Rohit Agarwal ( IMM, Delhi )

SEARCH ENGINE

OPTIMIZATION

Understanding the engines

WHAT IS SEARCH ENGINEOPTIMIZATION?

It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.

A successful search engine optimization campaign will have, as part of the improvements, carefully select, relevant, keywords which the on-page optimization will be designed to make prominent for search engine algorithms. Search engine optimization is broken down into two basic areas: on-page, and off-page optimization. On-page optimization refers to website elements which comprise a web page, such as HTML code, textual content, and images. Off-page optimization refers, predominantly, to backlinks (links pointing to the site which is being optimized, from other relevant websites).

Market

Share of

search engine

ORGANIC VS. PAID SEARCHOrganic search is based on unpaid, natural rankings determined by search engine algorithms, and can be optimized with variousSEO practices. In contrast, paid search allows you to pay to have your website displayed on the search engine results page when someone types in specific keywords or phrases. The fee you pay is based on either clicks or views of your ads.A strong marketing strategy uses both search engine optimization and paid search to get found online.

10% of clicks

HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK1. CRAWLING & IDEXING

The journey of a query starts before you ever type a search,

with crawling and indexing the web of trillions of documents.

Without links, the engines might never

find this page

The link structure of the web serves tobind all of the pages together.Links allow the search engines' automated robots, called "crawlers" or "spiders," to reach the many billions of interconnected documents on the web.Once the engines find these pages, they decipher the code from them and store selected pieces in massive databases, to be recalled later when needed for a search query.

2. PROVIDING ANSWERSHow do search engines determine relevance and popularity?To a search engine, relevance means more than finding a page with the right words. In the early days of the web, search engines didn’t go much further than this simplistic step, and search results were of limited value.

Popularity and relevance aren’t determined manually. Instead, the engines employ mathematical equations (algorithms) to sort the wheat from the chaff (relevance), and then to rank the wheat in order of quality (popularity).These algorithms often comprise hundreds of variables. In the search marketing field, we refer to them as “ranking factors.”

MANY DOMAINS VS. ONE DOMAIN

VS.

One of the most difficult choices SEO professionals face is whether to operate under one umbrella website or under multiple domains. Even if you operate in multiple countries there isn’t a clear answer on splitting up into local TLDs (top-level domains like .nl, .de, and .cn) versus working undera single generic TLD (like .com,.net, and .org).

DOMAIN AUTHORITY

Domain Authority is a score (on a 100-point scale) developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. Use Domain Authority when comparing one site to another or tracking the “strength” of your website over time.

PAGERANK

PageRank (PR) is a quality metric invented by Google's owners Larry Page and Sergey Brin.The values 0 to 10 determinea page's importance, reliability and authority onthe web according to Google.

CTR – CLICK THROUGH RATES

No. of people who view your link

•A high CTR is a good indication that users find your ads helpful and relevant. It also contributes to your keyword's expected CTR (a component of Quality Score), which can affect your costs and ad position.

•One can use CTR to gauge which ads and keywords are successful for you and which need to be improved.The more your keywords and ads relate to each other and to your business, the more likely a user is to click on your ad after searching on your keyword phrase.

Instant Answers

News Results

Real Time Results

Local Results

Image Results

BUILDING ACCESSIBLE SITES

CRAWLABILITY/LINK ARCHITECTUREWe define crawlability as the ability for search engine robots to crawl and index the pages on a WEb site. If the links on your site are formatted in a way that is not search-engine friendly, then your site's crawlability would be considered extremely poor.

It is very difficult to achieve good search engine rankings if you have poor crawlability because you will essentially be eliminating the ability to benefit from internal off-page SEO. In general, formatting links to be text- or image-based should be the goal. You should avoid using unspiderable JavaScript or Flash links as your navigation.

DUPLICATE CONTENT

Duplicate content is content that appears on the Internet in more than one place (URL). When there are multiple pieces of identical content on the Internet, it is difficult for search engines to decide which version is more relevant to a given search query. To provide the best search experience, search engines will rarely show multiple duplicate pieces of content and thus, are forced to choose which version is most likely to be the original—or best.

