Introduction to SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Hi Guys! We welcome you on board. Today, I am going to elaborate the details on the
Introduction SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and why it is important for your blog, especially for the engineers and students who intend to start their own blog and website to showcase their skills with an online presence.
This is my first article covering SEO series where I aim to continue and complete all the tips and techniques required to make SEO work and stand out.
It is observed, most of the engineers who are fond of making their own blogs start their journey quite well, but with the passage of time, they find it quite difficult to maintain the online presence too long, because they lack SEO skills to make their blog available on the top of search engine results. As a result, most of the students give up in the early stage of their online journey.
That's the reason today I choose this topic, so you get enough knowledge about how you can rank higher on the search engines. Let's get started.
Introduction to SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a set of tips and tricks used to rank your blog higher on the search engines. This process will help you retain and gain a number of visitors on your blog.
All search engines work efficiently and strive to offer more relevant data to their users. If your data resonates with the needs and requirements of the users, followed by certain rules and regulations recommended by search engines, you'll come with a higher chance of appearing on the top of search results.
There are three search engines that are mostly used for bringing visitors to your site called Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Most of the traffic you get from these search engine called organic (unpaid) traffic which you get by following the general rules of SEO without paying a single penny.
Now internet technology has been evolved over the time and main search engines like Google and Bing have made major changes in their algorithms so websites and blogs with most relevant and useful information come forward on the search engines when someone looks for specific information.
I have come across a number of emails and comments from visitors around the world asking how do we maintain our site and rank higher in search engines? And what are the main SEO techniques and tips we follow for providing the most relevant information to our visitors? Before I elaborate the main SEO tips, you should have a clear idea why do you need good SEO for your site?
Why Do You Need SEO?
In the early stage of the internet, blogs and websites didn't require much SEO techniques because there was a fewer number of websites available at that time. Now, almost millions of websites are available on the internet and only those survive that come with better SEO.
Most of the students and engineers come with very good software skills that help them make good responsive blog design but still unable to get organic traffic on their blog. The reason is quite clear. They waste enough time making good website design that makes them forget giving required attention for SEO that plays a vital part in bringing organic traffic on the blog. Good website design will be of no use if no one comes to see your website.
Making good website design and posting quality content is beneficial as long as you are paying equal attention to the SEO of your website. Search Engines come with intelligent bots which crawl and identify the pages that are most suitable and relevant for the users. No matter how much quality content you have written, if the content doesn't resonate with the requirement of the visitors and the keywords they are using for specific information, your content won't appear on the top of search results.
A golden rule of thumb is, create a content that is beneficial for both search engines and visitors; ignoring any of those can severely affect your blog traffic.
SEO is easy? Can I do it by Myself?
For some people, an idea of doing SEO for the blog looks quite intimidating that scares the hell out of them. They think only professionals, with lots of hard work and experience, can do SEO; however, this is not true. Without prior experience, you can start learning and get the experience right away.
But keep one thing in mind, this is not a process that you can do one time and get away with it; it requires tweaks and modifications with regular intervals as your blog grows with the passage of time.
There are only a few rules and regulations, which if you follow, can put you ahead from others and help you rank higher in the search engines.
Also, it is possible, some SEO tips that deem beneficial for others may not work for you. However, it is a matter of hard work and customization of your blog with different SEO methods, so stick with the ones that turn out to be good for your blog.
Types of SEO
There are three types of SEO techniques frequently used by most of the bloggers. Some are beneficial and highly recommended by the search engines and some give quick results but prove to be ineffective in the long run and come with limitations and drawbacks. Let's discuss one by one.
1. White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO is referred as tips and techniques used to rank your blog higher in the search results, without breaking any rule of the search engines. These tips are beneficial when you focus on achieving a long-lasting position on the search results, without ignoring visitors and search engine requirements.
These techniques include proper keyword research, link building, backlinking, title and meta description that include focus keyword, SMO marketing, branding, producing quality content, keep uploading fresh content, tweaking already produced content that resonates with recent visitors and many more.
White hat SEO is highly recommended by most of the bloggers because it will set you free from getting blocked by the search engines.
2. Grey Hat SEO
As the name suggests, Grey Hat SEO is referred as the SEO strategies that lie somewhere between white hat SEO and black hat SEO and are equally effective in making your blog go higher in the search results.
Applying grey hat SEO can be considered as techniques in which you are not 100% sure if you get the desired result but still you keep applying these techniques until some work for you. Grey hat SEO includes link buying, duplicate content, purchasing old domains and many more.
3. Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO is considered as the tips and techniques used to increase organic traffic on your blog and are illegal and break rules recommended by search engines. These tips will rank you higher for short period of time, provided you don't get noticed by the search engine.
In order words, these are the shortcuts that help you go higher in the search engines from backdoors.
Applying black hat SEO can put your site at huge risk because the moment search engines get to know you are breaking their rules, you'll get banned immediately.
These techniques include keyword stuffing, doorway pages, hidden text, spam blog, unrelated keywords, fake link building.
Types of White Hat SEO
SEO is divided into further two types on the basis of functionality.
A. On Page SEO
B. Off Page SEO
Let's discuss one by one.
A. On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO stands for tips and strategies that are completely in your control while you are producing content and preparing it for a search engine. There are many factors that widely impact your page in order to make it appear higher in the search engines.
1. Domain
Domain name plays a vital role in SEO strategies. If your domain name resonates with the specific keyword and the service you are providing, you come with a higher chance of appearing on the top of search results.
Suppose, your service is related to cricket or football, then domain containing cricket or football in their names will have a higher chance of appearing on the search engines as compared to those lacking these words.
2. Title
The
title you pick for your post must contain your focus keyword. Search engines come with automatic bots. Making your title stuffed with focus keyword will make it easy for bots crawling and picking your page without much effort.
And the title length must not exceed from 60 characters for better SEO. It is shown as a blue link when you search for any information.
3. Meta Description
Meta description is the little summary about your blog post. It should highlight the main points of the post and range from 160 to 320 characters. Writing more than 320 characters will automatically get cut off from the description. Focus keyword must appear in the meta description.
Meta description helps in increasing your CTR (click through rate) and you will get a higher chance of appearing in SERP (search engine results page).
4. Headings
Picking the right headings with the focus keyword can affect your SEO strategies. Page comes with many headings including H1, H2, H3 and so on with H1 is the main heading. H1 heading comes with a bigger font size that decreases gradually as we move from h2 to h3 to h4 and so on.
For example:
<h1>Introduction to SEO</h1>
<h2>Why we need SEO</h2>
<h3>Types of SEO</h3>
You can choose one heading H1 as your main heading and as many h2, h3 and h4 as required. The headings you used for your page must contain a focus keyword that resonates with the overall content of the page.
5. Keywords
Picking the most suitable keywords is very important to bring more visitors to your blog. Google Keyword Planner is a great tool to manage your keywords in your blog post. Keyword density is equally important for your SEO.
It is recommended, you maintain keyword density up to 1%. Suppose, your blog post is 1000 words in length, then focus keyword must appear 10 times in your blog post.
6. Alt Text
Alt text is very necessary when you add an image in your post. This alt tag tells the search engine bots what your image is about. This is the only way bots come to know information about your images otherwise simple image without alt text gives no meaning to the image and bot cannot interpret what image is all about.
And when you upload the image, try to embed as many keywords as possible related to the post in the alt text. Suppose, this article is about "Introduction to SEO", so related alt text would be like this i.e. Introduction to SEO, Intro to SEO, Introduction to Search Engine Optimization, Types of SEO, Types of Search Engine Optimization, Why do we need SEO. Add many alt tags as possible with focus keyword in it.
Also, the name you give while saving the image must be relevant to the topic. Suppose, the image you save for this article should be "Introduction to SEO.jpg" instead "image1.jpg"
7. URL Structure
Blog Post URL is another important factor that can affect your SEO strategies. Big and messy URLs have less chance of being identified and indexed by the search engines. Your URL structure must be relevant to the topic and not too long. Shorter URLs have more chance of going higher in the search engine results.
Avoid characters like $,%*& or underscore in the URL, instead search engine prefer dash - sign in case you are agreed to add sign anyway. Number and characters are preferred by search engines to add in the URL structure.
Whatever URL you prefer to set for your post, it must be relevant to the topic and gives a clear hint of what your topic is all about.
8. Internal Linking
Internal Linking is very important to decrease the bounce rate of the website. Bounce rate is defined as the number of visitors who visit your site and leave immediately after spending some time on your site.
By doing internal linking, visitors who are reading your recent post may find something beneficial in the posts you link to, in your article.
Keep one thing in mind while linking other posts, they must sound fit and resonate with the topic of the article. Avoid linking to those posts that are entirely on the different topic from the one you are writing.
