SEO
stands for Search Engine Optimization. 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?
Search
engines perform several activities in order to deliver search results.
·
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).
·
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.
·
Processing - When a search
request comes, the search engine processes it, i.e. it compares the search
string in the search request with the indexed pages in the database.
·
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.
·
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.
Search
engines such as Google and Yahoo! often update their relevancy algorithm dozens
of times per month. When you see changes in your rankings it is due to an
algorithmic shift or something else outside of your control.
Although
the basic principle of operation of all search engines is the same, the minor
differences between their relevancy algorithms lead to major changes in results
relevancy.
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 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.
Always
follow a White Hat SEO tactic and do not try to fool your site visitors. Be
honest and you will definitely get something more.
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 hiding them 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.
Always
stay away from any of the above Black Hat tactics to improve the rank of your site.
Search engines are smart enough to identify all the above properties of your
site and ultimately you are not going to get anything.
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 avilable in the market?
Many
people think it is important to have keywords in a domain. Keywords in the
domain name are usually important, but it usually can be done while keeping the
domain name short, memorable, and free of hyphens.
Using
keywords in your domain name gives you a strong competitive advantage over your
competitors. Having your keywords in your domain name can increase
click-through-rates on search engine listings and paid ads as well as make it
easier to use your keywords in get keyword rich descriptive inbound links.
Avoid
buying long and confusing domain names. Many people separate the words in their
domain names using either dashes or hyphens. In the past, the domain name
itself was a significant ranking factor but now search engines have advanced
features and it is not a very significant factor anymore.
Keep
two to three words in your domain name that will be easy to memorize. Some of
the most notable websites do a great job of branding by creating their own
word. Few examples are eBay, Yahoo!, Expedia, Slashdot, Fark, Wikipedia,
Google, etc.
You
should be able to say it over the telephone once, and the other person should
know how to spell it, and they should be able to guess what you sell.
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 as seo relevant filename(good)
Filenames
with underscores are not a good option.
seo_relevant_filename
as seorelevantfilename
(not good)
File Extension
You
should notice that .html, .htm, .php and any other extension
do NOTHING for your visitors, and they are simply a means of offloading some of
the work of configuring your webserver properly onto your visitor's. In effect,
you are asking your site visitors to tell your webserver HOW to produce the
page, not which one?
Many Web
masters think that it is a good idea to use filename without using extension.
It may help you, but not a whole lot.
URL Sub-Directory Name
From
Search Engine Optimization point of view, URL sub-directory name hardly
matters. You can try giving any keyword in any search, and you will not find
any sub-directory name matching with your keywords. But from the user's point
of view, you should keep an abbreviated sub-directory name.
Guru Mantra
Keep the
following points in mind before naming your files:
·
Keep the web page filename short, simple, descriptive, and
relevant to the page content.
·
Try to use a maximum of 3-4 keywords in your filename, and these
keywords should appear on your web page title as well.
·
Separate all keywords with hyphen rather than with underscore.
·
Keep your sub-directories name as short as possible.
·
Restrict the file size to less than 101K because Google chops
almost everything above that.
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.
The
actual page content should have a keyword density of about 10% and should weigh
in at about 200 words - but there are as many opinions about this as there are
SEO experts. Some say, keyword density should be 5% and some say it should be
20%. You can go with 10% which is good enough.
Here are
a few guidelines that you should keep in mind while designing a web page.
·
You should have more text content than HTML elements.
·
No frames. They are the enemies of search engines, and search
engines are enemies of frames.
·
No ads if possible. Because most of the ads use Java-Script which
is not advised to be used.
·
No JavaScript. If you need JavaScript, call it from an external
file rather than dumping the code in the HTML file. JavaScript drop-down menus
prevent spiders from crawling beyond your homepage. If you use them, be sure to
include text links at the bottom of the page.
·
Do not put anything in the page topic that does not fit perfectly.
·
No unnecessary directories. Keep your files as close to the root
as possible.
