Search Engine Optimization is the backbone of any website or online venture that relies on free search traffic from major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask Jeeves. Days are gone where you stuff loads of keywords into a web page and wait till search engines index and rank your page on top based solely on keyword density, which in turn produces bucket loads of free traffic. Search engine crawlers have grown smarter by the day, in fact the ranking algorithms of major search providers are the best kept secrets on the internet.
However Google have provided detailed guidelines to webmasters on how to optimize their webpages for better ranking. Along with conventional SEO techniques combined with hints provided in Google webmaster user guides, we can put up a list of SEO strategies that can sky rocket your rankings in Google.
On page SEO
- H1 title tags
- Target keyword in the title, preferably at the start
- H2 subtitle including the keyword
- Keyword present on the first and last sentence of the paragraph
- Title, description and keyword meta tags presented within the header
- All images complete with Alt tags
- Keyword density of 4% approx. (There is no absolute figure and its always better to concentrate on the readability of the content rather than keyword-density)
- 2-4 occurrences of keyword decorated preferably with H2 tags or at least with strong, bold fonts
- Keyword present at least twice in the last paragraph with a single occurrence in the last sentence
A while ago when I first started reading about SEO, it literally seemed unbelievable that such tiny changes would have a massive impact on search rankings. But they do. Having said that, now I don’t spend much time optimizing my posts. Because I want people to read my posts and feel confident to come back for more reading. Extensive SEO could possibly make your content crappy, because you write with the search engines in mind instead of real human readers.
Off page SEO
Off page aspect is a relatively newer dimension of SEO. In the recent times, it is also weighted more than the on-page factor, by major search engines. On the literal meaning, off page SEO is beyond the scope of webmasters. The theory is that if your web content is of high quality, visitors and other websites in your niche and everybody else would talk about it more which will earn you backlinks. These backlinks will increase your creditworthiness or your reputation online, which in turn increases the search ranking for those web contents. But in reality, web site owners feel its essential to have a link building strategy to keep websites alive, let alone ranking higher.
Off page SEO strategies
- Blog commenting
- Forum posts
- Guest posting in other authority blogs in the same niche
- Directory submission
- Article marketing
- Social network marketing
In a sense, all of the off page strategies revolve around a single task – link building. As opposed to SEO gurus, I suggest link-building regardless of their nofollow/dofollow status. Every link counts. But, and this is a big ‘BUT’, if you can’t stay genuine and non-spammy, don’t do it. Dont ruin your potential or existing reputation with just a few lousy links!
Best practice in all tasks related to your website, ‘Always, the users of your site come first.’ Whether its SEO or just changing the looks, put yourself in the users’ shoe and you will automatically make the correct decisions.