Search Engine optimization

What is Search Engine optimization mean?

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the activity of optimizing
web pages or whole sites in order to make them search engine
friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results.
• This tutorial explains simple SEO techniques to improve the
visibility of your web pages for different search engines,
especially for Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
 SEO is all about optimizing a website for search
engines. SEO is a technique for:
• designing and developing a website to rank well in search engine
results.
• improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search
engines.
• marketing by understanding how search algorithms work, and what
human visitors might search. SEO is a subset of search engine
marketing. SEO is also referred as SEO copyrighting, because most of
the techniques that are used to promote sites in search engines, deal
with text. If you plan to do some basic SEO, it is essential that you
understand how search engines work.
 How Search Engine Works?
1. Crawling - Process of fetching all the web pages linked to a website. This task
is performed by a software, called a crawler or a spider (or Googlebot, in case
of Google).
2. Indexing - Process of creating index for all the fetched web pages and keeping
them into a giant database from where it can later be retrieved. Essentially, the
process of indexing is identifying the words and expressions that best describe
the page and assigning the page to particular
keywords.
3. Calculating Relevancy - It is likely that more than one page contains the search
string, so the search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each of the pages
in its index to the search string.
4. Retrieving Results - The last step in search engine activities is retrieving the
best matched results. Basically, it is nothing more than simply displaying them
in the browser.
What is SEO Copywriting?
• SEO Copywriting is the technique of writing viewable text on a web page
in such a way that it reads well for the surfer, and also targets specific
search terms. Its purpose is to rank highly in the search engines for the
targeted search terms. Along with viewable text, SEO copywriting usually
optimizes other on-page elements for the targeted search terms. These
include the Title, Description, Keywords tags, headings, and alternative
text. The idea behind SEO copywriting is that search engines want
genuine content pages and not additional pages often called "doorway
pages" that are created for the sole purpose of achieving high rankings.
What is Search Engine Rank?

When you search any keyword using a search engine, it displays thousands of
results found in its database. A page ranking is measured by the position of
web pages displayed in the search engine results. If a search engine is putting
your web page on the first position, then your web page rank will be number
1 and it will be assumed as the page with the highest rank. SEO is the process
of designing and developing a website to attain a high rank in search engine
results.
What is On-Page and Off-page SEO? Conceptually, there
are two ways of optimization:
• On-Page SEO - It includes providing good content, good keywords selection,
putting keywords on correct places, giving appropriate title to every page, etc.
• Off-Page SEO - It includes link building, increasing link popularity by submitting
open directories, search engines, link exchange, etc.
SEO - Tactics & Methods
SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:
• White Hat SEO - Techniques that search engines recommend as part of a
good design.
• Black Hat SEO - Techniques that search engines do not approve and
attempt to minimize the effect of. These techniques are also known as
spamdexing.
White Hat SEO
An SEO tactic is considered as White Hat if it has the following features:
• It conforms to the search engine's guidelines.
• It does not involve in any deception.
• It ensures that the content a search engine indexes, and subsequently ranks,
is the same content a user will see
• It ensures that a web page content should have been created for the users
and not just for the search engines.
• It ensures good quality of the web pages.
• It ensures availability of useful content on the web pages.
Black Hat or Spamdexing
An SEO tactic, is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it has the following
features:
• Attempting ranking improvements that are disapproved by the search engines
and/or involve
deception.
• Redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more
human friendly.
• Redirecting users to a page that was different from the page the search engine
ranked.
• Serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version
to human visitors.
This is called Cloaking SEO tactic.
• Using hidden or invisible text or with the page background color, using a tiny
font size or hidingthem within the HTML code such as "no frame" sections.
• Repeating keywords in the metatags, and using keywords that are
unrelated to the website
content. This is called metatag stuffing.
• Calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword
count, variety, and density
of the page. This is called keyword stuffing.
• Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are
instead stuffed with very
similar keywords and phrases. These pages are called Doorway or Gateway
Pages.
• Mirror websites by hosting multiple websites - all with conceptually similar
content but using
different URLs.
• Creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to
the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or
malicious websites. This is called page hijacking.
SEO - Web Site Domain
When you start thinking of doing a business through
internet, the first thing that you think about is your
website domain name. Before you choose a domain name,
you should consider the following:
• Who would be your target audience?
• What you intend to sell to them. Is it a tangible item or just text
content?
• What will make your business idea unique or different from
everything else that is already available in the market?
SEO - Web Site Domain
When you start thinking of doing a business through internet, the first thing that
you think about is your
website domain name. Before you choose a domain name, you should consider
the following:
• Who would be your target audience?
• What you intend to sell to them. Is it a tangible item or just text content?
• What will make your business idea unique or different from everything else
that is already available in the market?
Guru Mantra
Finally, you should be able to answer the following questions:
• Why do you want to build your website?
• Why should people buy off your site and not from other site?
• What makes you different from others?
• Who are your target audience and what do you intend to sell?
• List 5 to 10 websites that you think are amazing. Now think why they are
amazing.
• Create 5 different domain names. Make at least 1 of them funny. Tell them to
half a dozen people and see which ones are the most memorable. You will get
more honest feedback if the people do not know you well.
• Buy your domain name that is catchy, memorable, and relevant to your
business.
SEO - Relevant Filenames

One of the simplest methods to improve your search engine optimization

is to look at the way you name
your files. Before writing this tutorial, we did a lot of research on file-
names and found that search engines
like Google give too much importance to file names. You should think
what you want put in your web
page and then give a relevant file name to this page.
Just try giving any keyword in Google search engine and you will find file
names highlighted with the
keyword you have given. It proves that your file name should have
appropriate keywords.
File Naming Style

• The filename should preferably be short and descriptive.