·
No fancy stuff (Flash, Splash, Animated Gifs, Rollovers, etc.)
unless absolutely necessary.
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.
Keyword Frequency
This is
calculated as how often does a keyword appear in a website title or
description. You do not want to go overboard with frequency, however, since on
some engines if you repeat a word too many times, you are be penalized for
"spamming" or keyword stuffing.
In
general though, repeat your keyword in the document as many times as you can
get away with, and up to 3-7 times in your list of metatags.
Keyword Weight
It refers
to the number of keywords appearing on your web page compared to the total
number of words appearing on that same page. Some search engines consider this
while determining the rank of your website for a particular keyword search.
One
technique that often works well is to create some smaller pages, generally just
a paragraph long that emphasizes a particular keyword. By keeping the overall
number of words to a minimum, you can increase the "weight" of the
keyword you are emphasizing.
Keyword Proximity
It refers
to the placement of keywords on a web page in relation to each other or, in
some cases, in relation to other words with a similar meaning as the queried
keyword.
For
search engines, that grade a keyword match by keyword proximity, the connected
phrase home loans will outrank a citation that mentions home mortgage loans
assuming that you are searching only for the phrase "home loans".
Keyword Prominence
It is a
measure of how early or high up on a page, the keywords are found. Having
keywords in the first heading and in the first paragraph (first 20 words or so)
on a page are best.
Keyword Placement
Where
your keywords are placed on a page is very important. For example, in most
engines, placing the keywords in the Title of the page, or in the Heading tags
will give it more relevancy. On some engines, placing keywords in the link
text, the part that is underlined on the screen in a browser, can add more
relevancy to those words.
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.
Finding Keywords
There are
many different ways to find keywords for your website. Some good keyword ideas
are:
·
The potential words, people would use to find your product or
service.
·
The problems that your prospective customers may try to solve with
your product or service.
·
Keyword tags on competitor's websites.
·
Visible page copy on competitor's websites.
·
Related search suggestions on top search engines.
·
By analyzing your website carefully and finding out proper
keywords. This task can be done by expert SEO copywriters.
·
Pay attention to stemming for your keywords - particularly to what
the root word is and what Google considers to be a match for that word, when
optimizing pages over time.
·
You can do brainstorming to identify correct keywords for your
site.
What is Word Stemming?
Google
uses a feature called word stemming that allows all forms of
the word - singular, plural, verb form as well as similar words to be returned
for a given search query.
So if
someone types in "house plans", not only the pages that are optimized
for that phrase but the pages that contain all variations of that phrase are
returned. For example, "house plan", "house planning",
"house planner".
Hope you
have some understanding on keywords and you also know how to identify them and
where to use them. The next chapter explains how to optimize metatags for
better results.
SEO
- Optimized Metatags
There are
two important meta tags:
- Meta description
tags
- Meta keyword
tags
Some search
engines may display the meta description as a part of the search results, but
the meta keyword tags should not appear in search results.
The
general consensus among SEO experts is that metatags are dead. Even so, many of
these same experts continue to use metatags in their own sites.
For
Google, adding the description meta tag does not result in a boost in the
Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), but the description might be used for the
description for your SERP listings in Google.
Yahoo!
says, they use the Keyword Meta Tag when it ranks a page. Hence it makes sense
to add one for Yahoo! and any other minor search engines that still use.
What Do the Metatags Look Like?
You can
add the following in the head section of the web page:
<meta name="keywords"
content="KEYWORD1
KEYWORD2 KEYPHRASE1 etc.
about 30 to 40 unique words">
<meta name="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.
Meta Keywords Tag Tips
Please
refer to the previous chapter for identifying good keywords. Use the following
tips for preparing good meta keywords tags.
- Use synonyms.
- Use unique
keywords.
- No need to
repeat any given phrase.
- You can repeat a
word any number of time, as long as each time it is part of a different
phrase.
