Is SEO Worth It- A Beginner’s Guide (first chapter).
How Search Engine Optimization helped me increase the number of visitors to my websites by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) — including Google, Mozilla, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines.
In this first chapter, we will be focusing on Understanding SEO and On-Page SEO
Search Engine Optimization?
We all have heard of the term SEO, in our daily life even we aren’t so much familiar with this word. Well if we try to explain this into simple terms,
“ It is a methodology of strategies, techniques, and tactics used to increase the number of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) — including Google, Mozilla, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines.”
Ok, besides is the definition we can see that when we search for a certain term number of websites come within a fraction of second in the search result but why some websites are at the top? Are they randomly arranged or is there any specific criteria for their arrangement?
There are some criteria which decide which website will be on top, this all comes under what we are discussing i.e SEO.So let’s start understanding from the very first topic i.e. ON-PAGE SEO.
The Components of On-Page SEO are
Keywords, Usability, URL Strings, User-friendly and Authoritative Content, Mobile Responsive, Site Loading Time, Click Through Rate and Bounce Back Rate.
1. Keywords:
These keywords imply that whatever you write in the meta tags i.e the tags that are used to provide search engines with information about your page these keywords should be those words on which you want to rank your website.
The better the meta tags are the more it will influence the users and eventually it will increase your CTR(click-through-rate), which is another big criteria for the higher ranking of your website.
well, there are a couple of tags -:
i. Title tags- The title is what users see when they search for the website and what they see in the tab when they open the website. The title tag outlines what the page is about. When ranking web pages for particular queries, Google looks at the title tag and compares that to the rest of the content on the page.
Another one is meta tags although they are not the direct ranking factors of the website search engines do read the meta tags to better know the topics and contents of the website. This directly attracts more click-through rate, which is the ranking factor. We’ll discuss what is CTR later in this article.
ii. Heading Tags: Your landing page or blog should include multiple heading tags, from the h1 down to a potential h6. This increases the user experience and the website looks smooth and easy to read and understand.
2. Usability:
Well, this may seem obvious and it’s quite important, make sure that the user should not have to read the complete page for certain information because it may irritate them and there is a potential risk of ‘bounce back’ which is the factor for website ranking. There should be clear headings regarding the contents.
3. URL Strings:
Well, the stats have shown that small URLs capture more traffic. Use the primary keywords in the URL that we have discussed earlier and the domain should be clear and appropriate.
4. User-friendly, Authoritative Content:
When the search engine’s spiders crawl the website they read the content as well to match the user intent and that’s how they give a better score to the website so your website should have User-Friendly, Authoritative Content.
The content shouldn’t have just one focus keyword. Write content that will drive traffic from many related queries. The goal is to generate clicks and use the factors of your on-page to increase conversions.
5. Mobile Responsive:
The website should be responsive on every device so irrespective of the user your website is useful for everyone and that’s how more traffic is generated. According to the updated algorithm of the google search engine, the ranking factors also include the responsiveness of the website, which means those websites will be shown upper which are responsive on every device.
6. Site Loading Time:
In today’s technology, speed is essential. We don’t want to wait. If a page isn’t loading right away, we find another website that will. So make sure you’re not hurting your user experience. This factor plays a very important role in the ranking of the website when the spiders crawl through your website they check its loading time if it takes more time the ranking is affected.
7. CTR (click-through rate):
As the name suggests it is the number of users who clicks the website. Sometime when we search a for particular query we might skip some top website and may click the website which is not at the top this may happen because we found the description or meta of that website more appropriate than in that process search engine might think that although this website is not at top there are more CTRs for this website hence this website might be more relevant for the given search query. In this way, CTR increases the ranking of the website.
8. Bounce Back Rate:
Well, this plays an important role in the ranking of the website. The bounce-back rate of the website should be very less. If the users click on the website and do not serve the website for few seconds then the search engine considers the website as the inappropriate for the given query as it’s not able to serve the users and meet their expectations hence they will rank that website at lower.
So these are the ON-PAGE SEOs.
We’ll see what are OFF-PAGE SEOs and some advanced SEO in the next article.
I hope you all must have found this article useful.
