SEO search engine optimization is a process by which we promot our websites on various search engine like Google, Yahoo, Bing. This pdf help you to understand SEO basics. PUSHPENDRA SARSWAT
1. 20 tips for off page optimization
1) Directory Submission : It is the easiest way to get backlinks for your website.
It is also known as one way link building. Submit your site to directory in
relevent category.
2) Search Engine Submission : Submit your site to different search engines. Search
engines crawl your site.
3) Reciprocal Submission : It is also known as two way link building. It’s
like link exchange.
4) Article Writing And Submission : Write an article to your site niche
and submit it to article directory.
5) Blog Commenting : Leave a comment with your main keyword and landing
url.
6) Guest Posting : Write a guest post in other blog or site.
7) Forum Posting : Forum posting is the way to get backlinks and traffic for
your website.
8) Blog Creation : Create a blog for your website.
9) Blog Posting : Submit your blog in blog directory.
10) Link Exchange : Link exchange to other sites with high page rank.
11) Social Bookmarking : Submit your site to social bookmarking sites like
digg, stumbleupon, reddit, diigo, technorati, etc.
12) Social Networking : Share your site to social networking sites like
facebook, twitter, etc. It is the easiest way to get traffic of your website.
13) Yahoo Answers : It gets traffic of your site.
14) PPT And PDF Creation And Submission : Create and submit your ppt and
pdf file in docstoc.com/upload, 4shared.com, easy-share.com, pdfcast.org,
doocu.com/pdf, slideshare.net, yudu.com, etc.
15) Image Sharing : Share an image on image sharing sites like
photobucket.com, flickr.com, zooomr.com, etc.
16) Video Sharing : create a video for your site and share it to video
sharing sites like youtube, photobucket, metacafe, myspace, dailymotion, etc.
2. 17) Press Release : Write a news for your website and submit it to press
release sites.
18) Classifieds : It is the way to advertising of your website but it also
gets backlinks for your site.
19) Business Listing : It is the way to increase your business and traffic.
20) RSS Feed Creation and Submission : create rss feed for your site with
the help of feedburner and submit it to rss feed directory.
Difference b/w on page & off page optimization
On page Optimization are related directly to the content and structure of the
website. This normally consists of pages written in the HyperText Markup
Language but also applies to other document formats that are indexed by
search engines, for example Microsoft Word or PDF formats. On-page
optimization involves modifying keyword frequency in the URL, Title,
Headings, Hypertext Links and Body text while the Off page Optimization are
elements that have less to do with the actual site. Off Page Characteristics
refer to all links both from pages contained within a particular web site and
from pages of other web sites that point to these specific pages. But, There
is never a confusion regarding which is more important between on page and
off page characteristics because both are equally as important.
A List of All On-Page and Off-Page SEO Optimization
Steps
1. Website analysis
A website analysis is a must for every website owner and if you are an
SEO you must know how to do a website’s analysis. A website analysis is
more than a checklist in which you check if everything works fine and
according to plan or not like content, programming, competition etc.
2. Keyword Research = Keyword research is necessary for a website. It
helps in getting best keywords which will help you to get only the targeted
traffic from search engines.
3. Bold, Italic effect to main keywords = These tags shows the
emphasis given to a particular word. This kind od tagging helps the bots to
understand that what the owner want to tell the user and what are the main
key points of the content shown in that page, for which it would have higher
ranking in SERP results.
4. Canonicalization = Url Duplicacy, if not solved then can harm your
website. It happens because one don’t redirects the unnecessary page that
3. show the same data which is somehow considered as duplicate data by search
engine bots.
5. Competition Analysis = It is must to understand the market and your
competitors. One has to make some plans to top the completion that can only
happen after doing the competition analysis about the every step they have
taken so far and probable future plans, this helps a lot to perform better in
the market.
6. CSS Validation = You website must look good not from outside but also
from inside to the bots which crawl your site, so make sure that you have
100% correct CSS, so validate it CSS validators.
7. Google Base Feeds = Better known as FeedBurner, It will help you to
have more subscribers from google reader which leads to more and better
traffic.
8. H Tags Optimization (Eg: H1, H2, H3) = An important part of SEO,
which helps you to make the robots understand that what is more important in
your website and what is less.
9. HTML Code Clean Up & Optimization = HTML also needs to be optimize
to provide optimal results, one must not create a website full of codes, try
to make them as small as you can so that the load time can get better and
this also helps in ranking better in SERP results.
10. Image Optimization = It refers to use alt tags properly. Using alt
tags with every image will help you to get traffic from image search as well.
11. Hyperlink Optimization = The anchor text used to create hyperlinks
of your website always helps you to rank better for those anchor texts, so
try to use keywords as your anchor text to create links, internal or
external.
12. In depth site Analysis = A deep analysis of your own website is
necessary to do. It helps you to detect all the errors and other
malfunctioning in your site.
13. Link Validation = All the links must be correct and must not be
broken.
14. Meta Description Tags Optimization = You Meta tags help you to
rank better but you must also know that how to manage them as there are some
limitation and rules that you must follow to get maximum benefits from it.
15. Meta Keywords Tags Optimization = Just Like Meta Description tags
Meta Keywords tag is also important most of the people thinks that it does
not help in any way but it really does.
16. Navigation & Design Optimization = Your Navigation bar or any
other navigation system must be good and user friendly, with it a good design
which attracts the eye of the user is must.
4. 17. PR Sculpting = It’s a way to get PR from the websites which already have
good PR. One can have the PR juice from good ranking websites by having
18. Robots.txt Optimization = It a file which tell the search engine bot
that which place to crawl and which to not.
19. Text Modification Optimization = Text optimization also plays
important role in ranking better in SERP. One must apply the keyword density
rule to gain more benefits from their site.
20. Title Tag Optimization = A title is most important tag, a good not
only attracts the users but also the search bots.
21. URL Rewrite = URL rewrite helps one to increase the visibility of
their site by making url understandable in human language which are highly
recommended by search engines as well.
22. W3C Validation = With help of W3C you can validate your website to
make sure that it is up to dated and working fine according to the latest
rules of programming.
23. Broken Links Checking = It’s necessary to find out every error in
your website even if it is a broken link. These kinds of error can happen
internally or externally which may lead to bad reputation from both users and
bots.
24. Directory Submissions = Directory Submission will help you to set
the category of your website and to get good free one way backlinks which
will help in faster indexation of your website.
25. Extraction of Site Url’s ( Link Level Depth) = It helps in
detecting the duplicacy of title and meta tags of those pages.
26. Internal Link Structuring = Internal link structure refers to a
structure which let you link the other pages of your website with any other
relative pages, these also may serve as backlinks.
27. Link Building ( Link Bait ) = It is a procedure of a reciprocal
linking with websites which already have good PR to share the link juice.
28. One way link (PR4 or Greater) = This steps may include all of the
off page optimization steps to get one way backlinks, sometimes they are paid
and sometimes they are free.
29. Site Back-links count = Try to get more backlinks everyday, more
backlinks means better ranking and more traffic which leads to more income.
30. Local Search Engine Optimization = If your business is local then
Local search engine optimization can help you a lot. Submitting in local
directories and search engine apps will increase your chances to appear more
in a local search.
31. Customer Review Submission = This is just like the testimonials but
on a large scale, it includes testimonials, customer feedback, their comments
5. etc. You can show this on many pages of your website which will increase
customers’ trust in you.
32. h card Integration = hCard is one of several open microformat
standards which helps in representing vCard properties and values in semantic
HTML or XHTML.
33. Testimonial Submission = Try to get more testimonials from some
reputed customers of your which will increase your goodwill.
34. Local Search Engine Optimization = This helps in getting better
response from internet users if you have a local business. It is helpful for
small businesses like shoe makers, restaurants, pizza shops, marts etc.
35. Google Webmaster Tools account setup & monitoring = It will
help you to understand the flaws and errors in your website with many other
facilities to be used to make your website a better one.
36. Installing Usability Tools on Website = If there are any tools
that can be used by your customers, please provide it to them.
37. Optimization for Multiple Browsers
= Making a website look good in all of the web browser is necessary because
you don’t want to lose your user just because your layout does not open
correctly in some browser.
38. Article Submission = It helps in having a good backlink and also some
visitors from good article websites.
39. Blog Comment on Relevant Blogs = Commenting on relevant blogs,
increase your popularity as well as provides good backlinks, just make sure
that you do not spam.
40. Blog Designing for the website = A blog of your website must look
attractive as well it also must be similar to your website, so that the user
may not get confused about its ownership.
41. Classified submission = It is a free facility given my many websites
mostly forums to promote your website, products on it or any service that you
provide for free, but please just don’t spam there.
42. Creating Promotional pages on hubpages, squidoo, etc = Hub
pages are good sources to attract more users, keeping the relevancy of the
content you submit there can bring more users to your website.