Robots Meta Tag
The
important metatag that you may need sometime is the Robots Metatag which looks
like this:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">
Using the
above metatag, you can tell a spider or a robot that you do not want some of
your pages indexed, or that you do not want your links followed.
SEO
- Title Optimization
An HTML TITLE tag
is put inside the head tag. The page title (not to be confused with the heading
for a page) is what is displayed in the title bar of your browser window, and is
also what is displayed when you bookmark a page or add it to your browser
Favorites.
This
is the one place on a webpage where your keywords MUST be present. Correct use
of keywords in the title of every page of your website is extremely important
to Google - particularly for the homepage. If you do nothing else to optimize
your site, remember to do this!
Here
are some considerations while designing the title of a webpage:
·
The title shouldn't consist of more than about 9 words or 60
characters.
·
Use keywords at the very beginning of the title.
·
Do not include your company name in the title unless your company
name is very well known.
Improper
or nonexistent use of titles in webpages keeps more websites out of top
rankings on Google than any other factor except perhaps for a lack of relevant
content on a page or a lack of quality links from other websites that point to
your site.
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.
·
Make sure the <title> tag is the first element in the
<head> section of your page - this makes it easier for Google to find the
page.
SEO
- Optimized Anchor
Use descriptive anchor text for all your text links. Most search
engines consider anchor text of incoming links when ranking pages. Here is an
example of anchor:
<a href="otherpage.htm" title="Anchor Title">Anchor Text</a>
Listed
below are some of the important points to note about anchors:
·
The Anchor Title plays
a very important role and is seen by most of the search engines. The anchor
title should have appropriate keywords. Anchor title helps the site visitors
using a balloon, and displaying written text.
·
The Anchor Text is
another important part, which should be selected very carefully because this
text is used not only for search engines but also for navigation purpose. You
should try to use the best keywords in your anchor text.
·
The otherpage.htm is
the link to another webpage. This link could be to an external site. Here, you
need to ensure that the linked page does exist; otherwise it is called a broken
link, which gives a bad impression to search engines as well as to site
visitors.
Another
example of an anchor could be as follows:
<a href="otherpage.htm" title="Anchor Title">
<img src="image.gif" alt="keywords" />
</a>
In
this case, Anchor Text has been
replaced by an image. So, while using an image in place of an anchor text, it
should be checked that you have put alttag
properly. An image alt tag should have appropriate keywords.
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.
Relevant,
fresh, and timely content is crucial in attracting visitors to your website. It
helps you both draw traffic from search engines and create audience loyalty.
Unique, High-Quality Content
When
people visit a website for information, they want your unique spin on a topic.
How is your material or content unique? Is that uniqueness obvious, and easy to
find and to understand? Visitors want unique, high-quality site content. It is
not only your home page content, but also all the linked pages should have
useful and easy-to-understand content.
Now-a-days,
search engines have become very smart and they are able to understand complete
grammar and complete phrase. Hence while ranking a page against other, the
content available on a page matters.
Sites
with duplicated, syndicated, or free content are get given red flags by the
search engines.
SEO Content Writing (Copy Writing)
SEO
Content Writing (also referred as SEO Copy writing), involves the process of
integrating keywords and informative phrases which make up the actual content
of your website.
While
writing your webpage content, the following tips may help you in keeping it
better than others.
·
The content should be directed for the specified target audience.
·
Keyword density is strictly adhered as per search engine
guidelines.
·
Titles should always be eye-catching, compelling your visitors to
read on and want to know what you offer in your website.
·
Do not use confusing, ambiguous, and complex language. Use small
statements to make your content more understandable.
·
Keep your web pages short.
·
Organize and distribute the content on the webpages.
·
Divide your web page content also into short paragraphs.
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.
Conclusion
Creating,
editing, and promoting unique high-quality content is difficult and time
consuming. But in the end, the golden rule of SEO is that Content is the King. It is not because of a
search engine, but it is for your site visitors. A page that is read by people
is better than a page that is read by bots.
