Sojan Seo Analyst: December 2016

Content Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing the web pages that affect the visibility of the web page in a web search engine’s organic results. Content optimization is the process of increasing the higher ranking of a website/blog to get listed at the top in search results. Content optimization means optimizing in terms of title and Meta description, keyword optimization, link optimization, image optimization and authorship optimization.

Steps In optimization

Title and Meta Description Optimisation

Before going to title and Meta description we have to concern about snippet. While we are searching, using certain keywords in the search engine google list many search results according to their page ranking. The search results are listed in the form of the snippet. ie, snippet include the page title, URL and Meta description. The best title tag ranges from 35 – 60 characters. Title tag speaks about what your website in a short and efficient way. It shouldn’t contain spelling or grammatical mistakes. It must contain 3 or more words. Title tags are affected by pixel width, so capital letters used in title tags are minimal. If more capital letters are used in the title, it will increase the pixel width and results in the listing of title tags. The second important thing in the snippet is Meta description. The best Meta description ranges from 155-160 characters on a page. While in a post they are up to 155 characters because in listing post google also include the date that has been posted. Meta description speaks about a short description or introduction about the content that have been posted on the website/web page. Title tag and Meta description must be unique. The h1, h2, and h3 tags also consider as an important factor in content optimization. The h1 tag must be once in a page, it is the title of the post. The h2 tag may be one or two in a post, but try to put once on a page. It is the subheading of the page. The h3 tag may be two or more, it is the minor headings.

Keyword Optimization

Keywords are the words that are used by the user to search in the web search engine regarding their queries. The keyword is an important factor for listing website/article on google top results. Keyword density is the ratio of a number of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page/article to the total number of words on the page. Keyword density is used as a factor in determining whether a web page is relevant to a specified keyword. For eg, if the keyword is used only two times in a blog containing 100 words, then the keyword density is 2%. Google doesn’t consider a number of keywords used as a factor in ranking. So don't stuff the contents with lots of keywords. Try to include the keyword in the first paragraph. In content writing, add bold letters in keywords for big paragraphs. It will help in user’s readability and time spent on the website. It doesn’t help in the ranking of the website.

Link Optimization

Link optimization is important in content optimization. Adding links to your website/blog is good when you want to show reference to another web page. So people can know more about the specific topic. Adding links will result in the distribution of page rank to another site. Adding links to highly trusted websites like Wikipedia will help to give your website more trustable.

Image Optimization

Image optimization is another important factor in content optimization. Adding images to your website/blog will help in user’s attention. The optimizing image is based on file name and alt tag. Add images relevant to the content in the website/blog. The file name must be same as the title tag. While saving the name of image use hyphens in between the words. Alt tag/Alt text is the alternate name for the image used. It is important as image file name, instead of hyphens, space can be used in the alt text.

Sojan Babu

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s organic results. SEO is mainly focused on the three important aspects that are, crawling, caching and indexing.While searching any information in the search engine using a particular keyword, the search engine spider/bot find any meaningful information on any page related to that keyword this process is termed as crawling. Caching is the process where copies of web pages stored temporarily to show the people. Indexing means the information searched by many people and find it useful then google stored it permanently in the databases.

History of Google

Google has now become one of the most profitable companies in the world. Google was found in 1996 by Larry page and Sergey brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University California as their academic research project. First, the name of their search engine was backrub. Later in 1997 google.com was officially registered. Later in years google became the most prominent search engine because of their trust value among people.

Google uses a special software to identify the contents of the web pages called crawler. The crawled or fetched data is temporarily stored to show the people is called caching. The cached data is indexed and stored permanently in the databases by google.

Google introduced a technique called page ranking which decides the ranking of the web pages or websites. The name page rank is obtained from one of the founders of google larry page. Page ranking becomes an important aspect in the ranking of web pages. According to quality, google gave ranks for each page in the websites. Google display the web pages which got highest ranking in the search results. The highest ranked web pages will be shown in the top position.

Earlier, google had some mechanisms to rank the web pages. One of the mechanism was niche specific. Niche specific means content specific. More keywords are used in this mechanism. Page rank is also based on the quality of web pages. While using more keywords the quality of the web pages become less.Some of them misuse this mechanism by the use of keyword stuffing. Adding more keywords without considering the quality of the web pages. Keyword stuffing is considered as a black hat or non-ethical SEO practice. Due to the misuse google introduced another mechanism known as link specific. This mechanism depends on the number of links get from other websites. So people began to buy links from other websites. It led a big threat to google. Then google introduced another mechanism called quality link specific. In this mechanism, google considers more quality links. When a website gave a link to another site, its page rank will be decreased automatically. This is called passing the link juice. Ie, the power or equity is passed to a site via links from external or internal sources.

In 2003, google introduced an online advertising service called Google AdWords, where advertisers pay to display brief advertising copy to web users. Google developed another service called AdSense program. Adsense is the most powerful program by google. This program is based on pay per click (PPC) or cost per click (CPC). Google get profit by clicking advertisements.

In 2009, google made user interaction more easily. They introduce suggestions in keywords. Depending upon user response google degrade the ranking of websites. If a user leaves a website from the homepage without interacting the page contents. This will result in bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of single stage session. When a user leaves from the homepage of a website within seconds and clicks another website for results, it will result in pogo sticking. Google will notice it and penalize the web page. Revisit and regular visit are the important factors for improving the page ranking. In 2010, social media like facebook and twitter activities increases. Social media authority value increases the ranking of web pages.

Google Updations

Panda Update

In 2011, google developed a web spam team to deliver quality search results. Google made some updations in their algorithms. Google panda was the first update. This update was against content spamming. It includes fewer quality contents, contents with spelling and grammatical mistakes, copy, and paste contents, keyword stuffing etc. In 2014, the last update panda 4.0 released, as a result, google removes lots of content spamming webpages.

Other Updates

In 2012, google launched the penguin update. This update was against link spamming. It includes link exchange, buying and selling of links, link farming, wiki spamming, guest blogging etc. In 2013, google released the hummingbird update. This update is based on semantic search results. ie, maximum accepted fact by the viewers increase the page ranking. In October 2015, the advanced version of the hummingbird with the inclusion of artificial intelligence was introduced ie, RankBrain.

In July 2014, google introduced another update called pigeon. It is regarding local SEO. This update makes google more user-friendly. Local audience visibility, geotagging etc are introduced in this update. As a result, relevant search results are provided.

Mobilegeddon

In April 2015, google released an update named mobilegeddon. This update is a mobile friendly ranking algorithm that gives web pages in mobile search. If the web pages are not mobile friendly google will terminate the web pages. Mobile friendly web pages can read the text without zoom and tap.