Introduction to SEO-Search Engine Optimization
Aren’t we familiar with terms like Search Engine, Social Media, E-Commerce, Digital Marketing? Yes, Indeed. These all technologies drive our daily life. We are connected with our friends, family via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and so on. We search contents on Google, Bing and so on. We buy from E-Bay, Amazon, Kaymu and so on.
We spread our and our firm’s information by creating unique web portals. So the question is how could our web portal be found on the search engine so that concern user can easily find it? Either you advertise your portal by paying or it could be optimized without paying further. SEO-Search Engine Optimization is the techniques for this. Here are the tools and techniques of SEO that may help you to rank your website on the front line of Google by using SEO on the basis of 10 Days SEO training conducted by resource persons Er.Anish Shah, CEO and Mr Bijay Ghimire, COO of Elance Digital Media, Kathmandu Nepal.
Here each day’s two-hour session’s content has been presented.
Day 1: Session I: Introduction and Importance of SEO
SEO is an act of making your website popular & relevant enough to rank high on Google for free traffic ( that saves the amount goes to the advertisement ). For e.g. if we type “Fashion tips” keyword in Google there will be millions of search results. Now, the question is among them how the website comes on the first rank of Google leaving those advertised websites? The answer is simple. It is so because of the two main features of SEO:
i. Relevancy (on-page SEO):
The contents of the website itself like the title, description, tags, labels, interlinking, HTML source code and so on.
ii. Popularity ( off-page SEO):
The public engagement like the no. of visitors, social media engagements, creating backlinks and so on.
Again, the question raises how Google determines the relevancy and popularity of the website? And the answer is :
After the keyword is typed on google search, the activated google spider bot check all these parameters and sorted the websites accordingly. Technically, any search engine works based on three processes named as “crawling” where content is discovered, “Indexing” where it is analyzed and stored in huge databases and “retrieval” where user query fetches a list of relevant pages.
Thus, At this moment, The SEO seems important because Google has 82% search engine market share and according to the Google latest updates “Google Panda” -2016 (latest 4.2), focuses mainly on “on-page” and “off-page” SEO.
Session II: SEO tools and techniques
I already informed you about the two main features of SEO i.e relevancy and popularity. So to rank on google our websites should be relevant and popular. Question is, how to make it so? This second 1st day’s 2nd session was about the tools and techniques of SEO.
Tool no 1: “Keyword everywhere”
This is an extension of the web browsers like chrome which shows the search volume, cost per click and competition which are also the major factors for the “Niche Research”.
Now, let’s explore further the niche research and its factors. Actually, Niche is the common interest of the common group. To understand niche let me give an example: We all soccer lovers know that Messi is a world’s top football player. His niche is playing football. Amitabh Bachan is Bollywood’s top actor. His niche is acting. Just as, A niche website is a website that focuses on specific information such as “health”, “education”, “entertainment”, “music”, “travel and tourism”, “jobs”, “fashion”, etc. that is useful, interesting and dedicated for the concerned audience. Talking about Amazon –the biggest E-Commerce site is a non-niche site because the niche area is not specific enough although it is focused on shopping.
Now, the point is how to find out the appropriate niche? We can term this process of finding and choosing appropriate, relevant niche as “Niche Research”. Choosing niche is depend on our field of expertise or can be chosen for the purpose of profit. The following table depicts the four factors of profitable niche research.
Day 2: Keyword Research and Blogging
i. Keyword research:
Whatever we type into the google search that becomes “keyword”. For e.g. If ‘Motivation’ is a niche then the ‘, ‘Motivation at work’, Motivation tips for good relationship’, ‘Motivation for success’ can be the keywords. The ‘Keyword everywhere’ extension for chrome provides the information about the factors explained in the above table.
Before start writing the contents in the blog or in the website, we should do research for the appropriate niche and the keywords. Another term we have to deal with secondary keywords i.e LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing ) Keywords. It is the keywords that are listed in ‘Related Searches’.
ii. Blogging:
Initially, blogging involved a personal web log, in which a person would journal about their day. From “web log” came the term “blog.” Blogs are updated frequently. Blogs allow for reader engagement. Blogs are often included in social media because of the ability for readers to comment and have a discussion with the blogger and others who read the blog makes it social. Search engines love new content, and as a result, blogging is a great search engine optimization (SEO) tool. [Source: https://www.thebalance.com/blogging-what-is-it-1794405]
How to create your own blog?
Here are the easy steps to create your own blog:
i. Go to BlogSpot.com and log in using your Google account. It is recommended to you uses your Google Plus profile.
ii. Once you are logged in, click on “new blog” then add a title and select your domain. The selection of the domain (Address) can be similar to that of your niche.
iii. After choosing the title and the address, you can choose theme depending on your requirements.
iv. Now, click on the “Create Blog” button, you can see “Dashboard” from where you can easily create new posts and pages.
Day 3: Topic Research and Content writing
In this session, we are going to learn about topic research- selecting the good topic for start writing the contents. Here are those steps to find a good topic:
i. Type the focus keyword in google
ii. Open at least 5 different articles on new tab
iii. Copy the title of each article & paste it into notepad then decide the appropriate title.