So,
write your content after a serious thought. Keep your title, keywords, link
text, metatags up-to-date, unique, and interesting.
SEO
- Verifying Web Site
You design and develop a website but how would you know if you
have put all the HTML syntax in a correct way. Most browsers do not complain
against your wrong syntax, but wrong is
wrong.
There
are many SEO experts who claim that SEO is not dependent on site HTML/XHTML
verification. But we will discuss various reasons why your site should be W3C
Compliance.
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.
·
There might be many HTML tags, which you are using in your webpage
but then have been depreciated and many of the search engines do not support
them.
·
Consistency, HTML Code Beauty, Process Compliance are always
appreciated by good webmasters.
What is W3C Compliance?
W3C
is the World Wide Web Consortium and since 1994, the W3C has provided the
guidelines by which, websites and webpages should be structured and created.
Here are the links to validate your web pages:
While
verification, you may get errors along with appropriate reasons. All the
validations will be done using XHTML DTD, which is a refined version of HTML.
Rules for W3C Compliance
There
following rules, are to be following while developing a webpage.
·
Use XHTML declaration statements to start every XHTML page:
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
·
Every tag must be closed.
·
The head and body tags are now mandatory.
·
Empty tags get a terminating slash. An empty tag is a tag that
doesn't require an end tag. Examples include <br> and <hr>.
· <BR> is now <br />.
· <HR> is now <hr />.
<IMG SRC="--"> is now <img src="--" />
·
All tags must be lower-case. This does not apply to attributes,
only tags. For example, both of these formats are acceptable under the XHTML
DTD:
· <FONT color="#ffffcc"> is invalid
· <font color="#ffffcc"> is valid
<font color="#FFFFCC"> is also valid
·
All the attribute values should be put with in double quotes.
·
Tags may not be nested.
· <b><i>Text</b></i> This is invalid
<b><i>Text</i></b> This is valid
·
The <pre> tag should not contain: img, object, big, small,
sub, or sup.
·
One <form> tag cannot be inside another <form> tag.
·
If your code contains a &, it must be written as &.
·
Any use of CSS should use all lower-case letter.
SEO
- Link Building
Link building is the SEO practice of obtaining links from external
websites to your own to improve both direct referrals (i.e., people clicking on
the links), and search engine ranking. Link building is all about increasing
your site link popularity.
Website
Crawler goes to a site again and again whose ranking in a search engine is
high. You can verify this fact by putting your site on a high-rank site. If
your site link is available on a high-rank website, then you have 99.99%
chances that your site is indexed within 24Hrs.
How to Increase Link Popularity?
There
are various ways of increasing your website link popularity. You can follow the
tips given below, which are easily doable.
·
Submit your site in popular search engines manually. Do not go for
automated submission.
·
Get your site listed in Open Directory Projects like dmog.org,
yahoo.com. Getting listed in these directories gives a boost in link popularity
and improve search engine ranking in other search engines.
·
Provide high quality content so that anyone would naturally link
to your site if you are featuring what they want, and that is not available
anywhere else.
·
Leverage your personal relations with other webmasters. Put your
site link on their sites. One-way links often count for more than reciprocal
links.
·
Participate in Link Exchange Programs. Find top 20 sites doing the
same business and contact them for reciprocal links. Link exchange between
unrelated sites might affect the ranking of websites in the search engine.
·
If you are subscribed in a forum and the forum does not have any
restriction to keep your site link as your signature, then it can help you to
increase your site popularity.
·
Submit your site to bookmark sites like DIGG and Slashdot. Before
submitting, please go through their spam policy.
·
Write good articles in blogging sites and give a few references of
your links within that article.
·
Keep providing good content to your site visitors. Try to keep
them busy on your site. If possible create forums, newsletters, blogs, etc.
There
are other ways, but you need to spend some dollars to go for such alternatives.
·
Buy a place on high-rank website where you can put your link.