CANONICALIZATIONCanonicalization can be a challenging concept to understand (and hard to pronounce: "ca-non-ick-cull-eye- zay-shun"), but it's essential to creating an optimized website. The fundamental problems that canonicalization can fix stem from multiple uses for a single piece of writing–a paragraph or, more often, an entire page of content–that appears in multiple locations on one website or on multiple websites.For search engines, this presents a conundrum: Which version of this content should they show to searchers?

To provide the best user experience, search engines will rarely show multiple, duplicate pieces of content and thus, are forced to choose which version is most likely to be the original (or best)

Tags are generally used to classify content in a way that isuseful for the reader and easy for the search engine to understand which potentially makes them very important for seo and usability.

• Improve the visibility of your website• Increase traffic• Boost your brands revenue• One of the most important aspect of on page

seo

TITLE TAG

• The title tag is one of the strongest relevancy signals for a search engine. The tag itself is meant to give the accurate description of the pages content. Search engines use it to display the main title of a search result.

• Ideally, the keyword should be placed at the start of the title tag. Pages optimized this way will rank better than those with keyword closer to the title’s tag end.

META TAGSMeta tags are snippets of text that describe a page's content; the meta tags don't appear on the page itself, but only in the page's code.We all know tags from blog culture, and meta tags are more or less the same thing, little content descriptors that help tell search engines what a web page is about.

Step 1 Adjust the title in the sourceThe first phrase you will see and will click on in the search engines is the title. Make sure your title iseffective and attractive.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><html><head><title>All our wooden furniture is water proof.</title></head>

<body>

This is a test text

Step 2 Adding keywords - keyword meta tag exampleAdd maximal 20 keywords and separate them from each other by a comma en a space.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><html><head><title>All our wooden furniture is water proof.</title><meta name="keywords" content="wood, furniture, garden, garden-table, etc."></head><body>This is a test text

</body></html>

Step 3 Adding a relevant description - meta description tagThe description are the phrases that will appear under every title in Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines. The search engines show the description you add to your meta tags so it's important to make a relevant description for every single page on your website.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><html><head><title>All our wooden furniture is water proof.</title><meta name="keywords" content="wood, furniture, garden, garden-table, etc."><meta name="description" content="Official dealer of wooden garden furniture.">

</head><body>This is a test text

</body></html>

Step 4 Provide relevant informationWithout a doubt a good website has to provide good information. If writing relevant text is not your thing, you should hire a writer to help you make your text relevant and easy to read.<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><html><head><title>All our wooden furniture is water proof.</title><meta name="keywords" content="wood, furniture, garden, garden-table, etc."><meta name="description" content="Official dealer of wooden garden furniture.">

</head>

<body>Visit our showroom on weekdays from 9 to 5...

</body></html>

H1 TAGHeader tags, as their name suggests, are used to differentiate the headings and sub-headings of a page from the rest of the content.

• These tags are also known to webmasters as heading tags or simply header tags.

• The most important heading tag is the h1 tag.

CANONICAL TAG

Sometimes, having two URLs with similar content is unavoidable. One of the ways from preventing this from becoming a duplicate content issue is by using a canonical tag on your site. This tag does one simple thing, it tells Google that one url is equivalent of another, clearly stating that in spite of two pages having the same content, they are in fact one.

GOOGLE ADWORDS TOOLIts Google's online advertising platform that can help you drive interested people who are searching on Google for specific information, product or service to your website.• AdWords is for advertisers.• AdSense is for publishers.

BENIFITS

• No minimum budget• Extremely targeted• Highly flexible- start and stop

at will• Can be measured/monitored

QUERY DESERVES FRESHNESSA mathematical model that tries to determine when users want new information and when they don’t.

The QDF algorithm was invented by Amit Singhal, senior VP and google fellow, who first talked about it in 2007.QDF has been a ranking factor ever since.

The query deserves freshness algorithm is Google's response to the fact that users are looking for “Fresh” content. QDF relates to how “hot” or newsworthy certain types of queries are. Search engine will rank higher for the queries that deserve so called freshness.

QDF

QDF

Normal Results

FRIENDLY URLS• A friendly URL is a web address that is easy to read and includes words that describe the content of

the webpage. This type of URL can be friendly in two ways:• It can help visitors remember the web address.•It can help describe the page to search engines. User-Friendly URLs. Example:A company may use the URL ‘www.[company].com/support/” for the

support section of their website.This is much easier to remember than a long convoluted URL, likewww.[company].com/section/support/deid

www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/african-elephants

Single domainShallow folder structure

with relevant wordsKeywords in page name,

separated by hyphen

UNFRIENDLY URLSUNFRIENDLY URLS ARE DIFFICULT TO TYPE ,DO NOT PROMOTE USABILITY AND CAN POTENTIALLY POSE A

SECURITY RISK.

