On-Page Optimization

(Onsite)
On-Page Optimization (Onsite): Basics of Website Designing /
Development; HTML Basics for SEO; Onsite Optimization Basics; Website
Structure and Navigation Menu Optimization; SEO Content Writing.
Keywords Research and Analysis (eg. SWOT analysis of website, finding
appropriate keywords).
DEFINITION
• On-page SEO (or on-site SEO) is the practice of optimizing web
pages for specific keywords in order to improve search visibility
and traffic. It involves aligning page-specific elements like title
tags, headings, content, and internal links with keywords.
• It’s a component of SEO that focuses on optimizing elements on your
website, like page speed and keyword density, versus factors outside
your website, like backlinks.
• With on-page optimizations, you aim to make your website more
usable and valuable to users to improve your rankings or visibility in
search results on Google, Bing, and other search engines.
 On-page SEO: Content, Architecture, HTML
• On-page search ranking factors are almost
entirely within the publisher’s control. This
is also where it’s critical to balance serving
the needs of your audience with making
your pages search engine friendly.
• The title of the page or article, the depth of
research, keywords used and so on should
all be used with your specific audience’s
needs in mind. HTML headings, anchor text
and more should provide clues for both
search engines and your audience about the
relevancy of your content. Your site
architecture should help search engine
crawlers navigate your site and help users
find what they’re looking for.
Site Architecture & Search Engine Success
Factors
• The major on-page optimization factor is site architecture. It plays a
critical role in SEO effectiveness. These factors affect the findability
and usability of your site.
• Good architecture makes content easier for search engines and users to
access and navigate. Take the following architectural factors into
account as you develop or evaluate your site.
Crawl : Site Architecture
• Search engines use web crawling software — Google’s is called Googlebot and
Bing’s is called Bingbot — to read your site’s pages and compile copies of them
within a searchable index.
• When searchers enter a query, the search engine scans its index to filter and rank
the relevant pages. If your site isn’t crawlable, it’s not going to get included in the
index and therefore won’t be visible in the search results.
• Most sites don’t encounter serious crawling issues; however, you should still be
aware of the factors that can facilitate or hinder this process.
• Improper internal linking, slow page load speeds, URL errors, user access
prompts, blocking search engines with the noindex value and showing web
crawlers something different from what you’re showing users can all inadvertently
prevent your site from surfacing in the search results.
Mobile : Site Architecture
• Mobile-friendly doesn’t just mean that your site is viewable on phones
and tablets, it means that your site is built for the humans that own those
devices — and they should be able to access everything desktop users
can access.
• The majority of searches originate from mobile devices, and search
engines have adjusted the way they index to respond to this trend. In
March, 2018, Google began broadly implementing mobile-first indexing
, in which it uses the mobile version of the web as its primary search
engine index.
• Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) can also be implemented to
swiftly deliver your content to mobile users.
Duplicate
• If left unchecked, duplicate content may make it more difficult for
search engines to figure out which page it should return for a query.
• It can also lead to people link to different versions of the same page.
• That dilutes the value of those links — a measure of trust and
authority — and paints an inaccurate picture of how valuable and
relevant a page may actually be to searchers.
Speed
• Page Speed is the amount of time that it takes for a webpage to load. A
page’s loading speed is determined by several different factors,
including a site’s server, page filesize, and image compression.
HTTPS
• Google has pushed websites to migrate to HTTPS servers in order to
provide better security to searchers. It’s forced the issue in a couple of
ways, including rankings.
URLs
• This is not a major ranking factor, but it’s good practice to use
descriptive words in your page URLs for search engines and users.
• Your URLs appear on search results pages, so having an easy-to-
understand URL may give searchers a better idea of what’s on the
other end of the link.
HTML Code & Search
Engine Success Factors
Titles
• HTML titles have always been and remain the most important HTML
signal that search engines use to understand what a page is about. Your
titles convey what your pages are about to users as well as search
engines, so it’s important that they are unique and descriptive.
• Titles are specified through the HTML title tag. This is typically what
shows as the clickable link in a search result. Your titles should be
concise, accurately reflect your page’s content and feature the
keywords you wish to rank for — without keyword stuffing (a Toxin).
Descriptions
• The meta description tag is an HTML element that can be used to
suggest how you’d like your pages to be described in the search
listings. Descriptions to appear below the headlines in the search
results.
• Although it is not technically a ranking factor, it’s a “success” factor.
Adding a well-crafted description can help entice users to click your
result over the others on the page.
• Meta descriptions that contain the keywords searched for may appear
in bold.
Structure
• “Structured data gives search engines a better understanding of the content on your page,”
Jessica Bowman, owner of enterprise SEO consultancy SEOIn-house, explains, adding, “For
users, it enhances the listing to give them more insight into what’s available on that page.