·
Subscribe for Google's AdWords program to drive traffic towards
your site.
·
You can go for alternative advertising option to increase the
number of hits on your site, which can result in your site link popularity.
Mobile
SEO Techniques
Millions of users these days access the web using smartphones
running on Android, iOS, or Windows. Hence, it has become imperative that
websites adapt themselves to this changing environment and make suitable
changes in their website design to attract more viewership.
The
desktop version of a site might be difficult to view and use on a mobile
device. The version that is not mobile-friendly requires the user to pinch or
zoom in order to read the content. Users find this a frustrating experience and
are likely to abandon the site. In contrast, a mobile-friendly version is
readable and immediately usable.
A
recent Google update makes it mandatory that a website should be
mobile-friendly to be effective on Mobile Search Engines. Note that a website
that is not mobile-friendly will not have any impact on regular search engines
either.
In
this chapter, we will see how to make a website mobile-friendly in order to
ensure the visitors who access the website from mobile devices have an
optimized experience.
What is Mobile SEO?
Mobile
Search Engine Optimization is the process of designing a website to make it
suitable for viewing on mobile devices of different screen sizes having low
bandwidth. Apart from following all the SEO rules which are applicable to a
desktop website, we need to take additional care while designing a website for
mobile devices. A website is mobile friendly if it has the following attributes
−
·
A good mobile website has a responsive design which performs well
on desktops as well as mobile devices. It not only reduces the maintenance of
the website but also makes the content consistent for the search engines.
·
The contents of a good mobile website are easy to read on a mobile
device without having to zoom the screen. It has appropriate fonts, colors, and
layouts.
·
It is easy to navigate through a good mobile website on a small
screen. It provides links and buttons that can be easily maneuvered using a
finger.
·
A good mobile website is lightweight such that it takes less
bandwidth and time to load on mobile networks.
·
The Home Page of a mobile website plays the most important role in
connecting users to the content they are looking for. Therefore, good mobile
websites make sure the most important links are displayed on the Home Page so
that they get enough visibility.
The
ranking of a website depends heavily on how user friendly it is. You can follow
the guidelines given below to design a great mobile-friendly website.
Optimize Your Site for Mobile
If
your site is already optimized for search engines, then it should not be too
difficult to optimize it for mobile devices. First, let us understand what it
takes to go mobile. We can categorize the steps into three broad categories −
Step 1 − Select a Mobile Configuration
Step 2 − Inform Search Engines
Step 3 − Avoid Common Mistakes
Select a Mobile Configuration
There
are three different mobile configurations that you can choose from −
Step 1 − Responsive Web Design
Step 2 − Dynamic Serving
Step 3 − Separate URLs
Each
has its own advantages and disadvantages. Google recommends responsive design,
however it supports all three configurations. The following table shows how the
mobile configuration affects your URL and HTML code −
Mobile
Configuration
|
URL
|
HTML
|
Responsive
Web Design
|
Stays the
same
|
Stays the
same
|
Dynamic
Serving
|
Stays the
same
|
Different
HTMLs
|
Separate
URLs
|
Different
URLs
|
Different
HTMLs
|
Responsive
Web Design
Google
recommends responsive web design become it is the simplest mobile configuration
and very easy to implement. It serves the same HTML code on the same URL,
however it adjusts the display based on the screen size of the mobile device.
Dynamic Serving
Dynamic
serving is a type of mobile configuration where the URL of your website remains
unchanged, but it serves different HTML content when accessed from a mobile
device.
When your content is dynamically served from the server, make sure
you inform Google that the content it is crawling may look different on mobile
devices. A major drawback of this approach is that you will have to do
additional processing on your content at the server level before severing it to
the user. This approach puts unnecessary load on your server and makes it slow.
Separate
URLs
When
you maintain two different URLs — one for mobile users and another for desktop
users – make sure you inform Google explicitly when to serve which version.
