SEO

SEO is Always Changing  

What to know about SEO is that it is ever changing. For instance, in years past, the effective use of strategically placed “keywords” within your website content seemed to rule the world of achieving high rankings results.  Now, although still important, keywords are not as important as they once were.  This means that a perfectly optimized website from 18 months ago may now be all but obsolete in its optimization protocol. 

 What is Important for SEO?  

The Meta Tags are still one very important starting point where the search engine spiders begin to crawl through your website, determining its relevancy factors for searchers’ needs.  Sitemaps are another area of the website that are considered highly critical as well.  They not only help your consumers navigate your site, but help the search engines scroll through your content as well.  All of this can be confusing as you try to figure out where to learn SEO because once you become skilled in one area, Google changes things up again.

There are backlinks to take into consideration and density of the website content itself.  If Google is having trouble scanning your site because it is tripping over itself with all the needless junk on your pages, you may never get to the first page of rankings.  These are some other reasons to hire a professional consultant

Article Marketing / Article Submissions has become one of the most popular ways of promoting your website.

Press Release Distribution is a great way of gaining exposure for your website as well as getting a high quality source of backlinks.

Video Marketing is a great way to get the word out about your website or company in an efficient, informative way.

and Hubpages can be a great way of boosting your website.

Blog Carnival Submissions are one of the best ways to perform white hat SEO. Your site is submitted to various carnivals at http://www.blogcarnival.com.

Social Bookmarking is one of the fastest acting SEO options currently available. We submit your website to social bookmarking sites such as digg, delicious, etc., helping you spread the word about your content.

Directory Submission has been one of the most tried and true ways of getting your website/business out there.

Advanced SEO Techniques for Website Optimization

1. Alt Tags

Alt attributes are a way to describe images to search spiders simply because search spiders cannot see them. It is not only an opportunity to add more content (with keywords) to your site, but it also helps your images to be searchable on Google. For best results, all images should also have distinct filenames.

Alt tags were originally designed to be displayed as an alternative text to an image in cases when an image cannot be displayed in a browser. Also, alt tags are displayed when users rest their mouse on the image.

2. Title Tags

A title tag describes an online document and has the most SEO power for establishing keyword relevance on the page. The Title tag appears at the very top of a browser or tab window, in search result pages, and external websites.

At 70 characters or less (including spaces), the title tag should include a few relevant keywords and a company or brand name. Important keywords should be placed at the beginning of the title tag. It is recommended to avoid using stop words such as “the,” “is,” “can,” “and,” “but,” “while,” “that,” “we,” etc. that have no keyword value.

3. Meta Descriptions

Meta tags give search spiders a summary of what the page is about. Meta descriptions play an important role in search results and gaining users click-through. Google sometimes uses this summary to display in search result pages (SERPs) and highlights keywords relevant to the search query.

The optimal length of meta description is between 150-160 characters and should include keywords that are relevant to the title tag and content. Consider this an opportunity to advertise the content of your page to searchers.

Ideally, each page should be optimized around one main key phrase that should be included in your title tag, meta description, and content.

4. Sitemap.xml

Google uses Sitemaps to learn about a website’s structure, which allows a better crawling of your site. Creating a Sitemap ensures that search spiders know all the pages of your site that may not be discoverable through the normal crawling process.

Sitemaps are also used to provide metadata about specific types of content on your site such as video, images, mobile, and news. Sitemap.xml files reside in the website main directory and have to be submitted to Google using Google Webmaster Tools.

5. Robots.txt

In addition to Sitemaps, a robots.txt file is used to instruct search engine robots about access to your site. Before accessing pages of a site, search spiders check the robots.txt file to see if it restricts them from accessing certain pages. You only need a robots.txt file if the directory of your site includes content that you don’t want search engines to index. The robots.txt file resides in the main directory of your site.

6. Rich Snippets and Microdata

High ranking on the search engine result pages (SERPs) is no longer the only problem to solve with website optimization. When searchers glimpse through result pages they look for additional relevant information to their query before they click-through. Rich snippets provide searchers with that information and help them quickly decide if the content that exists on a web page is relevant.

To implement rich snippets web developers have to add additional HTML markup to a website. One of the most used markups is microdata. Using simple HTML tag microdata allows you to indicate specific type of information: reviews, people, products, businesses and organizations, recipes, events, music and video content.

 

7. Code Restructuring

Though search algorithms have changed dramatically since their original inception, search spiders still don’t search deep into a site and don’t spend much time on any given page. With this in mind, code restructuring of some pages is still a valid addition to any advanced SEO techniques. Web developers restructure a page (without affecting a page layout) in a way that places content higher in the code. This helps spiders quickly find relevant information.

The above advanced SEO techniques will significantly improve your website’s online visibility, but that’s not the limit of SEO optimization that can be done to a website. A website can be further optimized for better usability with accesskeys (use of keyboard shortcuts), tabindex (use of tab key to navigate through a page), and web accessibility for people with disabilities. It might sound like unnecessary optimization, but everything that makes a website more human friendly is highly valued by search engines.

                               Seo Interview Questions and Answers Prepared By CP Bhai

 

Search Engine Optimization 

Seo is a technique which increases the visibility of websites on the search engines. It makes the website crawlable and easily accessible by the search engine bots. It improves the site structure and other elements like the loading time of the site in order to increase the user friendliness as well as search engine friendliness of the website. Seo is both an art as well as science. It generates traffic to a website organically (i.e. without opting for ads and paying money to the search engines).

