Digital Tech Solutions

a) SEO ─ OVERVIEW:

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is all about optimizing a website for
search engines. SEO is a technique for:
 designing and developing a website to rank well in search engine results.
 improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines.
 marketing by understanding how search algorithms work, and what human visitors
might search.
SEO is a subset of search engine marketing. SEO is also referred as SEO copyrighting,
because most of the techniques that are used to promote sites in search engines, deal
with text.
If you plan to do some basic SEO, it is essential that you understand how search engines
work.

1.How does a Search Engine Work?

Search engines perform several activities in order to deliver search results.
 Crawling - Process of fetching all the web pages linked to a website. This task is
performed by a software called a crawler or a spider (or Googlebot, in case of
Google).

 Indexing - Process of creating index for all the fetched web pages and keeping
them into a giant database from where it can later be retrieved. Essentially, the
process of indexing is identifying the words and expressions that best describe the
page and assigning the page to particular keywords.

 Processing - When a search request comes, the search engine processes it, i.e.,
it compares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages in the
database.

 Calculating Relevancy - It is likely that more than one page contains the search
string, so the search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each of the pages
in its index to the search string.

 Retrieving Results - The last step in search engine activities is retrieving the best
matched results. Basically, it is nothing more than simply displaying them in the
browser.

Search engines such as Google and Yahoo! often update their relevancy algorithm dozens
of times per month. When you see changes in your rankings, it is due to an algorithmic
shift or something else beyond your control.
Although the basic principle of operation of all search engines is the same, the minor
differences between their relevancy algorithms lead to major changes in the relevancy of
results.

2.What is SEO Copywriting?

SEO copywriting is the technique of writing viewable text on a web page in such a way
that it reads well for the surfer, and also targets specific search terms. Its purpose is to
rank highly in the search engines for the targeted search terms.
Along with viewable text, SEO copywriting usually optimizes other on-page elements for
the targeted search terms. These include the Title, Description, Keywords tags, headings,
and alternative text.
The idea behind SEO copywriting is that search engines want genuine content pages and
not additional pages often called "doorway pages" that are created for the sole purpose of
achieving high rankings.

3.What is Search Engine Rank?

When you search any keyword using a search engine, it displays thousands of results
found in its database. A page ranking is measured by the position of web pages displayed
in the search engine results. If a search engine is putting your web page on the first
position, then your web page rank will be number 1 and it will be assumed as the page
with the highest rank.
SEO is the process of designing and developing a website to attain a high rank in search
engine results.

4.What is On-Page and Off-Page SEO?

Conceptually, there are two ways of optimization:
 On-Page SEO – It includes providing good content, good keywords selection,
putting keywords on correct places, giving appropriate title to every page, etc.
 Off-Page SEO - It includes link building, increasing link popularity by submitting
open directories, search engines, link exchange, etc.

b) SEO ─ Tactics and Methods:

SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:

White Hat SEO – Techniques that search engines recommend as part of a good design.
Black Hat SEO – Techniques that search engines do not appr SEO

White Hat SEO ?

An SEO tactic is considered as White Hat if it has the following features:

 It conforms to the search engine's guidelines.

 It does not involve in any deception.

 It ensures that the content a search engine indexes, and subsequently ranks, is

the same content a user will see.

 It ensures that a web page content should have been created for the users and not

just for the search engines.

 It ensures good quality of the web pages.

 It ensures availability of useful content on the web pages.

Always follow a White Hat SEO tactic and do not try to fool your site visitors. Be honest

and you will definitely get something more.

What is Black Hat or Spamdexing ?

An SEO tactic is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it has the following features:

 Attempting ranking improvements that are disapproved by the search engines

and/or involve deception.

 Redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more

human friendly.

 Redirecting users to a page that was different from the page the search engine

ranked.

 Serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version

to human visitors. This is called Cloaking SEO tactic.

 Using hidden or invisible text or with the page background color, using a tiny font

size or hiding them within the HTML code such as "no frame" sections.

 Repeating keywords in the metatags, and using keywords that are unrelated to the

website content. This is called metatag stuffing.

 Calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count,

variety, and density of the page. This is called keyword stuffing.

 Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead

stuffed with very similar keywords and phrases. These pages are called Doorway

or Gateway Pages.

 Mirror websites by hosting multiple websites – all with conceptually similar content

but using different URLs.

 Creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the

original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious

websites. This is called page hijacking.

Always stay away from any of the above Black Hat tactics to improve the rank of your site.

Search engines are smart enough to identify all the above properties of your site and

ultimately you are not going to get anything.

c) SEO ─ Website Domain:

When you start thinking of doing a business through internet, the first thing that you think

about is your website domain name. Before you choose a domain name, you should

consider the following:

 Who would be your target audience?

