SEO- Intro to On-Page Optimisation & Website Architecture - Part 1

Hi Learners,

Welcome back to Analogue to AI blog. In this post we will get started on the discussion about some of the factors that influences Google to rank your website for the set of keywords you desire ranking for. You can catch up on our previous posts to get a grip of setting up for SEO. So lets begin...

What is On-page Optimisation?

Simply put, there are a lot of things webmasters do to get their websites ranked on SERPs, so all these actions that are taking within the scope of your website is termed as On-page optimisation. Broadly On-page optimisation cover 3 areas. 

1. Design & Architecture of the website.
2. Content of the website
3. HTML Tags

On-page optimisation encompasses all these areas on a website so that the pages & content are Index & Crawl friendly. 

Lets look at a few factors with the domain of Design & Structure that go into building an effective website.

SEO Design & Architecture

The Goal here is to create a design that would make your website search friendly and add value to the overall User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) of the website. Following are some of the factors (though not the only factors) which can get you started with effective design & structure.

• SEO friendly URLs

URLS of your site are of utmost importance to give your visitors a context of what page they are on. It not only helps users, but also search engines to identify the structure & information flow of your website. The more clear and straight-forward the structure of your URL is, the better. Some of the best practices in building URLS for your website include...

1. Do not use unnecessary words (Stop Words) - Words like "and", "for", "because" etc. You can find a comprehensive list of stop words here.
   
   http://www.example.com/best-cakes-in-mumbai.html
   http://www.example.com/best-cakes-mumbai.html
   
2. Use hyphens - Its a great idea to separate URL words with (-) hyphens as compared to (_) underscores. The reason for this is the understanding Google holds of these signs. For eg: a URL like: http://www.example.com/best-cakes-mumbai.html is read by Google as (best cakes mumbai)
   whereas a URL like: http://www.example.com/best_cakes_mumbai.html would be read by Google as (bestcakesmumbai)
   
   It has a small impact though its the right thing to do.
   
3. Avoid using dynamic characters in the URL: Using "&", "@", "$" etc is not considered SEO friendly. These would mostly come up in case of a dynamic URL or (auto-generated url) On e-commerce sites you would often see words like cgi-bin or .cgi in the URL. You could use a custom link shortening tool to convert your dynamically generated URLs into simple ones. 
   
   http://www.example.com/productid=2xdgi3/iGHSP=U#xyz1234.html  TO
   http://www.example.com/seo
   
4. Avoid sub-folders in the URL link - These linked are automatically included when you add new pages to your websites, mostly its the CMS functionality, you can counter this by changing the Permalink of that page. 
   
   http://www.example.com/2018/05/iphone.html
   http://www.example.com/iphone.html 
5. Try adding a highly searched keyword to the URL - Typically the one you would use in the Title of your page. this adds weightage to the quality factor of the URL. 
   
   http://www.example.com/iphone.html
   http://www.example.com/iphone-deals.html
   
6. Using a complete and descriptive URL structure: The image below is a breakdown of a typical URL structure. 

   

   Pic credit: Cult of Web blog

   As a rule of thumb, a URL that is easy to read by humans is most preferably an SEO friendly URL
   
   
7. Using Lower case characters in the URL: A URL is only appealing if its easy to recognise in the most simple text. Hence various tests have proved that a URL with lower texts have resulted in better click-throughs than Upper cases. for e.g. 
   
   http://www.example.com/Digital-Marketing-Courses.html
   http://www.example.com/digital-marketing-courses.html

Innovation in URLs is great, provided its supplemented with simplicity. Hope you found this post useful. More posts like these coming up through the coming weeks, so keep coming back.

If you have opinions on this posts make sure to be heard on the comments section of this post. You can get back to me with specific questions through the contact form too. 

See you around.

Happy learning.

Mitul Shingadia

 

SEO and Google Search Console or Webmaster tools

Hi Learners,

Welcome to Analogue to AI Blog. In our previous post, we went through a step by step process to create a website visibility plan. To re-cap, read the post here. In this post we will take our first step towards website SEO, thats adding our website to the Google Search console or most popularly known as Webmaster tools.

What is a Search Console?

Google Search Console is a free service that provides valuable information about your website like how do people "discover" your site, what keywords does your website shows up in the search result for, what keywords drive the most engaging traffic on the site, what pages are most popular on your site and how many pages are "Indexed" by Google. It also provides information about errors on your site and mobile responsiveness of your site and many such incredibly useful reports. Check out the below video for a better understanding.

