Everyone wants to appear on top of popular search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. But, due to the rising competition between businesses and websites, the wish to be on the top of the search list becomes quite difficult, isn’t it? But you can surely reach the top of the search results by following certain parameters that have been set up by the search engines themselves. If the basics of your search engine optimization process are right, you may expect great results.
Getting your basics right for the process of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a process in which, one has to optimize his/her own web pages (on-page optimization), and the other one is off-page optimization, where you consider parameters outside your domain. For instance- sharing and bookmarking on popular social websites. In fact, this post is limited to on-page optimization techniques.
Optimizing your web pages
Page optimization means fixing your own pages as per the standard guidelines of search engine websites. I promise to have a separate post for off-site website optimization tips.
Let’s talk about Metadata Optimization
On every HTML page, you have a Meta title, Meta description and Keyword tag. The keywords tag is not that popular, but the Title and Meta description tag is very vital.
For example- Suppose you are Packers and Movers Company located in Bangalore and say the name of your company is “ABC Moving and Relocation Company Pvt. Ltd” and you offer moving and relocation services in Bangalore, India.
So how do we write effective and meaningful Title tags? The title tag should make sense for both users and search engine robots. Let me give you a better example. A typical title tag may look like “Welcome to ABC Moving and Relocation Company Pvt. Ltd” “ABC Moving and Relocation Company Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore” “ABC Moving and Relocation Company Pvt. Ltd welcomes you” or “Welcome to our website”
Now look at some of the examples below. I am just re-writing the titles: “Packers and Movers in Bangalore- call for Household and Car Shifting” or “Packers and Movers Bangalore – Local and Domestic Packing & Moving Company”
Which title tag makes more sense to you? Ofcourse the second one. Why? Because it directly tells everyone about the services it provides, and that’s how people search for a moving company. They are not going to search it by your name, and chances are there that your company name is already a part of your domain name. So, having the brand name in the title tag is not necessary, and you should avoid it specifically if it’s a long name (more than 1 word)
Same way Meta description should have a valid description something like “Need Packers and Movers in Bangalore. Call us for free estimates for Local or Domestic Household, or Car Shifting Services”
Why meta title and meta description is so important?
Because when someone is searching for a product or service, the first thing that appears on search results is the title and the description. So, it must be relevant to the user’s search and should make sense for the users to take action i.e. click on your link to go to your website.
Image alt and Link title attributes.
For every image, you should have an alt tag. For example, you can have an alt something like alt=” ABC Moving and Relocation Company” for the Logo image
Similarly for each of the links, you should have a title tag. e.g. <a href=”index.html” title=” Click here to go to the home page”>
The search engine robots will parse these tags and it affects the search results. Also, it’s going to help your potential customers or website visitors.
Page URLs and Links
You should have proper linking techniques in place for better results and this is one of the basic. Because changing page links every now and then is not advisable and also not possible, because the number of pages may grow as your business grows. Secondly, any broken link (a link where the page does not exist) gives a very bad impression to the search engines as well as your own customers and visitors
Try to include keywords in your page name, so you have a great and easy-to-remember URL structure.
For example, take a look at an example URL https://www.abcmovingandrelocation.com/page.php?service=localshifting
Now look at https://www.abcmovingandrelocation.com/local-home-shifting-in-bangalore
Now if you observe both of these URLs/links above, the second one looks better and it makes some sense, however, the first one looks odd and does not quite make sense from a visitor’s perspective. Remember Search Engine Robots can make sense of both the Url and they are going to rank second on the top.
Not to mention having a clear-cut navigation structure throughout your website will give you better results for your search engine optimization.
Sitemap
Have a sitemap page with a proper hierarchy. This helps search engine robots in crawling your website and it’s going to be handy for your site visitors too.
You may also have a sitemap.xml page, which is mostly used to help search engine robots. There are several free Sitemap generators available, that can be used to generate sitemap.xml files.
There are several other factors but if you can take care of these basics, you are good to proceed further with your SEO process. You can always go and hire a professional SEO Company to help you with Search Engine Optimization projects.
I would like to know what else you think is required to begin the SEO process.
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