Currently Viewing Posts in Search Engine Optimization

Finding out the context of the search from the data related to keyword through various Analytics tool is advantageous in doing Search Engine Optimization. It is essential in SEO to use the language of the visitor for making the content to be related to the context of the search.

The use of keywords which helped in the user to reach at the site can be seen through analysis and this will open up the ideas for choosing the right keywords on the web page.

There are several factors that contribute to the intention of the search done for getting results.

• The first factor affect the context is the environment from which the visitor is browsing the web page and the circumstances that lead to the search. By environment it is meant whether the user is searching from home or office or while traveling etc.
• The device through which the search is being performed is also a factor contributing to the context for search as mobile and tablet devices are used on the go.
• The need for urgency is another factor for majority of searches and this can also relate to the context of the search.
• Duration of searches which can be seen from the statistical data of a web page throws light into whether the visitor want quick information or detailed information.
• Use of Navigation links menus and links within content can be used as a gauge in measuring whether the visitor is new to the website or returning visitor.

There can also be generalised searches which can not be related to any particular context.

Crawling of websites by search engine bots are important for making the web pages on the site being indexed by Search Engines. There are several factors that contribute to the easy crawling of a website. Depending upon the importance of articles search engines crawl and index pages in its database for specific period of time. This process is very important part for successful search engine optimization. The following are some of the tips for increasing crawling and indexing of the website.

1. Regular Content Updation
   One of the most important criteria for search engines to index a web page is the content. Websites having content being updated regularly will be crawled more frequently than those having static content. One of the many ways to have fresh content on the website is by implementing a blog on it.
2. Sitemap Creation
   Creating XML sitemap helps search engines to crawl the web pages depending upon the priority. Some of the content management system provides facilities for updating sitemap as soon as new content is being published. It is also essential for websites to submit the sitemap to Google Search Console for easy crawling.
3. Duplicate Content
   If the website is having duplicate content then there will be difficulties in getting the web pages being indexed easily. If there are multiple web pages with same content search engines will take the web page that is more relevant to the query. Removing web pages having duplicate can increase the chances of crawlability and indexability.
4. Loading Time
   If the loading time for web pages are pretty high then crawling of the website will take more time. In such cases the search bots crawling a website will become slower. This also affects the latest pages being indexed.
5. Blocking Pages
   It is not necessary that search engines index all the web pages in a website. Admin pages and website folders should not be allowed to crawl by the search engine bots. Adding Robts Text is an easy way to do so. It is also advisable to add no follow no index tags to the web pages in the head section for preventing crawling and indexing.

The purpose of having a web page on a website is of utmost importance because only through it one can say whether the outcome of visit on the web page is a success. From the first moment of making the sitemap for the website itself a clear idea should be there regarding what are the primary reason for putting a web page. Google and other search engines have defined defined different purpose behind the search queries. Depending upon the requirement by the visitor the web page with most relevant content is being displayed in search engine results page.

Each web page on a particular website should have a purpose for the visitor. The amount of helpfulness is the primary factor for the quality ratings provided by search engines. A web page that doesn’t have any purpose for the visitor can be of deceiving quality and web pages created with the intent of manipulating search engines will be having low quality score.

A Web Page must have any of the following Purpose for helping the visitors

• For sharing information regarding a particular topic.
• For sharing information regarding a particular person place or its social importance.
• For sharing images or other kind of media which can be shared over various social media platforms.
• For entertaining audience with a certain kind of media.
• For expressing an opinion about anything that’s having significance.
• For sharing files or downloading Information

The purpose of the web page should be clearly written inside the content of the web page. A web page having misleading or pointless opinion will not be considered as quality content by search engines.

Web Accessibility is a term coined to express the things that are done for ensuring the access to the features and content of a website. Web accessibility and Search Engine Optimization are interrelated in many ways. Content which are readable by the users and the SEO optimized content are both readable by Search Engines. Screen Readers which are used for accessing information by people with disabilities are relying on the structure of the content and semantics for the users.

Search Engines crawl content and index them in their database and shows the content depending upon relevancy when asked by users. Web Accessibility guidelines help website designers and developers to implement specific structure and codes for making the content visible to the user. In earlier days SEO dependent more on black hat methods  link link building techniques. But as years passed SEO got aligned with Accessibility and the more accessible sites have become more SEO friendly.

