Search Engine

Optimization
(CSET489)
Module 1
DR . PR AB HISHEK SINGH
ASS ISTANT P R OFES SOR
SC S ET, B ENNETT UNIVER S ITY, GR . NOIDA, INDIA,
PR AB HIS HEK.SINGH@B ENNETT.EDU.IN, +91-8874797830
Search engine
Each day we are searching for tons
of information on the Internet.
Sometimes the results are not what
we are looking for and sometimes
just the opposite. But how does the
Internet know what we want? The
answer is Search Engine.
You must have words like Google,
Bing, Yahoo, etc. All these are
search engines that curate top
results for the queries that we
enter. Let us dive deeper to
understand what is a search
engine?
Search engine
A search engine is a software that is accessed on the internet to assist a user to search its query
on the world wide web.
The search engine is helpful as it carries out a systematic search on the web and displays the
results that best match the user’s query.
A user enters keywords or key phrases into a search engine and receives a list of Web content
results in the form of websites, images, videos or other online data that semantically match with
the search query.
The list of content returned via a search engine to a user is known as a search engine results
page (SERP).
There are various search engines available, google being the most popular of all. All these search
engines are capable of searching so quickly due to the web crawler.
Search Engine Components
Generally, there are three basic components of a search engine as listed below:
Web crawler
It is also known as spider or bots. It is a software component that traverses the web to gather
information.
Database
All the information on the web is stored in database. It consists of huge web resources.
Search Interfaces
This component is an interface between user and the database. It helps the user to search
through the database.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
For most of us today, when we need something—whether
it’s an answer, idea, strategy, or service—we start by
asking search engines. Google alone gets 3.5 billion
searches per day. So just as search engines have become
integral to our lives, so, too, has it become integral to
many business marketing strategies. In fact, organic
search is considered to be the highest ROI channel by 49%
of marketers.
Organic search is just a fancy name for regular, non-ad
search engine results, and the way marketers use organic
search as a marketing channel is through search engine
optimization, or SEO.
SEO help to rank higher on Google, get more traffic to
your site, and improve your brand reputation.
What does SEO stand for?
SEO stands for search engine
optimization. Let’s break that down in the
context of your website.
Search: What people do when they want
to find an answer to a question or a
product or service that meets their
needs.
Search engine: A site (like Google or Bing)
where a person can perform said search.
Search engine optimization: What you do
to get said search engine to connect said
search with your site.
Definition of SEO
SEO is what you do to rank higher on Google and get more traffic
to your site.
Yes, Google is just one search engine of many. There’s Bing.
Directory search engines. Even Instagram is a search engine. But
capturing 92% of the market share, the terms “Google” and
“search engine” are synonymous for the intents and purposes of
this post.
SEO is about making improvements to your website’s structure
and content so its pages can be discovered by people searching
for what you have to offer, through search engines.
SEO is a set of practices designed to improve the appearance
and positioning of web pages in organic search results. Because
organic search is the most prominent way for people to discover
and access online content, a good SEO strategy is essential for
improving the quality and quantity of traffic to your website.
Benefits & importance of SEO
People are searching for any manner of things both loosely and directly related to your business. These are all
opportunities to connect with these people, answer their questions, solve their problems, and become a
trusted resource for them.
More website traffic: When your site is optimized for search engines, it gets more traffic which equates to
increased brand awareness, as well as…
More customers: To get your site optimized, it has to target keywords—the terms your ideal customers/visitors
are searching—meaning you’ll get more relevant traffic.
Better reputation: Ranking higher on Google builds instant credibility for your business. If Google trusts you,
then people trust you.
Higher ROI: You put money into your website, and into the marketing campaigns that lead back to your website
pages. A top-performing site improves the fruits of those campaigns, making your investment worth it.
So, whether you want more brand awareness, online visibility, leads, sales, or loyal customers, SEO is your
answer.
Types of SEO
Types of SEO…
Google and other search engines take several factors into account when ranking content, and as
such SEO has many facets. The core three types of SEO are on-page, off-page, and technical SEO:
On-page SEO: Optimizing the quality and structure of the content on a page. Content quality,
keywords, and HTML tags are the key players for on-page SEO.
Off-page SEO: Getting other sites, and other pages on your site to link to the page you are trying
to optimize. Backlinks, internal linking, and reputation are your off-page MVPs (Minimum viable
product).
Technical SEO: Improving your site’s overall performance on search engines. Site security, User
experience, and structure are key here.
Types of SEO…
The previous three types of SEO are used for websites and blogs, but they also apply to three
subtypes of SEO:
Local SEO: Getting your business to rank as high as possible in Google Maps and on the local
results of the SERP. Reviews, listings, and Google Business profile optimization are most
important here.
Image SEO: A mix of on-page and technical strategies to get images on your website pages to
rank in Google image search.
Video SEO: A mix of on-page, technical, and off-page strategies to get your videos to rank in
YouTube or Google video results.
While all three subtypes require all three core types of SEO, they do vary in how heavily they
rely on each core type.
 On-page optimization includes all of the things that your
readers will see when they visit your website.

