1. SEO Basics
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization
As the name implies, SEO is a process or technique used to optimize your website for search engines. The key is to optimize your website to increase the quality and quantity of traffic over other websites when a user searches for a keyword in google search.
- When a website is optimized, it increases the visibility of your website when people search for services or products related to your business.
- The better the SEO, higher will your website organic ranking.
- In other words, when the visibility of your website increases in search results, you are more likely to get more attention and attract customers to your business.
2. SEO Building Blocks
Building blocks of SEO
- Domain Name
- Top Level Domain
- Website Hosting
- Website Platform
- Positive User Experience
Domain Name
- Choose an apt domain name which reflects your service, business or blog.
- Domain name shall not contain more than 2 words and try to contain it less than 10-15 letters max.
- Domain name should pass phone test. When you say the domain name over phone, the domain name should be easily understandable.
Top Level Domain
- TLD or Top Level Domains are the domain name extension ending with .COM, .IN, .CO.IN, .NET, .ORG, .AI etc.
- Always select .COM as your top level domain as your first choice if your website is service or product or blog.
- If .COM is unavailable, only then .IN can be chosen as alternate.
Top Level Domain
- TLD or Top Level Domains are the domain name extension ending with .COM, .IN, .CO.IN, .NET, .ORG, .AI etc.
- Always select .COM as your top level domain as your first choice if your website is service or product or blog.
- If .COM is unavailable, only then .IN can be chosen as alternate.
Website Hosting
- Hosting company should have good reputation in the market.
- Should have best in class infrastructure
- Should provide round the clock technical support.
- Website can hosted in any one of the following servers:
- Shared Hosting
- Virtual Private Server(VPS)
- Dedicated Server
- Cloud Hosting
High Level Comparison Table between Servers
| Shared Hosting Server | Virtual Private Server | Dedicated Server | Cloud Server | |
| Performance | Low | Medium | High | High |
| Security | Low | High | High | High |
| Scalability | Low | High | High | High |
| Cost | Cheap | Affordable | High | High |
Website Hosting
Hosted: Hosted website are built using website builders such as Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Shopify or WordPress.com . The website is hosted in their platform and provide website templates to build your website.
The downside to Hosted platform is that they provide limited functionality and less customization.
Self Hosted: Self hosted website are built using Content Management System(CMS) such as Drupal, Magneto or WordPress.org. In self hosted, the website can be hosted in servers which we desire and the website built from scratch using themes and page builders.
In self hosted platform, you are provided with high level of functionality and lot of customization which can translate in great website.
Positive User Experience
SSL or Secured Socket Layer are the security certificate that is provided to a website stating that the website is secure and the data that is transferred between client & server are encrypted.
From user perspective, SSL padlock provide much more confidence in accessing the website than the ones not having SSL certificate. Also, when a customer does transactions using credit or debit card, the data is secured from hackers when processing which provides peace of mind to the user.
Logical Structure of a website also plays an important role in providing positive user experience.
When a website is structured logically, it makes the user to navigate to his desired page easily instead of making him search which make the user frustrated only to never return to the website.
3. SEO Setup/Process
- Keyword Research
- On Page SEO
- Off Page SEO
- Image SEO
- Link Building
4. Tracking SEO Success
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
5. SEO Tools
- Keyword Research Tool
- Google Keyword Planner
- Google Trends
- Google Autosuggest
- Ahref
- SEMRush
- On Page SEO Tools/Plugin
- Yoast
- RankMath
- All in One SEO
- Link Building
- Haro
- Technical SEO Tool
- Google Search Console
Conclusion
- SEO is not a one time setup but a continuous process.
- A website having solid foundation, good SEO and high quality content will have good visibility.
- SEO optimized website will start ranking organically once google crawls and indexes the website.
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