 What you intend to sell to them. Is it a tangible item or just text content?

 What will make your business idea unique or different from everything else that is

already available in the market?

Many people think it is important to have keywords in a domain. Keywords in the domain

name are usually important, but it usually can be done while keeping the domain name

short, memorable, and free of hyphens.

Using keywords in your domain name gives you a strong competitive advantage over your

competitors. Having your keywords in your domain name can increase click-through-rates

on search engine listings and paid ads as well as make it easier to use your keywords in

get keyword rich descriptive inbound links.

Avoid buying long and confusing domain names. Many people separate the words in their

domain names using either dashes or hyphens. In the past, the domain name itself was a

significant ranking factor but now search engines have advanced features and it is not a

very significant factor anymore.

Keep two to three words in your domain name that will be easy to memorize. Some of the

most notable websites do a great job of branding by creating their own word. Few

examples are eBay, Yahoo!, Expedia, Slashdot, Fark, Wikipedia, Google, etc.

You should be able to say it over the telephone once, and the other person should know

how to spell it, and they should be able to guess what you sell.

d) SEO ─ Relevant Filenames:

One of the simplest methods to improve your search engine optimization is to look at the

way you name your files. Before writing this tutorial, we did a lot of research on filenames

and found that search engines like Google give too much importance to filenames. You

should think what you want to put in your web page and then give a relevant file name to

this page.

Just try giving any keyword in Google search engine and you will find file names

highlighted with the keyword you have given. It proves that your file name should have

appropriate keywords.

File Naming Style:

 The filename should preferably be short and descriptive.

 It is always good to use same keywords in a filename as well as in page title.

 Do not use filenames such as service.htm or job.htm as they are generic. Use actual

service name in your file name such as computer-repairing.htm, which is more

specific.

 Do not use more than 3–4 words in file names.

 Separate the keywords with hyphens rather than underscores.

 Try to use 2 keywords if possible.

File Name Example:

Listed below are some filenames which would be ideal from the users’ point of view as well

as SEO.

slazenger-brand-balls.html

wimbledon-brand-balls.html

wilson-brand-balls.html

Notice that the keywords are separated by hyphens rather than underscores. Google sees

good filenames as follows:

seo-relevant-filename as seo relevant filename(good)

Filenames with underscores are not a good option.

seo_relevant_filename as seorelevantfilename (not good)

File Extension:

You should notice that .html, .htm, .php and any other extension do NOTHING for your

visitors, and they are simply a means of offloading some of the work of configuring your

webserver properly onto your visitor’s. In effect, you are asking your site visitors to tell

your webserver HOW to produce the page, not which one?

Many web masters think that it is a good idea to use filename without using extension. It

may help you, but not a whole lot.

URL Sub-Directory Name

From Search Engine Optimization point of view, URL sub-directory name hardly matters.

You can try giving any keyword in any search, and you will not find any sub-directory

name matching with your keywords. But from the user’s point of view, you should keep

an abbreviated sub-directory name.

e) SEO ─ Design and Layout:

The website design and layout gives the first impression about your site. There are sites

which are too fancy and regular net surfers just reach those sites and come out even

without creating a single click.

Search engines are very smart but after all, they are software and not human being, who

can read the content of their interest. If you make your site too complicated, then the

search engine would not be able to parse the content of your site properly, and finally

indexing would not be efficient, which results in a low rank.

The actual page content should have a keyword density of about 10% and should weigh

in at about 200 words - but there are as many opinions about this as there are SEO

experts. Some say, keyword density should be 5% and some say it should be 20%. You

can go with 10% which is good enough.

Here are a few guidelines that you should keep in mind while designing a web page.

 You should have more text content than HTML elements.

 No frames. They are the enemies of search engines, and search engines are

enemies of frames.

 No ads if possible. Because most of the ads use JavaScript which is not advised to

be used.

 No JavaScript. If you need JavaScript, call it from an external file rather than

dumping the code in the HTML file. JavaScript drop-down menus prevent spiders

from crawling beyond your homepage. If you use them, be sure to include text

links at the bottom of the page.

 Do not put anything in the page topic that does not fit perfectly.

 No unnecessary directories. Keep your files as close to the root as possible.

 No fancy stuff (Flash, Splash, Animated Gifs, Rollovers, etc.) unless absolutely

necessary.

f) SEO ─ Optimized Keywords:

A keyword is a term that is used to match with the query a person enters into a search

engine to find specific information. Most people enter search phrases that consist of two

to five words. Such phrases may be called search phrases, keyword phrases, query

phrases, or just keywords. Good keyword phrases are specific and descriptive.

