A beginner’s guide to SEO (All you need to know)

About SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the organic method to rank any website in the Google search results for the potential search terms. SEO is mainly classified in to two core categories as On Page SEO and Off Page SEO. On Page SEO covers all the optimization techniques which is followed on the website to make it perform better on search results. Off Page SEO is the works done outside the website to improve the authority of the website in the Google Search.

On Page SEO includes terminologies like title tag optimization, meta description optimization, adding internal & external links, image optimization and many more factors. Whereas the Off Page SEO includes link building, social shares, citation building and many more factors.

In this blog, let’s see in more detail about the On Page & Off Page SEO.

On Page Optimization

On Page SEO is all about making the website and the landing pages better to rank well on Google SERP’s. Below are the core On Page SEO factors,

• Title Tag
• Meta Description
• Internal Links
• Image Optimization
• Heading Tags

Title Tag

Title tag is the first thing that the user notices before landing on a web page. In simple words, title tag is the text with the blue link which appears in the Google Search results (as like in the below image). Title tag should contain the target keyword and it can be a maximum of up to 60 characters.

Meta Description

Meta description is the short piece of descriptive content which is appearing in the search results below the title tag (as like in the below image). When writing the meta description, you should make sure that it doesn’t exceed 160 characters. At the same time, you should try to embed the target keywords in the meta description.

Sometimes the meta descriptions will be auto generated by Google as shown in the above image. The common mistake that everyone will make in meta description optimization is adding keyword many times, You can add the keywords but you should not stuff them by repeating more times.

While writing the meta descriptions, you should make sure that it is capable of getting user’s attention. Meta descriptions will have the direct impact in the click through rate (CTR).

Internal Links

If you take a business or blogging website, normally there will be many pages and posts in the website. So you should interlink the relevant posts and pages. Interlinking should be done mainly for two purposes. One is to help the users easily navigate between the relevant pages. Other is to help the Google bots and the web crawlers to navigate to the other pages in the website and index the new web pages. This is how web crawlers will find the new webpages in your website and will index them.

Hence more internal links should be given to the relevant pages to help both the users and the web crawlers to easily navigate between the pages.

Image Optimization

Image Optimization is where the most of the SEO people miss out. Basically images are the media files and Google crawlers will identify the images only with the help of the Alt text. Hence when you add any image to the web page, you should make sure that you have given alt text to the image.

Google bots will read the images only with the help of alternative text (alt text), hence give relevant alt text to the images. You can try to vary the alt text based on the target keywords if you have many images in a web page.

Heading Tags

Heading tags in SEO ranges from H1 to H6. By default, page title will be the H1. If you are publishing a page or post in the website, you should make sure that you have used more headings in the content ranging from H1 to H6.

When adding the heading tags, you can try to add the keywords in the headings with the different variations. This will help Google to spot what exactly the page is all about.

Off Page Optimization

Off Page optimization deals with all the works which is done outside the website to boost the authority of your website. Some of the Off Page SEO factors are listed below,

• Social Sharing
• Citation Building
• Link Building

Social Sharing

If you are a blogger or a business owner, you should have the social media profiles for your website in mediums like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and in other popular platforms. You should share the blogs and latest news about your website in the social media profiles regularly. Social media profiles is also one of the ranking factors in Google’s ranking algorithm.

Citation Building

Citation Building is the process of submitting the business website in country specific business directories with the proper NAP details. NAP details include name, address, phone number of your business. Directory submission should be done with high NAP accuracy and this will add massive value to boost your sites authority.

Especially if you are starting SEO for a brand new website. It’s always recommended to start with the citation building. For example, if you are planning to target and rank your site in UK, then you can submit your website in UK based business directories to get organic SEO boost.

Link Building

Off Page SEO is mainly about building high authority backlinks to your website from reliable sources. Backlinks will help you rank the websites for highly competitive search terms. When it comes to building backlinks, you need to invest some money if you are planning to build really good links from the premium websites. When it comes to backlinks, its not about quantity, its all about quality. So the number of links doesn’t matter and only the quality of websites where you are getting backlinks matters.

These are the basics of SEO and I personally apply these techniques for our clients at ClickDo. Digital Entrepreneur Fernando Raymond, founder of ClickDo & SeekaHost have guided me in my SEO career and I have learnt many smart SEO techniques from him which helps to handle international clients for SEO.