43. Face Book Twitter Marketing = Social Media Marketing (SMM) with
Social networks like Facebook and Twitter can also help you to spread the
word about your website.
44. Integration of page bookmarking tools = You can also bookmark
your bookmarks like creating a linkwheel between them.
6. 45. Integration of page sharing tools = Sharing tools help you to
increase your link popularity through those users who like to share the info
with other with help of your sharing tools.
46. Paid Submission = One good websites people usually get paid links on
targeted pages from where they get backlink, PR juice and traffic as well.
47. Photo Sharing = Sharing images on websites like flickr, photo bucket
etc helps to increase traffic through image searches.
48. PPT Submission = Uploading PPT presentation or pdf files with good
knowledge also attracts the users eyes.
49. Press Release = Any small or major change must be released in market
to aware your customers, Press release do this work.
50. RSS Feeds = RSS feed helps reader to read your content without any
fancy layout and irritating ads and many users use different RSS feed
directories to find the content that they like to read and these website also
keep track of your every single post which also counts as backlinks.
51. Social Bookmarking = Bookmarking is one of the best way to get good
one way dofollow backlinks all you need a good list of bookmarking websites.
52. Video Submission = A good video can make a huge effect on your user,
submitting to video websites like YouTube, MetaCafe, Vimeo etc can bring more
targeted traffic.
53. Article Writing = It is the same as blog writing but article you
write can also be submitted in other article websites or article directories.
54. Blog Writing = By providing good content to users that they like to
read about your website, your service or your product, whichever the case is
keeps your users stay in your contact.
55. Press Release Writing = Press release helps one to look like more
profession, press release helps in spreading the word about your site or
56. Website Spell Check = One must keep their content correct even from
the point of view grammar rules.
57. XML Site Map Creation & Submission = XML sitemap helps bots to
crawl your website without tackling any difficulties usually created by
JavaScript, HTML error and other malfunctions.
58. HTML Sitemap for users = HTML sitemap helps user to find out all the
links available on a website and they can go at the desired place.
59. Log file analysis = By keeping a track of who is coming and when is
coming you can provide content or do SEO according to that region. It also
helps in tracking the incoming of search engine bots and you can know that
when to expect them again.
7. 60. Google, Yahoo & Bing Site Map Creation = XML sitemaps helps in
getting site indexed much faster by letting the bot to know about all the
urls of your website.
61. Deep Indexing Recommendations = Deep indexing helps to get more
backlinks from your own website, though as internal links they still help a
lot.
62. Check Search Engine Road Blocks = Check if there is any problem
for robots to crawl your website, you can check it through use of fetch as
bot from Google webmaster tool.
On Page Optimization – A Complete Walkthrough
On page optimization is one of the very first step of SEO which every
webmaster should look into. It probably won’t even take you an hour to learn
and implement some of these on-page optimization techniques. But you may ask
me, why it is so important? – Well literally speaking, if you can do proper
on-page optimization for your website you can not only rank well in a search
engine but also can increase the overall readability of your website for your
visitors.
Below I have tried to summarize some of the most important on-page
optimization techniques for you. You can implement some of these if not all
to give your site a better exposure to the search engines as well as to
increase your overall CTR (Click-Through-Rate) ratio.
1. Title Optimization
A site’s title tag is by far the most important website optimization element.
A title tag should be short but descriptive enough for your visitors to
identify you and your business. Title tag is the first thing that is shown &
indexed by the search engines. So naturally it is given a very high
importance – out of thousands results that a searcher sees, your site’s title
has to be appealing enough for him to want to find out more information. On
the other hand, your title has to be appealing enough to the search engine in
order to rank you above thousands of other similar websites like yours.
Important things to include in your title:
¦Your Name/ Business Name / Site Name: This is very important for breading
propose. If you feel that your customers may search you by your brand name
than it’s also useful to put it somewhere in your title.
¦Keywords: If you want to rank for a certain keywords it is always good to
place some of them in your title tag. A Title tag represents the whole flavor
& content of your website. So if you are selling pizza online you can include
keywords like – order pizza, home delivery pizza etc in your title tag. Don’t
staff too many keywords in your title. Write a title which is readable to
humans & also good for the search engine. (e.g. Domino’s Pizza, Order Pizza
Online for Delivery – Dominos.com)
¦Include your 1-800 or other toll-free numbers: Some may not agree with me
on this, but I think including your phone number in the title tag does help
your visitors to take a direct action! It also makes your site look more
professional and legit when it’s being displayed in the SERP (Search Engine
Result Page). Searchers are likely to ‘click’ on the result that has a phone
8. number attached to it because in their unconscious mind, they will have a
good impression on the authenticity of the business and the level of support.
If you prefer not to include your number in the title tag, you can
alternatively include it in your Meta Description which will give you almost
the same benefits.
2. Meta Tags Optimization
A site’s Meta tags may not be as important as it used to be before, however I
feel that Meta Description is something you can’t just ignore. A site’s Meta
description should contain a brief description of your website focusing on
the areas and services that your business is specialized in. This small piece
of text can be considered as a selling snippet, if a searcher finds it
appealing he is likely to click and go inside your page to find out more
information. But if your Meta Description is too generic and isn’t written
too well then there is a good chance that your site will simply be ignored.
Important things to include in your Meta Description:
¦Include your Selling Point– Tell your customers what they want to hear
through your site’s Meta Description, and you will definitely get some
advantage over others in the SERP. For instance – if you sell ‘cheap web
hosting’ then including a phrase like “hosting starting from only $0.99” may
result in more clicks and visitors because your description will exactly
match the flavor of search performed by the user.
¦Keywords – Including some of your keywords will give you some advantage in
Google’s relevancy algorithm.
¦1-800 or other Toll Free Numbers – if you haven’t included this already in
your title, you can rather include it in your Meta description. If the users
have skype installed on their system, any number on their browser will become
clickable which will result in a direct skype-out call. So basically, if your
number appears in the Meta description some of your customers might just
prefer to call you directly instead of going through your site.
3. Important HTML Tags
It is necessary for you to highlight certain parts of your website that you
want your readers to look at. There are several tags in html which allows you
to do so. For instance – the header tags [h1] [h2] [h3], Bold [strong],
Italic [em] etc. The text inside your header tags (e.g. [h1]) is given very
high importance by the search engine. Usually you can use them to define the
page/post titles or the important sections of your website.
Header Elements:
¦Header 1: Header 1 should be used to define the most important section of
your page. Usually Header 1 is used for Site’s title or header text.
¦Header 2 & 3: Header 2 and 3 can be used for Page/Post titles or important
sections of your pages. Separating your content with headers is a good
practice as it makes your site more readable and easy to navigate.
Text Styles:
¦Bold: You can bold (e.g. [strong]) certain words which are of high
importance. Sometimes it’s good to bold your keywords where appropriate.
However overdoing this may get you penalized.
¦Italic: You can use the [em] tag to emphasize certain words which will
appear in italic.
¦Quote: This is very useful when you are quoting from someone.
9. 4. Keyword Optimization & Synonyms
Your site’s content needs to be optimized in such a way that it can suit both
search engines & your readers. Stuffing your site with too many keywords can
make your site unreadable. So you will need to have some sort of balance
between your keywords & your content.
Important elements of Keyword Optimization:
¦Research: Do a proper research before you decide on your keywords. There
are plenty of free tools out there that can help you to do keyword research.
Some of my personal favorites are: SEObook Keyword Suggestion tool, Google
Adwords Keyword Tool & Overture Keyword Tool.
¦Keyword Density: Try to have a moderate keyword density so that it can help
the search engine to determine that your page is indeed related & relevant to
the keyword that you are targeting.
¦Synonyms & Related Keywords: I personally like to use synonyms instead of
having a high keyword density. This helps to make my content sound natural
but still helps in SEO.
¦Long Tail Keywords: It’s often good to target some long tail keywords as
they are comparatively easier to rank for. During your keyword research you
should be able to gather some good long tail keywords that you can optimize
your site for. But you can also come up with your own long tail keywords; for
example try adding some common words like – ‘best’, ‘free’, ‘cheap’, ‘top’
etc. along with your actual keyword and you might eventually get some good
long tail keywords.
5. Link Optimization
It is important to optimize your internal & external outbound links for
search engines as well as to give your visitors a better navigation.
Important elements of Link Optimization:
¦Try using good Anchor Text when you are linking to other people. Include
the appropriate keyword in the anchor text which gives the outbound link a
‘proper meaning’ and value.
¦A good & clean Internal Link Structure with proper use of anchor text will
definitely help. E.g. “Credit Card Application” is a better anchor text
compared to “click here”
¦If you are using a CMS, then try using permalinks. This way your
keywords/post title will be on the link itself and thus it will valued more
by the search engines.
