Search engine optimization or SEO is a method to increase the amount of visitors to a website using certain strategies, techniques and tactics to obtain a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) — including Google, Bing and other search engines.
It is common practice for users to not to scroll through all the pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search result page plays a major role for directing more traffic towards the site. The higher a website ranks, the greater the chance that site will be visited by a user.
We have tried to cover the following topics in this post:
White Hat SEO
1. Backlink
2. Top backlink sources
3. Link Building
4. Content Optimization
5. On site optimization
6. Off site optimization
Black Hat SEO
1. Keyword Stuffing
2. Doorway Page
3. Link Farming
4. Pagejacking
5. Mousejacking
Negative SEO
How to prevent Negative SEO Attacks?
Video SEO
Image SEO
Importance of SEO
SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine and be placed at a higher ranking than its competitors.
Search engine optimization is further divided into 2 types-
1. White hat SEO
2. Black hat SEO
What is White hat SEO?
White hat SEO refers to the use of optimization strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience in contrast to search engines and follows all the search engine rules and policies.
For example, a website that is optimized for search engines, yet focuses on relevancy and organic ranking is considered to be optimized using White Hat SEO practices. Some types of White Hat SEO techniques include using keywords and keyword analysis, backlinking, link building to improve popularity of your link, and writing content for readers.
White Hat SEO is mostly used by those who intend to make a long-term investment on their website. Also known as Ethical SEO.
What is a Backlink?
Backlink is a hyperlink that links a web page back to your own website. Having a greater number of relevant backlinks increases the ranking of your site on the search engine. Relevant backlinks are those which are placed on a web page which is related to your website. For eg. If your website is about cars and the the backlink is placed on a movie review site then that backlink will not be considered a relevant or a good backlink.
There are 2 types of backlink sources:
1. Do follow sources: These are the links which will pass on the SEO benefits from the source side to the blog where the source points to.
2. No follow sources: These links do not pass on the SEO benefits, in other words they have no SEO value at all.
What are the Top Backlink sources?
1. Slideshare: It is a community of presentation where people upload and share slides.
2. Google+ Profiles
3. Academia.edu: People upload documents and papers related to their research and add external backlinks in the document.
4. Dribble: It is a community for designers and you need an image to upload and link back.
5. Dailymotion: It is an alternative to youtube as a video sharing website. Simply upload your videos and add your website links in the description.
6. DeviantArt: It is a community for artists and designers. Submit an art or make a journal entry to get a backlink from the source.
7. Imgur: It is an amazing source for free GIFs, just share your GIF and add your links in the description.
8. Flickr: It is a video and photo hostling website.
9. Reddit: It is a social network for external links. If you want a backlink from reddit, you should write a text post.
10. Digg: It is a news site and getting a backlink from digg needs a high quality article related to current news.
11. Blogspot: It is Google’s most popular free blogging platform.
12. Tumblr: It is a microblogging platform and lets you share posts and blogs.
13. Wix: It is also a blogging site but it adds dofollow links to your website.
14. Weebly: It is a platform to launch a free website, blog or a store. It helps in getting you relevant backlinks for your website.
15. WordPress.com: Create a free blog and share posts to promote your website, it also lets you add links to your site.
16. Quora: It is a Question and Answer website. Share your links in the question or answer fields.
17. Stack Overflow: It is a Question and Answer website for programmers. Here one can find answers pertaining to all programming languages. Share your links in the question or answer fields.
What is Link building?
It is a process of exchanging backlinks with other websites in order to build your own number of quality backlinks.
What is Content Optimization?
The process of making a particular page on your website to make it more attractive for the search engines and users is known as Optimization. Once the content on your page is improved, broken links are removed, the search engines will find it easy to index your page and list it as a relevant result with a higher ranking.
There are 2 types of content optimization techniques:
1. On Site Optimization
2. Off Site Optimization
What is On Site Optimization?
1. The title tag
2. The body text
3. First sentence of the body text
4. URL
5. Same site link texts
6. Same site link URLs
7. Keyword Density
What is Off Site Optimization?
1. Community creation on social networking sites
2. Blogging
3. Forum postings
4. Photo sharing
5. Video Promotion
6. Business Reviews
What is Black hat SEO?
Black hat SEO refers to the use of negative SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines, starkly in contrast with the White hat SEO technique, and usually does not obey search engines guidelines and policies.
Some common types of Black hat SEO techniques include keyword stuffing, invisible text, doorway pages, and adding unrelated keywords to the page content or page swapping. Black hat SEO is mostly used by those users who are looking for a quick financial income on their Web site, rather than a long-term investment on their Web site. It can result in your Web site being removed from a search engine, however since the focus is usually on quick return business models, most experts who use Black Hat SEO tactics consider being banned from search engines a small risk.
It may also be known as Unethical SEO.
What is Keyword Stuffing?