For the most part, that means content.

The most important part of on-page SEO is making sure

your content is awesome.

Keywords, is an important one.

If you're writing a detailed piece on a topic, you're going to

1. On-page include a lot of relevant and related keywords.

SEO
But making sure that those keywords are totally optimized
to meet your goals can provide a big boost to your SEO.
 For example, including your keyword in the title, URL, first
paragraph, and at least one sub-heading in your page is a good
idea.

You also want your keywords to cover a single, specific topic.

on-page SEO goes beyond keywords.

Having a site that's easy for visitors to navigate is important, too—

if your visitors want additional information.

Good design is crucial as well.

1. On-page
SEO
You need to focus on providing a good user experience all around.
 2. Off-page SEO

Getting links to your site helps

bring in visitors, and it shows
Getting links from authoritative
off-page optimization is link- Google that other people around
sites can make a huge difference
building. the internet value your content,
in how your site is ranked
and that your site is
authoritative.

If people are talking about your

content on Facebook, Twitter,
Having a piece of content that's
Social media is another off-page LinkedIn, or other social
popular on social media gets you
signal that can make a big networks, search engines take
a lot of traffic, too, which can
difference in your SEO, as well. that to mean that it's worth
help your SEO as well.
talking about and help other
people find it.
 1. solid promotion to the channels where your audience spends
time requires a lot of time and effort.
2. Building positive relationships with bloggers, journalists, social
media personalities, and the people behind websites similar to
2. Off-page 3.
yours are all positive off-page SEO practices.
Commenting on other blogs can be helpful. Guest blogging is still
SEO a popular off-page SEO method.
 Technical SEO, in short, is related to on-page factors but has to do with things
that go on behind the scenes.
search engines may give some preference to sites with a responsive design
that scales well to mobile devices.
Page speed is also an important factor; if your page loads slowly, you're going
to lose visitors, and you might be penalized by ranking algorithms.
Optimizing images, using a secure HTTPS connection, caching information to
speed load times, uploading detailed sitemaps, and other technical factors can
3. Technical help your SEO.

SEO
The HTML on each page should be optimized, too.
Using schema markup to tell search engines exactly what's on your page,
making it easy for crawlers to figure out what your page is about, and using
the correct type of redirects are all SEO-related factors.
Speaking of crawlers, making sure your robots.txt file is updated to help
crawlers find the right information faster is crucial, too.
Technical SEO sounds intimidating, but most of it is guided by the same
principles as on-page SEO: you need to provide a good user experience.
If your site is fast and easy to use, you're halfway there. You just need to make
sure now that it's easy for Google's crawlers to get around, too.
Get your website on Google
Google automatically looks for sites to add to our
index; you usually don't even need to do anything
except post your site on the web.
However, sometimes sites get missed.
Check to see if your site is on Google and learn
how to make your content more visible in Google
Search.
Basic
checklist for
appearing in
Google To see if your pages are already indexed, search for
your site in Google Search with a query like this.
Search results Substitute your own site for "example.com".

site:example.com
 Is your website showing up on Google?

Although Google crawls billions of pages, it's inevitable that some sites will be missed. When our crawlers miss a site, it's frequently
for one of the following reasons:

• Your site isn't linked to by other sites on the web. See if you can get your site linked to by other sites (but please don't pay them to
link to you; that could be considered a violation of Google's guidelines).

• You've just launched a new site and Google hasn't had time to crawl it yet. It can take a few weeks for Google to notice a new
site, or any changes in your existing site.

• The design of the site makes it difficult for Google to crawl its content effectively. If your site is built on some other specialized
technology, rather than HTML, Google might have trouble crawling it correctly. Remember to use text, not just images or video, on
your site.