Google does not recommend separate URLs because it can detect automatically
that your mobile pages are different from your desktop pages.
This approach is not practical when you have a big website because
maintaining two versions of the same website will require double the effort and
money. At the same time, you cannot avoid various discrepancies in your content
while maintaining two versions.
From
the viewpoint of SEO, each URL performs separately. Hence your desktop ranking
will never be added to the mobile ranking and they will always be assumed as
separate websites. We don’t recommend maintaining different URLs for mobile and
desktop versions if you want to draw the benefits of SEO.
Inform Search Engines
Make
sure Google and other search engines understand your mobile configuration. Most
important of all, Google must understand your page so that it can rank your
website properly. How you inform Google depends on which mobile configuration —
responsive web design, dynamic serving, or separate URLs — you have opted for.
In
case your site has a responsive design, Google’s
algorithms can understand it automatically without you having to inform Google.
When you have a responsive design, just make sure you have the following
meta-tag in your webpage header −
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
The
viewport decides how your webpage will be displayed on a device. A site with
responsive design varies its size based on the size of the device screen.
Declare a viewport so that your webpage displays correctly on any device.
If
your website is dynamically served, make
sure you allow Google detect your configuration using the Vary HTTP header −
The Vary header is important to tell the
search engines that different content will be served on desktops and mobile
devices. This header is really important when your content is served by any
cache system like a Content Delivery
Network and those systems will make use of this header while serving
content on different devices.
In
case you maintain separate URLs, e.g., example.com and m.example.com, then you can inform
Google by adding a special link
rel=alternate tag in your desktop version and vice versa as follows.
Desktop page should have following in its header:
<link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)"
href="http://m.example.com" >
Mobile page should have following in its header:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com" >
Avoid Common Mistakes
In
order to optimize your website for mobile devices, make sure you avoid
committing the following mistakes −
·
Slow
Mobile Pages − Mobile networks are slower as compared to wired Internet
networks, so it is important to pay attention to how fast your mobile pages
load. It is a critical Google ranking factor. Use a mobile SEO tool to find out
your mobile page speed. Google provides a number of good tools that you can
use. Browse the following link −https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
·
Don't
Block CSS and JavaScript − Google recommends to use inline CSS
and Javascripts for mobile friendly websites so that they can be downloaded
along with the content. So if you don’t have much CSS, then try to adjust it
within the tag itself; but if you are using a lot of CSS in separate files,
then try to include it at the bottom which will stop blocking the other content
being downloaded. The same rule applies to Javascript, which can be kept inside
the page itself or included at the bottom of the page. If you can avoid
including the file at the top of the page, then make use of async attribute while including them.
<script async type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>
·
Mobile
Redirects − Since mobile networks are normally slow, too many
redirects can hurt your page speed. If you are maintaining multiple URLs, make
sure all your links point to the relevant pages. In case you maintain multiple
URLs and you recognize a user is visiting a desktop page from a mobile device
and you have an equivalent mobile page at a different URL, then redirect the
user to that URL instead of displaying a 404 error.
·
Heavy
Images − Heavy images increase the load time, however we cannot
completely get rid of them since they are useful and effective. Therefore you
should maintain a good balance between text and heavy images. Use a good tool
to optimize your images and save them at low resolution to avoid heavy
downloads.
·
Avoid
plug-ins and pop-ups − Plug-ins like Flash and Java may not be available on
user’s mobile device. Always ensure you don’t have any unplayable content on
your mobile page. Avoid using pop-ups on mobile pages because it becomes quite
clumsy to close these pop-ups on a mobile device.
While
creating a mobile page, always keep in mind that the user has limited space to
work on. So, you need to be as concise as possible while creating titles, URLs,
and meta-descriptions – of course without compromising the essence or quality
of information.
Useful Tools
Here
is a list of some useful tools that you can use to find out how mobile friendly
your site is −
·
Google
Webmaster Tools − Use the available Google tools and techniques to
understand what should be used and what should be avoided while designing
desktop as well as mobile websites.
