Day 12 - Search Engine Optimisation

SEARCH ENGINE
OPTIMISATION

by Tuhin Ghosh

MBA (XLRI), Guest Faculty (IIM-L), Digital Marketing
Strategist and Consultant

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

INTRODUCTION

Search Engine Optimisation

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > INTRODUCTION

Now let us study, how you can achieve high rank in Google’s organic search as well as
know the SEO ranking factors.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

OBJECTIVES

Search Engine Optimisation

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > OBJECTIVES

At the end of this module, you will be able to:

o Learn about how search engine bots crawl and index
o Know the SEO ranking factors
o See how search engines have evolved over the years and the

logic behind how people search

o Apply the best practices of on page content and technical

optimization

o Do off-page optimization to improve your search ranking with

proper linking strategy and create good quality backlinks

o Successfully create a SEO Plan

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

HOW SEARCH WORK?

The Science Behind Search

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK

Search engines have programs called crawlers or spiders or

bots which does three task when they enter your website or
web page.

They crawl into your website and finds all the data they

can ‘read’

They index all your elements and information in your

website ,they can decipher and where they have found it.

They determine relevance of your content with user’s

query using complicated algorithms.

Source- Drmolecule

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK

The query goes to Google’s web
server and it sends the information
to Google’s index server which
contains all the information it has
collected.

Index server send the query to the
document server which retrieves
the stored document with relevant
snippet and throws it back to the
search result .

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > KEY FACTORS WHICH DETERMINE RANKING

There are 4 key broad level factors:
The Content: Relevant and informational. Good to

read.

User Experience: How the visitor likes to navigate in

your page.

Technicalities of your website like security, speed

etc.

Backlinks: How many good and variety of relevant

websites are referring you. This also includes the
‘social signal’.

Google’s ranking factors according to MOZ- 2015

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > TYPES OF QUERIES

Navigational query: for finding a particular Informational query: for finding a particular
website or webpage information

Transactional query: for intending to complete a transaction

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > GOOGLE SEARCH IN NUMBERS

50000 85% 63% 30%

Search Queries Searchers who do not click Of the top organic links Being on top of search means so

Processed every second on paid links get clicked much more revenue

81% #1 10- 15% 66%

Of B2B buying starts with Factor for driving traffic to Growth rate of Google Of the best of class companies
Search involve search in their content
search sites
marketing

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

ON PAGE OPTIMISATION

Content

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > KEYWORD IMPORTANCE AND PLANNING

It all starts with the query being searched by the user. You

need to make a list of keywords you want to optimise for.

First step make a list of keywords you want to rank on
Have a mix of both short generic keywords and ‘long tail’

specific keywords.

Think like a customer: See what they are searching

related to your product or service.

Put variants

Example: Headphone > Headsets > Earphones

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > KEYWORD IMPORTANCE AND PLANNING

Use keyword planner tool of AdWords: Put your

keywords and look for suggestions

Else put your competitor’s URL and look for suggestions
Observe volume of search, competition and cost
Map it to the relevance of the your product and service

and make the list with multiple themes.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > KEYWORD IMPORTANCE AND PLANNING

Other tools you may use
Google Trends
Uber Suggest
SEM Rush
Your websites internal search
And simply type into Google’s

search bar and see the
suggestions.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > TAGS AND DESCRIPTIONS

Title Tag

Most prominent thing for the searcher: Think of it like a

headline and write copy accordingly

Keep it within 65 characters
Include a keyword which you want to optimise in the

tag

Make each tag unique

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > TAGS AND DESCRIPTIONS

Meta Description

Though this does not have a direct correlation with

ranking, but a well thought out meta can increase your
CTR

Keep it to 155 characters
Avoid duplicate descriptions
Include relevant information, reviews or any other

compelling element to drive clicks.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > TAGS AND DESCRIPTIONS