• Google received an error when trying to crawl your site. Most common reasons for this are that you have a login page for your
site, or that your site blocks Google for some reason. Make sure that you can access your site in an incognito window.

• Google missed it: Although Google crawls billions of pages, it's inevitable that we'll miss a few sites, especially small ones. Wait a
while, and try to get linked from other sites.
Do you serve high-quality
content to users?
Your number one priority is ensuring that your users
have the best possible experience on your site.
Think about what makes your site unique, valuable, or
engaging.
For a one-pager, read the short guide on how to
optimize your site for search engines.
To make sure that you’re managing your website using
Google-friendly practices, read the Google Webmaster
Guidelines.
 Optimize your site for search engines
Here are a few simple ideas that can help Google understand your site, and help the right people find it.
• Google doesn't accept payment to rank a website higher, or rank websites higher if they advertise on Google. If
anyone tells you otherwise, they're wrong.
• Be descriptive: Use accurate, descriptive titles for your pages. We recommend putting different topics, products, or
services on different pages, one topic (or closely related set of items) per page.
• Be complete: Mention everything that you have to offer. Google is smart, but we can't guess what you don't tell us.
• Keep your site up to date: If you haven't updated your site since 1925, it's time to remove the references to
Calvin Coolidge in your current events blog.
• Use text: Don't put your site content or page titles only in images, video, animations, or other non-text formats that
Google doesn't understand as easily as text. If you use a graphic for your site name, include the name in the page text
as well.
• Get referrals: Have your site mentioned in useful places online. See if you can get into your local online news sites,
or in any other appropriate resources.
Major Google’s SEO Algorithm updates
Google claims to update its search algorithm several thousand times per year. In the absolute
majority of cases, Google algorithm updates are too small to notice. But, every once in a while,
Google introduces a change so fundamental, that it disrupts the way we do SEO forever.
1. Panda
Date: February 24, 2011
Hazards: Duplicate, plagiarized or thin content; user-generated spam; keyword stuffing.
How it works: The Panda algorithm update assigns a so-called “quality score” to web pages. This
score is then used as a ranking factor. Initially, the effects of Panda were mild, but in January
2016 it was permanently incorporated into Google’s core algorithm. Since then, update rollouts
have become more frequent, so both Panda penalties and recoveries now happen faster.
2. Penguin
Date: April 24, 2012
Hazards: Spammy or irrelevant links; links with over-optimized anchor text.
How it works: Google Penguin’s objective is to down-rank sites whose backlinks look unnatural.
3. Hummingbird
Date: August 22, 2013
Hazards: Keyword stuffing; low-quality content.
How it works: The Hummingbird algorithm helps Google better interpret search queries and provide results that match searcher
intent (as opposed to the individual terms within the query). While keywords continue to be important, the Hummingbird
algorithm makes it possible for a page to rank for a query even if it doesn’t contain the exact words the searcher entered. This is
achieved with the help of natural language processing that relies on latent semantic indexing, co-occurring terms and synonyms.
4. Mobile
Date: April 21, 2015
Hazards: Lack of a mobile version of the page; poor mobile usability.
How it works: This, and subsequent mobile search updates (2018, 2020) have shifted the focus from a desktop to a mobile version
of your website. Today, Google ranks all websites based on how fast and user-friendly their mobile versions are.
5. RankBrain
Date: October 26, 2015
Hazards: Lack of query-specific relevance; shallow content; poor UX.
How it works: RankBrain is a part of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm. It is a machine learning system that helps
Google understand the meaning behind queries and serve best-matching search results in response to those queries.
Google calls RankBrain the third most important ranking factor.
While we don’t know the exact formula behind this major update, the consensus is that RankBrain is responsible for
customizing a user’s Google search results. Basically, Google goes beyond a person’s search query and takes into
account the larger context, like synonyms, implied words, and personal search history.
6. Medic
Date: May 4, 2018
Hazards: Lack of authority on YMYL websites; weak E-A-T signals.
How it works: The Google Medic update seemed to disproportionately affect medical websites as well as other
websites that have to do with potentially life-altering decisions (finance, law, education). Although not explicitly
confirmed, Google representatives have hinted that the update implemented some of the E-A-T (expertise, authority,
trust) signals from the Quality Rater Guidelines document.
7. Bert
Date: October 22, 2019
Hazards: Poorly written content; lack of focus; lack of context.
How it works: This Google algorithm update uses natural language processing technology to better understand
search queries, interpret text, identify entities and relationships between entities. We’ve seen Panda, Hummingbird
and RankBrain updates move away from keywords, and the BERT update is the culmination of this effort — it allows
Google to understand much more nuance in both queries and search results.
8. Core Updates
Date: 2017-present
How it works: As far back as 2017, Google has started to refer to bigger updates as Google core updates. Since then,
there is even less transparency about what those updates are and which parts of search they are intended to
improve. SEOs would often track post-update ranking shifts and try to figure out what exactly has changed, but there
is rarely a conclusive observation. It is likely that Google core updates are just improvements on previous Google
updates or perhaps bundles of smaller updates tied together.
 Planning and Strategies for SEO
1. Make a list of topics.
2. Make a list of long-tail keywords based on these topics.
3. Build pages for each topic.
