final on page seo.docx

Search Engine Optimization
What are search engines?
A search engine is an online tool that helps people find information on the
internet. Examples: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Duck Duck Go. But the truth is,
Google is also probably the only example you need to know. Just look at the chart
of the worldwide search engine market share
So when we talk about search engines in these notes, we mostly mean
Google. Other search engines work on similar principles and as long as
your website is optimized for Google, you should be all set up for
others too.
How do search engines work
The process in which search engines work consists of these main steps:
● Crawling
● Indexing
● Ranking
The process looks something like this:

Crawling
Crawling is the process in which search engines scan all the internet webpages
continuously. They use small pieces of programs (called crawlers or bots) to
follow all the hyperlinks and discover new pages (as well as any updates to the
pages they discovered before).
Indexing
Once the website is crawled, the search engines try to analyze and understand
the pages, categorize them, and store them in the index.
The search engine index is basically a gigantic library of all the
crawled websites with a single purpose – to understand them and have them
available to be used as a search result.
Tip: If you want to find out whether your page was crawled and indexed, you
can simply go to your Google Search Console and use the URL Inspection
Tool, as shown ahead

You’ll see when the page was last crawled as well as warnings about any potential
crawling and indexing issues Google may have with your page.
Ranking
Once the internet user submits a search query, the search engine digs into the
index and pulls out the best results and use a an algorithm to rank the results.
Google keep this algorithm updated acoordingly

What is search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of getting pages to rank higher in
search engines, ranking higher in search engines can lead to an increase in traffic
to a website.
In Google and other search engines, the SERP often features paid ads at the top of
the page, followed by the regular results or the "organic search results". Traffic
that comes via SEO is often referred to as "organic search traffic" to differentiate
it from traffic that comes through paid search. Paid search is often referred to as
search engine marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC).
Methods of Doing Onpage & Off Page SEO
Black hat SEO is a set of unethical (and usually spammy) practices to improve the
rankings of a website.
These techniques can get you to the top of the search results in a short time,
however, search engines will most probably penalize and ban the website sooner
or later.
White hat SEO, on the other hand, refers to all the regular SEO techniques that
stick to the guidelines and rules. It is a long-term strategy in which good rankings
are a side-product of good optimization, quality content, and a user-oriented
approach.
What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO (also known as “on-site SEO”) is the practice of optimizing web page
content for search engines and users.

On- Page SEO Techniques/Activities
Integrate relevant keywords into your pages
First on our list of on-page SEO activities is integrating relevant keywords into
your pages. If you want to rank in search results, you need to incorporate
keywords into your website. Keywords trigger your site to appear in relevant
searches, so you need to optimize your pages to appear in the right search
results.
To find the right keywords, start by conducting keyword research. You can
use keyword research tools, like “Google Keyword Planner” to help you find
relevant terms for your pages.
When you conduct keyword research, focus on long-tail keywords. Long-tail
keywords contain three or more words, like “best chocolate cake.”
Long-tail keywords are best for your website because they help you drive more
qualified traffic to your page. When someone searches a specific term, the search
intent is more specific, and you know what they want to find.

For example, if someone searches “chocolate,” it’s hard to know the intent
behind that search. Are they looking for chocolate cake recipes, chocolate bars, or
chocolate ice cream? The keyword is too short for you to identify the search
intent behind it clearly.
On the other hand, a keyword like “chocolate cake recipe” is clearer. You know
someone’s looking for a chocolate cake recipe — the search intent is evident.
Once you have your long-tail keywords selected, you’ll integrate them into your
site.
Don’t incorporate them too often, as it will lead to “keyword stuffing”. Keyword
stuffing negatively impacts your site and hurts your ranking, so only use keywords
where they fit and flow naturally.
Improve site load time
One of the most important on-page SEO activities involves improving site load
time.Users expect your site to load in three seconds or less. If your site loads
too slowly, your audience will go back to the search results and visit another
site instead.
When people go back quickly from your site, it tells search engines that your site
is not relevant to the search results. Search engines then won’t rank your site as
highly.
To prevent this from happening, you can use a tool like Google PageSpeed
Insights to help you see your site’s current load time and improve it.
Google will provide suggestions like:
Compressing image file sizes
Minifying coding
Reducing redirects
Optimize your images
Big image files are one of the most common factors that cause slow page
loading. SO Compress your images
Image compression is a process that removes some unnecessary image
data while preserving image quality.
Image alt texts

Image alt text is a piece of text in the HTML code that describes the image
It is very important From the SEO point of view – alt text provides better
understanding for crawlers since they can’t “see” your image
To write a good alt text,
you should:
be descriptive – describe the image in the best way possible
keep it short – 5 to10 words should be just fine
avoid keyword stuffing – alt text is not a place to stuff your keywords
unnaturally
Besides the alt texts, you should also use:
● descriptive image file names (yellow-apple.jpeg is always better
than DCIM1523.jpeg)
● image title and image description in coding
Optimize your title tag and meta description
Next on our list of on-page optimization strategies is optimizing your title
tag and meta description.
Your title tag appears as a blue line of text in search results that people can click
on to navigate to the page on your site. Users and search engines use this to
determine if your listing is relevant to their search
query.