6. Image Optimization
If your site has lot of images, you need to optimize them too as they can’t
be read by the search engines. It’s very easy for a human reader to interpret
the image into its meaning. However for a Web crawler the whole interpreting
process is completely different. Search Engine spiders can only read text but
not images. So you need to use some special tags for your images in order to
give them some meaning.
Some Important Image Optimization Elements:
¦Alt text : ALT text or Alternate Text is the text to describe your image
when your mouse moves over an image on your web page. The text should be
meaningful but short. You can use your relevant keywords as ALT text. If your
10. browser can’t display the image for some reason, the alt text is used in
place of that particular image.
¦File name : always use meaningful file name for your images, use names like
“apple-iphone-cover.jpg” instead of meaningless “DSC24045.jpg”. Keep image
file name same or similar to the ALT text.
¦Image Title : always use the title tag in images which will show the title
as tool tip when a user moves his mouse over the image. Example of an image
with title tag: [img src=”http://imagelocation.jpg” alt=”Image description”
title=”Title of the Image”]
¦Image Linking : Whenever you want to link to your image, use the image
keywords in your link text. Example: use “view an Apple iPhone”, instead of
“Click here to view” as the anchor text.
The most common on-page optimization techniques used in
SEO industry are given below.
Meta Data Modification:
Modifying Meta Data ie, Titles, meta descriptions and keywords of individual
pages helps to increase your organic rankings in Google results. It also
helps to increase Click Ratios (the number of clicks to your website on a
Search engine results page) for different keywords.
Content optimization:
Optimizing your website’s present content results in better indexing of your
pages, hence help search engines to better understand their themes and thus
improve organic rankings in Search engine results.
This involves optimizing the content with right keyword density and use of
H1, H2 heading tags.
URL Structure Optimization:
The structure of Urls have a significant role in deciding search engine
rankings. One should optimize each of the urls to reflect the theme of the
pages they represent. An example of an optimized url structure is
www.domainname.com/keyword where the part keyword is replaced by the search
term for which your page is optimized.
Image Optimization:
Optimizing the images help search engine to easily find read and relate them
to the theme of your website. This increases the rankings of your website for
image searches and helps to drive more visitors.
Sitemap creation and Submission:
11. Creating and Submitting a sitemap of your website helps search engine bots to
better index your web pages and access all urls easily. It also helps to add
more web pages to a search engine’s index.
Redirects and Specified urls:
Implementation of 301 redirects and specifying a url format using webmaster
tools help to avoid duplicate content penalty by search engines. For example
Search engines see http://www.sample.com and http://sample.com as two
different pages, so the presence of same content in both urls are considered
as duplicate which can cause a drop in your search engine rankings.
Google Webmaster Tools:
Submitting your website to Google Webmaster tools gives you a detailed data
about the total visibility of your website in internet. It helps you to
analyse the crawl rate, unfound urls, incoming links etc and is a great tool
for measuring a website’s popularity.
Google Analytics:
It helps you to track visitors, keywords and conversions. It gives you a
clear idea about how your website is performing in World Wide Web
On Page Optimization is a very important factor for overall dominance
in Google Searches. If all of your website pages are perfectly SEO
optimized, it can help you a great deal in getting a higher rank in
Google searches.
Though there is no successful formula for On Page Optimization but you
can adopt these following best practices to make your pages SEO
friendly:
1) Title Tag:
It is the most important factor for On Page optimization. The maximum length
for Title tag is 70 characters. So, try to write a title within 70
characters. If your title is more than 70 characters, then the engines will
display an ellipsis – “…” to indicate that title tag has been cut off. So,
try to keep it short.
Also, Use the keyword in the title tag at least once, or better twice if it
makes sense. And try to put the keyword as close to the beginning of the
title tag as possible which would help you to rank higher in Google searches.
Another aspect you can keep in mind is to write a Title which is click
worthy and emotional compelling users to click more on your pages.
2) Meta Description:
12. Meta Description is not used by search engines now for ranking but still it
is advisable to use your keywords in the Meta Description and make it unique,
short and catchy to get more clicks from users. The maximum limit for Meta
Description is 140 characters.
See Also: A Complete Guide to Rich Snippets
3) Heading Tags:
It is advisable to use the Heading tags in the body of the content and Use
the keyword in your Heading tags too. Use of heading tags helps users and
search engines know where the key points of your content are.
Your main page title should use the heading(H1) tag — this shows what your
page is about. Use of additional tags, such as (H2) & (H3) are also important
to know what are the topics on the page.
4) Body of the Content:
You should use your keyword at least 3 times in the body of the content. You
can also use your keyword more than 3 times if the body of the content is
long but do not use too many keywords to avoid any ban or punishment from
Google.
Also use your keyword at least once in bold and italic too.
The recommended minimum length for an article is 300 words.
5) Alt Attributes on Images:
Use the keyword at least once in the alt attribute of an image on the page.
As Search bots can only read HTML tags, they can’t read images without Alt
Attributes.
So, using Alt Attributes would help your images to show up in Image searches
which can also bring valuable traffic to your website.
I would also recommend to use the keyword as the file name of the image to
make it more SEO friendly.
6) URL Structure:
The URL structure of your page should be short, descriptive and should
include your keyword.
Do not use URL structures like http://youngblah.com/?p=5024 which do not
describe anything about the page but instead use URLs like
http://youngblah.com/?seo-techniques.
URL structures are very important from SEO perspective as well as
descriptive URLs increase click through rates and visibility.
7) Internal Linking:
Internal Linking is another important factor from SEO perspective and to get
easily spidered by Search Engines Bots. It can help to increase the relevance
of keywords and the keyword rankings of a given page within your site.
SEO Glossary
13. 301 Redirect
A 301 redirect is a page status code that tells search engines a page has
permanently moved to another URL. The new URL might be on the same site or on
a different one. You use a 301 redirect when you want to capture the traffic
to the old address but the page is now physically elsewhere. For instance, if
you change filenames, this usually leads to changes in the URL of the page
and if you don't do a 301 redirect, when visitors come to your old URL, they
will see a Page Not Found message. There are many ways to perform a redirect
and your options are limited by the technology (i.e. PHP, ASP, etc.) you are
using. If you want to check if your URLs are redirecting properly, use the
Redirect Check tool.
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302 Redirect
Unlike 301 redirect, a 302 redirect is used when you move pages temporarily.
For instance, if you are doing major changes on your site that involve
changing the URLs, and you need weeks to complete this, you can use 302
redirects for the time you are performing the changes. However, have in mind
that 302 redirects are frequently abused . i.e. you redirect your traffic to
an illegitimate site and search engines don't always regard 302 redirects in
a favorable way.
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ALT tag
The Alt tag, more correctly called the Alt attribute of the <img> tag, is a
way to tell search engines what an image is about. Since search engines don't
index the contents of images, if you don't provide a meaningful description
of the image in the Alt attribute of its tag, search engines won't index any
information about the image except its name. Good SEO practices require that
you fill the Alt tag with meaningful description without resorting to keyword
stuffing.
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Anchor text
Anchor text is the text of a hyperlink – i.e. in this hyperlink: SEO tools,
"SEO tools" is the anchor text of the hyperlink that leads to the home page
of the site. Usually the anchor text is underlined but this is not mandatory.
The importance of anchor text for SEO is significant because search engines
pay a lot of attention to it and if there are keywords in the anchor text,
this helps to rank better. Use the Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer to see if
the anchor text of the backlinks to your site contains your keywords or not.
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14. Backlink
Backlinks, also called inbound links are links from other sites to your site.
In SEO, the quality of backlinks (i.e. if the backlink comes from a reputable
site, what the Page Rank of the linking site is, and what the anchor text is)
is one of the major ranking factors. For more information, please refer to
the The Importance of Backlinks article.
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Bad neighbor
A bad neighbor is a site with low quality and/or illegal content. When you
link to bad neighbors, this affects your rankings in a negative way. When bad
neighbors link to you, this plays no role for your rankings because the
assumption is you can't control what the webmaster of the bad neighbor links
to. For more details, see the Bad Neighborhood article.
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Baidu
Baidu is the Chinese search engine. In many aspects it is different from
Google and if you want to learn how to rank well with it, consult the How to
Optimize for Baidu article.
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Bing
Bing is the Microsoft search engine and as such it is one of the biggest
search engines. Its algorithm is different from that of Google, Yahoo, and
the other search engines, as explained in the Bing Optimization article.
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Black hat
Black hat refers to a set of unethical SEO practices aimed at getting
artificially high rankings with search engines. Black hat includes techniques
such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, or the use of doorway pages. Sometimes
webmasters inadvertently use black hat techniques . for instance when they go
the over-optimization route . but still the end result could be getting
banned from search engines.
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Broad match
A broad match is the opposite of exact match and it occurs when any of the
search words (including synonyms) are found in the matched string. For
15. instance, if the search words are "homes in LA", when a broad match is used,
the search results will also include matches for "homes in Los Angeles", "LA
home", "real estate Los Angeles", etc.