It is a technique used by web developers in which they overload the page with the keywords so that when the search engine reads the page, finds it relevant and ranks it higher in the SERP.
What is a Doorway Page?
Also known as a jump page or an entry page. It is a page designed solely for the purpose of gaining a high ranking in the search engine’s result page. The page is meant to capture the attention of the search engine’s spider by containing specific phrases and keywords which the spider will pick easily.
What is Link Farming?
The process of exchanging link with other websites in order to increase your SEO. The main idea behind this is to increase the number of backlinks that kink back to your website because search engines rank you on the basis of quality and the quantity of the backlinks you have among other things.
What is Pagejacking?
The act of stealing content from a web page and copying to another page so as to redirect some of the traffic from the original page to the duplicate page.
What is Mousejacking?
The method of forcing the user to stay on the specific web site by not allowing them to leave the site. Whenever the user tries to leave the page by changing the URL or closing the browser, the page forcefully opens another window with the same URL.
What is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO is a very serious problem nowadays since black hat SEO has become very tough to execute. So the competitors have started to opt for negative SEO to tarnish the name of the organization. It occurs when someone makes attempt to lower a web site’s rankings in the search engines.
There are many ways that this can be attempted. The most common negative SEO is link based negative SEO. But these attacks can take a variety of different forms like:
1. Hacking the web site
2. Creating a large number of irrelevant and spam links to your site
3. Copying the content from your site and pasting it all over the web
4. Creating links to your website using terms like online poker
5. Creating fake social profiles and tarnishing your name online by giving negative reviews.
6. Deleting the relevant and original backlinks you use for your web site
Negative SEO is a major threat nowadays and many sites have had to deal with this problem. As is the case with many problems prevention of negative SEO is easier than fixing it.
Google has released a tool called the Disavow Tool to help people with this problem. It is a cautionary tool and must be only opted as a last resort because it usually takes 2-4 weeks to respond and no business can take a month off and survive.
How to prevent the Negative SEO attacks?
1. Set up Google Webmaster tools Email alert.
Google will send you email alerts when:
A malware is attacking your site
Pages of your website are not indexed
You are penalized by google
Your server has connectivity issues
2. Keep track of your backlinks.
This is the most important action to take. Most often, the spammers will perform negative SEO against your site by building low quality links or redirects.
3. Protect your best backlinks.
Very often the spammers will try to remove your best backlinks which garner the most traffic for your website. They might contact the webmasters pretending to be you and get them remove your link.
To prevent this you should always contact the webmasters with an email id which has your domain name in it. You should also keep a track of all your backlinks so that you come to know when you are being attacked by spammers.
4. Secure your website.
Security against malware and hackers is the most important thing. You do not want spam on your website.
5. Check for duplicate content on the web.
Most common technique used by the spammers is content duplication. They copy material from your website and paste it all over the web. If your website contains mostly duplicate content, there is a big chance that you will be penalized and lose your ranking on the SERP.
6. Check your social media mentions.
Sometimes spammers will create fake accounts on social media and try to defame you by giving negative reviews. You should try to report such profiles as soon as possible before they start to gain followers.
What is Video SEO?
Incorporating video to your online marketing strategies is becoming a necessary thing nowadays. Adding video brings more interest and appeal to your website than traditional article posts. For your videos to be relevant links and be ranked higher in the SERP, follow these tactics:
Use keywords in the title or the description space.
Make the title catchy.
Mention clearly in the description what your video is all about.
What is Image SEO?
Images make an article more vivid and contribute a lot towards the SEO of the post. Images when added in consideration and in sync with content of the page can contribute a lot towards the readability of the page. Finding the right image is a very important task in this regard. An image which is in sync with the content of the page and matches the keywords helps a lot in the ranking. Following tactics will help:
Always use an appropriate file name for the image. Use the keyword while saving your image.
Loading times of the page are important so use an image of appropriate size.
For making the size small do not use bad quality images.
Use appropriate captions for the images.
Search engine optimization is essential nowadays because:
SEO is more of a branding play nowadays rather than a marketing tactic.
1. The majority of search engines users are more likely to choose one of the top suggestions in the SERP. Very rarely users scroll down to the bottom of the screen or go to the second results page.
2. Users generally trust search engines results and having a presence in the top positions for the keywords the user is searching increases the web site’s trust and traffic.
3. SEO can help you overtake the competition. Since the optimized web site is listed at a higher rank so it has more chances of being clicked by the user than a web site being listed lower.
4. It is cost effective when we compare it to other forms online marketing like PPC advertising and social media marketing.
5. Most of the customers check the reviews on search engines before making a purchase and this number is only expected to rise further.
6. Without SEO, customers will find your competitors easily rather than finding you.
Your business definitely has to have a SEO strategy in place if you want to succeed in the online marketspace and it is one of the most important components in the organization’s online presence and success.
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