Do you know how many blogs are posted every second?
The numbers will surprise you!
Around 2 million blogs get posted by WordPress users alone. That means 24 blogs every second.
And while you were reading the above sentences users published around 200 blogs. This statistics is just for WordPress users.
It makes out that there’s a tough competition. Nonetheless, you have no way but to devise a strategy to make your blog a success.
While it’s important to devote time writing your blog posts, optimizing is the key to its success. Devoting just 10 minutes on optimization can come up with tremendously great results.
Every month, the term “SEO” is Googled millions of times. And, that’s not really surprising!
Talk about just Google; around 2.2 million searches are conducted every day. And, you know there are other search engines too.
So, the deciding factor for any business’s success and the bankruptcy of others is definitely whether it’s showing up on Google’s front page or not.
What is Effective SEO?
So, what’s SEO all about?
SEO is Search Engine Optimization.
What’s more important for a fine SEO strategy or for optimization? And, what you will need to optimize?
Writing?
Design?
Links?
All of the three indeed and a lot more.
Google says SEO is “the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s unpaid results.”
Alright, let me explain that for you in a more elaborated way!
SEO includes three parties…..
- You
- The Search Engine
- The Searchers
Let’s suppose you have an article about “how to travel like a Pro”, you’ll focus on showing it up on the first page of Google (Search engine) for anyone who makes a search for the phrase “how to travel like a pro”.
SEO will make it possible and bring your article on the first page!
Let’s dig a little deeper to find how to do SEO effectively.
Overview
It’s just important to be clear on why SEO matters!
As I explained at the beginning of this post, most of the online experiences start from the search engines and 75% of the users prefer searching over Google (search engine).
And, the five results in the Google Search get around 67% of these clicks! Having known this data you would realize why even we care about Search Engine Optimization.
Your blog post or article is not ranking at all if it’s not on the first page of the Google Search Engine.
You’ll need to understand how search Works if you want to find how you can show up your blog/article/site on the first page of Google Search Engine.
Let’s find out about the important components of SEO…..
SEO force, in essence, has two sides! You need to choose yours.
White Hat vs. Black Hat
There are those business owners who want to make it grand quickly while there are the others who want to play the long-term game.
Black Hat SEO is “a get-rich-quick scheme”. It does not consider humans while optimizing the content. The content is optimized just for the search engine.
Black Hat SEO is one of those SEO tools that will help your site rank and make money faster. But, this type of SEO often results in crappy, spammy pages, that come and disappear fast (banned).
The result is often some severe punishment that in turn results in ruining their chances of future business prospects.
Black Hat SEO may make a few more dollars faster, but in the long run, you’ll always need to find ways to avoid the rules and know the new Search Engine Updates.
White hat SEO, alternatively, proffers the users a sustainable way of building a business. It focuses on the human audience more than the Search Engines.
It considers providing the audience with authentic content that’s easily accessible and has high readability value.
There’s a term, Gray hat SEO, which exists between Black & White.
Gray hat SEO is a mix of white & black.
It’s not as pure as a white hat but it’s not even as manipulative as the Black hat. You don’t try intentionally tricking anyone, but you try taking a different kind of advantage.
Many times Google’s standards are not clear and are contradictory.
Take the example of Guest Blogging for building links.
But, why guest blogging is considered a tool for growing a business. It’s often used to bring awareness, to make a name for your industry, and generate enormous traffic.
While all of the above are considered illegitimate reasons to do Guest Blogging, I see it as an aid to SEO.
SEO and Online Marketing is a fun game. Competitors can try different ways to enhance their visibility.
Your competitors are going to follow the technique that brings them on top of the Search Engine. Their focus would be to displace you be the king!
So, the idea is to choose wisely, the path you’re going to follow and also the amount of risk you can be comfortable with.
On-page SEO vs. off-page SEO (Cleaning inside Out)
The two types of SEO are on-page & off-page SEO.
On-page SEO is about working on the Google ranking by focusing directly on the page you are trying to optimize that will include the headline, page structure, and the content.
Off-page SEO is about the variables that Google considers. That does not completely depend on you, but other sources including other blogs in your industry, the personal history of the searcher, and social networks,
While both of these strategies are different, but you’ll need to both of them right.
Let’s take an example to give you a clear picture.
Suppose you are running a business and you have rented an office where employees get to work.