4. Set up a blog.
5. Create a consistent blogging schedule.
6. Create a link-building plan.
7. Compress media files before uploading them to your site.
8. Stay up-to-date on SEO news and best practices.
9. Measure and track your content's success.
10. Write High Quality Content (Naturally)
11. Review Every Page for Additional Keyword Placement
1. Make a list of topics.
Keywords are at the heart of SEO, but they're no longer the first step to achieving organic growth. Instead, the first
step is to make a list of topics you’d like your content to address.
2. Make a list of long-tail keywords based on these topics.
During this step you’ll begin optimizing your pages for specific keywords. For each pillar you've identified, use your
keyword tool to identify five to 10 long-tail keywords that dig deeper into the original topic keyword.
3. Build pages for each topic.
When it comes to websites and ranking in search engines, trying to get one page to rank for a handful of keywords
can be next to impossible. But, here's where the rubber meets the road.
4. Set up a blog.
Blogging can be an incredible way to rank for keywords and engage your website's users. After all, every blog post
is a new web page and an additional opportunity to rank in SERPs. If your business does not already have a blog,
consider creating one.
5. Create a consistent blogging schedule.
Every blog post or web page you create doesn’t necessarily need to belong to a topic cluster. There's also value in
writing about tangential topics your customers care about to build authority with the Google algorithms.
6. Create a link-building plan.
The topic cluster model is your way forward in SEO, but it's not the only way to get your website content to rank higher
once it's been created.
7. Compress media files before uploading them to your site.
This is a small but important step in the SEO process, especially for mobile optimization.
8. Stay up-to-date on SEO news and best practices.
Just like marketing, the search engine landscape is ever-evolving. Staying on top of current trends and best practices is
an important strategy, and there are multiple online resources that can help you do so. Here are a few resources to
check out:
Moz, SEOBook, Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Land, Diggity Marketing, This Blog!
9. Measure and track your content's success.
SEO can take a lot of time and effort, and, because of this, you’ll want to know if your strategy works.
It’s important to track your metrics to understand the success of your overall process, and identify
possible areas for improvement.
10. Write High Quality Content (Naturally)
The key here is to use your marketing spidey sense and create engaging content that is valuable to your
target market. Valuable content includes content that answers the questions that your buyers have,
provides them with insights they can use, and educates them so they can be better at what they do.
11. Review Every Page for Additional Keyword Placement
Now that you’ve created high quality content that your target market needs (and wants) and have
attention-grabbing headlines to engage them and encourage them to read further, go back and review
everything you wrote. In your review, look for additional places where you can naturally place keywords.
 Technical SEO Factors
1. Sitemaps
The presence of a sitemap file on your site will help search engines:
• Better understand its structure.
• Where pages are located.
• More importantly, give it access to your site (assuming it’s set up correctly).
2. Robots.txt
A robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which URLs the crawler can access on your site. This is used mainly to
avoid overloading your site with request.
Identifying whether robots.txt exists on-site is a good way to check the health of your site. The robots.txt file can
make or break a website’s performance in search results.
For example, if you set robots.txt to “disallow: /”, you’re telling Google never to index the site because “/” is root!
3. Crawl Errors
The Crawl Errors section of Google Search Console will help you identify whether crawl errors currently exist on-site.
Finding crawl errors, and fixing them, is an important part of any website audit because the more crawl errors a site
has, the more issues Google has finding pages and indexing them.
4. Multiple URLs: Capital vs. Lowercase URLs
This issue can cause Google to see two or more versions of the page as the source of single content on your site.
Multiple versions can exist, from capital URLs to lower case URLs, to URLs with dashes and URLs with underscores.
Sites with severe URL issues can even have the following:
https://www.example.com/this-is-the-url
https://www.example.com/This-Is-The-URL
5. Does the Site Have an SSL Certificate (Especially in Ecommerce)?
Ideally, an ecommerce site implementation will have an SSL certificate.
But with Google’s recent moves toward preferring sites that have SSL certificates for security reasons, it’s a good idea
to determine whether a site has a secure certificate installed.
6. Minifying CSS & JavaScript Files
Identifying bloated CSS code, along with bloated JavaScript, will help decrease your site’s load time.
7. Image Optimization
Identifying images that are heavy on file size and causing increases in page load time is a critical optimization factor to get right.
This isn’t a be-all, end-all optimization factor, but it can deliver quite a decrease in site speed if managed correctly.
9. Mobile Optimization & Testing
Mobile is here to stay, and there are many reasons for mobile optimization.
This includes the fact that Google said that mobile-first indexing was being used for more than half the web pages in Google search
results at the end of 2018. As of July 1, 2019, Google has announced that mobile-first indexing is the default for any brand-new web
domains.
10. Forcing a Single Domain
Despite many recommendations online, I still run into plenty of websites that have this major issue. And this is the issue of multiple
URLs loading, creating massive problems with duplicate content. Here’s the situation. When you enter your address in your web
browser, you can test variations of URLs:
http://www.example.com/
https://www.example.com/
http://example.com/
https://example.com/
 HTML tags used to provide additional
information about a page to search
Meta Tags for SEO engines and other clients.