Xyz3.nationalgeographic.com/a/?q=31z&mg=vv7z&sd=8

Unnecessary Subdomain Dynamic URLs don’t perform as

well as static and engines recommend against more than two

parameters

No keywords in the URL string

LINK BUILDING STRATEGIESLink building is the most important (and challenging) SEO skill. Actually, it’s a culmination of several different skills; one needs to master content creation, sales, programming, psychology, and good old fashioned marketing if you want other people to consistently link to your site.

#1 - Manual Link Submissions/Requests

#2 - Competitive Link Research/Acquisition

#3 - Links via Embedded Content

#4 - Linkbait & Viral Campaigns

#5 - Partnerships, Exchanges & Trades

The Keyword Demand Landscape

• When it comes to on-page SEO, keywords are the biggest factor in determining your SEO success or failure.

• Short tail keywords are 3 words or less.• Examples include: “athletic apparel,”

• “DVD player,”• “engagement ring.”• Short tail keywords are also known as “head” terms. They may be the first thing you think of when

you are deciding where to go to eat (“Chinese food,” “pizza delivery”), what to do (“dance clubs,” “roller coaster park”), or where to worship (“synagogue,” “Catholic church”)

LONG TAIL KEYWORDS• Long tail keywords however are a little

different. These keywords are more than 3 words. They are definitely a lot more targeted and not as broad. You may not bring in as much search traffic from long tail keywords but the traffic you do bring in is the kind you are looking for.

• Examples of long tail keywords include:• “summer women’s athletic apparel,”• “super Blu Ray HD DVD combo player,” or• “white diamond engagement ring.”• Long tail keywords are obviously a lot more

specific than short tail keywords; as a marketer this actually can work very much in your favour

So if this is not a fight that you are even able to have, whywould you want to try?

If you have a huge body of content, a very specific but general item, or strong brand and domain authority then maybe the short tail keywords will still work for you.

However if you are looking for higher conversion rate, lower cost, lower competition, and volume that is specifically after what it is that you are selling, the long tail keyword game is one that you should be in.

The Long Tail of Keyword Demand

KEYWORD RESEARCH PROCESS

Identifying seedkeywords

Blowing seedkeywords

Removingduplicates and

consolidating

Weeding outjunk keywords

Tagging generickeywords

Categorizingintent drivenkeywords

Applying filters

•• IIDDEENNTTIIFFIICCAATTIIOONN OOFF SSEEEEDD KKEEYYWWOORRDDSS::

• After having a deep study of the website for which the keyword research has to be performed as a part of Search Engine Optimization, the Seed Keywords or the Generic Keywords that are most related to the corresponding website must be identified. The number of seed keywords may vary depending on the range ofservices the website provides. It is essential that identified seed keywords cover all the services of that website.

• BLLOOWWIINNG OF TTHHE SSEEED KKEEYYWWOORRDDSS::• Once the seed keywords are identified, using tools like Google Ad words Keyword

research tool, they must be expanded such that each seed keyword produces around 800 additional keywords. So the total number of keywords thus produced will be around 800 times the number of seed keywords identified.

• CONSOLIDATING THE KEYWORDS:• After the individual seed keywords are blown, the keywords thus produced for

each seed must be consolidated for easy access. Then the all the duplicate keywords out of the consolidated sheet must be deleted. The final consolidated sheet must contain no repetitive keywords.

• WEEDING OUT JUNK KEYWORDS:• The task after consolidating the keywords and removing the duplicates is to

identify and remove the junk keywords. Junk keywords are the words that are not at all related to the services offered by the corresponding website.

• TAGGING THE GENERIC KEYWORDS:• The selection of keywords after performing above methods would contain a lot of

categories. Out of those, the keywords that are related to generic category must be identified and tagged. This would leave the other keywords to be categorized specifically.

• CATEGORIZING INTENT DRIVEN KEYWORDS:• After categorizing the generic keywords, the remaining keywords must be

categorized based on the intent of the search. In fact, the intent and the category of the service the website provides must be correlated and then the category must be specified.