The following are some of the general tips for increasing web accessibility and SEO factors

• Use of Alternative Text for Images to make it visible on Text only Browsers
• Use of Heading tags in a proper hierarchical way and avoiding the use of empty heading tags
• Use of descriptive link titles to avoid confusion if more links are present on the web page
• Use of page Title and meta Descriptions to make it visible on Search Engine Results Page
• Use of javascript to minimum and avoiding wherever not required
• Use of various input features compatible with mobile devices also.
• Use of standards on web design and development
• Use of transcriptions and sub titles for videos for making it easy to read while watching
• Use of proper navigation to help users get content easily
• Use of URL which are easy to read and conveying the categories effectively

Buyers from around the world search for specific words while thinking about buying products or availing services. For these reasons it is essential to make your website visible when people look for these keywords. If the website is not found on top of search engine results page for frequently used keywords competitors will be gaining customers. Due to these reasons having a keyword strategy is the primary thing for a website becoming success.

While doing keyword research it should be kept in mind that if the website is not visible in the first few pages it is difficult to get clicks through search engines. Keywords that are short phrases are searched more than the long keywords. If the keyword is popular the competition will be high and will be difficult to get search engine rankings.

The first steps in doing keyword research will be choosing a maximum of 5 keywords that a typical customer search over internet for your product or service. There are different keyword research tools out of which Google Keyword Tool is used widely for keyword research. Google Keyword Tool helps in discovering the keywords which might lead to your website.

There are different terms being used by the Google Keyword Research Tool. For example the average search volume indicates the average searches performed over twelve months for that keyword. In certain cases the number of searches may vary tremendously depending upon the trends. The traffic volume is also grouped by set of numbers which are aligned to the nearest possible group. Short keyword sets will be performed multiple times a month whereas the long tail searches will be performed once in a month.

It can also be seen that Google Keyword tools does not provide the full set of keywords being searched by the users. Only the most relevant keywords with respect to a particular keyword will be displayed by Google in Keyword Research Tool. Google Keyword Research tool also truncates symbols and stop words from the keywords list which are being searched.

Tumblr blogs are an effective tool in marketing over internet. It has been found that Tumblr web pages are indexed by Google and other search engines and shows up in search result page. Various SEO Techniques like Keyword Marketing and Social Media Marketing can be done through Tumblr. Compared to other marketing methods the time taken by Tumblr blogs to get indexed are more and this usually keeps SEO Professionals from turning down Tumblr Marketing.

The first step in getting the Tumblr web page indexed is submitting the URL to the Search Engines like Google. This helps the web page to be notified to the Search Engines so that it can crawl and index the content of the web page. The Tumblr username should be search engine friendly and the web page URL also should be having keywords in it. Keywords in the Description and Title can help easily distinguish among the search results. It is also possible to change the Title Description and URL of the web page if it is not being crawled.

All types of content namely Text, Image, Audio and Video can be posted on the micro blogging platform Tumblr. At the time of posting on Tumblr care should be taken while choosing the keywords in order to make the web page relevant in search. Adding Heading Tags through modification of HTML code can also be used as part of the SEO marketing strategy. Alternate Image tags can also be included while uploading images on Tumblr.

Search Engines like Google and Bing change the algorithms frequently. Predicting about the future trends related to SEO is very difficult. The following are some of the predictions and tips for getting higher results through SEO.

Content Will be The King
Adding more content that is relevant to the audience will be the prime focus in the coming years also. Instead of keyword density more focus has been given to content by search engines like Google and Bing. So it is necessary to give proper importance to content than focusing on keywords.

Mobile Friendliness
With the latest update from Google regarding Mobile friendliness websites having mobile friendly responsive designs will dominate in search results through mobile searches. The number of searches performed in mobile is more than that is performed on desktops and responsive web design will make web pages more easy to read on  mobile devices. Local searches also increased through mobile devices and if you are not giving proper importance to mobile centric design you will b loosing customers.

User Intend
As Google show more Knowledge graph based results user intent has become more important in searches. Instead of focusing on keywords the conversational search has become more popular in search engine optimization industry. When the content becomes more conversational the chances of those web pages showing up in search results pages are also more.

Brand Mentions
When more brand mentions are added in content in offline SEO more keywords will be associated with the brand. This will eventually show up inn search engine visit history. Content that is focused on brands will dominate search engine results pages in 2015 through next year.

High Quality Media
Adding more high quality Media in the form of images and videos will be good in getting more organic searches through image search and video search. Adding more visual elements will also increase the credibility of the website. Video marketing through YouTube will also make the search engine results pages showing more video results.