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CTR
CTR, or Click Through Rate, is a measure used in Pay Per Click (PPC)
advertising to measure the number of clicks per 100 visitors. If you are
using Google Adwords to promote your site, CTR tells you how much attention
your keywords are getting . the keywords with the highest CTR get the most
attention.
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Cloaking
Cloaking is an unethical, black hat SEO technique that involves serving
different versions of the same page to crawlers and to human visitors. The
version you serve to crawlers is highly optimized for good rankings, while
the version you serve to your human visitors is made in a way to appeal to
humans.
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Crawler
A crawler, also called a spider, is the search engine robot that crawls and
indexes Web pages. It is an automated program that periodically visits a
site.
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Deep links
Deep links are backlinks to internal pages. For instance, SEO tips isn't a
deep link because it points to the home page, while Keyword Difficulty is
because it points to an internal page, i.e. the
http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-difficulty-article-20.php page. You use deep
links when you want to promote particular pages from your site, rather than
the homepage.
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Domain age
Domain age is a measure how old a domain is. Generally, all equal, older
domains get more favorable treatment by search engines than new domain. The
reason is that new domains are often created just for backlinks, while older
domains that have been around for years, are considered to be more
16. trustworthy. You can check the age of a domain with the Domain Age tool and
learn more about the term in the Age of a Domain Name article.
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Doorway page
A doorway page, also called a gateway page, is another black hat technique
that can get you banned from search engines. The technique employs the
creation of numerous identical pages, each of which is optimized for a
particular keyword. When the visitor comes through the doorway page, he or
she is redirected to another page, aimed at human visitors.
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Duplicate content
Duplicate content . i.e. content that is verbatim the same or very similar to
content found on other sites or other pages of your site – is one of the
worst things that you can put on your site. Search engines penalize for
duplicate content, so use the Similar Page Checker tool to see if you have
content that is very similar to other pages online. For more details about
what duplicate content is, read the Duplicate Content Filter article.
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Dynamic URL
A dynamic URL is the opposite of Static URL. A dynamic URL is the result of a
database query and it looks like this:
http://www.yoursime.com/products.aspx?Y=2011&M=05. Dynamic URLs are SEO – and
user–unfriendly and if you want to rank well with search engines, you must
rewrite dynamic URLs (for instance with the URL Rewriting tool) into static
URLs, as described in the Dynamic URLs vs Static URLs article.
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Exact match
An exact match is the opposite of broad match. When an exact search is
performed, the search results include only the exact search string. For
instance, if the search string is "homes in LA", the search results will
include only these pages where the "homes in LA" string is present and won't
include matches for "homes in Los Angeles", "LA home", "real estate Los
Angeles", etc. Exact matches are useful when searching for a competitive
keyword because it filters the results, rather than delivering millions of
broad matches.
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Flash
17. Flash is an interactive media technology that makes sites more interesting.
At the same time, Flash can kill your search rankings because search engines
can't index Flash content directly. Optimizing Flash Sites article explains
what to do if you have Flash content on your site.
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Frames
Similarly to Flash, frames are a burden in terms of SEO. When you use frames
on a page, you use the same URL but show different content in each of the
frames. This confuses search engines because for them one URL is one page of
content, not multiple pages, as the case with frames is and search engines
might not index the content of all the frames on a page.
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Gateway page
Another name for doorway page.
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Geotargeting
Geotargeting is a technique to target audience based on geographic location.
The criterion could be country, state, or city. Geotargeting is used in local
search, too, when you are interested in traffic from a particular location
only, not from the global traffic search engines bring by default.
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Google
The leading search engine. It is also a leader in PPC ads (AdSense and
AdWords) and in email services.
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Googlebot
Googlebot is the Google's spider . i.e. the robot that traverses the Web and
indexes pages for inclusion in Google's database. You can see how your site
looks to Googlebot with the Search Engine Spider Simulator tool.
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Heading tag
18. The heading tag is used to separate the sections of text on a page. Heading
tags are from <H1> to <H6>, with H1 being the title of the page. Very often
H1 and the title tag are the same but for better results you can make them
different. Keywords in heading tags weigh more than keywords in the body of
the page, so don't forget to use the right keywords in your tags.
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Hyperlink
A hyperlink is a link from one page to another or from one place on a page to
another place on the same page. Hyperlinks are inbound and outbound. The
hyperlinks that start and end on the same site are called internal
hyperlinks.
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Inbound links
Inbound links are links from other sites to your site. They are the same as
backlinks.
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Index
1. (Verb) The activity a spider performs when crawling the Web and collecting
pages.
2. (Noun) The database of indexed Web pages a search engine stores to
retrieve search results from.
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Internal links
Internal links are the links from one page on a site to another page on the
same site or from one place on a page to another place on the same page.
Search engines give the same value to internal and inbound links, so it makes
sense to have as many meaningful internal links on your site as possible.
Internal links are also important for a site's navigation.
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JavaScript
JavaScript is a popular Web programming language that allows to significantly
enhance the functionality of a site but for SEO the use of JavaScript could
be a problem. When the scripts you use are not spiderable, the content you
have inside them can't be indexed by search engines.
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Keyword
Keywords are the major factor for SEO success. A keyword (or more commonly .
a couple of keywords and/or keyphrases) describes what a page is about. When
you have keywords in the title and the headings, this is good for your
rankings. The higher the keyword density for a particular keyword, the better
you rank for this keyword in search results. However, too high density could
be regarded as keyword stuffing.
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Keyword density
The keyword density for a particular keyword defines how many times this
keyword is used on a page. Keyword density of 2 to 7 per cent is optimal
because everything above this could be regarded as keyword stuffing and
everything below this will make your page go down in search results. To check
the keyword density of your pages, use the Keyword Density Cloud tool.
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Keyword research
Keyword research is a major task for every SEO expert. Before you start any
SEO, you need to find the right keywords for your site and niche. To do this,
you use tools, such as the Website Keyword Suggestions tool, or the Keyword
Playground tool. These tools suggest relevant keywords with high search
volume . i.e. the keywords that makes sense to optimize for.
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Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a black hat technique, which involves artificially high
keyword density for your target keywords. In the best case keyword stuffing
can substantially lower your rankings in search results and in the worst, it
can get you banned from search engines.
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Landing page
This is the page where the visitor arrives, when he or she clicks a link. The
landing page could be the home page but it could also be any internal site
page.
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20. Link building
Link building . i.e. acquiring quality backlinks from other sites – is a
major activity for every SEO. Link building is a very time–consuming process
you can speed with the right tools, such as the Backlink Builder tool. Not
all backlinks matter, as you will learn in the Link Building Mistakes
article.
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Link exchange
Link exchanges are one of the primary ways to link building. Link exchanges
involve exchanging links with other webmasters, preferably in the same niche.
When you have thousands of backlinks from link exchanges, tracking them
manually becomes virtually impossible and here tools, such as the Backlink
Tracker Pro tool, come to the rescue.
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Link farm
Link farms are sites with many outbound links, often created with the sole
purpose to raise other sites' rankings. Link farms generally don't rank well
in search results and the backlinks from them are of low (if any) value.
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Link spam
Link spam is when you get dozens of backlinks in a short time, especially
from low quality sites. Very often link spammers use automated tools to get
backlinks but even manual submission to numerous sites and blogs is regarded
as link spam.
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Local search
Local search applies to those cases, when you use geotargeting and other
techniques (i.e. your location as a keyword) to attract local visitors and to
rank well in local search engines or in global ones for searches for your
location. More details about local search can be found in the SEO for local
businesses article.
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Long tail keywords
Long tail keywords are keywords with low search volume but high value. For
instance, "dating" is a very general keyword with millions of monthly
21. searches but it is low value because the traffic you will be getting won't be
as targeted as the traffic for "single parents dating Los Angeles" for
example. "single parents dating Los Angeles" is a long tail keyword.
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Meta description
The meta description is one of the most important meta tags because in it you
write your description of the page, search engines pick it and show it in
search results for visitors to see. This is why you need to write meaningful
meta descriptions with keywords with them but without stuffing them.
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Meta keywords
Similarly to the meta description, meta keywords are also important for SEO
because this is the place where you put your keywords and search engines read
it. Meta keywords used to be more important in the past but due to constant
abuse, now they have less weight but still they aren't totally deprecated.
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Meta tag
Meta tags are HTML tags, where you describe the contents of your page. Among
the most important meta tags are the title, the meta description and the meta
keywords.
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Mod_rewrite
Mod_rewrite is the Apache module for rewriting dynamic URLs into static. If
you don't want to mess with the configuration of Apache, use the URL
Rewriting tool instead.
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Navigation
Navigation is the system of hyperlinks and other auxiliary items that help
users find their way through the site. Internal links play a vital role in
navigation.