B. Off-Page SEO
Doing better On Page SEO means half work done for making your blog go higher in the search engines. Your blog authority has a lot to do with Off Page SEO. What On Page SEO does for preparing your blog for search engines, Off Page SEO will do it for SERP.
1. Creating a Sitemap
Creating a sitemap for your blog is very important. Search engines bots won't be aware of your online presence unless you create sitemaps. Every search engine comes with their own webmaster tool for creating sitemaps. Like Bing and Google have their own webmaster tools. While Yahoo uses Bing webmaster tool. However, you can also use a third-party tool to create a sitemap for your blog.
These sites maps are like road maps that give directions to the google bots where your web pages are located. Each sitemap contains a total number of links to your blog.
2. Back Links
Backlinks play a vital role in your Off Page SEO strategies. The more high authority and trustworthy sites are linking back to you, the higher the chance of your web page appearing on the search result. It is like a voting system but a little bit different from the democratic system. Getting only one backlink from a trustworthy, high authority site is way better than getting a number of backlinks from low authority sites.
Best way to get a backlink from trustworthy sites is creating a high quality and relevant content so other sites feel no hesitation sharing your content on their platform.
3. Guest Posting
Guest posting is another effective way to increase your online presence and make your content available to as many visitors as possible. There are a number of sites that are open to guest posting. You can approach them and ask them for a guesting posting about the topic that is missing on their blog. In this way, they'll get free written content and you'll get a high-quality backlink in return. Make sure, the blog you choose for guest posting is highly relevant and fall under your blog niche.
4. SMO
SMO (Social media optimization) is very important and widely impact your SEO strategies. Social media engagement will help you create a brand name for your business. If you are highly active on social media, follow up regularly and discuss the problems your visitors are facing, you will come up with a higher chance of being identified by the search engines that give value and keep an eye on the content that is widely discussed on the social media platforms.
5. Forum Submission
Forum submission is another important factor that falls under Off Page SEO and helps getting more backlinks. Take an active participation in the forums that are related to your blog. Build a connection, make a rapport with the visitors, answer their questions and queries. In this way, they will get a hint that you are pretty nifty about your skills and have enough information about the topic they are discussing on the forum.
6. Directory Submission
Directory submission is one of the oldest ways, still effective, to bring traffic on your blog. Pick a relevant directory and submit your blog with useful information and blog link. This process takes time and gives result slowly but surely.
7. Question and Answer
Answering questions related to your blog is the best way to hijack a number of visitors. You can join the question and answer sites related to your blog and help the visitors solve their problems and queries. Don't just go and put your link on those websites. First, give value to the visitors by answering their questions then put your link on the site. This way visitors think you are more concerned about their problems than bringing traffic to your site.
8. Article Submission
Pick high-quality article submission directory related to your niche and submit your article. Make sure, the article you submit contains high-quality content that gives value to the visitors. Low-quality content may get rejected that ultimately effects the overall reputation of your blog.
You can also check complete guide of
SEO Tutorials on a single page where I have combined all the articles combining both On Page and Off SEO.
Conclusion
These are just the important points to put your blog higher in the search engines. Don't just rush to things and expect quick results. Apply these tips I have mentioned above one by one as you start your journey with SEO. You will definitely see a spike in your traffic as your blog grows and becomes older with the passage of time.
Don't compare your progress with your competitors. What works for them may not work for you. Just keep trying a number of different SEO tips & and techniques and stick with the ones that prove suitable for you. Applying SEO tips is not one time process, you need to keep modifying and tweaking your SEO techniques because it may happen the techniques that are suitable recently may turn out to be ineffective in future.
The more you are concerned with the problems visitors are facing and giving ultimate solutions to them, the more your blog will go higher in search engines. Don't just pick any random topic and make a blog post on it. Do proper keyword research before writing a post.
Produce a content that fulfills the requirements of both search engine and visitors. You can't ignore any of them to really get off the ground your blogging journey.
Getting top position in the search results is not one night stand, you need to work hard consistently and efficiently if you really want search engines give value to your blog. And don't lose hope if things don't work out in the start, they will work, if not now, but eventually.
We are targeting On Page SEO first, that is necessary and plays a vital role when you are creating a blog post. Our next article mainly focuses on how to create stunning
Blog Post Titles.
That's all for today. I hope you have enjoyed the article. However, if still you feel skeptical or have any question you can approach me in the comment section below. I'd love to help you based on best of my knowledge and expertise. Feel free to keep us updated with your feedback and suggestions, they help us provide you quality work. Thanks for reading the article. Stay Tuned!