Seo is also a term used to define persons who practice this technique. There are known as Search engine optimizers. The field of Seo is directly related to the search engines. This covers how search engines deliver the search results, how a user finds information with the help of search engines, what does a user types in the query box, how does a search engine crawls the web, indexes and displays the result to the end user etc. The main function of a search engine optimizer is to make a website rank on the first page of Google for some keywords related to the industry (niche) of the website.

Short History of Seo (Seo Timeline)

1989- Cern became the largest internet node in Europe.

1990- Creation of Archie by Alan Emtage (The world’s first search engine)

1994- Tim Berners Lee founded World Wide Web Consortium

1995- Launch of Alta Vista

-     Launch of Yahoo

1997- Ask Jeeves launched as a natural language search engine

1998- Launch of Google

-     Launch of goto (later renamed overture)

 

Responsibilities of a Search Engine Optimizer

A search engine optimizer is responsible for understanding how the search engine works and delivers results. He/she should plan out a strategy to rank web pages on the major search engines by applying techniques which are suggested by the search engines (also known as white hat Seo techniques) .Major responsibilities of a Seo are as follows:-

      1- To make changes on the title and description tag according to the web page content.

      2-      To increase the crawlability of a website.

      3-      To submit the website in major search engines of this world.

      4-      To plan out a strategy for better search engine visibility.

      5-      To choose keywords using various tools.

      6-      To increase linkability of the website.

      7-      To remain updated about the ongoing changes in the search algorithms.

      8-      To increase the popularity of the website by social media integration and link building.

     9-      To provide users with the most relevant content w.r.t the targeted keywords (Every seo must think about this).

     10-   Creating 301 redirects (if necessary).

     11-   Making changes in the robots.txt file (if necessary)

     12-   Competitor Analysis.

     13-   Making changes in the content keeping in mind the user as well as the search engine.

Major Search Engines

An expert search engine optimizer should be able to rank the websites in all the major search engines of the world. Currently users are divided between some of the major search engines as given below:-

Google- Undoubtedly, the world’s best search engine, Google was found in the year 1998 by two young Stanford University students named Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Soon after it was launched, Google started to have an increase in the number of people who used it for quality results and speed. People liked Google for its simple design yet amazing ability to deliver the most relevant results in just a fraction of seconds. Currently, Google holds more than 75% market share of the search engine industry.

Baidu- It is a Chinese language search engine website and probably ranks second because China ranks first in the internet usage around the world. It was created in the year 2000 by Robin Lee and Eric Xoo Baidu holds the market share of around 7% due to it's stronghold among the Chinese community who trust Baidu the most.

 

Yahoo- One of the most visited websites in this world. Yahoo is the third most popular search engine in this world.It was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994. Very few of us know the full form of the acronym Yahoo. Yahoo stands for  "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". Currently Yahoo holds a market share between 6-6.5%.

Bing-  It ranks 4th in the world with around 4-4.5 % market share. Powered by Microsoft, Bing has enough potential in changing the metrics of search. It was launched in 2009 by Steve Balmer (The CEO of Microsoft).On July 29, 2009, a deal was struck between Yahoo and Bing where it was decided that Yahoo search results would be provided by Bing.In this way, Bing is slowly and gradually becoming the number 1 competitor for Google.

Types of Seo Methods

Seo Methods are broadly divided into two categories as given below:-

On Page Optimization – All the changes made on the files and servers of the website come under on page optimization. Some common examples are changing the title tag of the website, changing the meta tags of the website, rewriting content, applying redirects, adding some commands in the robots.txt file etc. In simple words, changes that one does on the website itself come under on page optimization. 

On Page Seo Techniques

1-      Changes on the title tag 

2-      Changes on the Meta tags 

3-      Changes on the content(Adding quality and relevant content) 

4-      Removing any canonical issues 

5-      Checking robots.txt file 

6-      Maintaining a clear site hierarchy 

7-      Improving search engine accessibility. 

8-      Maintaining the number of OBL’s on a web page. 

9-      Adding sitemap.xml and sitemap.html                 

10-      Removing broken links

Off Page Optimization- The work that you do to popularize a website on the World Wide Web comes under off page optimization. These may include directory submission, article submission, forum posting, blog commenting, link building, social media promotion etc. 

Major techniques of off page optimization are as follows:-
Directory submission
Article creation and submission
Blog creation
Link building
Social media promotion

Video Sharing
Guest posting
Forum posting

Types of Seo Professional

White Hat Seo – Search Engine Optimization professionals who follow the guidelines issued by the search engines while promoting a website come under this label.

Black Hat Seo- Search Engine Optimization professionals who apply techniques to trick the algorithm of search engines while promoting a website come under this label. They often promise to rank a website within a few weeks and therefore may ruin the status of the website. The sites which apply Black Hat Seo techniques are in danger of being penalized by the search engines.

Grey Hat Seo- Persons who apply a mix of both white hat and black hat seo techniques come under this label.

What Can Seo Do?

      1-      It can increase traffic to your website with the help of search engines.

      2-      It can make your site more search engine friendly.

      3-      It can increase the accessibility of your site.

      4-      It can increase the brand value of your business.

  5-      Seo can popularize your business on social media platforms like               Facebook,Twitter,Linkedn,Myspace,Orkut etc.

      6-      It can help you to reach niche audience.

      7-      It can generate more sales and increase ROI(Return on Inverstment)

Organizations ,Bodies and Conferences

SEMPO- World’s largest organization for search and digital marketing.

Pubcon- Conference and Gathering of Social media people.

Emetrics- Organizes search engine marketing and search engine optimization summits.