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nofollow
22. A nofollow is an attribute of links, usually inbound links, that tells search
engines not to follow the link. Links with the nofollow attribute are not
counted by search engines (mainly by Google because some of the other search
engines don't take the nofollow attribute into account) and therefore don't
count as backlinks.
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Organic search
Organic search, also known as natural search, refers to the non–paid search
results search engines serve based on the relevancy of the page where the
search string is found. Organic search is the opposite of the paid search
listings search engines serve for particular keywords.
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Outbound links
Outbound links are the opposite of inbound links (more commonly known as
backlinks). Outbound links are these links that start from your site and
point to another site on the Web. When the number of your outbound links is
high, this affects your rankings in a negative way, so keep the number of
outbound links low.
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Page Rank
A Page Rank (PR) is a measure used by Google to determine the popularity of a
page. PR ranges from 0 (most unpopular sites) to 10 (most popular sites).
Pages with high PR generally rank better in search results but this isn't
always so. One of the important implications of PR is with backlinks .
getting a few backlinks from sites with high PR helps more than getting tons
of them from low PR sites.
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Page title
A page title is what you put in the title tag . it displays in the browser
and tells users what your page is about. Clear and descriptive page titles
with keywords in them do a great job for your good rankings.
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Paid links
Paid links are these links you get in exchange of payment. Buying and selling
links is considered a huge offense by Google and if you get caught, the
23. penalties are severe . from not counting the links at all, to exclusion from
search index.
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Poison words
Poison words are these words that when used on a page, degrade the quality of
the page for search engines. Usually it is adult words that have such a role
but there are also other words that can literally poison a page with great
content and bury it deep in search results.
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Proximity
Proximity measures how close the words in the search string are in their
occurrence on the page. When the words are one next to another . i.e. they
are an exact match of the search phrase, this page is considered highly
relevant.
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Reciprocal links
Reciprocal links are these links where you put a link to Site A on your site
and Site A puts a link to your site in return. Reciprocal links are a common
form of a link exchange. You can use the Reciprocal Link Check tool to see
how many of the reciprocal links you had still exist.
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Redirect
A redirect is a way to tell search engines that the URL of a page has
changed. When you use redirects, you don't lose the traffic to your old URL.
301 Redirect (permanent redirect) and 302 Redirect (temporary redirect) are
the two most popular ways to redirect a page.
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Reinclusion
Reinclusion is the act of being included again in Google index. Most often
sites are removed from Google index because of the use of black hat SEO and
if they want to be reincluded, they need to clean their act. The Reinclusion
in Google article details what to do in order to be admitted in Google again.
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24. robots.txt
robots.txt is a file, where you tell search engines which pages/sections of
your site not to index. However, while generally search engines respect your
wishes and don't spider the pages/sections you don't want them to, if you
have sensitive information, don't think it is safe, if you have listed it as
not–spiderable in robots.txt. For more information about robots.txt, refer to
the What is robots.txt article.
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Sandbox
A sandbox in Google is a place, where new sites are temporarily put before
Google includes them in search results. When a site is in the sandbox, it is
indexed by search engines but results from it don't show in the search
results. Instead, results from sandboxed sites are available in the
supplementary results,which generally get much less traffic than the standard
results pages.
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Search engine
A search engine is a software application that is used to spider, store,
index, and display search results from the pages around the Web. Google,
Yahoo, and Bing are the three major search engines.
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SEO
SEO, an acronym for Search Engine Optimization, is a set of tools and skills
used to finetune pages, so that they rank well in search engines. Two of the
main SEO activities are keyword research and link building.
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SEO tools
SEO tools are various programs and pieces of code that allow to perform SEO
tasks. For instance, there are tools for keyword research and link building,
for Backlink Anchor Text Analysis, etc.
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SERP
SERP is an abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page . i.e. the page search
engines display with the results for a particular search query.
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Sitemap
A sitemap is a file, usually in HTML or XML format, where links to the
important pages on the site are gathered in one place. Sitemaps are useful
both for human visitors because they help navigation and for search engines.
For more details about sitemaps, please refer to the Importance of Sitemaps
article.
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Spider
Spiders are search engine robots that crawl the Web and index the Web pages
they encounter. Only pages that are spiderable are included in the search
engine databases and are later shown in search results. This is why it is
important that your pages are spiderable. You can check this with the Search
Engine Spider Simulator tool. For more details about spiders, please refer to
the The Spider View of Your Site article.
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Splash page
A splash page is a home page with very limited content. Typically, a splash
page will include only "Click to enter" or a similar text. Splash pages are
bad for SEO because they lack content. Splash pages are sometimes made in
Flash, which makes them even worse, unless optimized properly.
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Static URL
A static URL is the opposite of Dynamic URL. A static URL is always the same
and if we use the example from the Dynamic URL entry
(http://www.yoursime.com/products.aspx?Y=2011&M=05), the static equivalent
will be http://www.yoursime.com/products/2011/05. Static URLs are better for
your human visitors and for search engines, as explained in the Dynamic URLs
vs Static URLs article. This is why it is highly recommendable to rewrite
dynamic URLs into static . you could use the URL Rewriting tool for the
purpose.
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Tag
1. In HTML, a tag is a pair of an opening and closing bracket (< and />) that
tell the browser how to interpret a particular piece of code . i.e. as text,
image, title, table, etc. Title tags, headings, and metatags are the most
important tags for SEO.
26. 2. In social bookmarking this is a form of labeling entries, which usually
includes keywords.
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Title tag
The Title tag (<title>Enter your title here</title>) is displayed in the
browser titlebar and it contains the title of your page. Keywords here and a
descriptive title are vital because this is one of the first things visitors
see from your page.
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URL rewrite
In order to rank well with search engines, you'd better rewrite dynamic URLs
into static. You can do it with the URL Rewriting tool.
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User agent
A user agent is a program used to access the Net. A user agent can be a
browser or a spider. Usually log files give more details about the user
agents that have visited your site, such as the name of the browser and its
version.
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Vertical search
Vertical search is a type of specialized search that focuses on results from
particular area only. For instance, when you use a search engine that indexes
only business–related pages, you are performing a vertical search. The
advantage of vertical search is that the results it delivers are better
targeted.
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Yahoo
The second largest search engine and also one of the oldest. Optimizing for
Yahoo is different from optimizing for Google and Bing and Yahoo's search
results for the same term differ from those of its competitors.
51 SEO points for On Page Optimization
27. 1.Place your keyword phrases at title tag. Title must be less than 65
characters.
2.Place the most important keyword phrase close the beginning of the page
title.
3.Put some main keyword in keyword meta tag.
4.Write a good description for meta description tag, description must be
unique to each page.
5.Keep Meta description short and meaningful write only 1 or 2 sentences in
description.
6.Target the most important competitive keyword phrase at the home page.
7.Target one or two keywords phrases per page.
8.Use only one H1 header per page.
9.Place the most important keyword in H1 tag.
10.Use H2 and H3 for sub headers where required.
11.Use Bold / Italic / Underline for your keyword phrase for extra weight in
contents.
12.Use bulleted lists to make content easier to read.
13.Use ALT tag for images, so that crawler can know about images.
14.Don’t use flash on your website because crawler can’t read flash.
15.Try to keep easier navigation of your website.
16.Use text based navigation.
17.Use CSS to creating navigation menu instead of JavaScript.
18.Use keyword phrases in file name, you can use hyphens (-) to separate the
word in file names.
19.Create a valid robot.txt file.
20.Create a HTML site map for crawler and user.
21.Create a XML site map for Google crawler.
22.Add text links to others page in the footer of site.
23.Use keyword phrase in Anchor text.
24.Link the entire pages to each others.
25.Use keyword rich breadcrumb navigation to help search engines understand
the structure of your site.
26.Add a feedback form and place a link to this form from all the pages.
27.Add bookmark button.
28.Add a subscription form at every page for increasing your mailing list.
29.Add RSS feed button so that user can subscribe easily.
30.Add Social Media sharing button.
31.Use images on every page but don’t forget to use ALT tag.
32.Use videos on your site which is related to your niche.
33.Write informative, fresh, unique, useful content on your site.
34.Write site content in between 300 to 500 words.
35.Keywords % must be 3 to 5%.
36.Don’t copy any content from other websites, fresh and unique content is
the key of your success.
37.Add deep link to related articles.
38.Regular update your website with fresh content.
28. 39.Use CSS to improve the look of your website.
40.Write your content for human not for robot.
41.Buy Country Level Domain name if your website is targeting local users.
42.Use a good keyword suggestion tools to finding good keywords phrases for
your website.
43.Use 301 redirection to redirect http://www.domainname.com to
http://domainname.com.
44.Try to buy local hosting server for your website if your site is targeting
local people.
45.Use keywords rich URL instead of dynamic URL.
46.Break your article in paragraph if your article is long.
47.Add full contact address on contact page with direction map.
48.Validate XHTML and CSS at http://validator.w3.org/.
49.Don’t use hidden text or hidden links.
