SEO Tutorial

Welcome to SEO Tutorials.The objective of these tutorials is to provide in depth understanding of SEO.

In addition to free SEO Tutorials, we will cover common interview questions, issues and how to’s of SEO.

Introduction

The term "SEO" is the abbreviation to "Search Engine Optimization". This is not about optimizing search engines, though. It is about optimizing websites for search engines. But why one needs to optimize a website? To answer this question we need to understand what a search engine is.

Search engines as the way to find an info on the web appeared in the middle of 90's. They crawled websites and indexed them in their own databases marking them as having one or another keyword in its content. Thus, when someone put some query in the search box of that search engine, it quickly searched its database and found which indexed pages corresponded to that query.

Search engines

Before we start talking about search engine optimization we need to understand how search engines work.

Basically, each search engine consists of 3 parts:

-Crawler

-Indexer

-ranker

Crawler

A search engine crawler is a program or automated script that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical manner in order to provide up to date data to the particular search engine. While search engine crawlers go by many different names, such as web spiders and automatic indexers, the job of the search engine crawler is still the same.

Crawlers are very active, and often account for a great deal of the visitors to websites all over the internet. The Google crawler, known as Googlebot, is particularly active, and will often visit a website several times a day, checking for updates or new information. Studies have shown that it is much more active than other crawlers, the closest being the Yahoo crawler, which is about half as active as Googlebot.

Indexer

-The Indexer. This module stores all the pages crawled by the spider in a large database called the index. Think of it as the index in a paper book: you find a word and see which pages mention this word. The index is not static, it updates every time the crawler finds a new page or re-crawls the one already presented in the index. Since the volume of the index is very large it often takes time to commit all the changes into the database. So one may say that a website has been crawled, but not yet indexed.

Once the website with all its content is added to the index, the third part of the search engine begins to work.

-The ranker (or search engine software). This part interacts with user and asks for a search query. Then it sifts millions of indexed pages and finds all of them that are relevantto that query. The results get sorted by relevance and finally are shown to a user.

Google search engine work

Search engines perform several activities in order to deliver search results.

At the simplest level, search engines do two things.

Index information. Discover and store information about 30 trillion individual pages on the World Wide Web. Return results. Through a sophisticated series of algorithms and machine learning, identify and display to the searcher the pages most relevant to her search query. How did Google find 30 million web pages?

Over the past 18 years, Google has been crawling the web, page by page. A software program called a crawler also known as a robot, bot, or spider starts with an initial set of web pages. To get the crawler started, a human enters a seed set of pages, giving the crawler content and links to index and follow. Google’s crawling software is called Googlebot, Bing’s is called Bingbot, and Yahoo uses Slurp.

When a bot encounters a page, it captures the information on that page, including the textual content, the HTML code that renders the page, information about how the page is linked to, and the pages to which it links.

In the process of crawling a site, bots will encounter the same links repeatedly. For example, the links in the header and footer navigation should be on every page. Instead of recrawling the content in the same visit, Googlebot may just note the relationship between the two pages based on that link and move on to the next unique page.

As bots crawl to discover information, the information is stored in an index inside the data centers. The index organizes information and tells a search engine’s algorithms where to find the relevant information when returning search results.

But an index isn’t like a dark closet that everything gets stuffed into randomly as it’s crawled. Indexation is tidy, with discovered web page information stored along with other relevant information, such as whether the content is new or an updated version, the context of the content, the linking structure within that particular website and the rest of the web, synonyms for words within the text, when the page was published, and whether it contains pictures or video.

Importance Of Title Tag In Search Engine Optimization

Title Tag : Title tag is used to defined a page title and show preview snippets for a web page in search engine. Title tag is the most important part of search engine optimization. According toMoz "Google commonly displays the first 50-60 characters of a title tag, or as many characters as will fit into a 512 px display".<title> 50-60 Characters / Most Important Keywords<title/>

Importance of Meta Description Tag in Search Engine Optimization

Meta Description Tag : Meta description is an HTML attribute that gives concise explanations of the contents of page. Meta description is commonly used on search engine result pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a web page. Google displays the first 140 to 160 characters of ameta description tag.<meta name="description" content="140 to 160 characters summary of web page" />

Importance of Meta Keywords Tag in Search Engine Optimization

Meta Keywords Tag : Meta keywords tag is used to tell search engines what the topic of the page is. Search engine doesn't use the keywords meta tag in search engine result pages. There is no official length requirement for meta keywords tag but generally you'll see people mention anywhere from 100 to 250 characters<meta name="keywords" content="keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3 ...." />

Importance of Heading Tags in Search Engine Optimization

Heading Tags : In H elements h1 tag is the most important heading to place keywords for bestSEO. Your web page should have only one H1 tag. If you need more heading use H2, H3 tags. You can use H2 - H6 many times but never repeat H1 tag in a web page. Use Most important keywordsin H1 tag as well as title tag. There's no technical limitation to the length of heading tags in a web page.<h1> Your Awesome Heading </h1>

Importance of Image Alt Tag in Search Engine Optimization

Image Alt Tag : The required image alt attribute specifies an alternate text for an image, if the image cannot be load or display. Alt tag is the most important factor in image search. Use the most important keywords in image alt tag and title tag for imperative search engine optimization.<img alt="Image Detail And Keywords"src="/folder/image.jpeg" />