From a brand perspective, it gives eye candy.”
• Structured data is a code format that lets you tell the search engines what your content is
about in their one “language.” Specific schema markup (code) can make it easy for search
engines to digest and understand the page content and structure. Bowman says
SEOs need to master how to properly implement schema on their sites wherever appropriate.
• The result of structured data often translates into what Google calls a “rich snippet,” a search
listing that has extra bells and whistles that make it more attractive and useful to users.
• “Structured data are tremendous for search results, because your result can be filled with
rich media, images, pricing information, ratings and so on — and in a carousel versus just
the blue link,” says Detlef Johnson.
Headings
• Headings are a hierarchical way to organize and identify key sections of your
content.
• A page will typically have a headline. Behind the scenes, in the HTML code,
the headline is wrapped in an H1 tag.
• This page has a headline and several sub-headings to break up the copy into
sections.
• Those sub-headings use H2 tags, the next “level” down from H1 tags.
• It is good practice to use keywords your H1s and H2s to give search engines a
better idea of what your page is about.
• Do not spam your headings with keywords.
• Use them to make your content easy for users and search engines to navigate.
Content Shift
• As Google has removed the AMP requirement, we’ve gotten rid of that
element and added two new ones: Image ALT (ALT) and Content
Shift (CLS). Content Shift (CLS) focuses on the elements of visual
stability.
• Cumulative Layout Shift, which is part of the Core Web Vitals and
overall page experience update, refers to unexpected changes in a
page’s layout as it loads — it’s annoying for users at a minimum and
can cause real damage depending on the severity of the shift and
content of the page.
Image ALT
• Known by many names (ALT tags, image ALT, ALT descriptions, etc.),
Image ALT text is HTML that describes what an image is and what it’s
on the page for. While many SEOs use ALT text to help with image
search, the main purpose of these image descriptors is accesibility.
• “ALT text is the written copy that appears in place of an image on a
webpage if the image fails to load on a user’s screen.
• While it can help with your SEO, the key for image ALTs is that it
provides a positive user experience for users of all ability levels. It’s not
a requirement in terms of being indexed and ranked, but it should be a
part of any SEO’s audit to-do list.
Schema
• Another new addition to the HTML section this year is Schema (Sc).
Schema “is a semantic vocabulary of tags (or microdata) that you can
add to your HTML to improve the way search engines read and
represent your page in SERPs,” according to Moz’s SEO Guide. It’s
not just for Google, either. Many search engines use Schema data to
help them interpret content on the web: Bing, Yandex, and more.
• There’s lots of discussion about whether structured data like Schema
improves rankings, but most SEOs agree that, at a minimum, it does
help with more comprehensive rich snippets. As many SEOs are
implementing and experimenting with Schema nowadays, it’s become
table stakes for most industries.
 Content & search engine
success factors
Content should be your first priority when thinking about SEO. Quality
content is how you engage, inform, support, and delight your audiences.
Creating authentic, valuable content is also critical for search engine
visibility.
Quality
• Providing users with substantive, useful, and unique content is what compels them to stay on your
pages, building familiarity and trust. What constitutes high quality will depend on the nature of
the content and varies based on the type of content and industry.
• Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (section 5.1) break down the characteristics of
high-quality content by type:
• Informational content should be accurate, comprehensive, original, and professionally presented.
• Artistic content should be original, unique, and convey a high degree of skill.
• News content should be in-depth, well-cited, accurate, and contain original reporting.
• Brands creating Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) content need to pay particular attention to
these standards as Google’s algorithms may give more weight to authoritativeness, expertise, and
trustworthiness (E-A-T) signals.
• Content is the cornerstone of your SEO efforts and not a place to skimp. Creating — and
investing in — a clear content strategy is critical to your SEO success as nearly all other factors
depend on content quality.
Research
• Researching the keywords (the search terms your target audience is using) is
perhaps the most important SEO factor after creating good content. It will help
you develop content that “answers” what people are searching for. Keyword
research can also carry benefits beyond ranking for those queries.
• Keyword research can provide you with insights on the nature of your
audiences’ pain points and needs — whether that’s navigational, informational
or transactional — their interests, the amount of interest out there (indicated by
search volume), the level of competition for those queries, and even the format
in which they prefer that information.
• Once you’ve evaluated which keywords are viable, use them to inform your
content creation and include them within the content itself so that your audience
has a higher chance of finding you in the search results.
Keywords
• After you’ve researched the keywords your audience is using to find
you, include those keywords within the body of your content, your
subheads, and your titles — but not at the expense of readability or
other compromises that prioritize search engines over readers.
• To put it simply, consider the words you want your page to be found
for and use them naturally.
• Always keep in mind that you’re writing for users first and that search
engines are getting much better at understanding natural language.
