Search Engine Optimization Course For Students - SEO

What Is SEO?

SEO is a methodology used to gain traffic by making your website visible in search engine results via organic or paid techniques. The term organic means using natural ways to enhance website visibility without using a pay-per-click service. There are many ways to implement SEO, such as using relevant keywords, quality content, and optimal to implement SEO, such as using relevant keywords, quality content, and optimal to implement SEO, such as using relevant keywords, quality content, and optimal multimedia content on your web pages.

In the past, people implemented underhand techniques (black-hat SEO) to gain website visibility. Google Search, Bing, and Yahoo! Search are the most prominent search engines used to locate information on the Web; and with these search engines getting smarter by the day, it is imperative that you use legitimate tactics to achieve natural visibility. Therefore, SEO can also be defined as the art or science of affecting website visibility in search results, ruling out using manipulative ways to trick the search engine. Google has laid out guidelines that must be adhered to, to ensure that site owners use appropriate tactics to implement SEO.

Benefits of SEO

SEO is not a cost but an investment that imparts results in the long term. You cannot expect a miracle to happen overnight—it takes weeks or even months to reach the top-of-the-results chart. There is no fixed way to accomplish this; however, a combination of several methods can help you achieve higher rankings in a calculative (and not manipulative) way.

Catering to a massive audience

Permanent results

Low cost of implementation

Data and analytics

Staying ahead of the competition

Usability

Content marketing and branding

Black-Hat SEO vs. White-Hat SEO

Black-hat SEO can be defined as deceptive and underhand techniques used to scale up to higher rankings in search results. Most people tend to underestimate the potency of search engines in determining whether the techniques used are appropriate or deceitful. However, search engines are getting smarter by the day and can figure out whether you use improper tactics and strategies to fool them.

Black-hat SEO may get results in the short term, but eventually you will be penalized by the search engines. The following are a few ways these techniques are implemented:

Stuffing keywords into content: Using massive numbers of keywords in your content may achieve short-term gains. However, if the keywords are not relevant to your content and are placed there just to fool the search engines, then eventually your site may be penalized. Remember, SEO is all about quality, not quantity;

if your content is not good enough and is packed with keywords, your site may not be visible in the top search results because you are being penalized by the search engines.

Link farming: Buying links is never fruitful, because the search engines will know you are manipulating them. Using inappropriate links pointing to your website is detrimental because the search engines will realize that the links have no relevance and are not authentic. For example, suppose your site offers plumbing services to people in Florida. If several links on a travel website in Toronto point to your site, it doesn’t make sense: travel services are in no way connected to plumbing services. Using such deceptive techniques can have long-term consequences and may even result in your site being delisted from search results.

Doorway pages and cloaking: Doorway pages are used to gain high rankings in search results in a deceitful manner. These pages contain keywords and phrases that are picked up by search-engine bots and crawlers. Once you click to access the page, you are redirected to the actual page that the site owners want you to visit. Cloaking is a mechanism that renders a page visible to search engines but not website users. This short-sighted technique can prove detrimental in the long run. Google has announced penalties for using doorways, deceptive redirects, and cloaking.

There is much more to black-hat SEO, which you learn about in later chapters. White-hat SEO is the opposite of black-hat SEO and is focused on using optimal, organic tactics to help your site rank higher in search results. Usually it means adhering to the guidelines provided by the search engines and playing by the rules. Factors such as quality link building, user-engaging content, and optimal performance are some of the white-hat SEO strategies used by SEO consultants to streamline accessibility and visibility in search rankings. In short, you need to focus on user intent rather than try to fool the search engines.

Types Of Search Engine Optimisation - SEO

On-Page SEO

On-page optimization is related to factors controlled by you or your code that have an effect on your site’s rankings in search results. To create an optimal experience, you need to focus on the following page-optimization factors (see Figure 3-1):

• Title tags

• Meta keywords and meta descriptions

• Headings

• Engaging content

• Image optimization

• Interactive media

• Outbound and internal links

Title Tag Optimization

In a page’s HTML code, the <title> tag gives an indication of the page content. (You can find the words used between the <title> tags by viewing the page source in Firefox; the method varies depending on the browser.) shows the location of a title on a web page as well as where it can be located in the code.

Search engines display the page title as the title of the search snippet link on SERPs.

However, the title of a search snippet may also depend on the search query.

The search results for a query about a Zurb Foundation 6 book in Google Search in the Chrome browser. This example uses zurb foundation 6 book amazon as the search query; therefore, in the highlighted box in the search results, you can see the website search snippet for that book on Amazon.

Meta Keywords and Meta Descriptions

Recently, Google confirmed that it doesn’t consider meta keywords and descriptions as ranking factors. Nevertheless, meta keywords and meta descriptions are cached, so it would not be a best practice to ignore them. Although they are not consequential in determining search engine results, meta descriptions can be an excellent way of advertising; they may or may not be displayed in the search results.

The meta description must be unique for each page on a website, like the page title. Avoid stuffing the description with keywords, and remove all special characters. Using multiple meta keywords can have a negative influence on search engines.

The meta robots attribute is increasingly being used by web designers. It tells crawlers whether the page should be displayed in SERPs (index/noindex) or whether you should depend on the links on the page (follow/nofollow).

Using meaningful and pertinent content in the body section of the site is vital. Relevant content is king. The content should not be irrelevant or stuffed with keywords—the search engines may penalize you for it. However, you can use keywords or close variations of them twice or three times on a page in a logical way. The content should be informative and engage the user, encouraging them to return to check out the site regularly.

It is a good practice to update the content (such as technology topics) at least every six months, because Google has a penchant for updated or fresh content. (News channel sites update their content on a daily basis. Here, we are referring to product pages or informative sites, and updating or adding content for a product or topic.) Blogs must be updated on a regular basis.

Use interactive media such as images, videos, and audio files on your web pages; they are intuitive and engage users, and may make the site more popular. Always spell-check and proofread your content, because incorrect grammar or spelling errors can reflect negatively on your site.

Image Optimization and Interactive Media

Earlier SEO was text-based, but this has changed significantly. You should use interactive media such as audio, video, images, and infographics to connect with your users. Use captions and alternate text for media, and build relevant content around these media.

You can use a single key phrase in the alt text if it is relevant to that image. You can interchange images based on the screen size, with heavy-duty images for desktop sites and lightweight images for mobile sites. Try to limit the image file size to less than 80–90 KB for optimal page-loading time. Use PNG or JPEG image formats wherever possible, because they are robust and have more visual properties. Using thumbnails and different angles for a product can be very handy, especially on e-commerce sites.

Whereas on-page SEO and on-site SEO factors are based on the elements and content on your web page or site, off-page SEO factors are external and help you rank higher in SERPs. They are not design or code related and are more like promotional concepts. This section looks at the following

• Social media Backlinks

• Blogging Backlinks

• Localization and local citations

• Inbound links

• Image Submissions

• Classified

• Web 2.0