Social Engagement
When more engaging content is being placed on social media platforms like Facebook Google Plus and Twitter more traffic will be coming into the website. This will eventually increase google Plus and Twitter results in Search engine Results Page. High quality content shared on Social Media websites will catch the attention of the visitors and more visits can be expected.

Online Security
For those website using online payment security systems adding https security certificates will increase the credibility to search engines. Visitors will be getting the trust factor and websites with https will be shown in the first page itself for relevant search queries. Google has already begun using https as a ranking factor in search engine algorithms.

Guest blogging is an easy way to connect with other bloggers and offer other content to your blog readers. But as far as Search Engine Optimization is concerned Guest Blogging is not beneficial in the long run.

1. Allowing Guest Bloggers to post on your blog will give away a backlink to their website and if the website linking to is of spammy nature then there are chances of Google penalizing the website.
2. Posting blogs that are not relevant to the website can make the readers leave them. Posting different topics is also not good for the website as it may make them unfriendly to Google.
3. Readers of the blog who wish to read content only from one author will feel it annoying when guest blogs are posted in it. This will turn the visitor away from the blog.
4. Adding Guest blogs will increase the frequency of posts from the blog and people who are subscribing articles will feel it annoying. This will lead to people unsubscribe the blog posts.
5. There might be copied content coming from the Guest bloggers and if one can not distinguish it from the original then copyright issues may be going to affect the blog.
6. Some guest bloggers write articles just to get traffic to their website and for this they may ask the readers to go to the website to read the full article. This will not only decrease the  quality of the blog but also decrease the viewers.

If guest blogging is essential to be implemented it is necessary to check the quality of the content as well as the background of the guest blogger.

Internet consumers are using various devices to browse for information and purchase products and services through internet. The strategies that used to drive websites to the top of search engine rankings have changed. By researching single keywords alone will not be enough to get the idea of what consumers are searching for. Most of the searches that lead to actual product purchase involve long tail keywords. Short keywords will be having more searches and the competition will be very high whereas long tail keywords will be less popular and competition will be less. The following tips can be utilized as part of long tail keyword strategies.

Increase in Number of Pages
It is common practise to create single page and target multiple keywords to that page. Instead of this if long tail keywords are utilized on web pages it will be effective in driving attention to more pages. Having different product descriptions with long tail keywords are better than putting all products on one page.

Product Specific Pages
Most of the short keywords will be showing bigger brand pages and it will be good to target long tail keywords by small business to get advantage of the specific nature of the custom products. Search Engine Suggestions can also be used as a starting point in calculating the importance of the long tail keyword.

Long Navigation
Having keywords with long description in the navigation will be good in telling search engines the importance of the web pages pointing to. Even though the traffic to the website will be minimized the quality of searches coming to the website will be more focused in the nature. Instead of ranking high for general topics it is good to show up for long tail queries.

Using long tail keywords as part of SEO campaign is of utmost importance as the number of leads are generated through long search queries.

If the number of visits coming to the landing page is high and the rate of conversion is pretty low then it is time to do a detailed study about conversion rate optimization. The following are some of the tips for increasing the Conversion rate Optimization.

1. Analyzing Competitor’s Strategy
One of the reason why your competitors are gaining multiple conversions are because of their strategies tested several times. Tracking your competitor’s landing page properly by taking the screenshots is a good way of getting know how they are changing various elements on the web page. It is also good to try things your competitor website is doing which have not been tried by you. care should also be taken about not copying all strategies your competitor are doing.

2. Multiple Step Forms
Instead of reducing the number of form fields in the landing page it will be good to implement a multiple step form filling process. It has been found through various studies that if the form is divided into multiple steps people will try to finish filling it instead of leaving it. Asking for the Choice of product category first, then filling forms through each stage will seem easy for the user if multiple step forms are adopted.

3. Matching Call To Action
When people enter your website after searching for a particular keyword they expect to see that keyword in the web page. Matching the Call To Action with the user intend is a good way of compelling the user click on the submit button. Doing analysis of the keywords that are making the users to come to the site can be a turning point in finding out the decision taking factor to buy the product or avail services.

4. Feeling for Urgency
Most of the buyers would like to postpone a decision to buy a product or avail a service if there is no urgency. This tendency can be overcome by making a feeling to do something urgent fore the product sells out or the service for the season is sold out. proper control of various elements on the website like countdown timer and sold out counter are used by some of the marketers to create a feel of urgency.

5. Building Trust Gradually
people are concerned about their privacy and they do not like the information which is filled on the web page form to be used anywhere else. Guaranteeing about this one through a Privacy Policy will be good in building the trust. Adding banners which will clear out the concerns about spamming can help people trust the web page more and contact the business fastly.

