SEO - A Beginners' Guide

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A Beginner’s Guide to SEO
CompiledbyEthinosDigitalMarketing

SEO – A Beginner’s Guide
• Improving website performance on Google is a relevant, much discussed topic in the field of
digital marketing.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques are used to index the pages of a website and
improve their crawling ability.
• We have created this SEO techniques and best practices guide for beginners; to help them use
SEO more effectively and enhance the performance of their website.

The History of SEO – A Timeline
Yahoo Optimization was born using the concepts of AAA, A#1, and yellow pages/white pages
alphabetical optimization.
Keyword density and location testing started. Once a URL was submitted to Yahoo, it would get
listed within 72 hours.
Algorithm cracking occurred for the first time. SEO companies decoded all the 35 parameters that
Excite used to rank websites and could generate #1 pages at will.
Search engines began to use Yahoo as a quality assurance test and thus it became necessary for websites
to be present on Yahoo.
Websites could get listed within few hours by pulling referrals. Spam became a serious problem for
search engines and cloaked pages appeared for the first time.
1995
1996
1997
Mid ‘97
Late ‘97
More

The History of SEO – A Timeline
Search engines began to move to off-the-page criteria. Algorithms became more sophisticated and
difficult to crack. Search engines used multiple algorithms for the top ten positions. Rampant site-
theft and page-jacking forced search engines to limit submissions. They began to modernize with
word lists, multi-languages and Google entered the scene with 25 million URLs. Open Source
Directory (ODP) became very popular.
War between search engines and SEO firms. Websites of many SEO firms got banned from search
engines and lost rankings for their entire client lists. Decoding algorithms became the most difficult
task and cloaked pages became almost mandatory for SEO firms to protect their clients’ rankings.
The beginning of Pay Per Click.
Pay Per Click and Pay For Performance schemes gained popularity and Google began to
consolidate its position as the default search engine.
Bought and paid-for listings became the order of the day and the Google era began. Websites had no
option but to be on Google.
1998
Late
‘98 - ‘99
Late ‘99
2000
2001
continued

Why is SEO one of the best techniques to promote your business?
• Allows global and regional promotion
• Generates targeted traffic that can be converted into
potential customers
• Increases product/service visibility to potential local or
international customers
• Higher Return on Investment through higher volume of sales
and profits
• Relatively cost-effective when compared to other promotion
channels
• Lets you target a selective audience
• Results can be measured easily through search engine
reports

SEO and other elements of Digital Marketing
SEO is not the only element of digital marketing.
Various others include Social Media Optimization (SMO), email marketing, paid ads, etc.
Though objectives and strategy determine the digital marketing elements that are employed for
a particular brand or company, the following comparisons of the elements will help make the
bigger picture a little more clear.
Social Media Optimization (SMO) Email Marketing Paid Advertising

Quality of traffic generated by SEO and SMO
* Marketing Easy – SEO centric
* Online Marketing banter – SMO centric
The proportion of ‘Returning Visitors’ is lower in SMO generated
traffic when compared to SEO generated traffic.
SEO results in more ‘Page Views’ than SMO as social
media visitors are less likely to explore the site.
SMO generated visitors are more prone to just
one-page visits and have a higher bounce rate.

SEO and Pay Per Click (PPC)
31% of B2B and 40% of B2C respondents claim
that they will increase their budget for PPC.
59 % of B2B and 49% of B2C respondents feel that SEO
has a higher impact on lead generation.
43 % of B2B and 45% of B2C
respondents claim that they
will increase their budget for
SEO .
Which channel has the biggest impact on lead
generation?
Will you increase, decrease, or
maintain your SEO budget in 2012?
Will you increase, decrease, or maintain
your PPC Budget in 2013?

SEO and Email Marketing
named email marketing as
the strongest performing
channel in the previous year
39 % of businesses
named email marketing in their top
3 marketing investment areas for
the coming year
37 % of businesses
• SEO increases potential customers by
directing traffic to the website and email
marketing increases interaction with an
existing database of customers
• SEO is an opportunity to reach the members
of the target audience and email marketing is
an opportunity to begin building a relationship
with them
• The drawback of SEO is that visibility does not
guarantee an interaction
• The drawback of email marketing is that the
target audience may consider it as spam
• Using SEO to drive traffic to the website and
then getting the visitors to sign up for a
regular publication, like a newsletter, is a way
to make the most of both, SEO and email
marketing