1. Title Tag
The title tag is the first HTML element that specifies what your web page is about. Title tags are
important for SEO and visitors because they appear in the search engine results page (SERP) and
in browser tabs.
2. Meta Description
A meta description is an HTML element that sums up the content on your web page. Search
engines typically show the meta description in search results below your title tag.

3. Canonical Tag
A canonical tag is an HTML link tag with the attribute “rel=canonical."
It’s used to indicate that there are other versions of this webpage. By implementing the
canonical tag in the code, your website tells search engines that this URL is the main page and
that the engines shouldn’t index other pages.
Use the following syntax to add a canonical tag:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/" />
4. Alternative Text Tag
Search engines can’t read images, which are a crucial part of many websites. Alternative text (alt
text) is a way around that issue.
5. Robots Meta Tag
The robots meta tag tells search engines to either index or non-index your web page.
The tag has four main values for the search engine crawlers:
FOLLOW –The search engine crawler will follow all the links in that webpage
INDEX –The search engine crawler will index the whole webpage
NOFOLLOW – The search engine crawler will NOT follow the page and any links in that webpage
NOINDEX – The search engine crawler will NOT index that webpage
6. Header Tags
You can use header tags to change font sizes and signify information hierarchy on a page.
The heading elements go from H1 to H6. H1 is the largest and most important level, and H6 is
the smallest and least important
7. Responsive Design Meta Tags for SEO
The final important meta tag is the responsive design meta tag, which is also called the viewport
meta element.
Viewport meta tags allow web designers to configure how a page scales and displays on any
device.
What Is Website Architecture?
In an SEO context, website architecture refers to the structure which organizes the content on
your website. It includes two main components which complement each other, one for human
visitors and one for search engine robots:
1. The navigational hierarchy which guides human users through your content via menus,
categories, tags and other internal links
2. The corresponding technical framework which allows search engine robots to crawl, index
and rank pages on your site
How Does Website Architecture Affect
SEO Performance?
Your website’s architecture can affect your SEO results in three main ways:
1. Allowing robots to crawl your pages
2. Helping robots identify which pages on your site should be indexed and prioritized
3. Promoting clicks from human visitors
 How Do You Optimize Website
Architecture?
You can take a number of steps to improve your website architecture so that your pages get crawled, indexed and ranked correctly:
1. Keep URLs simple and unique, avoiding long URLs and dynamic URLs
2. Double-check URLs for typos and broken links
3. Use secure HTTPS protocol in your URLs
4. Use a hierarchy of navigational menus and other internal links which allow visitors and robots to reach any page by following four or fewer links (a
strategy known as a “flat” architecture)
5. Use menus and categories to organize pages into content hierarchies, linking menus to categories and categories to individual pages
6. Label internal links with relevant anchor text
7. Provide robots.txt and sitemap files to guide search engine robots
8. For pages with multiple versions, use canonical tags and 301 redirects to let search engines know which version to prioritize
9. Use the noindex metatag to keep robots from indexing pages you don’t want indexed, such as duplicate pages created by categories and archives
10. Use the nofollow metatag to keep robots from following links you don’t want followed
11. Avoid JavaScript menus or take steps to help Google’s robot access them
12. Test your site to make sure it loads quickly and renders properly on mobile devices
Permalinks optimization
Then, there are a few best practices to keep in
mind when deciding on your permalink structure:
Keep it short – Avoid articles like "the," "a," "an"
and create a slug that's a shorter version of your
title. E.g.: If your article is titled, "How to Create