Google Trends is an under utilized tool which is having tremendous scope in Search Engine Optimization. Google Trends General categories include Business, Entertainment, Health, Science and Technology, Sports and Top Stories. Google Trends currently displays three featured stories in the home page. The trending stories in the last 24 hours can be seen through Google Trends. It is also possible to see YouTube trends and top charts through Google Trends. The following are some of the areas where Google Trends can be utilized.

Keyword Research

Using Google Trends one can find out how popular a keyword is how similar keywords are performing over the various parts of a particular country. However it is not good to use Google Trends alone to use for Keyword Research.

Brand Mentions

Google Trends can be used for finding trends related to Big Brands. If a particular business is promoting big brands it is advisable to check the trends to promote whichever item is trending at the moment.

Viewership Analysis 
Google trends can be used for finding out the negative performing keywords. This can be used as a tracking tool for preparing strategies that can harm the exiting brands. It is also possible to create trending news based upon the existing data.

Content Analysis

Depending upon the popularity of news it is possible to use Google Trends for digging out ideas for creating new content. As trending content creates more viewers to watch the articles it is advisable to post articles based o trending news.

Most of the people uses Google several times a day. Only a few people uses the advanced search feature on google for finding information they need. The following tips will help to conduct search through Google in a more efficient way.

Explicit Phrase Search
If the information is needed only about a particular keyword adding double quotes will display explicit phrase search results.
Eg :”Search Term”

Excluding Keywords
If a particular keyword phrase is searched and you does not want a term to be occurring in the search result it can be searched with a – sign in the search box.
Eg : Search Term – Keyword

OR Function
While looking for any one of the keywords it is desirable to add OR inside the search for conducting the search.
Eg : Keyword1 OR Keyword2

Words Search
If you are looking for the words in text of the web page it is advisable to add allintext before the search term.
Eg : allintext:keyword

Words in URL
If the searching keyword is in the url of the web page it is advisable to search with allinurl: before the keyword.
Eg : allinurl:keyword

Words in Title
If the searchable keyword is in the titlle of the web page it is advisable to add allintitle: befor ethe search term
Eg : allintext: Keyword

Searching within a Web page
For websites that does not have a built in search it is advisable to add site: and url of the web page to search inside the search box.
Eg : site:www.domainname.com “Keyword”

Related Search
If a search term related to a particular keyword is to be searched it is advisable to ise related: before the keyword.
Eg : related:keyword

Links to Another Page
For finding out what all web pages links to a website it is advisable to add link: before the search term.
Eg : link:domainname

Similar Word Search
for including similar words in search along with the keywords provided it is advisable to use the search operator ~ in the search box.
Eg : “Keyword1” ~Keyword2

Find Definitions
If you want to find the definition of a particular keyword you can use define: before the search term to find the meaning of the word.
Eg :define:keyword

Find Missing Keywords
If you want to find a missing keyword from a phrase * can be added in between to find the missing word.
Eg : keyword1 * keyword2

News at Specific Locations
for searching news at a particular location it is advisable to add location: before the search term
Eg : keyword location:place name

Specific Files
While searching for specific filetypes like pdf and ppt it is advisable to add fuiletype: before extension in the search box.
Eg : keyword filetype:ppt

Calculator
For doing arithmetic calculations the expression can be typed in the search box to find out te results on Google.
Eg :  9876543210- 123456789 * 777 =

Weather
For looking at the weather information it is easy to do it by adding weather before the place name. Similarly Sunset and Sunrise can be calculated using sunset and sunrise along with place name.
Eg : Weather Place Name

The way in which people are accessing information has been revolutionised by mobile devices. Website publishers now use the medium of mobile devices to convey content to the audience through responsive web design. But if the web page is taking too much time to load the users who access the information will bounce back and the chance of getting leads become less.

Search Engine giant Google has recently announced an open source project called Accelerated Mobile Pages which is intended to make the mobile browsing an easy experience. Through this project web pages with heavy content containing images videos and ads load quickly on mobile devices. This user experience will be similar across smartphones tablets and laptops. Google News Twitter Pinterest WordPress etc will be using Accelerated Mobile Pages for delivering content to the audience.

The AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages will help in building more feature to the web pages loading on mobile devices. The content which will be displayed on mobile devices will be having high resolution images and videos along with visualizing in different ways. Sharing information across continents can also be achieved through AMP technologies. Distribution of content in different countries will become easier with AMO Technologies.