SEO For Dummies: An Introduction
I decided to wrote this tutorial and to title it SEO For Dummies for two main reasons:
- SEO is misconceived
- SEO is the backbone of your website visibility
First, we need to know what is this widely spread term “SEO”. SEO is shorthand for Search Engine Optimisation, where you optimise your website to be visible to search engines. Respectively, you MUST understand this material very well to be able to build search engine-friendly website. Either you can find someone professional at this and do it for you.
How do Search Engines work?
Before we know how Search Engines work the readers should having least knowledge about the web page structure using the HTML markup language to build optimised SEO source code. Now let’s move to the steps of how search engines process its work:
- Crawling: First of all, every search engine is deploying a special piece of software called “Crawlers” or “Bots“, these pieces of software crawl to your website and all of its direct web pages, not only that also it crawls to every web page linking to your website. You can read more about Search Engines Crawlers
- Indexing: In this stage of the artwork of Search Engines, the core of the engines creates an index for all the crawled web pages by the bot to store it in a huge-under-demand database where which it can be retrieved later. Substantially, this process relies mainly on deep analysis of the fetched web pages. To identify it for the sake of proper categorization and choosing the best to describe it.
- Processing: Whenever search query is triggered, search engine instantly compares this search in the query with the indexed web pages in the database.
- Relevancy Calculation: To ensure that the user has found what he was looking at exactly, Search Engines when got a search string or search query. It starts to investigate and calculate the relevancy of each of its indexed web pages for this particular query.
- Fetching The Results: After Crawling, Indexing, Processing, Relevancy Calculation. Eventually, Search engines begin to Fetch the best results based on the last steps and also based on specific criteria.
This small Video From Matt Cutts, The Head Of Web Spam Team At Google Demonstrating How Search Engines Work
SEO For Dummies: Types Of SEO
SEO Mainly broken into Two Main Types:
1 – On-Site SEO
2 – Off-Site SEO
On-Site SEO
On-Site SEO is the part of the Search Engine Optimization process in which it involves optimising your web page to encourage Search Engines to crawl to it. Briefly, i will uncover with you the proper anatomy of an optimised SEO page and be sure to follow every little detail in this checklist.
Before I delve into this checklist you need to know a very important thing which is, Search Engine bots are Blind. Yes, you read right they are totally blind, which means they don’t see the web page like you. See just see it’s HTML structure. And I here I mean Meta tags, Title Tags, Headings, Subheadings and Image alt tags. Now, enough talking about this jargon and let’s go deeply to our dear checklist.
1 – Adopt SEO-Friendly URLs
According to this post when a user enters any search query, Search Engines begin to find this keyword first in your URL to the page. So, try to avoid auto-generated URLs or default configuration that may lead to the not good looking permalink. Try to apply this practice to get the best results:
This is SEO-Friendly URL : (http://www.example.com/your-keyword/)
This is not SEO-Friendly URL: (http://www.example.com/p=123)
2 – Start Page Title With your Keyword
When you type in Google “Basketball shoes” the first result will appear to you is a link to Nike store selling basketball shoes. You will notice that your keyword appearing in the second and third-word positions respectively.
So, according to this small snippet, we can conclude that Search engines pay very strong attention and give much weight for the title tag of your webpage.
3 – Mix Your Title with Modifiers
Since this is SEO For Dummies tutorial am trying to be simple and effective to summarize the checklist. Now, using and mixing your title with modifiers like “Best”, “Guide”, “101, and much more about modifiers. Those small pieces of text can boost your SEO strategy. Read this post for more information about title modifiers.
4 – Use H1 Tag as your post title
There are several heading tags start from H1 to H6 each of which has its specific use. Here when it comes to your title it’s strongly recommended to wrap up your post title in an H1 tag. In case of using WordPress as your CMS( Content Management System ), be sure that your title is set-as H1. Because some themes not using the H1 tag as the default title tag.
5 – Make use of Multimedia
Text content is killing and compelling. But why not using and mixing your text content with video, images, and infographics?. This approach can be resulted in high ROI on your website, as it will reduce bounce rate and increase the session time.
6 – Use Further Subheadings
Wrap your targeted keyword in at least one subheading in your copy can be very good in On-Page SEO. This can be done by including your keyword within H2 Tag.
7 – Keyword in the first paragraph
If you used Yoast plugin for your On-Site SEO, and after setting your focus keyword in the editor. If the focus keyword will not appear in the first paragraph. You will get warning from the plugin stating that
“The focus keyword doesn’t appear in the first paragraph of the copy”. So, one of the best practices to proper keyword placement within your copy. Is to include your keyword within the first 100 word or generally within the first paragraph. Personally, I consider this as one of the best practices for Search Engine Optimization for beginners, so be very careful when applying it.
