Basics of On Page SEO

The most important aspect of a website vis-à-vis SEO is to have quality content. It is often said that in SEO content is king. One should always create a website to the users and not for the search engines. If you are creating the website for the users then there are greater chances of those getting higher ranks in the search engines. Writing good content has to be supported by finding out the right keywords for the website. So the first process in On Page SEO is Keyword Research.

Keyword Research
Keyword research is perhaps the most fundamental part of a Search Engine Optimization campaign. If the website is targeting the wrong keyword then driving traffic to the website is going to be very difficult. So identifying the keyword is a process which involves a lot of effort in it. There are a lot of keyword research tool available online like Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, Nichebot, Overture etc. Once you identify the right keywords then the effort should be directed against finding the best possible ways to integrate these keywords into the copy of the website. These keywords should find it place in the content of the website, title tags, meta tags, meta description, and title of the content.

Title Tags and Meta Tags
The keywords should find their place in the title tags and the meta tags of the webpage. Title tag is the content which the web browser displays at the top of the browser when some page is downloaded. Title tag is perhaps the most important place where one has to integrate the keywords into as search engines tend to give enormous importance to this aspect of a webpage. Meta tag is the HTML tag which contains information on the content of the website and is not visible to the users and is used to give information to the search engines about the specific webpage. So it is quite imperative to have the keywords as the meta tags. The keywords in the title tag and in the meta tags will go a long way in enhancing the value of a webpage in the eyes of the search engines.

Meta Description
The meta description is a hidden HTML code which the search engine uses to display the detail of a website when it shows the search results. Hence it is very important to have the keywords in the meta description of a webpage.

Headings
While using the headings in webpage always remember to include the keywords in the headings. Each search engine has different ways in which they prioritize the headings and therefore it is quite vital to use the right heading format while writing a web content.

Keyword Density
Once you have identified the right keywords to concentrate at then the next task is to write the content of the website with these keywords. One of the most important factors to consider while writing the content is the keyword density. Keyword density is the number of times a specific keyword appears in the whole content. Different search engines have different ways of analyzing the importance of a webpage on the basis of the keyword density. For the search engines, a higher number of a keyword appearances on a webpage means higher chances of appearing in the top results of the search engines.

Site Maps
Yet another important aspect of on page SEO techniques is the inclusion of site map in the website particularly in the homepage, if possible. It is useful because it helps the search engine spiders to index the whole of a website without much difficulty since it provides a page which contains only the text links to all pages of a website. Google in their "Guidelines for Webmaster" suggest that if you have more than 100 links then it is always advisable to break up the site map into logical groups.

Internal Linking
Most of the SEO efforts are directed towards getting good backlinks from other websites. A factor most website owners tend to forget is the importance of internal linking in getting higher search engine ranks. With good internal linking of the pages there are greater chances of getting indexed by the search engine spiders and it will also help the user in navigating efficiently through the website. If an internal page with a low PR gets a link from a high PR homepage then the internal page also gets some added value from the high PR homepage.

These are some of the factors that are to be taken care of while doing on page SEO. This article only gives a basic idea of on page SEO and it should be noted that there are lot of subtle things that are to be taken care of while doing on page SEO which in itself is a elaborate subject.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Some Basics

As explained in one of this writer’s earlier articles, Search Engine Optimization is defined as the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.

Search Engine Optimization experts mainly uses two techniques for increasing the rank of a particular websites in the Search Engines. They are On page SEO and Off Page SEO. Though the methods used in both these techniques are different they both have the same ultimate goal – increasing the rank of a website in the Search Engines.

On Page SEO

On page SEO is done my increasing the quality of the content of the website. The main techniques followed in this method includes the following

• Keyword Research
• Title Tags and Meta tags
• Meta Description
• Headings
• Bold & Italics
• Keyword Density
• Site Maps
• Internal Linking

Off Page SEO

The main methods followed for Off Page SEO are as follows

• Increase Link Popularity
• One-way Inbound Links
• Gradual Link Building
• Keywords in Links
• Article Submission
• Forum Participation

The detailed description of both On Page SEO and Off Page SEO will be specified in the articles to follow in which we will look vividly into the strategies in On Page and Off Page SEO.

SEO techniques can be broadly classified into two broad categories; they are White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO.

White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO are techniques recommended by search engines and involves methods which increases the value of the content of a website. White hat techniques normally comply with the guidelines set by the search engines and involves no fraud. White Hat techniques are mostly used for the users and not for the search engines and therefore they always increases the value of a website.

Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO techniques are mainly fraudulent techniques used to deceive the search engines and normally include fewer functions that would increase value to the user. Search engines will penalize the websites that uses black hat techniques for optimizing. Search engine algorithms are normally capable of finding out the deception and penalize websites but at some other times manual intervention will result in penalization.

