Table of Contents
We live in the internet world. The Internet has become an integral part of our life. Even for a day, we can not live without our smartphones. We use Google for our requirements day by day. As a user, have you ever searched websites on second, third, or so on?
No, the 99% answer is no. Generally, we look at websites that are ranked on the first page.
So to rank on google’s first page, you should know what SEO is and how it works? Have you ever thought there are thousands or millions or more of these websites present for our search keywords in google bar? But google ranked the ten websites first and respectively. But why are these websites ranked on the first page and not other sites? These websites are search engine optimized.
SO do you want to be in the first ten on google’s first page? Then understanding search engine optimization is crucial.
What is SEO?
The full form of SEO is Search Engine Optimization.
Search engine optimization is practices done on online content or a website help to rank it higher or on the first page in google.
SEO is an organic search. Why am I saying this?
Have you seen advertisements on Facebook or Insta and other social media platforms? So from these social media, whatever clicks you get are all included in paid search. You invest money to get searched. But in organic search, people search for you or reach you by putting queries on google, and for that query, your website is ranked on the first page of Google, and your website gets clicked.
So here, without investing money, you get visitors to your website, known as organic search.
So for organic search, the proper search engine optimization practices are an essential aspect as it drives more traffic to your website.
Why Should You incorporate SEO in your practices?
There are many other search engines also to search queries. But Google is popular among them. (Bing. yahoo etc.)
The search engine uses modern algorithms and technology to return the best results for your query. So google SEO is used to optimize websites to rank on google.
The main benefits to incorporate SEO techniques are
- Traffic from SEO is free.
- Traffic remains consistent as you rank high.
- You can reach a massive audience.
How SEO Works?
Search engine optimization itself is like an ocean. As much as you try to go deeper, you will find many new things you can call SEO concepts.
For instance- on-page SEO, off-page SEO, black hat SEO, White hat SEO, Gray hat SEO, Backlinks, and much more.
How does Google work?
Generally, to rank a website on google, some algorithms google follows. But nobody knows how exactly the algorithm works, but for Google, there are some clues you can incorporate. Other search engines also have their algorithms, and following different algorithms for each search engine is very difficult. As Google is the largest search engine, generally, we follow the google algorithm to get rank.
Two main factors-
- Crawling
- Indexing
Crawling-
Google uses crawlers or web spiders to get available information
Publicly on all over the web. Web crawler starts with the list of URLs found on the sitemap.
These are called SEED. Then web robots crawl hyperlinks that are on pages from SEED.
Indexing-
This process goes on and on and builds a massive index of information and takes this information on the back of a Google server called Search Index.
Then their algorithm works by taking keywords, content freshness, authority here you can read in-depth.
Types of SEO-
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- White hat SEO
- Black Hat SEO
On-page SEO –
This is one of the essential types of search engine optimization. Many SEO people give importance to off-page SEO. Yes, it is a crucial part of SEO, but if your content is not appropriately optimized and if keywords are not used in place, what is the use?
Practices to build good content regularly where keyword research is done correctly and used in the content. Meta tag optimizes with keywords used in it, title-length and keyword-rich who give good CTR(click-through rate), image alt text optimized.
It is well-written, keyword-rich content optimized with meta tag, images, anchor text as it is a part of content, title with keywords.
Off-page-SEO
It is also known as off-site SEO, where actions are taken by staying outside your website.
Building backlinks is a vital process of off-page SEO.
Web robots use Backlinks considered linked to good quality content, so high-value links play an essential role in ranking the site.
Off-page optimization is helpful to increase the web robots and users’ recognition of site popularity, authority, trust, and relevance.
White Hat SEO-
These search engine optimization practices follow algorithms.
- The SEO practices such as writing relevant content
- proper use of keywords, content with keywords that contextual appeared
- well-labeled images, relevant links, or anchor text.
We can say the legal search engine optimization is done under white hat SEO.
Black Hat SEO-
The name itself tells us what exactly it is? The SEO practices which are not legal, we can group it as Black Hat SEO. These practices are against the algorithms of search engines terms and conditions; as a result, a website can get banned from search engines. These unethical SEO practices are done to get a higher rank on Google.
The following practices are called Black Hat SEO-
Keyword Stuffing-
The targeted keywords are used more than needed or are often used in content where they are not required. When we feel the content but not contextual, we can say it as keyword stuffing.
Duplicate Content-
Same content is used for another by changing its name. It never works in ranking. Copy-paste content from other sites is also duplicate content. As we know, fresh and brand new content is one of the responsible factors for ranking the site. Writing unique and fresh content frequently is not easy; therefore, many black hat SEO people use duplicate content. But IT IS A BAD IDEA.
Hidden Text-
The hidden text has the same color as the background, so the reader can not read it. It means the text color is used purposefully, which also leads to keyword stuffing. But the web robots are so intelligent that they can recognize it as a fake text.
Clocking-
The practice of using a site for one purpose, and when clicked by a user, he found the other site. For example, if one has coded their site for travel blogs and clicks on it, the user sees an insurance or other site instead of a travel blog.
The user searches for another set of content and gets another search for his query.
Doorway pages-
The content written is full of keywords, but the poor value or not relevant to the content and the links are given in the content that opens the unrelated content are called Doorway pages.
Article spinning
Article spinning is nothing but rewriting a piece of content or an article that is used repetitively to generate its multiple copies and use it as a new fresh article. The poor-quality article is not relevant to the content subject and not valuable to the user.
Spam comments-
Many times in comment, we see a message which is not relevant to the commented topic or many promotional links, which lead to commenting spamming.
Paid links-
This is a common technique of Black Hat SEO. The return Links or backlinks play a vital role in ranking content. And many times, people get help from an outsource which gives backlinks to your content. But often, the links provided by different sites are low-value links, or the sites have less authority or high spamming scores. So getting links from such non-authority sites is always better to stay out of this and do an excellent on-page SEO job.
Improper use of Meta tag–
In this black SEO hack, the meta tag in the snippet is misused, which means the use of irrelevant meta so that it helps to rank content, but the content and the used meta is not related to each other.
So to rank higher is not an easy task.
Black Hat SEO hacks result in disranking pages, not being seen in SEarch engines, or banning the site.
What is Technical SEO?
Generally, technical search engine optimization is a part of an On-page-SEO. It helps improve the technical aspects of content and ranking of a site in Search engines. Some elements of a technical SEO is-
Page speed–
Google gives results for a user’s query in fractions of a second, so the opening speed matters.
Structured –
The structured data helps understand the search engine about your site, and it gets easy to crawl the search robots.
The structured data is known as schema mark-up. It is nothing but code designed in such a manner to understand search engines the information regarding the content clearly. So web robots can crawl your site or content easily.
Robots.txt file–
This file is specially designed so that servers or web robots can easily understand the site and crawl it fast. When first web robots come into your website, they first see the robots.txt file, and as per the instructions, the web crawler crawls the site.
It tells the web crawler which part of a website is to crawl or not to crawl.
The meta robot tag-
If you want to crawl your site but want to keep away from search engines for some reason, then you can use the Meta robot tag.
Search engine optimization is a complex and essential element for ranking your content higher on search engines. Google algorithms are frequently updated, so knowing about everything related to SEO is crucial.
So I feel that you do your task with sincerity, follow all ethics, and try to incorporate the SEO practices in your content as possible. But keep the natural essence of the content.
I am very sure if you do your on-page SEO task efficiently, you do 70 % of your work.
So optimizing the content is fun and gives happiness to me. What about you?