Adding or Verifying website with Google Search Console

Google needs to verify that you are authorised to access information that it will share with you, so this is the first crucial step. Generally the steps are standard across all types of websites.

Step 1: Log into Google Search Console
Step 2: Add "Property" thats your website to the Search console.

Step 3: Verify your site. Once you add a property, you will be directed to verify ownership of your website. If you have a Google Analytics account, choose the Google Analytics method. And click on "Verify"

Done!

Once your website is verified, the next step is to submit sitemaps to Google's database.

Generating Sitemaps and adding them to Google (Wordpress)

To manage SEO on your wordpress website, we will use a plugin called Yoast. This means you need to first install Yoast plugin on your Wordpress website to get started.

To do this...

Step 1 - Log in to your wordpress admin dashboard.

Step 2 - From the left menu click on "Plugins"

Step 3 - Click on Add new and search for "Yoast"

Step 4 - Click on "Install Now" and then Activate as soon as the button text changes. Once done, you will see a new option called SEO appear on the left hand side of your Wordpress dashboard.

Follow the below process to enable and generate sitemaps.

When you click on the SEO menu, it expands into more options. When you click on General...

Click on Features

Find Sitemaps from the list and set it to "On"

To view sitemaps, 

Now that you have your sitemaps, its time to submit them to Google Search console.

Step 1 - Go to your Search Console Dashboard and Click on Crawl --> Sitemaps

Step 2 - Click on Add Sitemap, and copy paste the Sitemap URLs generated from Yoast plugins and submit them here.

 

Once submitted, Google generally takes 24 hours to calibrate your sitemaps and starts with the crawling and indexing process. You need to keep in mind that once you have submitted your sitemaps, its not a guarantee that your site will start ranking immediately. 

SEO is a slow and a consistent process. Your persistence, quality of content and frequency of update allows Google to consider your website as important.

Hope you found this post as valuable. Leave your comments in the section below and dont forget to share your feedback about this post.

Wait back for the next post as we sail through more ideas of getting your websites indexed and influencing google to rank website.

Happy learning,

Mitul Shingadia

SEO - Visibility on search engines

Hi Learners,

Welcome to AnaloguetoAi blog. In our previous post, we discussed the importance of keyword focussed content and what are some standard characteristics of content that Google deems valuable while ranking. If you missed it, you can find it here. While we discussed great keyword focussed content, we also hovered through the crawling & Indexing process of a typical website. Crawling and Indexing ensures that our website gets included in the Google database while keyword focused content ensures visibility for the right set of keywords. Hence your keyword research forms the backbone of your SEO strategy. In case you missed the post on keyword research for SEO, you can find it here.

Why does visibility of Search Engines matter?

According to Google's research, search activity amounts for 36% of the time spent online. This means your customers are searching for you in the moments of need, research & support. Interestingly the web has embraced mobility in a way never imagined before.

When you are in a business of selling life-changing products

Or when you are a local business

Or when you are selling online / offline

Or when you want to drive walk-ins to your store

Or when you are providing great information

When you have something valuable to sell or share

Where should my business be found?

Its a known fact that Google accounts for major chunk of online traffic. So much so that when Google was down for 5 mins in 2013, global internet traffic was down by 40%! This means you starting point for web visibility cannot & should not exclude Google. Some of the common avenues where your business has the potential to be seen on Google results are...

Google Map Results

Your local business will greatly benefit if it is found while people are searching for it and they are nearby. To get your business listed on Maps, you need to create a business profile on Google My Business. GMB is a self-serve platform for businesses that enables them to create local listings, upload pictures, and also allow its prospects to view, rate & review its services. Google heavily relies on User Generated Content (UGC) to gauge the quality of your business. We will dive into the details of GMB in our future posts. Its important to know however that your business will first be manually verified after you create a profile on this platform through a post-card or a telephone verification.

Natural Search Results on Search Engine's Result Pages (SERP)

Natural search results or Organic search results are regular listings that the search engine shows up when a search is made on Google. These results are shown based on 3 broad factors...

1. Relevancy - Matching of content on the page with the keyword searched.
2. Credibility - Quality of content & stickiness value
3. Popularity - Shareability value of the content. 

Its important to note that ranking on SERP is a slow process, it does not happen overnight and takes a lot of optimisation and monitoring efforts. Also remember, Google does not charge you for ranking on these results. This is the reason we want to influence google to identify our sites as a quality website with the help of On-page & Off-page SEO. (We will talk about that in our future posts)

Image Search Results

Visual content on your website does drive a lot of value & quality traffic. You want to be seen if your business benefits from visual content.