Your
meta description is the small text that appears below the title tag.
This tag provides your audience with a summary of your page. While it doesn’t
directly impact your ranking, your meta description can help guide people to
choose your
listing.
This tactic is one of the most crucial on-page SEO techniques because it impacts
whether people click on your listing.
If your title tag and meta description are detailed, people are more likely to click
on your listing if it fits what your audience wants to find.
To have a click-worthy title tag…
Stay within the 60-character limit
Use your keyword towards the front of your tag
Use power words (i.e., Exclusive, Free)
To have a impactful meta description…
Stay within the 155-character limit
Summarize what people can find on your page
Use your core keyword in your description
Optimize your URLs/SEO friendly URLs

Next on our list of on-page SEO activities is optimizing your URLs.
Search engines use URLs to determine the relevancy of your page. If you want to
help your page rank in more relevant search results, you’ll want to optimize your
URLs. When you don’t have a clear URL, it makes it difficult for users and search
engines to understand your page’s context.
So, imagine seeing a URL that looks like this
www.baker.com/fnsj/ejnf-een3234/4392jnr392
If you saw this URL, would you have any idea about the context of the page?
The random numbers and letters doesn’t tell you, or search engines, what’s on
the page.
With an optimized URL, however, you provide a relevancy.
Now, imagine seeing this URL
www.baker.com/recipes/cakes/chocolate-fudge-cake
When looking at this URL, you know the page’s context and what to expect from
it. So, as you can see, optimizing your URL is fundamental to helping search
engines and users understand the relevancy of your page.
When you optimize your URLs, make sure you use your page’s core keyword
within the URL’s end portion.
On-page SEO activity: Use internal links on your page
Internal links are links on your page which takes you to other pages on your same
website. Internal links are a fundamental part of SEO for two reasons:
● Internal links help keep users on your site longer
● Internal links help search engines discover new pages on your site and
index them in search results to rank
Example of Website Content with internal link

When you use internal links on your page, you want to ensure you create relevant
“anchor text” for those links.
On-page SEO activity: Make responsive website/mobile Friendly website
Last on our list of on-page SEO techniques is integrating responsive design.
People will access your site from mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets. If
your website isn’t optimized for these devices, you risk delivering a poor mobile
experience.
A poor mobile experience is negetive to your SEO because Google takes the
mobile version of your site into account when ranking you in search results.
If you don’t have a mobile-friendly site, you won’t rank well in search results.
Sitemaps
A sitemap is a structured list of all pages on a website available to be crawled by
search engines. Having one is yet another way to let crawlers find all
your pages.
What’s more, it contains some useful additional information, like
the lastmod attribute – the date when the last update of the page was made so
that the crawlers will know whether the page needs to be re-crawled.

If you’re not sure how to create a sitemap and your website runs on WordPress
(which it most probably does), we recommend creating the sitemap with
the Yoast SEO plugin.
It will look something like this:
To let Google know about your sitemap, you can submit it to Google Search
Console.
Then go to Google Search Console > Sitemaps and paste it under Add a
new sitemap:

HTTPS
This one goes without saying. There’s really no excuse for not using an
SSL certificate these days, Ggoogle will punish your rankings. Fot this you
just need to buy a SSL certificate. The security of your website’s visitors should be
a priority for you. your website may perform worse in Google Rankings
if you don’t use HTTPS.
Header Tags
Header tags — such as H1, H2, and so on — are one of several elements that
affect on-page search engine optimization (or SEO). Headers are one element
that can have an impact on both the user experience of your site and how the
search engines process and interpret your content. Using header tags well
requires that the writer understand how to create a pleasant read for the user,
while also writing in language that search engines can understand and categorize
with ease.