Throw out any notion of “keyword density” formulas to improve your
rankings.
Freshness
• Search engines love timely, up-to-date, “fresh” information.
• This does not mean you can make minor updates to your pages, update the publish date or
continuously churn out new, low-quality pages to get a freshness boost.
• If you have a library of aging content, you can update it or retire obsolete and expired pages.
Doing so will make your site more useful to viewers and also indicate to search engines that
your content is well maintained.
• Google has also long applied what it calls Query Deserved Freshness (QDF) as a content
ranking factor for certain types of queries. If a search query suddenly becomes popular —
“hurricane” when there is an active hurricane, for example — Google will apply QDF to those
searches and the results will change to reflect the stories, news and information about the topic.
• You may be able to harness a freshness boost to increase your visibility on the results page by
creating content relating to popular trends, upcoming events or holidays, and breaking news. Be
aware, though, that a QDF-related boost may subside over time and your page may get shuffled
deeper in search results.
Answers
• There is tremendous value in explicitly answering users’ questions on your pages.
For one, you’re creating content specifically designed to meet your audiences’
needs. Two, search engines are increasingly trying to show direct answers in the
search results. If you answer questions well enough, your page may be displayed
as a featured snippet or returned as a voice search result on Google Assistant.
• Research indicates that more than half of Google searches end without a click to
other content, and that’s partially because search engines are looking to satisfy
users by resolving their searches right on the results page. Some of those answers
are licensed (as is the case with music lyrics) and some are drawn directly from
web pages with a link for attribution.
Depth
• “The content on your site should be deep enough to answer the user’s
question in a ‘substantial, complete or comprehensive’ manner, as the
Google core update advice post says,” advises Barry Schwartz, news
editor for Search Engine Land.
Multimedia
• Text is the foundation that the internet is built on, but that doesn’t
mean it’s universally the best medium for your content. Other formats
can also provide added exposure in the search results. Consider using
images, video, audio or other formats that appeal to your audience and
set your brand apart from competitors.
Swot Analysis of website
SEO SWOT analysis of a website
• SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. These are the
four factors used by organizations to evaluate their business and viability as an
enterprise. In a similar way, these factors can be used to evaluate the current and
future growth of a website.
• Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors which are under the control of an
organization. Opportunities and threats are the external factors which are beyond the
control of an organization. After the SWOT analysis, you can find the strengths and
weaknesses of your website as well as the opportunities and threats to your website.
• The SWOT analysis starts with setting specific goals and objectives for your website.
These objectives or goals should be measurable and realistic, i.e. increasing profit by
10% in the coming year, increasing click-through rate by 15%, decreasing shopping
cart dropping rate by 5%, etc. After you identify your objectives and goals you can
start with the following steps of SWOT analysis.
Strengths
• It refers to the advantages that are not present in the sites of your
competitors. These are competitive advantages that help your website
gain a competitive edge over other similar sites, e.g. relevant and
unique content, user-friendly design and quick sign up and check out
process, etc. can be the strengths of your website.
Weaknesses
• It refers to the features of your website that slow down your progress
or prevent you from achieving your objectives and goals.
• To identify your website weaknesses you can compare a feature of
your website with the same feature of competitor website.
• If your competitor executes this feature better than you then consider
this feature as your weakness which should be improved.
Opportunities
• It refers to the external elements which can help you improve your
website performance and popularity.
• These elements are beyond your control and if exploited wisely can
help you achieve your objectives and goals.
• Some of the common opportunities for the websites are new
technology to improve visitor experience, web 2.0 trend focused on
social networking, internet on mobile phones, online transactions,
innovative marketing strategies, etc.
Threats
• It refers to external factors that may prevent a site from achieving its
objectives and goals.
• These factors are beyond your control and if you ignore these threats
your website can't make progress.
• Some of the common threats to a website include new entrants
(websites), software piracy, unfavorable government regulations,
changing customer needs, competitors imitating your ideas and
features, fraudulent activities, etc.
Keywords Research
Introduction
• Keyword Research and Analysis is a high return activity and an important part of
the SEO. Right keywords can place your website on the first page of search results
and irrelevant keywords can increase the gap between users and your website.
• Keyword Research and Analysis enables you to identify the information your
target audience is searching and the keywords they are using for their queries.
After researching and analyzing the keyword demand you not only get the
relevant terms and phrases for SEO but also understand the users in a better way.
It helps you build a better website with relevant keywords and phrases.
• Your webpage has to compete with millions of web pages to achieve a higher
ranking. So, optimizing your content by incorporating the right keywords in the
pages is a necessary SEO practice. If you are not using the right keywords your
website might never be on the first page of search results.
How to find the suitable keyword
• Before using the keyword research tools you need to understand your product or service and the
target audience. If you know your product or service in a better way you can create better
keywords.