8 – Be Sure that your design is optimized across devices
Back to days on April 21, 2015, Google began to hit websites with a penalty which are not mobile optimized. This is for many reasons like you are missing a lot of mobile and tablets traffic, your website is looking so horrible on these devices and many others. So be sure that your design or theme is optimised across many devices to fit all screens.
Now let’s move to another part of our SEO For Dummies tutorials which are Off-Site Optimization and this section I will not go deep into it. As it cares about a more technical aspect of your website and so many related terms, I will explain it briefly in a later post.
2 – Off-Site SEO
Off-Site SEO also can be named as “Off-Page SEO” is set of practices and steps that applied to your Search Engine Optimization plan to improve your rankings within SERPs ( Search Engine Ranking Pages). But What makes it called “Off-Site”, because it’s more concerned about factors away from your website. Think of off-site SEO as the infrastructure of your main website, like if you want to establish successful business you should have strong-based assets.Okay, now direct to the point this aspect can be broken into small steps, but from now it’s no longer SEO For Dummies material :D.
1 – Link Building For Off-Site SEO
Building backlinks for your website are a very very important tactic in your SEO campaign. As Search Engines consider backlinks as vote up to your website, be default the more votes up to your website the more quality and relevant you are. And the more increasing in your SERPs in Search Engines. But building WordPress Backlinks or generally backlinks for any kind of websites, can be time, money and effort consuming and sucker. So you will have two options:
- Hire someone to Build backlinks for you
- Build it yourself, but keep in mind to build it properly
There are three different types of Backlinks you should know before continue reading this topic which are:
- Natural Backlinks: Is the type of Backlinks that given out naturally without the consent of the page owner. Like if you are writing a blog post about Bitcoins you are likely to link to Coindesk, BitcoinTalk and so on. So the Backlinks given out from you to these websites are natural Backlinks.
- Manual Backlinks: Those kinds of Backlinks can be known from their types, which are built manually through Link Building activities
- Link Building Through Submission: These Includes building backlinks using submitting your website to Social Bookmarking Sites, Web 2.0 Directories, guest post with an optimized anchor around your desired keyword and the examples are huge.
There is also a plugin for WordPress that is mainly dedicated to deliver high-quality backlinks and also Backlink builder plugin that builds backlinks on the autopilot and it’s free at WordPress Plugin store.
2 – Social Signals for Off-Site SEO
I think this will be funny and easy as part of SEO For Dummies tutorial, which involves social media Sharing and that stuff. But when it does not sound like the title states. I mean by social signals that’s a good pointer to your content quality. Think of it when you head to Buzzfeed to read breaking news or trending topic and you liked it so much. Then you are more like to share it on social media with your friends. From that experiment, we can conclude that social signals can play a big role in the off-Site Search Engines Optimization.
3 – Site Speed Loading
Let’s quickly define site speed loading it is the time required to load all page elements. Including Images, Javascript Files, CSS and the assets of the web page itself. I want to apologize for this off-topic since it’s not SEO For Dummies Too :(, but briefly and statistically speaking reducing the time of your page to load can be in very useful for your Search Engines Optimization strategy.
According to Google official Webmasters Blog’ post to speed up your website is an advantage not only for you but for users and Google. And technically when you reduce site speed loading you also offset the costs of running and operating your website which is a big return for you and your income.
Below I will write some recommendations to reduce site speed loading
1 – Enable Compression Of Your Server
There is widespread software and it’s free to use Called “Gzip“, which works mainly on compressing for CSS, HTML and Javascript files to reduce its size, but only files that exceed 150Byets.
2 – Minify Your HTML, CSS And Javascript Files
This can be done by trimming all whitespaces in your source code files, comments, and that stuff. As it has quite a good impact on your site speed loading. Google is recommending tool developed by Yahoo Developer Network called “YUI Compressor” which works well for both CSS and Javascript.
When I wrote SEO For Dummies Tutorial I meant it, but the idea is that am just scratching the surface to the search engine optimization world and in further tutorials, i will be sure to deliver raw SEO For Dummies learning material.But until we reach those further tutorials, complete this until the end as there are future updates totally depends on this material.
3 – No Need For unused redirects
If mobile user visited your website like (http://www.example.com) and since its mobile device he will be redirected to (http://m.example.com) after that to the homepage(http://m.example.com/home). This cycle can consume time as it relies totally on HTTP request/response diagram, which can be frustrating to the user. So reducing those annoying redirects works good for reducing web page loading. Just use them whenever necessary.
Finally i want to say this will not be the last SEO For Dummies tutorial. It’s Just an asset and cornerstone to the upcoing Search Engine Optimization tutorials, by the end of these tutorials. You will be able to create a website with yourself and apply each little detail you learned here to watch yourself your website. Gaining alot of organic traffic from major search engines. subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media for everyday tip and precious piece of information regarding Search Engine Optimization related topics. And share our article if you liked it.