A lot companies in the US and Europe are using SEO as one of their most important marketing strategies as umpteen number of users are utilizing the search engines before taking a purchasing decision. Organizations in India are yet to utilize the full potential of SEO techniques as a marketing strategy.

Basics of Keyword Properties

Keywords are the words or phrases that people use in search engines to search for the products or services. They have great importance in Internet Marketing and especially in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns since its using these keywords that one has to optimize her website so that it would appear in the first few pages of a search engine thereby increasing the possibility of getting noticed by the potential customers.

Finding the right keywords for the purpose of using it for SEO purposes is a very important step in Internet Marketing. It involves the understanding of various keyword properties like

• Popularity
• Competition
  
• Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI)
  
• Keyword Effectiveness Rank (KER)

Popularity

Popularity of a keyword is the number of times a particular keyword was used by users in Search engines for a particular period of time. This is mainly found out by using online tools like Wordtracker, Overture etc. that keeps record of the number of times a keyword was used in various search engines.

Competition

Competition of a keyword is the number of websites that are optimized for a particular keyword. This is the number of results that a particular search engines shows for a given keyword.

Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI)

An understanding of keyword effectiveness index is a very important factor in SEO. It compares the popularity of a keyword with its competition to find out which keywords are most effective for the SEO campaigns. KEI was invented by the Search Engine Positioning expert Sumantra Roy. KEI is mathematically found out using the below mentioned formula

Keyword Effectiveness Index = (Popularity)² / Competition

KEI = (P)² / C

This apparently means that when the popularity of a keyword increases its effectiveness also increases and vice versa. It is also quite obvious from the formula that when the competition increases the effectiveness of the keyword decreases and vice versa.The most important function of an SEO campaigns is therefore the identification of keywords with higher KEI and optimize the website with this high KEI keyword.

But some argue that KEI is not a perfect measure of effectiveness of a keyword. They say that the main problem with KEI is that it assume that the strength of competition of a website in the 100000^th place is same as that of a website in the 10^th place, which is actually not correct. The competitive strength of a website in the 10^th place is certainly more than the website on the 100000^th. Another measure with the name Keyword Effectiveness Rank (KER) has been introduced to overcome this issue.

Keyword Effectiveness Rank (KER)

The real value of a keyword in relation to a particular website can be effectively found out by comparing it with the average popularity and average competition of the chosen keywords. The result is normally showed in percentage. A keyword with a KER of 100% is an average keyword and a keyword with a KER of 500% is a very good keyword. KER is still in the developmental phase and the inventors hope to establish this concept pretty soon.

Optimizing the website with the right keywords alone doesn’t make sense and it should be done together with other on-page and off-page SEO methods. But keyword optimizing is a very important step in SEO campaigns that involves a lot of analysis also.

Some Basic Concepts of Internet Marketing

Internet marketing also referred, as online marketing is a relatively new concept in India. Not many companies in India are pursuing this form of marketing as of now but at the same time there are a lot of them who are seeing it as an emerging concept quite capable of making a radical change in the way marketing is done. In this article I would like to give explanations to some of the basic concepts of online marketing. In the articles to follow I will try to explain each individual concept in detail.

Search Engine Marketing - The term used to describe the range of marketing techniques required to make a website visible on search engines and directories so that it will attract visits from its target audience. This includes the optimization of a site, the submission to directories, the use of 'pay-per-click' search tools and keyword related advertising.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - The process of increasing the amount of visitors to a web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.

Search Engine Optimization can be mainly done through two methods – on page SEO and off page SEO. Though the final result expected from both is increased position in search engine rankings, they use different methods to realize this goal. Both these methods use a lot of effective techniques to achieve their objective, which in itself can be considered as a separate system of study.

Keyword Research – Keyword research is one of the most important activities of Internet marketing. It is through keyword research that one will find the most effective keywords using which one optimizes his website for better ranking in the search engines. Keyword research involves understanding a lot of subtle concepts like keyword popularity, keyword competition, Keyword Effectiveness Index, Keyword Effectiveness Rank, to name a few. These factors are very well needed for finding the exact keywords to optimize one’s website.

Unethical practices – One of the most important thing that one should keep in mind while doing SEO is to avoid unethical practices like keyword stuffing, doorway pages etc. as it might result in penalizing by the search engines. All search engines inveigh unethical practices and are always very strict in countering it by adopting tough measures on those who does it.

As said in the first paragraph of this article, this was just a small effort to give some basic idea of what constitutes Internet marketing. Please come back later to this blog to find detailed explanations of all the above-mentioned concepts and more.