Importance of Anchor text in Search Engine Optimization

Anchor text : Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink, which is helps to link from one page to another. Hyperlink your relevant pages in every web page and use imperative keywordsin links. Internal linking is very important factor to increase domain authority and page authority of a web page.<a href="/another-page.html"title="another page" > Your Keywords Here </a>

Importance of Anchor text in Search Engine Optimization

URL Name or Link : Use keywords in URL names or current web page link. URL names should have keywords in them, not punctuation marks and gibbering numbers. URL name also used insearch engine result pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a web page. Make URL As :<a href="/awesome-login-form.html"title="Awesome login form" > Awesome Login Form </a>

OFF Page SEO Tutorial, Tips And Tricks For Beginners In 2016

Off page SEO refers to all the activity that we can do directly OFF our web page to help our rank higher, such as social bookmarking, search engine submission, social bookmarking, article submission, directory submission, form posting, press release submission, classifieds submission, RSS submission and guest posting.

Importance of Search Engine Submission in SEO

Search Engine Submission : Search engine submission is the first part of off page SEO to index your page in search engines. While Search Engine Submission is generally seen as a way to promote a web page, it normally is not required because the major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo use crawlers, bots, and spiders that ultimately would find most web pages on the Internet all by itself. The top most search engines are Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com and AOL.

Importance of Social Bookmarking in SEO

Social Bookmarking : Social bookmarking is a step for users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of website or web pages. Users save links to websites that they like or want to save, using a social bookmarking network to store these links. In modern time the main purpose of social bookmarking is to generate back links and promote a web page in search engines. The top most social bookmarking sites are StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious, Digg, Meta filter,Newsvine, Folkd, Instapaper and Google bookmark.

Importance of Directory Submission in SEO

Directory Submission : Today submission of web pages to web directories is considered atypical SEO ( search engine optimization ) technique to get back links for the submitted web page. One original feature of directory submission is that it cannot be automated like search engine submissions. Its most important to place a web page in same directory while doing directory submission for effective SEO. The top most directory submission sites are Dmoz,Ipl.org, Jayda, Cyndi's List, Hot Vs Not .

Importance of Article Submission in SEO

Article Submission : Article submission directories allow authors to post unique articles to the directory for content association. These directories allow articles to insert links to other web pages with compatible anchor text. famous article submission directories are studied authority pages and are constantly crawled by search engine spiders. The most important article submission sites are E how, E zine, Examiner, Article base, Technorati and First post.

The Skills Required for Good SEO

There are so many different skills related to SEO. Sometimes it can be overwhelming to even think about the different areas needed to go from start to finish when it comes to creating websites and content, then optimizing it all for search. It honestly is a wide range from technical to soft skills. Don’t feel overwhelmed by this, though. The more you do it, the better you will get.

Advantages of SEO

Increased Traffic

Top positions on the search engine result pages receive a majority of the impressions and clicks, so ranking in these top positions can result in significant traffic increases for your website. SEO also focuses on creating informative and keyword relevant title tags and meta descriptions, which show up in the result pages. Having optimized tags and descriptions helps to increase click through rate, which also promotes increases in qualified web traffic.

ROI

SEO provides trackable and quantifiable results, regardless of whether you are an ecommerce or non-ecommerce site so there are no qualms when it comes to ROI. Specialists are able to track nearly every aspect of their strategy, like increases in rankings, traffic and conversions.

Cost effectiveness

SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies because it targets users who are actively looking for your products and services online. Its inbound nature helps businesses save money as opposed to outbound strategies like cold-calling.

Increased Site Usability

In an effort to make your website easier to navigate for the search engines, SEO simultaneously helps to make your website more navigable for users as well. It consists of rearranging the site’s architecture and links to make pages within the website easier to find and navigate. This not only makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site and find pages, but also makes it easier for users to find information on your website as well.

Brand Awareness

Since top position rankings result in significant impressions, having your website in these top positions on the result pages translates to more exposure for your website. Plus, being on the first page for your targeted keywords not only helps users to associate your brand with those keywords, but it instils trust, since companies on the first page are generally perceived to be more trustworthy.

Better Conversion Rates

An SEO optimised website is fast, easy to use and compatible with mobile and tablet devices. This also translates to better conversions i.e. visitors coming to your website are more likely to become customers, subscribers or loyal visitors.

Stay Updated

The search engine industry is one of the fastest changing industries in the world. Rules and practices change all the time and if you can stay in-sync with the latest developments then it’s for your benefit. SEO is a continuous activity and if you hire a reliable company they will give you the necessary advice so you won’t miss any opportunities.

Bypass Competition

Do not underestimate the power of search engines and SEO and don’t forget that if your competitors are doing SEO and social media marketing then you have to do it as well. If on the other hand they are not doing any of this stuff, then it’s your chance to differentiate and make a step ahead.

Open Business 24/7

A business that gets organic traffic is like it is open for 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. That’s the magic of the Internet and SEO. Invest time and money to get your website on top of the search engines and gain new customers while your business is closed!

Good For Social Media

A webpage with high rankings will also gain more social media exposure. The relationship between SEO and social media is by-directional. Social media popularity is good for SEO purposes and SEO brings more social media visibility. In simple words, searches are more likely to LIKE / Tweet a page when it is found in the first positions of the search engine results than a page that does not have good rankings.