We can consider two scenarios in that case:
Possibility 1
The Infrastructure is Awesome, but the working environment is not good
In this case, no one will like associating with you for a long time. No matter how good the infrastructure looks like, but a poor working environment will ultimately result in a loss.
Similar is the case with off-page SEO. Google considers it a bounce if a visitor leaves your site just after seeing the first page. Higher bounce rate reduces your Google ranking.
Possibility 2
The working environment is perfect, but the infrastructure horribly poor.
People who have come for an interview or been selected after clearing all the rounds will not turn up. This is because they were not very impressed.
Same is the case with on-page optimization. Your website might have amazingly great content but no one will turn out see what’s inside of it.
You’ll not get any traffic in the first place and no one will bother to see that awesome content. Both of these techniques are therefore important.
I’m going to explain how to work both on on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Let’s start with on-page SEO.
On-Page SEO
There are three important things that you’ll need to take care of while working on on-page SEO. The most significant of them is the CONTENT.
“Content is the King”: This prediction was down by Bill Gates in 1996 and it has come out to be true.
But, why content is called the king?
A Google user who is trying to find an answer will be happy when he finds the results satisfying for the queries he has put in.
Suppose a user has Googled “the best sources of Vitamin C”, so Google will put in all its efforts to find the best possible result that will answer exactly what the user is trying to find.
It’ll not look just for focus on a vegetarian source or a non-vegetarian source of Vitamin C but will try to find the exact answer for your question. Google always tries to direct the user to the best content it can find on the result.
Therefore, the foremost step when doing SEO is to deliver great content.
It same as applying the best strategies to market a bad piece of content. Even if you have applied the best SEO techniques if the content is not well-framed, it’s going to be a waste.
What factors matter in Google’s eye while designing your content strategy?
Quality: It’s undoubtedly the most important factor. The strategy of producing the best quality content will never be out of fashion. For any SEO efforts quality of your content is always going to be the first step.
It’s not very easy to produce great content. Because then you’ll have to become a great teacher first.
Thankfully the good news is that you don’t always have to start it from scratch. You can take smaller steps, piggyback the content from others and design it in your own way and make additions, subtractions.
And, if you have your own idea, you can take your time brainstorming and then producing the best quality content. A compelling heading plays an important role.
Make sure that you are including every important ingredient into your blog post before it is published.
Newbies can also develop skills like professionals by inculcating the habit of writing a daily habit. And that will surely come up with improvements!
Keyword research
Keyword research is an important part of producing great SEO content. It’s important to make keywords selection before you start writing.
There are various keyword research tools available online that will help. From all the on-page SEO techniques this is the most important one.
We’ll be later posting blogs that on top ways on Keyword research.
Use of keywords
Over the years Google has become smarter! Optimum use of keywords is important. While it’s important to make use of keywords into your content, stuffing it unnecessarily will deteriorate the quality of your content thereby decreasing its ranking.
Keyword stuffing
These days keyword stuffing has become all about semantics. Google has improved tremendously in interpreting the keywords that the users are searching and how it’s creepy.
There are algorithms to check and cross-check not only the meaning but, also its synonyms and what you mean when you are typing something.
If you are sure that your keyword has been placed in the title, meta description, and URL, you don’t really need to stuff it unnecessarily a hundred times.
It’s better to focus on who is reading your stuff and accordingly integrate your keywords.
Content Freshness
By content freshness, we mean how frequently content is being posted, which is another important factor for Google ranking.
Apart from posting new content, you can do plenty of things to make the content more effective that you already have published.
And, SEO strategists will keep making changes to the already posted content by tweaking it, rewriting it, and adding fresh information to it.
Undoubtedly, it’s important to put in new posts regularly, you can also get great results posting an in-depth blog/article every month.
Direct Answers
Sometimes Google will provide with a direct answer on SERP to a searchers query. And, if you writing a content clear enough to give an explicit and direct answer to a question, Google will show up your result on its first page.
Before you post your blog post, you need to make sure that its written in easy to read and understand language. Complex sentences and ornamental words are neither help you with SEO nor will it make your writing smart.
Keywords Selection
Keyword research is a massive topic in itself and you’ll have to make a full-fledged blog to give a clear picture.
And, the reason behind is that a considerable part of SEO depends on your keyword selection.
Keywords selection can give a clear picture of what may be inside your content.