Main Content

Choose one group of thematically related keywords
Do not stuff keywords: A few is fine
Keep it natural and easy to read contents
Include call to actions
Link out to internal pages or external authoritative

pages

Use related words or phrases and synonyms

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > TAGS AND DESCRIPTIONS

Alt Text URL Rich Snippets H1 Tag

 Since search engines can  Do not put numbers and  You can use this with your  This is an HTML tag.
not read your images you symbols meta description to lead
need to put ‘alt txt’ to tell visitors to particular  This is the top most in
the search engines what  Avoid long URLs actions like checking out hierarchy from H1 to H6.
the image is all about. recipes, reading reviews,
 Include keywords book the event etc.  Search engine is found to
 For that you also need to give importance to this.
put a relevant image  You can indicate the  Similar to the sitelink
architecture through extensions in AdWords  Include a key word (but it
 These are different from ‘breadcrumbs’ for proper is not a must)
image title indexing  Employ this with
schema.org

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

ON PAGE OPTIMISATION

Technical

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > PAGE SPEED

Very important aspect for search engine crawl as well as

user experience.

You can check this in Google page speed insight where it

suggests corrections in:

Server response time
Minifying CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
Reducing redirects
Leveraging browser caching.
Enabling compression to reduce files size

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > ONSITE TECHNICAL OPTMISATION AREAS

Robot.txt .htaccess Reduce Flash, frame
and java
 It tells the search  It is a plain-text file
engine what to crawl using which you can  It hinders readability
and what not to by replace symbols and and crawling for search
adding robot.txt at the numbers of your engines.
end of the url deeper pages into
“speaking URLs” that  Also affects page speed
 Do not overuse this are understood by
users and Robots
 You can validate using and are easy to
Google’s tester check.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > ONSITE TECHNICAL OPTMISATION AREAS

Fix broken Links Fix duplicate content Use text links

 A broken link is the one  For internal duplicate use  So try to avoid image links
having some elements “Rel=canonical” (used in and replace them with
incorrect or missing E-commerce websites) or normal text links, where
from the link’s HTML change the content. the site’s design allows it.
code, or a link that
leads to a non-existing  External content: either  Today DHTML or CSS,
web page. change your content or make it possible to create
ask the other guy to elements that look as
 Check your pages for change (if the original great as images, but are
broken links and fix belongs to you) easy to understand for
them Search Engines.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > ONSITE TECHNICAL OPTMISATION AREAS

Search Engine Create Sitemap Create Internal
Submission Links
 An HTML sitemap is made
 You can submit to Google for human users mostly, to  Internal links within your
, Yahoo and other relevant help them navigate. webpage guide the robots
search engines. to navigate fast and into
 An XML Sitemap is for logical and richer content.
 Use Webmaster tools of Search Engines only.
the respective search  Make sure you link
engines to submit.  They will know about all properly for a seamless
the pages on your site, journey of the bot.
including URLs that can
not be naturally crawled.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

OFF PAGE OPTIMISATION

Link Building

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > WHY LINK BUILDING

Backlinks (links from other websites) act as a vote
Better votes or link quality better is your chance to rank

higher

Create links with sites that are authoritative and relevant

to your domain or page.

Source: Wordstream

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > STOP HARMFUL LINKS

Avoid spam, bad quality links as they harm your

website’s status in front of the Search Engine.

Irrelevant links also do not add to your ranking
Link Farms and Free for All (FAA) site’s links are strictly

no-no

Paid links are also looked down upon by Google
Stop bad links by rel=‘no follow’

Source: ahref.com

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > USE PROPER ANCHOR TEXTS

Anchor texts is a clickable text in a hyperlink in your

backlink.

It help search engines to determine the relevancy
But do not overuse anchor texts: do not have the same

anchor text in most of your postings

You can create anchor texts based on themes.
Anchor texts can also be a long phrase like “here is how

to deal with negative ranking in google”.

Source: Neil Patel blog

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > SELECTING TARGET SITES

Look at Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA)

using Moz tool bar: have a mix of both high to medium
authority targets.

Check the number and nature of outbound links from the

target site.

Check the diversity of the backlinks: more is good.
Check for relevancy of the target site or page with

reference to your business.

Check for domain age: older is better
Check for high value domains like .edu and .gov

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > FINDING LINK BUILDING OPPORTUNITIES

Head over to your competition and check the backlink

profile with tools like Moz and Backlinko: Get ideas from
there

Search the relevant terms and Google and see what is

coming up and what are they writing

Search for “your topic + submit post ” (or similar searches)

and see who is offering opportunity to write

Try local directories , Google places
Link author bios to your pages in the guest posts you write

in other sites.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > FINDING LINK BUILDING OPPORTUNITIES

Get other bloggers to write about you, your product or Linkbait from Backlinko (Source)

service

Create Link baits: Awesome piece of content which

others would like to link naturally.