an Instagram Story," your slug can simply be
/Instagram-story.
Include your main keywords – Optimize your slug
by including your keywords. Make sure the
keyword you use directly relates to the content on
the page.
Improve Website Performance
1. Choose the Right Hosting Provider
Every hosting provider offers a different baseline performance out of the box. Moreover, you
usually can’t compare the performance of a web host’s shared plans with more advanced offerings
such as dedicated servers.
2. Leverage Browser Caching
Caching is one of the most critical steps to improving your site’s loading times. By enabling browser
caching, you tell your visitors’ browsers to store some (or all) of your site’s static files on their
computers temporarily. Caching improves and speeds up browsing.
3. Enable Keep-Alive On Your Web Server
Usually, when you visit a website, your browser establishes a connection to its server and uses that
to transfer the files it needs to fetch. However, if your server isn’t properly configured, users might
need to establish new connections for every single file they want to transfer.
4. Enable GZIP Compression
As its name implies, GZIP is a compression method that enables you to reduce the file sizes for several elements
within your website. In some cases, simply enabling GZIP compression can reduce the weight of your pages by up to
70%.
5. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
On most types of hosting (except cloud hosting), your website resides in a single server with a specific location. Every
visitor needs to connect to that server in order to load your website, which can lead to bottlenecks.
This setup provides you with two advantages:
a) It reduces the load on your servers.
b) It translates to lower loading times for international visitors.
6. Disable Query Strings for Static Resources
Query strings are the suffixes that you sometimes see at the ends of URLs, starting with special characters such as
question marks or ampersands. Here’s a quick example of an URL with a query string, and one without:
yourwebsite.com/style.css?ver=2
yourwebsite.com/style.css
 Improve Loading Time of Sites
1. Hosting Providers: A hosting provider is a service that hosts your website on a server and
makes it accessible to users via the internet.
2. Page File Size (total amount of content): Your page file size, or page weight, is the overall size
of a particular web page.
3. Individual Element Size (images): Individual elements like high-quality image files can add
appeal to your site, but high-quality images also come with large file sizes that slow the load
time significantly.
4. WordPress Themes and Plugins: A WordPress theme is a group of files (graphics, style sheets,
and code) that dictate the appearance of your blog or website. WordPress themes can
potentially slow down your site speed if there’s no content delivery network (CDN), if the code is
bulky or poorly written, or if it doesn’t match the level of traffic you get.

Plugins To Speed Up WordPress: https://blog.hubspot.com/website/plugins-to-improve-loadin-time-wordpress

Perform the Page Speed Test
Explore the tools:
1. Google PageSpeed Insights - https://developers.google.com/speed/p...
2. GTmetrix - https://gtmetrix.com/
3. Pingdom - https://www.pingdom.com/
4. WebPageTest - https://www.webpagetest.org/
5. IsItWP Speed Test Tool - https://www.isitwp.com/free-website-s...
6. Uptrends - https://www.uptrends.com/
7. KeyCDN tools - https://tools.keycdn.com/speed
8. Byte Check - https://www.bytecheck.com/
9. Dareboost - https://www.dareboost.com/
10. Yellow Lab Tools - https://yellowlab.tools/
 XML and HTML
sitemap creation
What is XML Sitemap?
The XML sitemap is the machine-
readable sitemap created in an
Extensible Markup Language (XML)
that contains information about all
of your website URLs along with the
metadata.
What is HTML Sitemap?
HTML sitemap is a sitemap written in
hypertext markup language that
serves as a directory of links or table
of contents for your website pages.
How to Make sitemap for Blogger Blog /
Generate XML Sitemap for Blogger
How To Add Blogger To Google Search Console |
Submit Your Blogger Blog to Google Search Console
How to Add Custom Robots.txt in
Blogger Blog
How To Add Google Analytics to
Blogger Blog