What is an HTML Header Tag?
Headers appear in a page’s source code as tags such as <h1> or <h2>. Unlike
humans, search engines don’t “see” web pages in the visual sense. They use
HTML code to interpret elements that change the look of the page, as well as to
indicate which words and phrases are being used as titles, subtitles, and in other
contexts. This also helps the search engines index content correctly.
You can use header tags in your HTML to add titles to the tops of articles and
break up text with subtitles or subheaders. This adds visual breaks to a page,
while also helping search engines understand the context of the words more
clearly.
How Many Levels of Heading Tags are There in HTML?
HTML contains six header tags, H1 through H6. H1 is the most prominent of the
header tags — making it ideal to use for web page titles — and the tags get
subsequently smaller and less prominent from there.

Why are Header Tags Important for SEO?
When pages are indexed by search engine bots, the underlying HTML code is
stored on the search engine’s servers to be analyzed and interpreted by their
algorithm. This is how search queries get matched to web results so quickly.
Header tags are an important piece of code that search engines will look at when
trying to determine what keywords your content should rank for, how content
on a page is organized, and what sort of topics your domain is about.
SEO Value of H1 Tags
H1 tags are almost as important as title tags, but are subtly different. While title
tags will display on a SERP, the H1 will generally appear at the top of the page
when someone clicks on a result. Outside of the SERP, human readers generally
won’t see or interact with a page’s title tag, but they are almost certainly going to
see the on-page title (H1).
SEO Value of H2 Tags and Beyond
Header tags progressively lose SEO value with each step down. H2 tags are
extremely important for establishing context and matching keywords to your
content. Use H2 tags to signal keywords or specific blocks of content. It’s a good
idea to match your H2 tags to your target keywords whenever possible and
whenever it doesn’t disrupt the user experience.
H3 tags are still somewhat important for signaling keyword relevance, but this is
the point at which the SEO value of header tags really starts to fall off. H3 tags are
roughly on par with bolded text when it comes to signalling context and keyword
matches. H3 tags can contain target keywords, but it’s best to leave most of the
heavy keyword lifting to higher headings and subheadings.
Subheaders beyond H3 (i.e. H4, H5, and H6) don’t carry much SEO value when it
comes to highlighting keywords. It’s fine if you find yourself writing content that
contains these subheadings, but when you use them, remember that you’re using
them more for the sake of the user experience, rather than for their SEO value.

As a user you may be wondering what a 4XX error means, why it’s occurred and is
there anything you can do to fix it? As a digital marketer, your main concerns will
be why a 4XX has occurred, how it’s impacting the end user, and how you can fix
it. In this helpful guide, we explain what each 4XX error is, what causes them, how
it impacts your SEO value, and how you can fix them.
What is a 4XX Error?
A 4XX Error is an error that often occurs when a webpage doesn’t exist or has
restricted access or rights. These type of errors often occur from misspelling the
URL. As a result, the page cannot be found or, the site or page could not be
reached. If a page is not valid, the message cannot be exchanged between the
web page and web server, and as a result, a 4XX Error is presented.
A Guide to HTTP 4XX Page Errors
What is a 400 Bad Request Error?
When you submit a request to the website server to load a webpage, if it is
somehow incorrect, the server can’t understand it and a 400 Bad Request will be
presented.
What is a 401 Unauthorized Error?
A 401 HTTP error code indicates a request sent by the client that could not be
authenticated. the client is banned for some reason, or the server has rejected
the client’s credentials.
What is a 403 Forbidden Error?
This error message is shown when you try to access a page or resource that is
strictly forbidden for some reason. You will usually be presented with basic
troubleshooting instructions.

What is a 404 Not Found Error?
Broken links on a webpage will present the user with a code 404 error page, The
404 error ‘page not found’. A 404 error may occur if a website has deleted a page
but failed to remove the link
What is a canonical tag?
A canonical tag (rel=“canonical”) is a HTML code that defines the main
version for duplicate, near-duplicate and similar pages. In other words, if
you have the same or similar content available under different URLs, you
can use canonical tags to specify which version is the main one and thus,
should be indexed.
What does a canonical tag look like?
Canonical tags use simple and consistent syntax, and are placed within the
<head> section of a web page:
<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://example.com/sample-page/” />
Why are canonical tags important for SEO?
Google doesn’t like duplicate content. It makes it harder for them to
choose:
Which version of a page to index (they’ll only index one!)
Too much duplicate content can also affect your “crawl budget.” That
means Google may end up wasting time crawling multiple versions of the
same page instead of discovering other important content on your website.