• The next step is to access the value of the keyword. To access the value of your keyword you can
follow the steps described below:
• Few questions: Ask yourself a few questions such as is the keyword relevant to your content?
Will the visitors get the right information with this keyword? Will this traffic increase revenue?
If the answer to these questions is yes then the keyword is full of value.
• Search the given keywords in major search engines: In this step, you will get to know about
the other websites which already rank for your keyword. It will deepen your understanding of the
competition and tell you how hard or easy it will be to rank for the given keyword or phrase.
• Buy sample campaign: You can buy sample campaign at Google Adwords, Bing Adcenter, etc.
You will get test traffic which you can direct to your webpages and see how many of them click
and how much time they spend on your pages. It will tell you either you need to change your
keyword or you can continue with that keyword.
How to Choose Best Keywords
• Keywords are the words or phrases used by people in search engines to find the desired
information. Relevant keywords and phrases help increase profitable traffic to your
website.
• So, keep the following points in mind if you are looking for the best keywords and phrases.
• 1) Long-tail keywords: It usually refers to 3 to 5 words phrases. Such keywords are
considered ideal for SEO as people in the purchase stage of buying cycle tend to use longer
phrases to search for products or services. The long phrases are also found to be less
competitive than shorter keywords and help you attract targeted traffic.
• 2) Latent semantic indexing: It is also known as LSI. In this method, we incorporate
related terms along with main key phrases, e.g. if a page contains information about cars
then search engine tends to see related terms like models, makes, car parts, etc. So, if the
search engine finds more semantic words on your page they will assume you are more
relevant and authentic.
How to Choose Best Keywords
• 3) Recent trends: If you want to create popular keywords then keep an
eye on recent trends. You will get to know what is popular on search
engines and if you find any trending search query related to your niche
then you can effectively newsjack it to increase traffic to your site.
• 4) Location based keywords: You can add country, state or city name to
your main keyword to stand out from the crowd. It will help you achieve
higher ranking in local search results.
• 5) Identify competitors' keyword: You can use some of the popular
keywords of your competitors to pull some of their traffic to your site.
You can take the help of online services such as Keyword Spy to identify
their keywords.
Tools Available for Keyword
Research
Tools
• Keywords are one of the most important aspects of SEO and for relevant and useful
keywords a precise keyword research is required.
• Keyword research provides you meaningful keywords that enable your webpages to
rank higher in search results. Thus, it can be considered the base of SEO is keyword
research.
• There are a number of tools available for keyword research. Some of the popular
tools are described below:
Google Keyword Planner
• It is one of the most used keyword research tools. It is a free tool which is integrated
with Google Adwords. This tool requires you to create an Adwords account before
you start using the tool. It gives you an idea about the competition level for each
keyword and offers you filters and match types to find out profitable keywords.
Tools
• Google Trends
• It is also a free tool of Google which is designed to compare the traffic for a set of
keywords. It allows you to enter multiple keywords, search history and category and
use filter by location. You just enter the data and it will display how high a particular
keyword ranks along with the reason for its popularity like press coverage, social
media, etc.
• SEMRUSH
• It is designed to offer more than just keyword search. In this tool, you don't need to
enter seed keywords like other tools, i.e. you just need to add your and competitor's
URL, the tool will provide you all the keywords that are ranking for competitor's site.
You can identify the keywords that you are not targeting. In the paid section of search
you can find out the keywords your competitors are planning to bid on; you can use
these keywords for your organic benefit.
Tools
• Keyword Spy
• It is an SEO optimization tool designed for keyword research. As the name suggests, it
allows you to spy on competitors' keywords, to create targeted campaigns and to see
their rank based on geographical location. Its free version offers several features;
Domain spy tool is one of them which allows you to type the domain into the search
box and provide you the data such as on what keywords a site spends most, how much
a site is spending in paid search and who are the competitors, etc.
• Keyword Discovery
• It is one of the best keyword tools. It collects data from more than 200 search engines
including the popular ones like Google and Yahoo. It provides regional or country
specific databases, industry related keyword lists, online shopping keywords lists, etc.
The tool also features various research options like filters, misspellings, keyword
permutations, trends, etc.
Tools
Keyword Tool.io
• It is a basic keyword research tool which can be useful if you are looking for long-tail keyword
suggestions for your keywords. It is also a free tool; its basic version can be used even without creating
an account. The basic version uses Google Autocomplete to create a list of related long-tail keywords.
But, it does not provide information about search volume and cost-per-click for this information you
have to upgrade to Keyword Tool Pro.
WordTracker
• The tool helps you find best keywords related to your search keywords and also shows how much
traffic a keyword gets. It is generally used by small organizations. It helps them to research keywords,
develop a planned SEO platform and build new links.