Google Analytics is a platform

that collects data from your
websites and apps to create
reports that provide insights
into your business.
 How to Perform an Effective Competitor
Website Analysis
A competitor website analysis is the process of studying your competition’s online presence to
understand their marketing strategies and identify potential areas of opportunity for your own business.
By understanding what tactics your rivals use to attract customers, you can develop a more effective
online marketing strategy that sets you apart from the competition.
1. Identify and make a list of your competitors.
The first step in any competitor website analysis is to identify your competition. This can be done
differently, depending on how thorough you plan to be. There are three major sources where you’ll find
this information:
a) Known direct competitors in your industry.
b) A google search for your most relevant keywords.
c) Specialized software and online tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and SimilarWeb.
2. Analyze their positioning.
Once you have a list of your competitors, it’s time to start analyzing their websites, and you should start with
positioning. This involves looking at what each company is saying about themselves on their website and
understanding how they see themselves in relation to the rest of the industry.
There are a few key things you can look for:
a) Their tagline, which should describe what they do at a very high level.
b) Their mission statement, which you’ll usually find on their "About Us" page.
c) The language they are using on their website to get an idea of what kind of language competitors think works
best in describing themselves to their audience.
3. Identify their target segment.
Once you have a good understanding of your competitor’s business, it’s time to start analyzing their marketing efforts,
and this starts with trying to identify their target segment. This can be tricky, as it’s not always easy to tell from their
website or marketing materials. However, there are some clues that you can look for.
 4. Analyze site performance and user experience.
We’ve only focused our analysis on crafting the most accurate company profile possible for each competitor until this
point. Now it’s time to build an objective view of the quality of each competing website to identify its strengths and
weaknesses. This starts with website performance and the overall user experience.
There are a few key elements to analyze when assessing these website parameters, such as:
a) How quickly does the website load?
b) Is the layout easy to navigate?
c) Are the fonts easy to read?
d) Is the text well-formatted and easy to read?
e) Are the images properly sized and optimized?
f) Are there any broken links or images?
g) How user-friendly is the overall design?
 5. Take a trip down their funnel.
It’s time to look at your competitors’ marketing funnels and see how effective they are. This includes everything from email marketing
campaigns to their retargeting efforts. The best way to understand what each competitor is doing in this area is to experience it
yourself as a user.
Look at all the calls to action on each web page and click on them to see where they take you. Also, make a note of everything they
offer in each stage of the sales funnel:
a) The type of copy they use.
b) The digital assets they use (images, videos, audios, etc.).
c) Anything that tells you how they generate leads and convert them into paying customers.
6. Find out what stack the website is built with.
There are dozens of different tools and platforms to build websites, and some are better for some applications than others. While most
websites on the internet are built with WordPress, some specialized websites are not, so it’s important to find out what your
competitor’s websites were built with. If there’s one website that you found particularly appealing, and you find out it was built with a
different CMS than what you’re using, you may want to consider switching platforms in the future.
 7. Analyze their content strategy.
Though they may present their content in very different ways, there is one thing all your competitors have in common: they
are putting out content regularly. Content marketing is critical to an organization’s website’s success. They know that if they
want to drive traffic, convert leads, and grow their customer base, they need to consistently publish high-quality blog posts,
videos, or podcasts that will attract attention.
Other things you also want to look at include:
a) The topics they cover.
b) The types of articles they produce (How long are they? How many images do they include per article, etc.).
c) How frequently they publish new articles (daily, weekly, etc.).
8. Analyze their SEO strategies.
Looking at a company’s website can reveal insights into their SEO strategies, and this can be invaluable if your competitors are
ranking higher than you on SERPs. By understanding how they’re optimizing their website for search engines, you can apply
the same techniques to your website and see an improvement in your ranking.
9. Prepare a list of flaws and highlights.
The last step of the process is to integrate every bit of information you acquired into a
spreadsheet so you can get a high-level view of your competitive landscape. With this
information at hand, you’ll have a clear view of where each competitor excels and where they
fall short, so make a list of all the flaws and highlights of each competitor. This summary will be
the main output of the entire competitor website analysis.