Forcing Google to waste time crawling duplicate content is, of course, something
that should be avoided if possible.
But I don’t have duplicate content, do I?
Given that you probably haven’t been publishing the same posts and pages
multiple times, it’s easy to assume that your website has no duplicate
content.
But search engines crawl URLs, not web pages.
That means that they see
example.com/product and example.com/product?color=red
as unique pages, even though they’re the same web page with identical or
similar content.
especially on ecommerce sites
example, Brown Bag Clothing sells shirts.
This is the URL for their main category page:
https://www.bbclothing.co.uk/en-gb/clothing/shirts.html
If you filter for only XL shirts, a parameter is added to the URL:
https://www.bbclothing.co.uk/en-gb/clothing/shirts.html?Size=XL

If you then also filter for only blue shirts, yet another parameter is added:
https://www.bbclothing.co.uk/en-
gb/clothing/shirts.html?Size=XL&color=Blue
These are all separate pages in Google’s eyes, even though the content is
only marginally different.
But it’s not just ecommerce sites that fall victim to duplicate content.
Here are some other common causes of duplicate content that apply to all
types of websites:
The basics of canonical tag implementation
Canonicals are easy to implement. We’ll discuss four different ways for
doing that in a moment. But no matter which method you opt for, there are
five golden rules that you should remember at all times.
Rule #1: Use absolute URLs
Google’s John Mueller states that it’s best practice not to use relative paths
with the rel=“canonical” link element.
So you should use the following structure:
As opposed to this one:
<link rel=“canonical” href=”/sample-page/” />
Rule #2: Use lowercase URLs
Since Google may treat uppercase and lowercase URLs as two different
URLs
Rule #3: Use the correct domain version (HTTPS vs. HTTP)
If you switched over to SSL, make sure that you don’t declare any non-SSL
(i.e., HTTP) URLs in your canonical tags. Doing so can theoretically lead to
confusion and unexpected results. If you’re on a secure domain, ensure
that you use the following version of your URL:
As opposed to:
<link rel=“canonical” href=“http://example.com/sample-page/” />

What Is Robots.txt?
Robots.txt is a file that tells search engine spiders to not crawl certain pages or
sections of a website. Most major search engines (including Google, Bing and
Yahoo) recognize and honor Robots.txt requests. It disallows Search engine for
certain pages.
What Is Schema Markup?/Rich Snippets/Microdata
Schema markup is a code that is added to a website’s code so that search engines
can easily grasp the detailed page content. This helps to represent the web pages
on SERPs and provide accurate information to users.
Google receives schema in the page’s HTML. Rich snippets contain additional
information which Google showcases in a shortly and concisely. Such information
may include- product’s pricing, photos, reviews, events, recipes, etc. Schema
markup explains this information to search engines so that they can provide
better search results. It results in high click-through rates.
1. Organization Schema Markup
2. Product Schema Markup
Product schema markup is mainly used for showing the selling products and
offers on the search results. The offer markup requires “price”, “type of currency”
($, ₹, €), and status of the product like “in stock” or “out of stock.”
3. Local Business Schema Markup
This schema markup is especially important for local businesses and companies. It
enables the users to see the carousel of businesses related to their queries,
business hours, reviews, their menu, contact info for providing better search
results.
6. Event Schema Markup
Event schema markup provides detailed information about webinars, festivals,
etc. It shows events with location, date, and time.

With the help of this schema markup, you can attract visitors to event posting. It
may happen that they may click on it and navigate to your site. This can increase
traffic on your site.
article pages, and blog posts.
9. Recipes Schema Markup
Recipes schema markup helps to show your recipes with the structured data.
When you provide detailed information about your recipes such as- nutrition
value, cooking time, reviewers rating. Then Google understands it and represents
this in a better way. Your provided recipes will appear in the Google search results
and Google Images.

The Best Tips To Boost Organic Traffic On Your Website In 2022
10. Reviews Schema Markup
Review schema markup helps to show the review content of the website. Your
pages will appear for a rich result on search engines. This can help your website
reach the right audience.

11. Movies Schema Markup
You can markup your movie lists with the structured data. So that the users can
easily explore the movie information. Such information include- movie title,
movie image, and name of the director.

Outbound Links and SEO
Outbound links increase the relevance of your website, especially when it comes
to search engine algorithms.

These links allow search engine algorithms to process what you do, and the
industry you’re in.
They even assist search engines in making decisions about the relevancy of your
site to searchers. Hence, your SERPs rankings.
How Outbound Links Work
What happens when you include high-quality outbound links on your website
pages? You increase your online reputation in the eyes of search engines.
You also build trust and distinguish your website from the competition as a
legitimate source of information.
These links makes it clear to Google, and other search engines, that your blog
posts are worthwhile. it allow you to build your online authority, but only when
you include high authority, relevant ones.
If your site contains the right number of authoritative links, then you, in turn, look
authoritative.
Most people don’t have tons of time to explore a variety of high-value websites
during their research.
When you can offer a few excellent suggestions, you instantly raise your status to
the level of an expert.

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