50.Avoid graphic links, because text in the image can not be indexed by the
spiders.
51.Don’t create multi page for with same contents.
On-Page Optimization (SEO)
SEO has traditionally divided into two main areas; on-page optimisation
which covers what can be done on the pages of the website itself, and off-
page optimisation which covers activity that takes place elsewhere (e.g.
link-building).
The most effective strategy in 2012 however (social media powered SEO)
requires an integrated approach, with on-page content promoted off-page
within the main social media channels. Please click on the following link to
find out more about social media SEO - the future proofed SEO strategy that
delivers outstanding results now.
Alternatively, click here to understand more about how off-page SEO has had
to adapt to changes in the search engines’ algorithms to remain effective in
2012.
Finally, if you are more interested in on-page SEO, we should probably warn
you that, although it’s still very important to optimise on-page factors,
it’s extremely unlikely to work on its own unless your market is particularly
niche. Please read on for:
• A checklist outlining the key areas to consider when reviewing on-page
SEO.
• A list of common mistakes to look out for with regard to on-page SEO.
• A list of old-school SEO (‘spammy’) on-page tactics that the search engines
are now able to recognise (and punish accordingly).
On-Page SEO Checklist:
• Always start with keyword selection, research and testing
• Meta Description tag
• ALT tags
• H1 tags
• URL structure
• Internal linking strategy
• Content
29. • Keyword density
• Site maps, both XML and user facing
• Usability and accessibility
• Track target keywords
• Expect results in 6-12 months
Avoid common on-page SEO mistakes such as:
• Duplicate content
• URL variants of the same pages
• Off-site images and content on-site
• Duplicate title tags
Avoid spammy SEO tactics such as:
• Hidden text
• Hidden links
• Keyword repetition
• Doorway pages
• Mirror pages
• Cloaking
SEO Interview Questions and Answers 2011:
1. Give me a description of your general SEO experience.
A. My experience is mainly with my own site at www.xyz.com and one other site
www.zxy.com. So far, my site is on page one for narrow search terms involving
outdoor recreation in Nevada. The other site has gone from not being listed
at all in the first 10 pages of any search result to being in pages 2 and 3
of a couple of search engines. That work is ongoing at this time.
2. Can you write HTML code by hand?
A. Yes I can. I do use some WYSIWYG editors and then modify the code by hand
as needed.
3.Could you briefly explain the PageRank algorithm?
A. In simple terms, Google uses the gross number of inbound links to a page
to determine how important the page is. This "pagerank" has little to do with
actual search results but can make a difference on user behavior.
4. Have you created any SEO tools either from scratch or pieced
together from others?
A. No, I do make use of many tools already available on the internet as well
as SEO programs that I have purchased.
5. What do you think of PageRank?
A. In relation to SEO projects, it is relatively unimportant but can give an
indication of how much work needs to be done in gaining inbound links.
6. What do you think of using XML sitemaps?
A . I use them. They are an additional tool to help the search engines when
they crawl a site. There is no requirement for any sitemap and your pages
will get indexed without them if you pay close attention to navigation within
your site.
7. What SEO tools do you regularly use?
30. A. Keyword analysis tools, keyword density tools, index checking, backlink
checking, wordprocessor to check spelling and grammar, HTML validation and
others.
8. Under what circumstances would you look to exclude pages from
search engines using robots.txt vs meta robots tag?
A. Usually I would use the robots.txt to keep a search engine from indexing
an entire directory on a site. This would often be directories dealing with
admin functions or directories that only contain script or image libraries.
9. What areas do you think are currently the most important in
organically ranking a site?
A. Text on page! Search engines utilize text and only text in providing
search results. That text is found in many place including the URL and title
of your pages as well as the visible text you place on your pages.
10. Do you have experience in copywriting and can you provide some
writing samples?
A. My experience in "copywriting" is limited to my site at
www.afreshpath.com. It is a blog about outdoor recreation in Nevada and so
far is placing well in search results.
11. Have you ever had something you've written reach the front-page of
Digg? Sphinn? Or be Stumbled?
A. Not yet! I am not particularly worried about it but I do try to write in
such a way that others would be inticed to submit my articles.
12. Explain to me what META tags matter in today's world.
A. The most important META tag for SEO is your page description. Search
engines do make use of this tag but it does not outweigh the title or visible
text. The META keywords tag is not much of a factor in the major search
engines but should not be overlooked.
13. Explain various steps that you would take to optimize a website?
A. 1. Interview website owner or webmaster to get a good grasp of the site's
purpose and goals.
2. Perform a keyword analysis to find best performing keywords that should be
used for that site and for individual pages of the site
3. Analyze site content to determine usage of relavant keywords and phrases.
This includes visible text as well at titles, META tags, and "alt"
attributes.
4. Examine site navigation
5. Determine the existence of robots.txt and sitemap and examine those for
effectivenes.
6. Make recommendations for changes needed for the site and each individual
page.
14. If the company whose site you've been workind for has decided to
move all of its content to a new domain, what steps would you take?
A. I would update the old site with permanent redirects to to new page for
every page. Then I would attempt to remove old content from the major search
engines to avoid duplicate content issues.
15. Rate from 1 to 10, tell me the most important "on page" elements
A) 1. issue is visible text being relevant to expected search terms.
2. would then be page titles
31. 3. is navigation and "alt" attributes for navigation items and link text.
4. would be "alt" attributes for images and other media presented on pages.
16. What do you think about link buying?
A. I discourage the practice for the most part. There are more effective
means of paid marketing. One exception would be purchasing listings in highly
reputable directories such as Yahoo directory.
17. What is Latent Semantic Analysis (LSI Indexing)?
A. LSI indexing ries to overcome the limitations of "literal" search term
matching . For example, if someone is searching for "hiking in Norhter
Nevada" a literal search would only match the words used without taking into
account words such as "hike", "hiked". LSI can give more relevant results
because it does take word usage and context into account determining what a
page is "about" rather than a strict reliance on literal wording.
18. What is Phrase Based Indexing and Retrieval and what roles does it
play?
A. In regards to search results, it is a method that search engines such as
google use to determine relevance of a page based on phrases acutally used in
a document. For example, if you have a page instructing people on wildlife
photography, the search engine would reasonably expect to see terms and
phrases such as "selecting a camera", "appraoching wildlife", and "low light
photo conditions". Related phrases will add to the relevance of a page where
unrelated phrases will reduce the relevance of a page. This is one technique
that Google is using to weed out "spam" sites.
19. What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
A. Seo is search engine optimization and is the process you use in getting
your pages to place well on search results. SEM is search engine marketing
and involves purchasing advertising space on search result pages. Sponsored
listings are SEM. Both are related though! When using Google Adwords, the
better you optimize your pages for search, the less you will be paying for
your selected keywords in the PPC campaign and the better placment your ads
will get.
20. What kind of strategies do you normally implement for backlinks?
A. I check the competitors backlinks to find hightly relevant sites and
request a link from them. If reciprocal linking is required, I may be able to
place a lik back to them in a relevant portion of a page on the site but if
not, I will state so and may not gain that link. Another method I use is to
submit press releases to relevant media.
21. What role does social media play in an SEO strategy?
A. Social media such as social networking sites and news sites can provide
for viral marketing. Viral marketing has proven to be powerful if the content
of a site is appealing.
22. What things wouldn't you to do increase rankings because the risk
of penalty is too high?
A. I would avoid any site with the appearance of a link farm. I would also
avoid any "spam" practice such as unsolicited email campaigns, certain
affiliate advertising sites, sites that re-direct visitors to your site, and
anything resembling the practices of Zango.
23. Why might you want to use nofollow on an internal link?
32. A. Many sites have shoping carts and member login or logout links. This type
of link is simply an administrative function and does nothig to contribute to
site content. The search engine does not need to index those pages.
24. Are you familiar with web analytics and what packages are your
familiar with?
A. Yes I am and the tool I use most frequently is Google's webmaster tools. I
also use the available Yahoo hosting tools for my own sites. Knowing what
search terms your visitors are actually using to find your site as well as
where those visitors are coming from will help refine SEO efforts. The amount
of time each visitor spends on your site will help in determining if content
changes are needed.
25. From an analytics perspective, what is different between a user
from organic search results vs. a type-in user?
A. A user coming into your site from an organic search usually has never
visited your site before or is performing a general search for a specific
product or topic. These visitors are trying to find the site that most suits
thier needs. A "type-in" user is specifally interested in your website. They
may have found your URL in print advertising or from a friend. Often, these
users are familiar with what you are offering and are coming back to your
site as a repeat visitor.
26. How do you evaluate whether an SEO campaign is working?
A. The main indicator is to perform a search on all major search engines
using the keywords/ keyphrases I am optimizing for. An analysis of those
results will help to determine if optimization has gained in the results or
lost ground. This analysis should be done over time as each search engine
will update and index on a varying schedule. Another aspect is to use website
statistics to determine where traffic is originating.