The following concepts related to keywords help in optimizing the keywords on a web

page.

Keyword Frequency:

This is calculated as how often does a keyword appear in a website title or description.

You do not want to go overboard with frequency, however, since on some engines if you

repeat a word too many times, you are penalized for "spamming" or keyword stuffing.

In general though, repeat your keyword in the document as many times as you can get

away with, and up to 3-7 times in your list of metatags.

Keyword Weight:

It refers to the number of keywords appearing on your web page compared to the total

number of words appearing on that same page. Some search engines consider this while

determining the rank of your website for a particular keyword search.

One technique that often works well is to create some smaller pages, generally just a

paragraph long that emphasizes a particular keyword. By keeping the overall number of

words to a minimum, you can increase the "weight" of the keyword you are emphasizing.

Keyword Proximity:

It refers to the placement of keywords on a web page in relation to each other or, in some

cases, in relation to other words with a similar meaning as the queried keyword.

For search engines that grade a keyword match by keyword proximity, the connected

phrase ”home loans” will outrank a citation that mentions ”home mortgage loans”,

assuming that you are searching only for the phrase "home loans".

Keyword Prominence:

It is a measure of how early or high up on a page, the keywords are found. Having

keywords in the first heading and in the first paragraph (first 20 words or so) on a page

are best.

Keyword Placement:

Where your keywords are placed on a page is very important. For example, in most

engines, placing the keywords in the Title of the page, or in the Heading tags will give it

more relevancy. On some engines, placing keywords in the link text, the part that is

underlined on the screen in a browser, can add more relevancy to those words.

Best Places to Put Keywords:

Here is a list of places where you should try to use your main keywords.

 Keywords in the <title> tag(s).

 Keywords in the <meta name="description">.

 Keywords in the <meta name="keyword">.

 Keywords in <h1> or other headline tags.

 Keywords in the <a href="http://yourcompany.com">keywords</a> link tags.

 Keywords in the body copy.

 Keywords in alt tags.

 Keywords in <!-- insert comments here> comments tags.

 Keywords in the URL or website address.

Finding Keywords:

There are many different ways to find keywords for your website. Some good keyword

ideas are:

 The potential words people would use to find your product or service.

 The problems that your prospective customers may try to solve with your product

or service.

 Keyword tags on competitor’s websites.

 Visible page copy on competitor’s websites.

 Related search suggestions on top search engines.

 Using an online tool such as Google Keyword Tool.

 By analyzing your website carefully and finding out proper keywords. This task can

be done by expert SEO copywriters.

 Pay attention to stemming for your keywords - particularly to what the root word is and

what Google considers to be a match for that word, when optimizing pages over time.

 You can do brainstorming to identify correct keywords for your site.

What is Word Stemming?

Google uses a feature called word stemming that allows all forms of the word - singular,

plural, verb form as well as similar words to be returned for a given search query.

So if someone types in "house plans", not only the pages that are optimized for that phrase

but the pages that contain all variations of that phrase are returned. For example, "house

plan", "house planning", "house planner".

Hope you have some understanding on keywords and you also know how to identify them

and where to use them. The next chapter explains how to optimize metatags for better

results.

g) SEO ─ Optimized Metatags:

There are two important metatags:

 Meta description tags

 Meta keyword tags

Some search engines may display the meta description as a part of the search results, but

the meta keyword tags should not appear in search results.

The general consensus among SEO experts is that metatags are dead. Even so, many of

these same experts continue to use metatags in their own sites.

For Google, adding the description metatag does not result in a boost in the Search Engine

Results Pages (SERPs), but the description might be used for the description for your SERP

listings in Google.

Yahoo! says, they use the Keyword Meta Tag when it ranks a page. Hence it makes sense

to add one for Yahoo! and any other minor search engines that still use.

What Do the Metatags Look Like?

You can add the following in the head section of the web page:

content="KEYWORD1 KEYWORD2 KEYPHRASE1 etc.

about 30 to 40 unique words">

content="An accurate, keyword-rich description

about 150 characters">

Meta Description Tag Tips:

Important tips for good Meta description tags:

 Use keywords in your meta description tag.

 Try not to repeat the words overly often, but try to use multiple syntaxes of your

keywords.

 There should not be more than 150 characters in a description metatag of a single

web page.

 Use a different meta description tag for each page, as each page is different and

stands a better chance of being found if you place a good title and description on

it.

Meta Keywords Tag Tips:

Please refer to the previous chapter for identifying good keywords. Use the following tips

for preparing good meta keywords tags.

 Use synonyms.

 Use unique keywords.

 No need to repeat any given phrase.

 You can repeat a word any number of time, as long as each time it is part of a

different phrase.

