SEO/Search Engine Optimization: A complete guide

Do you really want to increase your traffic really fast?

Then keep on reading… 

If you have a website for quite some time and you are still struggling to drive traffic to your website then this is the article for you. You can get all your answers here about how to increase your website traffic.

SEO

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”, it is used to make the search engines understand what is your website and web pages are all about. By doing SEO you can let all search engines know that your website is worthy of ranking. So, when you have your own blog it’s better to learn SEO.

So Search Engine Optimization from its name only means optimizing your website for search engines. Using proper SEO technics you can optimize your website to rank better in search engines. While doing SEO keep in mind that don’t just optimize your website for search engine but give utmost priority to user intent.

SEO can also give you a chance to start your own freelancing business. You can create your own agency and can earn good money.

Let’s get into it…

When we listen about SEO, people use to make you believe that SEO is very hard to difficult and more difficult to execute. But in reality, you can learn SEO very easily without going to any class just on the internet.

Mainely SEO is divided into three parts,

1.Technical SEO

2.On-Page SEO

3.OFF Page SEO

Technical SEO:-

Most people don’t give that much importance when it comes to technical SEO. But the fact is to do any kind of On-Page SEO or Off-Page SEO you should have to have a good website. A good website means that website should be technically a good website.

So, now comes the question of what is technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the process of doing all the technical things correctly according to the requirement of search engines. If your technical SEO is good then it will definitely help in ranking better in SERP and getting more organic traffic. 

Technical SEO comprises the structure of the website, design of the website, crawling, indexing, content, structured data, etc. To rank, your website search engine has to first find your website, crawl your website, and then index your website. 

If by mistake you have blocked all the search engines to crawl your website, then the result will be your website will not rank in SERP. By focusing technical SEO properly you can allow search engines to find your website, crawl them, and index them.

To improve your website’s technical optimization you have to do the following things,

Site structure

XML Sitemap

URL Structure

Structured data

Content

Hreflang

Canonical

Meta tags

Og Tags

Website loading speed

Robots.txt    

Site structure:-

The website structure is the design of the website, how the website is structured and linked together. Your website design should be like this so that the search engine can crawl the website easily and the user can reach their result easily in fewer clicks. 

The most important thing is all pages on the website should be internally linked with each other. All the pages should be directly or indirectly connected with the home page. Because most of the time search engine crawlers or bots come to the home page first and then they crawl the entire website from there only. If all the pages are not linked properly then there is a chance that bot may not completely crawl your website.

XML Sitemap:-

The sitemap is the first thing a search crawler looks for, so you should properly add all the URLs you want to rank in the search engine. You have to add all the pages you want to rank in the sitemap.

URL Structure:-

When it comes to URL, the first thing we have to see is that the URL is short. Don’t use any lengthy URL. 

Only the domain name and the targeted keyword should be there in the URL. Don’t use the complete title in the URL instead use the main keyword. Don’t use date and time in the URL. When you will update the content if you want the date of updation to change, then the URL will change. And all the link juice to that old URL will be wasted.

If you are using WordPress then you can do all the changes in the General setting section.

Structured data:-

Structured data is one of the most important things on your website. It helps search engines better understand your website and content. And also it will help your website to get featured in featured snippets.

Content:-

Content is the king, as we all know. So, we have to have awesome content that we can market or others can give backlinks. You should not have thin content on your website. Never copy content from other websites. 

Try to create your unique content, which will help you in the long run.

HrefLang:-

If you have a different version of your website for different countries in different languages then you should consider using the hreflang tag.

Canonical:-

The use of canonical tags is a must for your website and content. It will safeguard your website and content.

Canonical is usually used to tell search engine that a particular page is the owner of the content. If it is the original content then you should use self-canonical. And if you have copied the content from another page then in the canonical tag you have to mention that webpage URL.

 If any one will copy your content, if you have used a canonical tag in your website then the value will come to you. 

If you are not using self canonical then anyone can copy your content and can use them.

Meta Tags:-

Meta tags are some of the most important things in a website, these tell about the website. There are so many meta tags we use in our website, some of the most important are title tag, description tag, and many more.

OG Tag:-

OG stands for open graph, these help while we post or share some of our posts in social media. Most of the people don’t want to show the same title, desc, image in SERP and in social media.

In that case you can use the OG tag and you can define separate title, desc, image for social media.

Website Loading Speed:-

Website loading speed is one of the most important ranking factors when it comes to ranking better search engines. If your website take longer in desktop and mobile version to load completely then your website user experience will be bad.

To be precise according to KISSmetrics, 40% of people will leave your website if it will take more than 3sec to load.

Robots.txt:-

Robots.txt file is one of the most important factors of a website. Here you can tell search engines which pages to index and which are not to index. 

On-Page SEO:-

On-Page SEO is all about the changes we make on the page. All the changes we make on our HTML file is an URL is basically called as ON Page SEO. For better ON Page SEO you can follow below steps,

Website Theme:-

The website theme you use must be very lightweight so that it will load quickly. And also in the coming years, voice search will be increased, at that time also the loading speed of your website will play a big role in it. So, it’s better to use a lightweight theme.

And also it is better to choose a theme that is SEO friendly.  SEO friendly means the theme you will choose to use must have the menu bar, sidebar, footer section, and social buttons.

You must optimize your website and all the images you use, and also try to optimize all your CSS file so that your website will load fast.

Page Title:-

You should give a perfect title to your article, your title must be attractive and it should represent your article. The title also plays one of the most important roles from the SEO point of view. The title tag should be between 65 to 70 characters in length.

Meta Description:-

The meta description is a short description of the article. Here you can describe your article in a few lines. The meta description is used when any user writes any query in the search engine, it matches the query with the meta description and gives the result which is most relevant.

While searching in the search engine it shows a snippet below the blue link in the Google search result page. That result is the meta description.

Meaningful URL:-

You should use a meaningful URL, by seeing which people will come to know about your content. Most importantly try to use a short URL.

H1,H2,H3 tags:-

Use header tags properly. Use your main targeted keywords in H1 tag then use H2 tags for 2nd most important keywords, and so on, because when search engine searches for any query, it searches for heading tags.

Keyword Density:-

Try to use your targeted keywords and related keywords at least 2-3% times. Don’t overdo it. Take your main keyword and go-to tools like UberSuggest and enter your keyword, it will give you many related keywords try to use them, and create an awesome post.

Backlinking And Internal linking:-

Interlink your keywords with other pages of your website. Give as many backlinks as possible to reputed websites in your niche.

OFF-PAGE SEO:-

Off-Page SEO is all the things which we do outside of our HTML file to get traffic like,

Social Bookmarking:-

After posting your article you should share your blog post in different social bookmarking sites like Quora, Reddit, Bucket, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. You should share it on all the popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest.

Search Engine Submission:-

You have to submit your blog post to all popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing. When you will post any article all search engines will crawl your posts but if you will submit it manually then it will take less time to rank.

Directory Submission And Commenting Back:-

You could submit your blog post to your niche directories. It may give you delayed result but it will definitely give a better result. You can also go to the reputed website in your niche and read their blog posts and comment on their posts.

Commenting back may not profit you directly but you can create connections with people in your niche, which will definitely help you.

Forum Marketing:-

Find forums online in your niche and get involved within that community and reply to threads, answer questions.

Conclusion:-

Try all the SEO tricks and see your traffic increasing. Search Engine Optimization is the way to market your content. So, try to learn all the things about SEO and implement it for getting good traffic.

Let me know how it worked for you by leaving a comment below by sharing your experience.