Basics Of Search Engine Optimization- On Page & Off Page SEO

● What is SEO and why is it important ?

In simple words, Search Engine Optimization is a technique which involves optimizing a particular website or a webpage in such a way that it ranks at the top for a particular search phrase on a search engine like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.

                The motive of ranking your website on a particular search engine is to increase the web traffic generated on the website. It is analysed that 67% of all clicks are made on the top 5 listings displayed by the search engine. Search Engine Optimization is the best way to increase organic traffic to your website. The best practices for SEO are- having a good and valuable content emphasizing on appropriate keywords, having a good adaptive website and a strong backlinking.

So now that we've seen what Search Engine Optimization is, and what is its importance in ranking a website, let's see some more information about SEO in brief.

● Black Hat SEO | White Hat SEO

• Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO can be explained as a malpractice used to increase your website traffic by means which violate a search engine's terms and policies. Black hat SEO can get your website delisted from search engines and affiliate networks. The main motive of black hat SEO is to just increase the sites raking without adding any valuable content for the users. Some of the most common malpractices are listed below...

1) Content Duplication
2) Keyword Stuffing
3) Link Manipulation
4) Pages with malicious programs like Trojans, Phishing pages, etc
5) Content Automation

• White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO is the right way of doing Search Engine Optimization without violating any rules or regulations. It is a practice that non objectionable as per search engine guidelines. It can be achieved by creating unique and valuable content and hence increasing your backlinking from other sites. Below are few ways to perform white hat SEO...

1) Valuable and Relevant Content
2) Rich and appropriate keywords
3) On-page optimization
4) Natural Link Building
5) No Grammatical Errors

● What is On-Page SEO

On-page SEO refers to optimizing each and every webpage on your website individually so that it can rank higher on a search result. It mainly focuses on keywords, content, title and other tags on a webpage. Let's see some factors that can help you improve the on-page SEO.

• Meta Tag -

When a search engine crawls through your webpage all it sees is the html behind it rather than the actual content. So it is important to provide relevant information in the meta tags about your webpage. This will attract more users and increase your CTR (Click Through Rate).

• Meta Description -

Description tag doesn't have a direct impact on SEO but that doesn't mean that it is useless. Description tag lets a search engine know what content does your page offers and hence it can be easily ranked accordingly. Google can show descriptions upto 172 charechters for mobile devices and 200 charechters for desktop.

• Title Tag -

Title plays the most vital role in ranking of your webpage. Title is the main part of your webpage as it depicts what your content is all about and is the main keyword that is used. All the users these days are wise enough to read the title and description before visiting the website, so keep it as engaging as possible.

• Heading Tag -

Apart from the title and description, heading tags play an important role improving the SEO of the page and increasing user feedback as they help to establish a hierarchy on a topic and making it easy for the reader to understand various topic a and subtopics. You shouldonly use one H1 tag as a main heading and then multiple H2, H3 and so on depending on topic to create subheadings.

• Keyword Targeting -

Always remember to write the content that is relevant to the title and choose keywords accordingly. Don't deviate too much from the topic or else the content won't match the keywords. Be sure to target the keywords that have a greater search volume and less competition.

● What is Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is a technique of improving your ranking a by means of factors which aren't directly linked with your websites appearance or structure. Below are some factors essential for off-page SEO.

• Backlink Building

Building backlinks to your webpage is the most important thing as it helps to increase traffic to the website in the most easiest way and improves your ranking. But wait, it is not that easy to make some other website link back to your article. The best way to increase your backlinks is to write good and valuable content which will automatically force people to refer your page.

• Internal Linking and Structure

Give more emphasis on interlinking your own webpages on preffered keywords, and make sure the user stays focused on your content and related topic. Another thing to keep in mind is to structure the website in an user friendly way, so that he/she won't struggle finding the required content. The overall design should be as simple as you can keep, refer the image below.

• Use Thematic Keywords

Keywords play an important role in off-page SEO as much as they do in on-page SEO. As said earlier proper use of keywords is the best strategy to rank higher on a search query, the earlier you include the keyword in title the better it will rank on a search engine.