Social signals (posts from Social media) are important if

they have a high engagement level.

Seek out broken links (by tool like Domain hunter) and

offer a replacement article to the web master.

Sign up for HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and write

awesome articles in your niche

Create Infographics in sites like Visual.ly.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > WHAT DOES NOT WORK

Spam comments in someone’s blog or forum
Putting the your name as the developer in the footer of

your client’s page

Just posting in any and every social bookmarking sites
Free article directories
Wikipedia link (though this does not work in passing any

link juice as there is ‘no follow attribute’ but some SEO
specialist thinks otherwise)

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

SEO TOOLS

Making Your Life Easier

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > SEO TOOLS

MOZ Tools
Has both paid and trial version
Moz Bar can help in getting the page metrics
Open Site explorer helps in link building opportunity

and comparing to competition

Keyword explorer: helps in discovering and

prioritizing the best keywords for you

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > SEO TOOLS

SEO quake: A browser toolbar shows different parameters

on a page. It is free.

Screaming Frog: It has both free and paid version which

crawls a website and fetch onsite elements to analyse

UberSuggest: It generates keyword ideas, is free but not

applicable to all geographies.

Backlinko: It gives different ways to analyse backlinks and

find opportunities.

Majestic SEO: It is complete suit with standard and

advanced reports and automates much of SEO work.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

CREATING YOUR SEO PLAN

Getting Started

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > CASE STUDY

Think what do you want your audience to do when they visit your website.
Select 5 pages to start with
Make your list of keywords you want to optimise for: consider relevance, volume of search and

competition

Onsite contents
Write content looking at your audience
Write all the tags and descriptions
Include call to action and internal linking

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > APPROACH

Onsite technical: Check the page speed and rectify any errors, create robot.txt, htaccess

etc.

Create a list of search engines to submit
Identify link building opportunities and make a list with proper classification
Create 2-3 variants of approach mail to guest blogging sites
Create contents to publish in different social media sites

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > RESULTS

Create a daily, weekly and monthly plan on executing all the above
Maintain the status of all the onsite and offsite activities
Create a quarterly site audit and competition benchmarking plan to see what is working and

what is not. And what are others doing.

Rinse and repeat!

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

ASSIGNMENT

Creating a Back-Linking Plan

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > ASSIGNMENT

Pick up 3-5 of your online competition
Check the backlink profile and see opportunities to create good quality links
List out 10 of those opportunities and create a plan to approach them.
Look at what contents they are publishing.
Write a synopsis of what you want to write in those sites.(heading and bullet points)
Discuss your choice of the opportunities and your approach

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

CHECK YOUR
UNDERSTANDING

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING

1. _______ is the method by which search engines deciphers the code of that information
contained in a page and store it in massive databases to be recalled later on a user query

a. Crawling
b. Indexing
c. Finding relevance
d. None of the above

Indexing is the process by which search engine spiders deciphers the code of that information and
store it in massive databases to be recalled later on a user query

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING

2. What can “Rel= canonical” help you in

a. Dealing with duplicating content in your website
b. Dealing with broken links
c. Dealing with duplicating content outside your website
d. Dealing with page speed

This selects and shows the main URL amongst all the duplicate ones

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING
3. While starting your link building you should target sites with 8 and above PA and DA

a. True
b. False

For a newbie link building in such high PA/DA sites may be difficult . Also it is
always better to have a mix of medium and high authority sites

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING

4. One of the following is not an example of a link bait

a. "Download whitepaper"
b. "Watch our webinar"
c. "How to guide"
d. "Fill up the contact form"

Link baits involves creating a stunning content that people naturally want to link to
And not just a contact form.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING

5. Leaving a comment with link to the own site in somebody else's blog is a great idea to build
backlinks quick and free

a. True
b. False

Such activities are treated as spam not only by search engines but also vigilant bloggers
and hence it is a bad idea to build links like this

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > SUMMARY

Key points discussed in this module:

o How search engines work
o Key SEO ranking factors
o On page content optimisation
o On page technical optimisation
o Off-page optimization and linking strategy
o How to create a SEO Plan

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