Moz's Keyword Difficulty Tool
• The tool is designed by Moz. It helps analyze the competitiveness of a keyword. When you enter a
keyword, it shows the top ten ranking for that keyword. Then, it assigns a difficulty score for the
keyword based on the webpages that are ranking for this word. It also allows you to export data into a
CSV for deep analysis.
On-page Optimization
Factors
Introduction
• On page optimization refers to all measures taken by SEOs within the
website to improve the ranking of a site in search engine result pages. These
measures are related to content and HTML source code of a page, e.g., meta
tags, keyword placement, and keyword density including the technical set-
up, the content, and user-friendliness of your site. So, on page seo
optimization factors are linked with the elements of your website.
• So, in on page seo, you deal with all the elements of SEO that you can
control. For example, a website owner can control the technical issues, meta
tags, and quality of the content of the site. On page seo issues are in your
control so that they should be resolved without any delay to improve
rankings in search engine result pages.
Factors
• 1. Keyword in the Title tag: Title tag tells the search engine and users
about your content. It provides an accurate description of the content,
which makes it an important relevancy signal for a search engine. So, one
can incorporate relevant keywords in the title tag that represents your
content and thus can assist search engines and users in understanding
what they are going to read and accordingly to improve its ranking.
• 2. Keyword in meta description tag: It is a summary or snippet of your
page, which is displayed on search engine result pages below the URL.
You may include your keywords in this and make it make more relevant,
appealing, and informative to search engines and users and thus can get
more click on your link.
Factors
• 3. Keyword in the H1 tag: It is also a relevance factor that introduces your
page or acts as a description of your page. So, you may also include your
main keywords in the H1 tag to improve its ranking.
• 4. The length of the page: Today, the users don't get satisfied with basic
information; instead, they want to be educated by reading all the possible
information about a topic. The search engine, therefore, prefers lengthy
pages to rank first as the longer pages can cover more aspects of your topic.
• 5. Canonical Tag: You should use the canonical tag when you have two
URLs with similar content. This tag prevents the issue of duplicate content
as it tells Google that one URL is equivalent to another, so the two pages
with the same content are not different pages and they belong to the original
page.
Factors
• 6. Image Optimization: Along with the text, images should also be
optimized by using alt text, caption and description, and more. Furthermore,
don't name your image as 'image1.jpg' instead use descriptive filenames, for
example, 'woman-driving-car.jpg.'
• 7. Content Updates: Search engines prefers freshly updated content. So,
keep adding more information to the site and update the old pages if required.
• 8. Outbound Links: You can use outbound links to send users to another
website if you want to provide more information. So, it can be a trust factor
for Google. However, using too many outbound links many affect the
rankings, so use them in moderation.
• 9. Internal Links: You can interlink your pages so that traffic from a one
may be diverted to other pages which are less clicked by the users.
Factors
• 10. Keyword in URL: The URL should contain the keywords as it is also a
way to send a relevancy signal to search engines.
• 11. Sitemap: You can create a Sitemap for your site. It helps search engines to
index all pages on your website, which is a part of SEO.
• 12. Google Search Console Integration: You can verify your site at Google
Webmaster Tool. It provides you valuable data to optimize your size.
• 13. Content of Page: The content of the page should be of good quality,
relevant, and latest. Furthermore, it should supply the largest demand, which
means it should be related to highly searched topics, keywords, etc.
• 14. Linkable Content: This type of content is crafted with the objective of
attracting links generally from other websites in your niche.
Factors
• 15. Content Formatting: The content should be readable and organized, which you
can achieve through different ways, such as:
• Highlight the important parts of a page using bold, underline and italics options
• Use a suitable font size at least 14 px
• Split the content into small paragraphs of 4-5 lines
• Maintain the required spacing between the paragraphs to make the post easy to read
• Use CSS to create sections that break the content into manageable parts and make it
appealing
• 16. Images and Multimedia Elements: The images make your content more
appealing and presentable, so add images to your content if possible. However, do
not add images unnecessarily or too many as it may leave a bad impression. The
images should not be very large as it may increase the loading time of your page,
which is not good for SEO.
Factors
• 17. URL Optimization: You can optimize a URL in two different ways: URL optimization
and URL structure. The URL of a page, which is also known as a slug, is a permanent link.
An optimized URL should be less than 255 characters, and hyphens '-'should be used to
separate the different parts of the URL. Furthermore, it should be short, descriptive, and
include your target keywords.