27. What does competitive analysis mean to you and what techniques do
you use?
A. Competitive analysis means taking a close look at websites that rank
highly in search results and comparing those sites to the one you are
optimizing. They have employed methods that are working and are a valuable
source for ideas.
28. If you've done 6 months of SEO for a site and yet there haven't
been any improvements, how would you go about diagnosing the problem?
A. I might approach the problem as if it were an entirely new project. Again
taking a look at the keywords and phrases that I am attempting to optimize
for and again taking a close inspection of top ranking competition. If the
site is indexed and does show up in the irst 10 pages of a search but on in
the top three, I would look into modification of major areas such as page
titles, on page text, and page descriptions. If the site is not yet indexed
or has been dropped from an index, there are major problems and the site may
require a total re-work and re-submission.
29. How many target keywords should a site have?
A. I advise not more than three or four well related keyword phrases. This
allows for more effective optimization.
33. 30. You hear a rumor that Google is weighting the HTML LAYER tag very
heavily in ranking the relevance of its results - how does this affect
your work?
A. It doesn't unless the rumor proves to be fact. Yes, I check on the rumor
but as with all rumors, it can have detrimental effects if you "jump on the
band wagon" and it proves to be just a rumor with no basis in fact.
31.Why does Google rank Wikipedia for so many topics?
A. Wikipedia is an established authority! As such, it is referenced by huge
numbers of other documents with relevant text associated with links back to
Wikipedia.
32. salary and location were not an issue, who would you work for?
A. Myself and only myself if those conditions existed.
Search engine optimization technique used to optimize a website
so as to see the web site in SERPs(Search engine results page).
Many companies are setting up to start SEO business there by
increasing opportunities for those who want to set up their
career in SEO. SEO is a part of SEM(Search engine marketing), it
is quite easy to learn. Here are few important interview
questions and answers for SEO fresher.
(Q) What are Search Engines?
(A) Search engines are programs, when you enter a keyword and a search term
these programs will find specific information on web. Example: Google, yahoo,
Bing, DuckDuckgo
(Q) What is SEO?
(A) SEO – Search engine optimization or optimizer is a collection of
techniques applied to optimize our site so that it ranks well in SERPs
(Search engine result pages).
(Q) What are Meta tags?
(A) Meta tags are keywords which tell search engines about the site, these
keywords are viewed by search engine bots. When any person searches then
search engines based upon the meta tags, title and keywords in the site
displays the results.
(Q) What is the importance of Title tag used in website?
(A) Title plays a vital role in SEO, page`s title accurately describes the
about the content in that pages.
(Q) What is site map?
(A) Search engine bots reads the content of the web page after converting
them to XML, placing site map in our site helps bots to read the content
easily.
34. (Q) Why to use Robot.txt?
(A) Robot.txt is a message to search engine bots to index the page or not. In
case if your don`t want search engines to index particular page then place
“noindex”.
(Q) How keyword analysis is done?
(A) Choose the keywords those are with high searches and low competition
related to your site niche. Then initial target long tail keywords to see
rankings in SERPs gradually increase the keywords.
(Q) What is Canonical form?
(A) Canonical is a tag which accepts URL, it is a message to search engine
bots that to index this URL but not the page URL.
For example: http://thestudentdaily.com/iamuser=dick?9087 this the url of the
page and if you don`t want search engines to index this url but instead you
want to make http://thestudentdaily.com/iamuser , then include it in
canonical tag.
(Q) How to get traffic for the website?
(A) Start article submission with quality content, participate in forums and
do all the SEO techniques. To get traffic upload image to profile and give
your users brand look by sharing them with genuine information about website.
Concentrate on local search engines like super pages, manta etc..
(Q) Is Domain extension (.com, .in, .net, .org) has any effect on SEO?
(A) It depends; If you are concentrating people all over USA then taking
domain with .in extension can effect SEO.
(Q) What is PPC?
(A) PPC is a method of online advertisement where you pay per users click.
(Q) List few SEO techniques you fallow when a new site is given?
(A) Checking with onpage factor like Title, meta tags, meta description and
keywords in the content
Submitting site to major search engines
Submitting to RSS feed sites
Bookmarking site pages
Press release announcing about your site launch
Directory submission
Article submission to concentrate article readers
Classifieds to target local users
35. Blog commenting
Web 2.0 page creation
….these are few techniques listed you can add more.
(Q) What is analytics?
(A) To analyses the traffic to your site, many sites are providing analyses,
using this you can track the results for your SEO work.
Bad Request – The request could not be understood by the server due to
malformed syntax. The client should now repeat the request without
modifications.
Banned – Also known as delisted or blacklisted, a banned site is a URL that
has been removed from a search engine’s Index, typically for engaging in
Black Hat SEO. Banned sites are ignored by search engines.
Banner Ad – A banner ad is a rectangular graphic advertisement. Banner ads
are one of the commonest forms of online advertising. Their sizes vary, but
most measure 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels high. Clicking on a banner ad will
direct you to the advertiser’s website or a designated Landing Page.
Example of banner ad: [image:]
Banner Blindness – Banner blindness is a usability phenomenon in which a
website visitor completely overlooks a banner. Such a banner may either be an
advertising banner from an external site, or a banner that the serving site
intends to use to promote content or a navigation link.
Black-Hat SEO – Refers to SEO tactics that are deemed by search engines as
deceptive in nature. Search engines set up guidelines that help them extract
billions of dollars of ad revenue from the work of publishers and the
attention of searchers.
Within that highly profitable framework, search engines consider certain
marketing and optimization techniques deceptive in nature, and label them as
Black-Hat SEO. Those tactics which are considered within their guidelines are
called White-Hat SEO [link:] techniques.
Blacklisted – Also known as banned [link:] or delisted, a blacklisted site
is a URL that has been removed from a search engine’s Index, typically for
engaging in Black Hat SEO. Blacklisted sites are ignored by search engines.
Some popular blogging platforms:
WordPress
TypePad
MovableType
36. Broken Link – A hyperlink that is not functioning, or a link which does not
lead to the desired location. Links may broken for a number of reasons, but
four of the most common reasons are:
a website going offline
linking to a page or site that has moved to another location
linking to a site whose root domain name has changed
C
Click-Fraud – The illegal practice of manipulating Cost-Per-Click
(CPC)[link:] or Pay-Per-Click (PPC)[link:] revenue sharing agreements. There
are numerous types of click fraud, but in a typical scenario the webmaster of
a site that earns money from each click of the advertising links it publishes
pays individuals a small fee to click those links.
Click-Through – Refers to a single instance of a user clicking on an
advertising link or site listing and moving to a Landing Page. A higher
Click-Through Rate (CTR)[link:] is one of the primary goals of Search Engine
Optimization[link:].
Click-Through-Rate (CTR) – The percentage of users who click on an
advertising link or search engine site listing out of the total number of
people who see it, i.e. four click-throughs out of ten views is a 40% CTR.
Cloaking – Displaying different content to search engines and searchers.
Depending on the intent of the display discrepancy and the strength of the
brand of the person / company cloaking, it may be considered reasonable or it
may get a site banned from a search engine. Cloaking is typically done to
achieve a higher search engine position or to trick users into visiting a
site. In such cases cloaking is considered to be Black Hat SEO and the
offending URL could be Blacklisted [link:].
Code Bloat – Code bloat is the production of code that is perceived as
unnecessarily long, slow, or otherwise wasteful of resources. Code bloat can
also be caused by inadequacies in the language in which the code is written,
or inadequacies in the compiler used to compile the language.
Content Management System (CMS) – Tool used to help make it easy to update
and add information to a website. Blog software programs such as
WordPress[link:] are some of the most popular content management systems
currently used on the web. In short, a good CMS will make it easier for non-
HTML savvy users to create and maintain a website or blog.
Conversion – Conversion is the term used for any significant action a user
takes while visiting a site, i.e. making a purchase, requesting information,
or registering for an account.
Conversion Rate –
37. For Web sites, the conversion rate is the number of visitors who took the
desired action divided by the total number of visitors in a given time period
(typically, per month). For example, the conversion rate of visitors that
subscribe to a newsletter = number of visitors divided by number of
subscribers. If a website has 10,000 visitors and 500 subscribe, the
conversion rate equals 1 out of 20 (or 5%).
Cost-Per-Thousand (CPM) – Also known as Cost-Per-Impression [link:] or CPM
for cost-per-mille (mille is the Latin word for thousand), cost-per-thousand
is an advertising revenue system used by search engines and ad networks in
which advertising companies pay an agreed amount for every 1,000 users who
see their ads, regardless of whether a click-through or conversion is
achieved. CPM is typically used for Banner Ad [link:] sales, while Cost-Per-
Click [link:] is typically used for text link advertising.
Crawl Depth – How deeply a website is crawled, and how many pages are indexed
(or what percentage of the site’s pages).
