SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: MAKING YOUR WEBSITE HIGHLY RANKED

The process of making your website appear in Google search results on the first pages is known as Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the science of making a website to rank highly on search engine result pages(SERPs) when a search request (query) is made on a Search Engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.).
There are a lot of terms associated with Search Engine Optimization and we’ll discuss them briefly. But before we do that, here is a story related to this topic. In September 2006, If a user searched for the phrase “miserable failure,” that user was taken to the website of a high profile politician. A group of website designers used the power of SEO to achieve this result. The story is meant for an explanation of this topic and not to be used for this purpose. The techniques explained in this article will help promote your blog, business or any other online platform when a user does a search related to your website. If you don’t have a website yet, this article explains why you need a personal website

Search Engine Optimization Terms

Search Engine: A search engine is a software that collects information about a website. The information is usually keywords or phrases that indicate the context of the webpage. Examples are Google, Yahoo and Bing Search Engines.

Crawler/Spider/Robot: A crawler is an application or agent a Search Engine uses to get information from a web page.

Keyword: A single word or phrase you want a crawler to prioritize while collecting information from a web page. Keywords serve as an indicator to the entire context of the web page.

Keyword Frequency: The number of times a keyword appears on a web page.

Keyword Density: It is usually calculated as (No.K/No.W) * 100 where No.k stands for Number of times a keyword appears in a page while No.W stands for the total number of words in the webpage. Example: No.k = 5, No. W=300, Keyword Density= (5/200) * 100 = 2.5 percent. Most SEO experts advise a keyword density of 2.5 percent or more.

Indexing: The process of storing information collected by a crawler on a Search Engine Database. When a user makes a search, search engines check their database for the most relevant or suitable information and make it available to the user.

Search Engine Result Page(s (SERPs):

This is the page with links to websites that contain keywords a user used while making a search.

Search Engine Algorithm:

These are steps a search engine takes or considers before displaying a web page on the SERP. These could be the keyword frequency, the positions a keyword appears on a webpage, Site popularity etc. Every Search Engine has its own criteria, that’s the reason for different results on different Search Engines.

Organic SEO:

Simply means improving your page rank on search engines without paying for it. Paid optimization involves paying a Search Engine to display your web page as an Advert when a related keyword is searched.

ON-PAGE SEO: The methods used on your web pages to increase rankings

OFF-PAGE SEO: Getting other related sites to link to your website.Search Engines consider sites linked to a website whose contents are related.

In this article, our focus will be on organic SEO.

Making Your website appear on Google Search Result: Techniques and Best Practices for High Ranking.

Domain Authority: Business.com was purchased for $7.5 million in 1999, casino.com went for $5.5 million and worldwideweb.com went for $3.5 million. What made these domain names expensive? Because they have a great impact on search results related to them. When a user makes a search that has a “business” keyword, most likely, business.com will be on the first page.When choosing a domain name, ensure it has the keyword of your business or product.

Page and Post Titles: Your keyword should be included in your post and page titles. Having a good domain (keyword included) without keywords reflecting on the page post title will affect the ranking. Example: When a user makes a search for making money, if makingmoney.com doesn’t have posts or pages with making money, a site with this keyword will have a better ranking. Also, make sure your keyword appears in the first paragraph of your post.

Meta Description: This is a short description of the page. This will give a search engine crawler information about the page. Therefore, keywords for the page should be written in the page description.

Contents and Keyword: Most SEO experts advise a keyword density of 2.5% in a copy. We’ve defined keyword density above.

Images: The images of a website also appear in search results. Use the “Alt” text/attribute to describe the image with your keyword in mind.

URL/Permalink: The link to a page, post or any content should have your keyword.

Links (Inbound and Outbound):

Inbound links come from other websites pointing to your site; it is mostly referred to as link juice. The number of websites pointing to your site increases your page rank. outbound links point to another website from your own. When writing a link text, it should be descriptive and contain a keyword instead of the generic “click here”.

Website Speed and Bounce Rate:

Websites load time can increase bounce rates. Bounce rate is the speed at which a user leaves a website which can be caused by a slow website or finding an irrelevant content. When selecting a host for your website, check the speed.There are a lot of tools to check for speed. Also, take note of contents that have high bounce rates using google analytics.

Submitting your website search engines:

Search Engines will index your website without you submitting it. It could take some time to appear in search results or get indexed. However, your site will be indexed within 24 hours if you submit manually. To do this, set up your site with Google Search Console, on the dashboard, go to Crawl > Fetch As Google and click Fetch and Render on the right. Sitemaps help crawlers understand the organization of your website. A sitemap is the way pages are structured on a website.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips

• SEO is a process and takes time. Ideally, your site should rank within the first three pages
• Constantly update your content. It is better to update an irrelevant content than to delete it.
• Review your SEO goals – At least, every six months and quarter is much better
• Prioritize pages if you have many on your website
• SEO requires testing, monitoring and often rebuilding
• Understand what your audience is searching about
• Try using different keywords each quarter to know which ones work.
• Write fresh contents constantly
• Avoid using Black Heart SEO – link farms, spamming etc.
• Design your website for people but with the search engine in mind.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
Google Analytics
Yoast SEO plugin (WORDPRESS)

Keyword Suggestion Tools
Grammarly
Google Trends
Google Rank Checkers

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