Now, before start writing the contents we must select the attractive title. Here are the few tips for keeping better title:
SEO Title Rules:
i. Length of the title should be 50-60 characters.
ii. A title should include focus keyword.
iii. Use of power words; e.g: Amazing, Eye-opening ( you can google it for further power words).
iv. If you are going to give tips and tricks or steps to solving any problems then it is better to start the title with” How to ”or “Numbers”.
About content writing, it has main three sections:
i. Introduction:
This section should contain a well-defined problem statement with the assurance of the solution. Here, for optimized writing focus keyword within first 50-100 words can be included with the bold format. It is also better to write the contents using “I” and “You” to give the audience an emotional touch.
ii. Body:
This section is the explanation of the subject matter. It can include the steps or the subheadings with LSI keywords.
iii. Conclusion:
This section will be followed by focus keyword. The appropriate volume of words for an article is around 2000 and the appropriate keyword density is 0.25-1.25% i.e. 2 to 12 keywords in 1000 words.
Day 4: Posting the first article on BlogSpot
There are following rules while posting an article:
i. Follow the mentioned optimized “title rule”.
ii. Use of focus keyword and LSI keywords ( in bold, italic or underline format).
iii. Interlinking (linking the current contents to other contents of own blog/site).
iv. Outbound links (linking the current contents to the other contents of other’s blog/site).
v. Mention labels sometimes called tags i.e. Shortcut keywords separated by commas.
vi. Edit the properties of image i.e. give title & alt text to the inserted image since free images can be inserted from unsplash.com, pixabay.com where there will be no issue of copyright.
vii. Use of H1, H2 H3 headers tag i.e. by default 1st heading has tag, Subheading has tag, for e.g. In the body section, a first step can be assigned as first heading, the subheading can be appended under that heading and so on.
viii. Make URL short by customizing the permalink on the right-hand side of the blog dashboard.
By following all these rules I have created my first blog on “5 Eye-Opening Tips to Motivate Yourself at Work” where my niche was motivation with keywords -motivate yourself at work and LSI keyword -stay happy.
Day 5: Digital Marketing
There is few abbreviation we should know when there is a term of digital marketing:
SEO: Search Engine Optimization; its free
SEM: Search Engine Marketing; payment basis by advertisement
SMM: Social Media Marketing; via Facebook, Twitter
SMO: Social Media Optimization; sponsorship basis
In this session, we had learned about social media marketing. i.e. creating a page on facebook and posting the related posts also creating facebook groups finally learned about posting on other social media such as Twitter using Google URL shortener, Quora, Tumblr and so on.
Day 6-8: Link Building
In these sessions we had learned about:
Creating backlinks (contextual and non-contextual): here, social media are tier 2 backlinks where web2.0 (blogging), article directory, profiling, bookmarking, guest posting, press releasing, sharing are categorized as tier 1 backlinks.
- Creating an account on article directory: for this, we should know about DA-Domain Authority & PA-Page Authority which can be shown by Moz toolbar. To start article writing and authorship less than 70 DA sites are preferable. Here is the HTML code for link creating in article directory: e.g.: Read my article, here for giving link at “my article”, following HTML code is used: <ahref=www.kcsabanblogspot.com blog”=””>my article</ahref=www.kcsabanblogspot.com>
- Forum posting
- Profiling in Facebook, Twitter, Quora,
- Document sharing sites like SlideShare, Researchgate,
- Video submission on youtube, Vimeo ( by using pawtoon.com)
- Orientation on word AI, Turing Spinner, yopmail.com and other SEO tools
Day 9-10: Monetizing the blog/site
Now the concern is how to monetize the blog/site?
Here are the ways:
i. Google Adsense
It requires a high number of visitors. It also requires pre-investment for creating an account for earning from advertising the blog/site. Note: There is the hassle of payment gateway in the Asian region.
ii. Affiliate marketing
It is commission based marketing. Medium no. of visitors is okay for this. For e.g. Writing the product review of Amazon, if customers purchase the product by reading the product review via your site/blog you will get 4%-15% commission from Amazon. There are different platforms like jvzoo.com, warrior plus, clickbank & so on where different products are categorized and review can be written for them and earn the commission. Note: There is the hassle of payment gateway in the Asian region.
iii. Email marketing
This is the way of increasing visitors to the blog/site. Creating the list of email of clients and flourish the information to them and update them timely about the content of the blog/site.
iv. Earning $ by Approaching on freelancing platform: SEO Clerk
Here, we can find and contact online clients (Global) directly. We can create different services and sale here. The services can be:
- Do 20 highly profitable niche research for $5
- Do 20 highly profitable keyword research for $5
- Build 10 hand-crafted web 2.0 sites for $5
- Write 500 words SEO content for $3-$5
- Write 10, 1000 words highly unique content for $5
- Create highly relevant 50 DA + backlink for $5
Conclusion
Finally, we got following tips:
- Make an SEO friendly site/blog
- In a week write almost 3 articles
- Give 1-2 hours per day
- Visit Back hat, follow SEO experts like Neil Patel
- 1st-day blog writing,
- 2nd-day social media marketing and link building
- At the same time approaching on freelancing platform like Seoclerk, Fiverr
- Do learn from mistakes so do the mistakes.
- Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.