• It is always good to use same keywords in a filename as well as in page
title.
• Do not use filenames such as service.htm or job.htm as they are generic.
Use actual service name
in your file name such as computer-repairing.htm.
• Do not use more than 3-4 words in file names.
• Separate the keywords with hyphens rather than underscores.
• Try to use 2 keywords if possible.
File Name Example
Listed below are some filenames which would be ideal from the users'
point of view as well as SEO.

slazenger-brand-balls.html
wimbledon-brand-balls.html
wilson-brand-balls.html

Notice that the keywords are separated by hyphens rather than

underscores. Google sees good filenames
as follows:

seo-relevant-filename asseo relevant filename(good)

Filenames with underscores are not a good option.

seo_relevant_filenameasseorelevantfilename(not good)
SEO - Design & Layout

The website design and layout gives the first

impression about your site. There are sites which are
too fancy and regular net surfers just reach those
sites and come out even without creating a single
click. Search engines are very smart but after all, they
are software and not human being, who can read the
content of their interest. If you make your site too
complicated, then the search engine would not be
able to parse the content of your site properly, and
finally indexing would not be efficient, which results
in a low rank.
SEO - Optimized Keywords

A keyword is a term that is used to match with the query a person enters
into a search engine to find
specific information. Most people enter search phrases that consist of two
to five words. Such phrases
may be called search phrases, keyword phrases, query phrases, or just
keywords. Good keyword phrases
are specific and descriptive.
The following concepts related to keywords, help in optimizing the
keywords on a web page.
Best Places to Put Keywords
Here is a list of places where you should try to use your main keywords.
• Keywords in the <title> tag(s).
• Keywords in the <meta name="description">.
• Keywords in the <meta name="keyword">.
• Keywords in <h1> or other headline tags.
• Keywords in the <a href="http://yourcompany.com">keywords</a>
link tags.
• Keywords in the body copy.
• Keywords in alt tags.
• Keywords in <!-- insert comments here> comments tags.
• Keywords in the URL or website address.
What Do the Metatags Look Like?
You can add the following in the head section of the web page:
<metaname="keywords"
content="KEYWORD1 KEYWORD2 KEYPHRASE1 etc.
about 30 to 40 unique words">
<metaname="description"
content="An accurate, keyword-rich description
about 150 characters">
Meta Description Tag Tips
Important tips for good Meta description tags:
• Use keywords in your meta description tag.
• Try not to repeat the words overly often, but try to use multiple syntaxes of your
key words.
• There should not be more than 150 characters in a description metatag of a
single web page.
• Use a different meta description tag for each page, as each page is different and
stands a better
chance of being found if you place a good title and description on it.
Best Practices for Creating Titles
Here are some best practices you should follow for creating titles on pages:
• Each page should have a unique title.
• If practical, try to include your Primary Keyword Phrase in every title of
every page.
• Begin the title of your home page with your Primary Keyword Phrase,
followed by your best Secondary Keyword Phrases.
• Use more specific variations to your Primary Keyword Phrase on your
specific product, service, or content pages.
• If you must include your company name, put it at the end of the title.
• Use the best form, plural or singular, for your keywords based on what
WordTracker says is searched on more often.
• Do not overdo it - do not repeat your keywords more than 2 to 3 times in
the title.
SEO - Content is the King
Content basically includes what you see on the site: the text, graphics, and
even links to other websites. You should not use excessive graphics because
they are not Search Engine Friendly plus heavy graphics normally put the
users out when they get downloaded, especially over a slow network.

Thousands of articles, books, and forum entries are available on how to make
your website search engine friendly, but ultimately, one rule stands above the
rest: Unique, high-quality, unduplicated content is the King. Superior the
quality of your content, the higher the ranking you achieve, larger the traffic
you gain and greater the popularity of your website. Search engines prefer
good quality sites in their index and search
results.
Other Advantages of Having Great Content;
It is not only SEO you need to think about. Many factors contribute to make
your site popular.
• If your site is having something really unique, then people like to suggest it
to their friends.
• Other webmasters like to create a link of your site on their sites.
• Your site visitors start trusting on your site and they look forward for the
next content update and
keep coming again and again.
• Although you are listed out by search engine, a but net surfer will click only
that page whose
content snippet looks more unique and interesting.
Why HTML/XHTML Verification is Required?
There are various reasons to verify your website before hosting it
over the internet.
• Any webpage quality depends on how well you have written
your webpage. It should be
syntactically correct and should pass all the Quality Gates.
• When any search engine does indexing for your web page
content, it might get confused if the
HTML tags are not written properly, and much of the web page
content might not be indexed
properly.