In the modern age, SEO is not considered as a technical skill rather it is a basic requirement that must be learned and users must have a good understanding of this aspect. Search Engine optimization strategy is recognized as a fundamental practice which is significantly important for a modern marketer. For the past few years, the requirement of this skill has increased to a lot more extent. This article contains some fundamental key knowledge that any SEO beginner should know.
What is SEO?
First, you must know what basically SEO means? Search engine optimization consists of a strategy for optimization of your website so that it can be easily indexed by search engines. You basically have to design the website and manage its content in a way that it becomes search engine friendly and when search engines search for most relevant results, your website comes in the top results.
Let search engines search you easily
How will you make your web pages easily accessible to the search engines so that your website is ranked higher in relevant results? For this purpose, there are some on- page optimization techniques that are mentioned below. Through these techniques, you can manage the content, help increase the traffic on your website and enhance the click-through rates.
On-page SEO
What are the different elements that you need to improve on your web page for making it easily visible to search engine? There are different elements that are mentioned below. For example, the URL of your website also plays a role in determining your website ranking. Use of sitemaps is recommended, and good, high-quality content is obviously a must. How to improve the visibility of your website? Let's see
Internal linking
If you are linking content on one web page to other pages on your site, then this means your website surely has gained quite some value. There are Google bots managed by Google that determine the ranking of your site in the search results of Google. For that purpose, the internal links are preferred by Google bots while indexing your site.
While you focus on internal linking, you help the site rank good for some keywords that are the focus of your website. Internal links can also decrease the bounce rates as the users can find some related content which they like to go through, ultimately spending more time on your website. Just add two to three internal links in each web page and spread them throughout the content.
Anchor text
Your anchor text communicates the meaning of your content to the search engine as well as the users. While you add a link to some certain text, then make sure that the text is relevant to the link. Moreover, it is recommended to vary the anchor text throughout because otherwise, search engines may detect it as spam or suspicious content.
Headlines, titles and title tags
You have to keep the title tags, titles and headlines right to the point and they should be short too. Your headlines and titles explain the main theme of your article and they must not be vague in any way. Meta keywords and metadata are not that important now for the search engines as they used to be because of their misusage. But, the title and its importance has never lost its worth.
XML Sitemap
SML sitemap is the document that comprises of all pages of your website and is hosted on the server. Therefore, whenever you will add new pages to your website, the search engines will be informed by Google Search Console. This will be of great help especially if you don't have a good ranking at Google.
Navigation
You have to create a smooth navigation for your aircraft so that the users can easily move to their relevant area. Your website should be easy to go back and forth. It will be better and convenient to use text links rather than images or animations for navigation on the website. The text links take less time to load and are easily understood too.
Content
This is probably one of the most important elements in the ranking of your website. You must have an entertaining, relevant and high quality unique content on your web pages as this is crucial when it comes to SEO practices. Google has a rapidly changing algorithm. However, one thing always remains constant which is preference to the content. Content value is always the top priority in determining the search engine ranking of a website.
Regularity
Your content should be of a high quality and should also come regularly. On average, there should be at least one article posted on your website per day. Write as regularly as you can because the world-wide web is a very busy place and is stuffed with competitors who are ready to take your place whenever they can.
Length
Don't try to stuff content in your website while not focusing on the quality. Be concise and offer value so that a reader is interested to spend time on your website. Fascinating, completely relevant and unique content will do the job in a lot better way than vague, useless content even larger in length.
Improving click-through rates
Different techniques can be employed for increasing the click-through rates and make your search result appealing to the searchers.
Meta description
This is the short description of your website that is displayed beneath URL in SERPs and gives a hint to the search engine so that your site can be ranked higher for relevant searches. When you share the web page on social websites, meta description is displayed in the posts.
Images
The image search is also a useful contributor to web traffic but you need to optimize them to make their full use: name of image and "Alt" attribute.
Off-page SEO
There are some promotional means and off-site techniques that can help in increasing the ranking of your website. Some of them are mentioned below:
Natural link building
If another site links to a web page from your site, then this will be considered a positive point and like a vote of confidence by Google.
Social media
The contribution of social media is also vital in increased search engine ranking. For most of the websites, social media is the real key for their traffic.