SEO Process
DoFollow and NoFollow
Other Link Building Activities
Link Building
Keyword Research

Keyword Research
Meta Tag ,Meta Keywords and Description: This is an
important factor of the HTML background which is read
by search engines but not displayed on the webpage. It
should include all the important keywords.
Page Title: This is the head section of the webpage and the
most powerful factor in search engine ranking.
URL Structure: The URL structure of a website is like the door to a house. It is an important
building block and making it clear and simple will help to rank high on the search engine. A
keyword rich domain is always preferable.
Keyword Research is one of the main aspects of SEO. Your website
should target the correct keywords to the right audience that is
likely to be interested in your products or services.

Link Building
Link Building is a powerful strategy to get your website a
high rank on search engines. You need to focus on the
quality and quantity of the links.
One-way links:
One-way links are links to your website from other websites that do not receive a link from your website. One-way
links indicate to the search engine that your website has useful, relevant information.
Reciprocal links:
Reciprocal links are links exchanged between two websites. Each website has a link to the other. It is advisable to
have reciprocal links with other websites that are relevant to your industry or business.
Three-way links:
Three-way linking is a process by which a website receives a one-way link from
one website and creates a one-way link with another website. The purpose of
three-way linking is to reduce the number of reciprocal links because reciprocal
links are easily detected by search engines and websites with too many
reciprocal links are not ranked very high.

Other Link Building Activities
Press releases: Press releases can
bring your targeted keywords on the
top positions of search engines and
are an easy way to promote and drive
traffic.
Blogs: A blog is a website or a part
of a website which should be
continuously updated with new content to
drive more traffic to the website.

Do Follow and No Follow
• Search Engines use search bots or web crawlers to access
and index web pages.
• DoFollow and NoFollow, terms coined by Matt Cutts in
1995, refer to html coding of a website that instructs a
crawler to access or reverse from a particular link.
• A NoFollow command in the code for the link will result into
the link being ignored by the crawler and the website will not
receive any link juice.
• On the other hand, a DoFollow coding will transfer link juice to
the website that the link refers to. DoFollow links are valuable
for SEO and NoFollow links should be avoided.

Internal Linking:
Internal linking is an SEO best practice
that involves linking one section of the
web page to another so that visitors
to the website can navigate the web
pages conveniently.
Elements of the SEO Strategy
SEO Content:
SEO content should include certain
keywords that you are targeting. This will
help to get a better rank on search engine
result pages. However, you need to be
careful and have the correct keyword
density to avoid your website from being
considered spam.
Getting Inbound Links:
Inbound links are links from pages on external
websites linking back to your site. Inbound
links are a result of relevant, useful content
and are likely to get your website a high page
rank on search engines.
Reverse SEO:
Reverse SEO is a technical way of relegating the
negative aspects or mentions of your website to
lower ranks on a search engine results page. It is
an effective way to secure your site from bad
publicity. Reverse SEO techniques are used on a
large scale while carrying out Online Reputation
Management (ORM).

Technical Elements of the SEO Strategy
It is a visual map of your website which allows easy navigation to visitors and search engine crawlers.
Webmasters often use it to indicate the number of pages that the search engine has to crawl.
Sitemap:
301 Redirect is one of the methods to convey to a search engine that you are transferring your
webpage to another URL without wanting to affect your current search engine ranking.
301 Redirect
It defines text for your image and thus allows you to optimize your image for search engines.
If you have two same URLs with minor differences in content, you can use the canonical tag which
instructs the search engine to not consider duplicate content issues in your site.
Canonical tag:
Alt tagging:

Technical Elements of the SEO Strategy
It helps to control search engine crawling i.e. if you have two similar pages, it helps to protect form
duplication. If you have some data which you do not want to show on a search engine, a robot.txt file
can be used for the same.
Robot.txt:
It is a directory level configuration which helps to change the name of the file which
controls many features of the server.
Error 404 is used to indicate that the client could connect to the server but the server could not
find the required URL. This page is used in case of broken links and can be customized.
Error 404:

Some Funny Error 404 Pages

SEO Tools
SEO tools are mainly used for two purposes :
• To get high rankings on search engine result pages
• To find out the flaws and problems in the website
Following are some commonly used tools
Google AdWords
Google Insights Google Analytics
WebmasterTools
SEO PowerSuite
Copyscape
InternetBusinessPromoter
Quirk SearchStatus
RoboForm

Google Adwords
Google AdWords keyword tool is widely used by internet marketing professionals to
create advertising campaigns and carry out research on new keywords for websites.

