Search Engine Optimization -Part I
Hey guys, I know it's been a long time since I wrote something.
I have been looking up and learning about SEO, as one of my friends very recently, got me interested in this.
What do we understand by Search Engine Optimization?
It is the process of increasing and improving the visibility of a website, when people search for products and services online using web browsers like Google Chrome, Brave, Mozilla Firefox, etc.
Technically, there are 3 key areas in SEO -
- Page / On-Page Optimization — refers to the content on the page, keyword choice for the page, and optimizing the page’s metadata. Eg — Title tags, URLs, content, and keywords.
- Technical / On-site Optimization -
Technical SEO is important because it focuses on the improvements you make within code, while you can make the best on-page improvements to your site, it won’t make a difference if search engines cannot find or understand the improvements that you made. - Off-Site /Off-Page Optimization -
It refers to what actions you can take outside of your website to improve the optimization of your website. It can be very focused on developing good relationships with other webmasters(like public relations).
Eg — backlinks(links from one website to a page on another website)
Google in 2023 still uses keywords to crawl through web. But if you search for any competitive keyword, you’ll notice that the top-ranking pages almost all use that exact keyword in their title tag. For Eg — When I serach up SEO solution, here are the top 4 websites I see.
In this article, we will mainly focus on On-Page Optimization -
Optimization using content comes under On-page Optimization -
- Use Your Target Keyword In The First 100 Words —
Google still puts more weight on the words that are mentioned early in the document. - Wrap your blog title in an H1 tag —
Helps google understand the structure of the page - Wrap sub-headings in H2 tag —
Include a target word in at least one sub-headings - Increase Keyword Frequency —
The word that users will use the most to look for your service/product. - Using modifiers like “best”, “guide”, “checklist”, “fast” and “review” can help you rank for long tail versions of your target keyword.
- Focus on crisp content with content worth search intent.
- Using Title with Questions
- Pay importance to your organic Click Through Rate(CTR)
- Use Review and FAQ Schema
- Use original Images
- Chunk your data content
As you can see, The use of the “Best” modifier has helped the above websites rank as the top 3 or 4, and the presence of an FAQ is also shown.
In search results, the keywords are highlighted as shown.
Anatomy of Search — Concept of Meta Data
According to Oxford Dictionary, Meta Data is a “set of data that describes and gives information about other data”.
Every page of a website contains an area for its meta-data.
Meta Tags -
Meta tags are small snippets of text that help search engines identify important information about the page, such as what the page is about or whether or not search engine robots should ignore the page.
They are usually present in the head section of the HTML page and are not usually present in the source code unless and until someone looks for the code of the page.
Title Meta Tag —
The text in between the title tag of a page in the head section.
- It is important to place keywords at the beginning of the title, followed by the brand name.
- If the brand value is higher, you can get more CTR.
- It is recommended to have only 55–60 characters in the title.
- Best to remove special characters.
- Separate keywords with hyphens if you’re using multiple keywords.
However, the content of your page is the most important On-Page Optimization Technique.
Must contain a lot of keywords naturally, and should not be forced. The content should be crisp and related to the topic only.
Google ranks site based on the site that published the content first, thus you do not need to worry if your content gets published later. Copying and changing words doesnt mean unique.
Reusing a keyword too much in your content can lead to an over-optimization penalty. Instead of using the same word, try to think of synonyms that can expand the keywords for your results.
Meta Descriptions —
The meta description is the block of text under the title and URL. This block of text describes what the page is about.
A well-crafted meta description has been found to increase click-through to your website. That means influences how likely a user is to click on your result instead of a competitor's.
- Avoid using quotations or special characters whenever possible.
- Quotation specifically will cause your meta description to be cut off. The meta description looks better if the end is not cut off due to length.
- Avoid going past 160 characters.
- You should try to use words that really describe the value of the content and entice users to click. In addition to describing your content and including keywords, it’s also a good idea to include a call to action.
You may notice that this meta description does not match the meta description we just read in search results. If Google believes this area is not well optimized for example, maybe it’s not relevant to a curry, or maybe it’s too long. Search engines will not look for keywords within them at a description for ranking purposes, the meta description does help support your SEO strategy.
URL Optimization -
It describes a page, and how relevant the page is in context to our search. A URL must contain important keywords. More important keywords must be placed Search Engines usually cut off subfolders and subdirectories to make URLs easier to read. If subdirectories contain important keywords, they will be bolded to show their relevance to the user. Better to leave the parameters out of the URL.
Changing URLs is a tedious task, as the redirection of the URL takes some time. Always use 301 Permanent Redirects while changing URLs. Thus the decision of changing URLs, just for the purpose of SEO should be decided carefully.
Search engines will look at the heading tags on a page to better determine what the page is about and the page's structure.
The H1 tag is the most important of the heading tags, and the H2 tags are somewhat important in the grand scheme of things. We should avoid using more than one H1 tag.
Thank you for reading this blog! I will be posting Part II of this series very soon ❤