Video Search Results

Video is growing in triple digits and businesses are leveraging videos to drive more sales. You want to create a lot of video content and tag that content with relevant keywords that will help your business show up on video search results.

SEO visibility plan

While planning visibility for your business on Search, you want to adopt a holistic approach for your brand. As you must have realised by now that keyword research and content will drive your visibility plan, its very important to have a well researched keyword list for the most important pages on your website. This has to be backed with sound content planning. Every aspect of SEO boils down to content. To be specific, keyword-focussed-content. Here is a check-list that will help you pen down a visibility plan.

1. List down all the important URLs of your website along with keyword you want to rank for each url.
2. List down how will people on the internet find these pages? (SERP, Maps, Images, Video search)
3. Identify where is it most important for you to be seen & list down the priority level.
4. Create a content schedule around that priority level & stick to that schedule till you start ranking for the aforesaid keywords for each URL

 

Using the above simple steps you will be able to start planning for your visibility on the web. This planning is an ongoing process and will have to be fine tuned as time progresses. 

Interesting SEO Books

I have a few recommendations that will help you plan effectively for your business. Here they are...

                               

Well, we are only getting warmed up. In our upcoming posts, we will talk about On-page & Off-page optimisation factors, link building & much more. I hope you enjoyed this post. Leave your queries and comments in the comments section below & use the Contact Us form to get in touch with me with a specific doubt. 

Keep watching this space for more updates on digital marketing.

See you soon. Have a great day ahead.

Mitul 

SEO & Keyword focussed content

Hi Learners,

Welcome back to this blog once again. In our previous post we discussed a standard approach towards keyword research & how effective keyword research can become a backbone to your organic traffic strategy. Along with an awesome keyword list comes an effort to create great keyword focussed content. It is this content that is Indexed by search engines like Google & stored in its vast databases along with similar themed pages. This brings us to understanding the concept of crawling & Indexing

What is Crawling & Indexing of a website?

Search engines like Google are always in the "discovery process" and is constantly looking for fresh content & valuable pages. When Google discovers your web page it does that with a software program called "Spider". The Google crawler program is known as "Googlebot" It is this spider which goes through every nook and corner of your page and collects data and puts in in a "Bag" This crucial step is called Crawling. Over the years Google has been very efficient at upgrading its crawling capabilities and as a result the Googlebot now is a sophisticated piece of software program which not only collects data but also understands this data based on context & intent of the article and words used.

In the example above, lets say a website is being crawled, the spider will go through the top navigation bar, the image, the words mentioned on the page & the button that leads the user to another page. Google bot will now put all this data in a bag and start storing it in topic based baskets. This process of storing is called Indexing.

For a website, its important to get the most important pages Crawled & Indexed. 

Keywords and content in SEO 

Once you have a centralised list of keywords along with traffic estimates from tools like Google keyword planner & UberSuggest, your next challenge is to create attractive and useful content. According to most analysts, there are a few qualities that Google determines in your content for it to deem as valuable. Here is a a ball park list.

Keyword focus

If the central theme of your page is about "Leather wallet" then you want to have a balance of keywords leaning towards leather wallet concepts and ensure leather wallets are mentioned through out the page in subtle ways. You want to include them in multiple elements on the page like headlines, URL, words in a paragraph etc. Generally acceptable keyword density is about 25-28% if done subtly.

Content Variety

 If your central theme is Leather wallets, you not only want to write an article about it, you also want to upload a video, a picture gallery, some important links and if relevant some reviews & testimonials with additional snippets of information about leather wallets. This not only makes your page content rich but also provides an insight into how knowledgeable your page is about its central theme.

Frequency & Recency

Google loves fresh content & wants to serve its users the most recent articles and other information available on the internet. Hence its important to update your information and customer centric pages frequently especially if you are focussed on certain site-wide keywords.

User generated content (UGC)

A dash of reality is always preferred and considered as genuine content. If a certain UGC element on your page justifies the keyword concept, the probability of your web page to rank goes up.

Researched content

With variety & centricity comes authenticity of content. Your content should be well researched and backed with important links which adds credibility to your web page. This should be reflected across all formats of content across your branded content.

Importance of keyword focussed content cannot be ruled out in SEO, it drives intent based traffic and produces relevant results for any business in focus.

I hope you enjoyed this post and found it informative. Keep writing great content & keep driving traffic.

Hope to see you soon on my next post.

Thanks & regards,

Mitul Shingadia