• 18) URL Structure Optimization: The URL structure should reflect the actual structure of
a website. You can optimize it by making categories that help users and search engines find
the content with ease. A website without categories is like a warehouse with unorganized
items, and with categories, it looks like a warehouse where items divided into different
categories. Although you can have sub-categories, it is advised not to go over two levels:
For example:
• Homepage>Social Media> Twitter> Article (optimized)
Homepage>Social Media> Twitter> How to>Article (not optimized)
Factors
• 19) Internal links: Interlinking the web pages of a website is very important for
SEO. It allows you to create your own web or network. A search engine spider
follows the links found on a page, both internal and external links. If a page lacks
links, the spider will read your page and go. It also helps keep users on your site
for a long time.
• 20) External Links: External links can be used for SEO as they allow you to link
your site to other high-quality related websites, which makes your site more
trustworthy, which is good for SEO.
• 21) Page Loading Speed: Search engines always keep putting efforts to make
the web faster. It prefers to include the fastest websites in its index, which is good
for a site in terms of SEO. It also helps with customer retention and conversions.
• 22) Mobile Friendliness: With the increase in mobile internet users, around 60%
of searches in Google are generated through mobile devices. So, a website, which
is not mobile-friendly, maybe lose half of the potential traffic.
Factors Examples
Page Title Tag
• It is an HTML element that specifies the title of a web 1.<!DOCTYPE html>
page.
• It is one of the meta tags that represents the title of your 2.<html>
web page and found in the <head> section of the HTML
code of your web page. 3.<head>
• It is displayed on the title bar of your browser window. 4. <title> Web Page Title Example </
• The title tag is displayed on search engine result pages as title>
the clickable headline above the url of a website.
• The page title tells users and search engines about the type
5.</head>
and nature of the information available on your page. 6.<body>
• It is the title tag that helps search engines understand what
your page is about, and it is the first impression users have 7. <p>Welcome to my first web page.</
of your page. p>
• Title tags can be used in three important places; search
engine result pages (SERPs), web browsers, and social
8.</body>
networks. 9.</html>
What is Meta Description?
• Meta description is a short paragraph that is 1. <head>
placed in the HTML code of a webpage. It is a
kind of advertising copy that briefly describes 2. <meta name="description" cont
the content of your page. The meta description
appears under the URL of your page in search ent="description of the webpage
engine result pages. It is also known as a .">
snippet and is one of the components of SEO,
and SEO is one component of digital 3. </head>
marketing.
• The meta description is an important part of
search marketing, i.e. a relevant and compelling
description draws users from search engine
result pages to your website, which improves
the click through rate for that webpage. The
purpose of a meta description is to get users
searching on Google to click your link.
Meta Keywords
• It refers to a brief list of the most
1. <!DOCTYPE html>
important keywords and phrases
2. <html>
of your webpage. 3. <head><meta http-equiv="Content-
• They are a specific type of meta Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-
1252">
tag that appears in the HTML 4. <title>First web page.</title>
code of a Web page. 5. <meta name = "description" content=" this is me
ta description example upto 155 characters">
• These tags are different from
6. <meta name = "keywords" content="keyword1,
regular keywords as they appear keyword2, keyword3, .....keywordN" >
"behind the scenes" in the source 7. </head>
code of your page instead of the 8. <body>
live, visible web page. 9. <p>Welcome to my first web page.</p>
10.</body>
• They are not visible to the users like
11.</html>
your meta titles and meta descriptions.
Headings/ Headings Tags
• H1 tag is the most important tag of each of
the pages of a website. Its purpose is to
introduce the content of a page, to tell users
what to expect from a page, or simply tell
the name of the page.
• The relevant keywords or desired
information at the top of the page is good for
SEO. It allows users and search engines to
read and understand your text. They make it
easier for the users to understand what a post
or page is about. Headings tell which parts of
your content are important, how they are
connected. So, we can say that headings act
as signposts that guide readers through a
page.
Images and Alt Text
• Alt text stands for Alternative text. It is also 1. <!DOCTYPE>
known as "alt description" and "alt attribute."
It is a feature added to an image tag in HTML 2. <html>
to provide a text alternative for search engines.
It helps search engines know what an image is 3. <body>
about as they cannot see or interpret images as
they cannot see, understand, or interpret 4. <img src="https://
images. static.javatpoint.com/seo/
• Alt text is designed to optimize images for images/images-and-alt-
speed and SEO. It appears in a blank image
box when the image cannot be displayed for text1.png" alt="SEO Images and
some reason like slow connection, broken alt text 1"/>
URL or user is using a screen reader. Thus, Alt
tags provide better image descriptions to 5. </body>
search engine crawlers to help them index
images properly. 6. </html>
Internal link Building
• A text link from one page to another page
on the same domain is known as an internal
link and creating such links is
called internal link building.
• It is an important SEO technique that
enables you to link a new post to another
old or popular post to increase the traffic to
the new post as well as to provide users
with more relevant content.