D
Dead Link – A link which is no longer functional. Most large, high-quality
websites have at least a few dead links in them, but the ratio of good links
to dead links can be seen as a sign of solid information quality.
Deep Link – A link which points to an interior page within a website. When
links grow naturally typically most high quality websites have many links
pointing at many different interior pages.
When you request links from other websites it makes sense to request a link
from their most targeted relevant page to your most targeted relevant page
Delisting – A URL that has been removed from a search engine’s index [link:].
Delisted sites are ignored by search engines. A site may become delisted for
many reasons:
DNS Propagation – When a new domain name is registered (or an existing one is
transferred to a new DNS), the information must make its way around the
entire internet. This process usually takes around 24 hours, during which
time the domain will be inaccessible to many or all users.
Domain Mirror – A domain mirror for your website enables you to host two
domain names using the same web content. Typically, a domain mirror will be
used to cheaply register variants of a domain name (i.e. – the .com.au and
.com) and host them both using the same website. They can also be used to
assist in the case of changing your domain since the old domain can be
mirrored to the new domain once everything is set up.
Duplicate Content – Content which is duplicate or near duplicate in nature.
Search engines do not want to index multiple versions of similar content.
Dynamic Content – Content which changes over time or uses a dynamic language
such as PHP to help render the page. In the past search engines were less
aggressive at indexing dynamic content than they currently are. While they
have greatly improved their ability to index dynamic content it is still
38. preferable to use URL rewriting to help make dynamic content look static in
nature.
E
Entry Page – The page on which a user enters your website. If you’re running
pay-per-click[link: ] ads, it is very important to send visitors to the most
appropriate and targeted page associated with the keyword they searched for
(this strategy is called “deep linking” [link: ]). If you are doing link
building it is important to point links at your most appropriate page when
possible so that:
If anyone clicks the link they are sent to the most appropriate/relevant page
Google Traffic Estimator – Tool which estimates bid prices and how many
Google searchers will click on an ad for a particular keyword.
If you do not submit a bid price the tool will return an estimated bid price
necessary to rank #1 for 85% of Google’s queries for a particular keyword.
S
Search Engine Friendly – The process of creating a web site with Meta and
Text Content that can be read and understood by the various search engines.
Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) – The Search
Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) is a non-profit
professional association founded in 2003 to increase awareness of the
benefits of search engine marketing and provide educational resources to
members and consumers.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP) – Search Engine Results Page or SERP is
the page on which the search engines show the results for a search query.
SERPs are typically divided into two sections, the natural [link:] (or
organic [link:]) and paid [link:] sections
Sitemap – Sitemaps can be used to help give search engines a secondary route
to navigate through your site. HTML Sitemaps typically consist of a list of
links to the most important pages on a website, while XML sitemaps [link:]
are typically more bare-boned URL lists and usually included all website URL
Slug – A slug is the part of a URL which identifies a page using human-
readable keywords. Slugs are used to construct clean URLs (often for
permalinks) that are easy to type, descriptive, and easy to remember.
For example, in the URL on this site:
http://www.agent-seo.com/seo-dictionary/
The slug is ‘seo-dictionary’
39. Social Media – Websites, tools, and platforms which allow users to create
and share content across their social networks via a variety of different
online mediums.
Since the mid 2000s, social media has grown by leaps and bounds and has been
widely adopted by individuals and companies alike as a preferred medium from
which to market, communicate, collaborate, connect, share, and perform a
variety of other tasks.
Some of the most popular and influential social media platforms include:
Twitter [link:] – Micro-Blogging
Facebook [link:] – Social Community
Google+ [link:] – Social Community
YouTube [link:] – Video sharing
LinkedIn [link:] – Professional Community
Flickr [link:] – Photo sharing
Spider – Search engine crawlers which search or “spider” the web for pages to
include in the search engine’s index. Also called “crawlers” [link:] or
“bots” [link:] and a variety of other names.
Many non-traditional search companies have different spiders which perform
other applications. For example, TurnItInBot searches for plagiarism. Spiders
should obey the robots.txt protocol.
Google’s main spider is called ‘Googlebot’ while Bing’s is named ‘Bingbot’
and ‘MSNBot’.
Status Code – A status code, also known as an error code, is a 3-digit code
number assigned to every request (hit) received by the server. Most valid
hits will have a status code of 200 (“ok”). “Page not found” errors will
generate a 404 error.
Here are the most common status codes:
200 OK
300 Multiple Choices
301 Moved Permanently
302 Found / Temporary Redirect
400 Bad Request
401 Unauthorized
403 Forbidden
404 Not Found
500 Internal Server Error
501 Not ImplementeD
Submission – The act of making information systems and related websites
aware of your website. In most cases you no longer need to submit your
website to large scale search engines, they follow links and index content.
The best way to submit your site is to get others to link to it. Another way
would be to submit your XML Sitemap [link:] with all current pages included
40. or new pages you’d like to be included in the index to Google Webmaster Tools
[link:]
Supplemental Results – Documents which generally are trusted less and rank
lower than documents in the main search index.
Some search engines, such as Google, have multiple indicies. Documents which
are not well trusted due to any of the following conditions:
Limited link authority relative to the number of pages on the site
Duplicate content or near duplication
Exceptionally complex URLs
T
Technorati – Blog search engine which tracks popular stories and link
relationships.
See also:
Technorati.com
Term Frequency – A measure of how frequently a keyword appears amongst a
collection of documents. Many SEOs also like to break this down on a page-by-
page basis when looking at Keyword Density [link:].
Term Vector Database – A weighted index of documents which aims to
understand the topic of documents based on how similar they are to other
documents, and then match the most relevant documents to a search query based
on vector length and angle.
Title Tags – A title tag is an HTML tag which contains a sentence of text
describing the contents of its associated webpage.
The page title is one of the most important aspects to doing SEO on a web
page. Each page title should be:
Unique to that page: Not the same for every PAGE SITE.
Twitter – Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging
service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140
characters, known as “tweets”
U
Update – Search engines frequently update their algorithms and data sets to
help keep their search results fresh and make their relevancy algorithms hard
to update. Most major search engines are continuously updating both their
relevancy algorithms and search index.
URL – Uniform Resource Locator is the unique address of any web document. You
can see the URL in your toolbar [link:] in the web address section.
41. Usage Data – Things like a large stream of traffic, repeat visitors,
multiple page views per visitor, a high clickthrough rate, or a high level of
brand related search queries may be seen by some search engines as a sign of
quality. Some search engines may factor in a website’s usage data as part of
their ranking algorithm [link:].
Web Crawler – Also known as Spider or Robot, a crawler is a search engine
program that “crawls” the web, collecting data, following links, making
copies of new and updated sites, and storing URLs in the search engine’s
Index. This allows search engines to provide faster and more up-to-date
listings.
Examples of ‘good’ spiders are Googlebot, MSNbot and Yahoo Slurp, which
search the web for pages to place in their respective search indexes. ‘Bad’
spiders are those that search for vulnerabilities in server configurations,
web content to steal, etc.
Spiders should obey the robot.txt protocol.
Website Traffic – A general term used to describe the volume of visitors to
a website.
Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web
site. It is a large portion of Internet traffic. This is determined by the
number of visitors and the number of pages they visit.
Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages
of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one
specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country.
There are many ways to monitor this traffic and the gathered data is used to
help structure sites, highlight security problems or indicate a potential
lack of bandwidth — not all web traffic is welcome.
A popular and free tool for measuring website traffic is Google Analytics
Difference b/w off page & on page optimization
On Page Optimization is the activity that is done on the page for search
engine ranking like using alt tags, keywords is meta tag, tool tip and
proximity, keyword-density, proper usage of keywords in heading tags.
Off Page Optimization is the activity that is done on other sites for our
site to increase search engine ranking. Off Page Optimization activities
include directory submission, article submission, forum discussion, blog
posting, press release, blog commenting
what is difference between on page & off page optimization
As we all know that SEO is divide into the two phase one is on-page SEO and
another one is off-page SEO and both are very important part of SEO to get
the ranking for any website into the search engine results.
42. On-page SEO - in that webmasters optimize their own website for getting
ranking. There are many techniques in on-page SEO used to optimize a website.
1. Title Tag Optimization
2. Meta Tag Optimization( Keywords, Description)
3. Heading Tag Optimization
4. Image Alt tag Optimization
5. Anchor tag Optimization
6. Content Modification
7. Internal Linking structure
8. HTML and XML sitemap
9. Robot.txt
Off-Page SEO - in that SEO technique webmasters work on other website to get
the back links for their website whch helps to get the traffic and ranking
from the search engine. here are some technique which we used in off-page
SEO.
1. Social Bookmarking
2. Directory Submission
3. Forum Posting
4. Article Writing
5. Press Release
6. Blog Commenting
7. Blogging
8. Q&A websites
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