Google Insights
Google Insights tool is widely used by internet marketing professionals to compare search
volume patterns across regions, categories, time frames, and properties. It displays changes in the
frequency with which a keyword is being searched and thus provides useful information.

Google Analytics
Google Analytics is used by internet marketing professionals to get statistics that
trace the traffic flow towards the website. Google Analytics can track visitors’
details like IP address, country of origin, bounce rate of traffic, etc.

Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools are used by internet marketing professionals to draw
inferences about site performance. These tools can be used to address and
correct any indexing problems that the website might have and also to learn how
to maximize the impact of SEO on the website.

SEO Power Suite
SEO Power Suite is used by internet marketing professionals to keep track of the
website keyword ranking. Manually checking keywords every time can show
different results at different times and situations. The SEO Rank Tracker tool
from SEO PowerSuite can be used to avoid these discrepancies.

Copyscape
Copyscape is a tool used by internet marketing professionals to check for
duplication of content. Duplication of content can lead to the URL being banned
by the Search Engine. Thus, a tool that detects duplication and allows for
corrective action proves very useful for those who want to post original and
relevant content.

Internet Business Pomoter
Internet Business Promoter (IBP) is a software that can carry out various tasks like:
• Search niche directories for submission
• Search link building websites related to your industry
• Provide you with ranking results of keywords

Quirk Search Status
Quirk Search Status is a tool which is specially designed to provide internet
marketers with necessary information like DoFollow, NoFollow, page ranks, etc. It
can be used to monitor the performance of any website in the world. It comes as
an add-on with the Mozilla Firefox or SeaMonkey browsers.

RoboForm
Manually submitting websites to each and every directory is a tedious, next to impossible
task. Managing the logins and passwords for every different platform and repeatedly typing
out the same forms is a time consuming, non-value adding effort.
RoboForm is a software that lets internet marketing professionals submit directories with
just one click, makes form filling much simpler by storing details, protects and stores their
backup data and lets them manage passwords using one master password.

Tips to follow in 2013 - Keywords
• Try to create a keyword rich URL for optimizing the
page.
• Do not insert more than six keywords in the
keyword tag. Avoid using duplicate keywords in
many pages of the website.
• Write keyword rich descriptions and do not increase
description to more than 160 characters.
• Always insert important keywords in the title tag.
Analyze keywords and create a list of keywords which satisfy three criteria (relevance, demand,
competition). Select keywords that meet these criteria and some long tail keywords which can be
ranked easily to gain a little more confidence over your SEO skills.

Tips to follow in 2013 - Links
• Use internal linking with anchor text.
• Get one-way links which are relevant and have good page ranks.
• If you are exchanging links with other websites, check the outbound links of that site. If they are
more than 25, avoid such websites.
• Check the domain age and outbound links when
you are trying to build links. Remember that old
domain websites have more value on internet.
• Try to get links from websites that have high page
ranks.
• Get DoFollow links that will boost your search
engine ranking

More Important Tips to follow in 2013
Use Webmaster Tools to detect and remove
the broken links from your website. Avoid flash, graphic and moving
locations on the website.
First submit website to top search engines like
Google, Yahoo, Bing, and then to the others.
Try to get listed in government directories,
DMOZ, and other top directories.
Keep the website structure and URL
structure simple. Check it before
optimizing.
Avoid using frames, and use the <NOFRAMES>
tag wherever required.
Create a sitemap that clearly indicates all the pages
that the Search Engine needs to index.
Give alt tag to optimize images because
search engines do not crawl images.
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• http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum5/1008.htm
• http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/seo-vs-smo-traffic-quality-test.html
• http://www.slideshare.net/webmarketing123/2012-state-of-digital-marketing-
report
• http://www.oracledigital.com.au/email-marketing-is-dead-the-statistics-and-
social-proof/
• http://media.focus.com/assets/research/focus-survey-results-marketers-
benchmark-report-2011/Marketers_Benchmark_Survey_Results_Q2_11.pdf
Sources

Have a question, ask the experts!
siddharth.hegde@ethinos.com
+91 – 9820217252
http://www.linkedin.com/in/hegdesiddharth
@siddhegde
http://www.facebook.com /EthinosDigital
Ethinos
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SEO - A Beginners' Guide

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