·
Mobile
Emulator − It lets you see how your site appears on a wide variety of
mobile devices.
·
Moz
Local − Use this tool to ensure that your local SEO is in order.
·
Responsive
Web Design Testing Tool − Use this tool to see how your
responsive site looks like on a variety of mobile devices with different
standard screen sizes.
·
Screaming
Frog − This is a useful tool that allows you to analyze your site
and double-check all the redirects.
·
User
Agent Switcher − This is a Firefox add-on that you can use to find out how
your site looks like when accessed from a different user agent.
SEO
- Miscellaneous Techniques
There are
various other tips related to SEO. We have not categorized them into any
special category and hence, putting these in miscellaneous category. Go through
these tips one by one.
To-Don't List
- Don't keep
hidden text on your webpages.
- Don't create
alternate image spamming by putting wrong keywords.
- Don't use meta
tags stuffing.
- Don't use frames
and flash on your site.
- Don't exchange
your links with black listed sites.
- Don't try to
fool your site visitors by using misspelled keyword.
- Don't send spam
emails to thousands of email IDs.
- Don't use too
much graphics on your site.
- Don't create too
many doorway pages.
- Don't try to
create duplicate content of pages.
- Don't submit
your website many times in a single search engine.
- Don't use
sub-directory depth more than 1-2.
- Don't create too
many dynamic pages. Try to convert them into static pages.
- Don't bloat your
pages with code.
- Don't nest your
pages.
To-Do List
There are
various other tips which can help you to optimize your website for many search
engines.
·
Create logs of pages and each page should however contain a
minimum of about 200 visible words of text to maximize relevance with Google.
·
Create a Sitemap, Help, FAQ, About Us, Link to Us, Copyright,
Disclaimer, Privacy Policy pages on mandatory basis.
·
Create a homepage link to each and every webpage and provide easy
navigation through all the pages.
·
Pay attention to your dynamic page URLs. Google can crawl and
index dynamic pages as long as you don't have more than 2 parameters in the
URL.
·
Check your complete site for broken links. Broken links will
reduce your other pages rank as well.
SEO
- Process & Task :
Creating, editing, and promoting unique high-quality content is
difficult and time consuming. If you are really serious about SEO and you are
not getting expected result, then it would be better to hire an SEO expert.
SEO
experts perform the are following tasks:
·
Code validation and clean up - Ensure that the code is search
engine friendly and standards compliant.
·
Site Structure - Building a semantic structure/theme and ensure
URLs are spider friendly.
·
On-Page optimization - Page Title, copy writing, Call-to-action,
etc.
·
Quality link building - Securing one way links from relevant
sites.
·
Keyword research - Building a list of key phrases relevant to your
business.
·
Creating Quality Content - Building optimized pages around terms
discovered through keyword research.
·
Off-Page Optimization - Managing Blogs, Press Releases, Article
Submissions.
If
you are confident that you have the required skills, then you can take care of
all the above activities; otherwise it is worth taking help from SEO Companies
or to hire any SEO specialist.
Choosing an SEO Expert or Company
It
is very difficult to choose a correct SEO expert or SEO company. However the
following guidelines can help you in this activity:
·
Start searching through your friends and business partners.
·
Post your queries in SEO Forums to get feedback from the
community.
·
Check other sites rank which they already have optimized.
·
Do not go for SEO companies doing automated submission.
·
Do not go for SEO companies doing Black Hat tricks.
·
Do not look for cheap SEO. But take care, high price also does not
guarantee high quality.
·
Take guarantee if possible for a particular rank and any
particular search engine.
·
User SEO Expert or Company name in Google to find more information
about them.
·
Do not go just because of their fancy site and availability of
good articles on their site.
·
Do not get fascinated by the testimonials available on their
sites.
We
can not list out all the factors here because there may be different situations
and different views. You should be smart enough to think what's bad and what's
good.
