experience and can decrease the drastically on your website for which the Google ranks the sites.
Conclusion
Long story short, we talked about the website ranking on Google. We found out that SEO is the set of practices which we follow and rank our website higher in search engines like Google. We also talked about the working of the Google search algorithm and the three types of SEO.
To rank your website higher, make sure you offer authentic and original content. Write the content that gives importance to your topic and answers the readers' queries. Now that you have all the techniques to rank your website higher, go on and apply them and drive organic traffic to your site.
learning online Quran
Good
Online Quran learning