• The website owner has full control over
internal links, so it is important to use it
effectively. Link structure should be natural
and user-friendly so that users can easily
navigate your website.
Site Map

• A site map refers to the map of your site, which

shows the detailed structure of your site like its
different sections and the links which connect
them. The role of the site map is to help users
and search engines find information on your
site and thus discover more of your site.
• Types of Site Map:
• A site map can be a static HTML file or an
XML file.
• Sitemaps based on HTML files are traditional
sitemaps.
• They were designed to outline the first and
second-level structure of a site so that users can
easily find information on the site.
301 Redirect
• 301 Redirect is an HTTP status code of a redirected page. It is a web server function which
manages the complete or permanent redirection of a page. It tells the users and search
engines that the original page is no longer available and all the information is shifted to a
new page.
• Thus, 301 redirect helps a website to redirect its users and search engines to its latest
version from its old or original URL. So, it is a process of forwarding one URL to a
different URL.
• 301 redirects can be used in the following circumstances:
• You have shifted your site to a new domain, and you want to make the transition as smooth
as possible.
• When your site can be accessed through different URLs, for example; user can reach to your
homepage in multiple ways such
as http://example.com/home, http://home.example.com or www.example.com. In this case,
you can choose one of your URL as your main or preferred (canonical) destination, and use
301 redirect to send traffic from the other URLs to your preferred URL.
• When two websites are merged and the links to outdated URLs are required to be redirected
to the correct pages.
SEO 404 error
• The 404 error is the most common HTTP error that users often encounter
while browsing the web. It is an HTTP standard response code which
indicates that client is able to contact the server but the server is not able
to find the page requested by the client. Thus, it simply means that the
webpage you are trying to reach cannot be found on the server.
• 404 error usually arises due to a wrong link on your site or if you have
removed the requested page. It usually occurs when a redirect to the new
URL has not been implemented. If you don't create 404 Error Page, it
can affect your SEO. It is required to have 404 error page because it is a
common problem. To create a 404 page, you need to redirect all
irrelevant requests to a single 404 error page.
Website Design SEO
Guidelines
Content Guidelines
• The success of a website mainly depends on the quality of content it
offers to its visitors. In SEO, quality content refers to a content which
not only appeals to readers but also to the search engines.
Some important guidelines to create quality
content
1) Choose the best keywords
• Your pages must have the keywords related to your product, services or concept as from the
keywords the search engine gets to know about the nature and type of your website. Accordingly,
the search engine ranks your website in the result pages for the related queries. So, conduct a
thorough keyword research before you start writing content. You can take the help of various
keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, SEMRUSH, etc.
2) Original/unique content
• Incorporating relevant keyword is not enough; your content must be original and unique. It
should not be copied from any other site otherwise your website will be penalized by the search
engine.
3) Have enough words
• Your webpages must have enough words. They should not be filled with lots of images, symbols
and negative space. Pages with less content and more images are not considered optimized for
SEO and rarely found on the first page of the search engines.
Content Optimization
Content Optimization

• Content optimization is a process of making your webpages more

appealing to search engines and users. It is not only restricted to using
best keywords in your pages but also focuses on various other parts of
your website like the quality of content, broken links, title tags, meta
tags, etc. Once your content is optimized the search engine can easily
find and index your website and show up it in the initial pages of
search results.
Focus on the following areas for better
content optimization
• Title Tag: It refers to the title of your page or post which is incorporated in the head of the
HTML code of a page. It appears at the top of the page on the result pages or when you promote
your page on social media. The title tags which are concise, accurate and relevant are considered
best for content optimization.
• According to SEO experts, an ideal title tag should be between 50?60 characters long, correctly
describe the content on the page and must have targeted keyword at the beginning of the title tag.
• Meta description: It is the information which Google displays on a result page under the title
tag. It is a brief summary of the information contained in your page; users get a preview of the
page before they click it. The meta description must contain the relevant keywords as search
engine highlight it as descriptive text when a user performs a query using that keyword.
• Try to keep the length of your meta description around 150 characters including spaces for better
results. Meta description is written by you and if you don?t write meta description the Google
will compose the meta description from the content of your page.
Focus on the following areas for better
content optimization
• Meta keywords: You can leave them blank as since 2009 they are not
in use. If you use them your competitors can get a clue about your
targeted keywords. You can use them if your internal site search needs
them.
• Fresh content: Fresh and unique content appeals both the users and
the search engines, so keep updating your site regularly to optimize
your content. Add new pages, articles or update your existing content
to reflect changes and updates.
Design and Layout of a
Website
INTRODUCTION
• The design and layout of a website may be appealing but if it is not
SEO-friendly, it cannot achieve higher rankings on search engine
result pages.
• The search engines cannot interpret the content just like us and the
visitors; a webpage may not look the same to a search engine as it
looks to you.