Robots Metatag:

The important metatag that you may need sometime is the Robots Metatag which looks

like this:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

Using the above metatag, you can tell a spider or a robot that you do not want some of

your pages indexed, or that you do not want your links followed.

h) SEO ─ Title Optimization:

An HTML TITLE tag is put inside the head tag. The page title (not to be confused with the

heading for a page) is what is displayed in the title bar of your browser window, and is

also what is displayed when you bookmark a page or add it to your browser Favorites.

This is the one place on a webpage where your keywords MUST be present. Correct use

of keywords in the title of every page of your website is extremely important to Google -

particularly for the homepage. If you do nothing else to optimize your site, remember to

do this!

Here are some considerations while designing the title of a webpage:

 The title shouldn't consist of more than about 9 words or 60 characters.

 Use keywords at the very beginning of the title.

 Do not include your company name in the title unless your company name is very

well known.

Improper or nonexistent use of titles in webpages keeps more websites out of top rankings

on Google than any other factor except perhaps for a lack of relevant content on a page

or a lack of quality links from other websites that point to your site.

Best Practices for Creating Titles:

Here are some best practices you should follow for creating titles on pages:

 Each page should have a unique title.

 If practical, try to include your Primary Keyword Phrase in every title of every page.

 Begin the title of your home page with your Primary Keyword Phrase, followed by

your best Secondary Keyword Phrases.

 Use more specific variations to your Primary Keyword Phrase on your specific

product, service, or content pages.

 If you must include your company name, put it at the end of the title.

 Use the best form, plural or singular, for your keywords based on what WordTracker

says is searched on more often.

 Do not overdo it – do not repeat your keywords more than 2 to 3 times in the title.

 Make sure the <title> tag is the first element in the <head> section of your page

- this makes it easier for Google to find the page.

i) . SEO ─ Optimized Anchor:

Use descriptive anchor text for all your text links. Most search engines consider anchor

text of incoming links when ranking pages. Here is an example of anchor:

<a href="otherpage.htm" title="Anchor Title">Anchor Text</a>

Listed below are some of the important points to note about anchors:

 The Anchor Title plays a very important role and is seen by most of the search

engines. The anchor title should have appropriate keywords. Anchor title helps the

site visitors using a balloon, and displaying written text.

 The Anchor Text is another important part, which should be selected very carefully

because this text is used not only for search engines but also for navigation

purpose. You should try to use the best keywords in your anchor text.

 The otherpage.htm is the link to another webpage. This link could be to an external

site. Here, you need to ensure that the linked page does exist; otherwise it is called

a broken link, which gives a bad impression to search engines as well as to site

visitors.

Another example of an anchor could be as follows:

</a>

In this case, Anchor Text has been replaced by an image. So, while using an image in

place of an anchor text, it should be checked that you have put alt tag properly. An image

alt tag should have appropriate keywords.

j) SEO ─ Content is the King:

Content basically includes what you see on the site: the text, graphics, and even links to

other websites. You should not use excessive graphics because they are not Search Engine

Friendly plus heavy graphics normally put the users out when they get downloaded,

especially over a slow network.

Thousands of articles, books, and forum entries are available on how to make your website

search engine friendly, but ultimately, one rule stands above the rest: Unique, highquality,

unduplicated content is the king.

Superior the quality of your content, the higher the ranking you achieve, larger the traffic

you gain and greater the popularity of your website. Search engines prefer good quality

sites in their index and search results.

Relevant, fresh, and timely content is crucial in attracting visitors to your website. It helps

you both draw traffic from search engines and create audience loyalty.

Unique, High-Quality Content:

When people visit a website for information, they want your unique spin on a topic. How

is your material or content unique? Is that uniqueness obvious, and easy to find and to

understand? Visitors want unique, high-quality site content. It is not only your homepage

content, but also all the linked pages should have useful and easy-to-understand content.

Nowadays, search engines have become very smart and they are able to understand

complete grammar and complete phrase. Hence while ranking a page against other, the

content available on a page matters.

Sites with duplicated, syndicated, or free content are given red flags by the search engines.

SEO Content Writing (Copywriting):

SEO Content Writing (also referred as SEO Copywriting) involves the process of integrating

keywords and informative phrases which make up the actual content of your website.

While writing your webpage content, the following tips may help you in keeping it better

than others.

 The content should be directed for the specified target audience.

 Keyword density is strictly adhered as per search engine guidelines.

 Titles should always be eye-catching, compelling your visitors to read on and want

to know what you offer in your website.

 Do not use confusing, ambiguous, and complex language. Use small statements to

make your content more understandable.

 Keep your webpages short.

 Organize and distribute the content on the webpages.

 Divide your webpage content into short paragraphs.