• APPLYING FILTERS:

• Once all the keywords are categorized, the filters must be applied to the list. Filtering of the list is made basing on the following fundamental parameters.

Demand Competition

ObjectivesKeyword

Effectiveness Index

SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS

Using social media influencers in your marketing is the practice of building relationships with the people who can build relationships for you. Whether an influencer's audience is small or large, an influencer can reach consumers via their blogs and social networks that your brand may not be able to.

WHAT IS INFLUENCE?

Influence is defined by the aspects which provide individuals with the power to persuade others within their social sphere.

The foundationalattributesinfluence potential

are

which

reach,

resonance and relevance.Marketers should be aware of these as

they are common criteria used by influencer identification tools.

• The ability to reach an audience that is relevant to your brand.Reach

• Engaging with content by an audience that is relevant to your brand.Resonanc

e• Creating content that is relevant to your brand

or a topic that is imperative to your brand.Relevance

EXAMPLEEach of these qualities is required in order for an individual to be considered an influencer for your

brand. For example, a celebrity with a huge audience that retweets everything you post doesn’t become an influencer unless they actually start talking about your brand. Furthermore, not all influencers are influential on all topics, there are specialists and experts to look out for on social

media.

HOW TO IDENTIFY A POTENTIALINFLUENCER?

• This is an essential process before you proactively engage any influencers: identify them! You can do this using data from Twitter by setting up a report for a keyword/collection of keywords which will show you users degree of relevance to any given topic.

• After relevance it’s good to look at resonance, which will tell you whether their content is shared and how much. It also allows you to analyze the quality of their follower network to establish whether the audience is appropriate to your brand.

• Selecting audience quality will influence your reach and this depends on your brand aims. If you have a niche topic then influencers with a smaller following is fine.

• Finally, analyze brand advocacy by examining whether possible influencers are talking only aboutyour brand or about your competitors as well

What does the future of search

engine optimization have

in store for us?

THE FOUR PILLARS OF THE FUTURE OF SEO

1.RankBrainAlthough RankBrain is the third most significant ranking factor in the Google algorithm, it is perhaps the most misunderstood one.

2. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)In February 2016, Google integrated results from its Accelerated Mobile Pages project into its search results in theform of a “Top Stories” carousel in mobile results. Six months later,

Google starteddisplaying links to AMP pages in the main organic search results. Today, Google has 150 million indexed AMP documents in its index, and,encouraged by mainstream adoption outside the publishing industry has justannounced that users searching from mobile devices will be directed to the relevant AMP pages even if an equivalent app page exists.

3. The Knowledge Graph & rich answersGoogle’s Knowledge Graph, which it launched in 2012, is its slow but sure attempt to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible,” in line with their mission. In a nutshell, it’s Google’s attempt at scraping — sorry, replicating — Wikipedia

The Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base usedby Google to enhance its search engine’s search results with semantic-search information gathered from a wide variety of sources.

4. Real-time, integrated penalty filtersGoogle announced that they have finally updated Penguin (after what seemed like a never-ending wait of almost two years), noting that it is for the last time.That’s because Penguin is now a real-time signal processed within Google’s search algorithm — data on your pages is refreshed every time Google re-crawls and re-indexes them.

CONCLUSIONIt is clear that Google will focus on machine learning, understanding of semantics, connections and patterns and user

experience in the future.

SEO at the moment is very closely tied to content marketing. While Google can interpret content and derive its relevance to

search queries with a very high degree of success, it is constantly focused on making refinements to improve how timely,

contextual and useful this content is to the searcher. The Knowledge Graph, rich answers, RankBrain and AMP all serve this

purpose, while integrated penalties maintain the quality of results.

Pratik Dholakiya is the Co-Founder & VP Marketing of E2M, a digital marketing agency and MoveoApps, a mobile apps development

company. He has over 8 years of experience in digital marketing and has served more than 500 customers into different verticals. As a

passionate marketer, he regularly shares his thoughts and knowledge on high-end publications like Search Engine Journal, Entrepreneur

Magazine, Search Engine Watch, Moz, Fast Company, Huffington Post and many more. He has been recommended as a ‘must follow’ SEO

expert by Search Engine Watch and has been named one of the top content marketing influencers by Onalytica two years in a row. He's

passionate about fitness, entrepreneurship, startups and all things digital marketing.