Guidelines
1) Keyword Placement
• You should use the targeted keywords and phrases at the right places throughout the site, i.e. body text,
headlines, headers, meta description, links, etc. Proper keyword placement is important for every page but
it is more important on the home page as it is a gateway and introduction to the rest of the pages of your
site. Also, use proper words for links; instead of using "see more", "read more" or "click here" use the
words that describe the link itself.
2) Navigation
• The navigation must be user-friendly so that users can easily find the desired information in less time, i.e.
moving from one step to another step should be simple and quick.
• Some of the useful practices to optimize your site are;
1. The primary navigation should be at or near the top of your page.
2. Add navigation options in the footer of web page.
3. Add breadcrumbs on every page to make users aware of their navigation path.
4. Add a search box near the top of your page to enable users search by keywords.
5. Offer limited navigation options on a page and limited steps in the navigation.
6. Don't modify the website template in every category as it could make the navigation difficult for the users.
GUIDELINES
3) URL's and Filenames
• URL should be SEO optimized so that search engine can easily indentify it.
There are a number of ways to optimize a URL such as;
1.Incorporate keyword in the URL so that it could clearly tell what is on the
page
2.Minimize its length to make it easier for the users to copy and paste
3.Don't use URLs that contain random letters or numbers
• And to optimize the filenames you can add relevant keyword in the filenames
of uploaded items, e.g. media, html, documents, etc. Also, you should use
hyphen (-) instead of underscores, spaces or plus sign to separate words in the
URL.
GUIDELINES
4) Images
• Website images are an important aspect of SEO and should be optimized for
faster loading and search engine visibility. Some of the practices to optimize
images are;
1.The size of images should be small, i.e. 30 ?100 kb size and 72 dpi resolution
are considered optimal for website images.
2.Images should be placed in context to the information on the pages, i.e. there
should be relevant content around an image.
3.Use proper alt tags for the images as the search engine can only see words,
not the images. So, instead of using alt tags like "image" or "screenshot" use
a phrase that contains a keyword or describes the image.
GUIDELINES
5) Simplicity
• Visitors come to your site to complete some task or to find specific information, so
avoid unnecessary design elements that could make it harder for the visitors to
accomplish a task or find the information. Some instructions to enhance simplicity in
a website are;
1.Don't add too many colors, i.e. according to SEO experts use maximum of five colors
in your website.
2.Choose easily readable typefaces and use maximum of three different typefaces and
maximum of three different sizes for each typeface.
3.Add graphics only if they help users perform a specific action.
4.Add suggestion plugins to help users find pages with specific information.
5.Avoid horizontal scroll and pop ups as they could annoy the users.
GUIDLINES
6) Bullets and numbering
• Most of the readers generally have short attention span and are not willing to read the
entire page. They look for bullet points to get the meaningful information in less time, so
whenever possible use crisp and concise bullets or numbering to make your page more
attractive and readable.
7) Relevant linking
• Your content should be hyperlinked to the relevant pages. If your content is linked to a
page which is offering different information then it would annoy the readers and you
could lose your credibility.
8) Proof read content
• Even if you have good typing skills or experience in writing you could make mistakes
while writing. So, carefully proofread your content at least twice before publishing. It will
help you eliminate all the errors in your content.
Navigation Menu
Optimization
Navigation is important for search engines
• The navigation of a website is
important in helping visitors
quickly find the content they want.
• It can also help search engines
understand what content the
website owner thinks is important.
• Although Google's search results
are provided at a page level,
Google also likes to have a sense
of what role a page plays in the
bigger picture of the site.
Plan your navigation based on your
homepage
• All sites have a home or root page, which is usually the most frequented
page on the site and the starting place of navigation for many visitors.
• Unless your site has only a handful of pages, think about how visitors
will go from a general page (your root page) to a page containing more
specific content.
• Do you have enough pages around a specific topic area that it would
make sense to create a page describing these related pages (for example,
root page -> related topic listing -> specific topic)? Do you have
hundreds of different products that need to be classified under multiple
category and subcategory pages?
Using breadcrumb lists
• A breadcrumb is a row of internal
links at the top or bottom of the
page that allows visitors to quickly
navigate back to a previous section
or the root page. Many
breadcrumbs have the most general
page (usually the root page) as the
first, leftmost link and list the more
specific sections out to the right.
We recommend using
breadcrumb structured data markup
when showing breadcrumbs.
Create a simple navigational page for users
• A navigational page is a simple page on your site that displays the
structure of your website, and usually consists of a hierarchical listing
of the pages on your site.
• Visitors may visit this page if they are having problems finding pages
on your site.
• While search engines will also visit this page, getting good crawl
coverage of the pages on your site, it's mainly aimed at human visitors.