Image Alt

• Image Alt attribute

Image Alt
Image Alt attribute is used to describe an image

Let’s say your image on the website is not loaded then the browser shows
this text in place of the image.
It works well when the visually impaired uses the browser or if the browser
is configured to not load images.
So always use this tag for highlighting some important keywords.
Remember to not overdo this.
Keyword Stuffing anywhere on the page is a punishable offence.
STRUCTURAL DESIGN
Structural Design
First Step

• One of the most important aspects of SEO is the Structural Design of a Website.
• This part comes before anything else.
• You might not have done the keyword research also as of now, forget about building
content.
• This is what is needed as a first step.
Why is it so important?

Again, the answer for this lies in the way a Web

Crawler traverses a website.
If your website is not having a good structure, with
important pages lying somewhere deep inside…
Then there is a chance that the crawler will never be
able to reach the page itself.
This in turn means that you are losing out on some
important factors to rank.
Hierarchical Structure

The basic idea is to chalk out a hierarchy for your website.

Figure out the most important categories or pages and then find
subcategories that relate to each category.
Unless you are a huge firm like Amazon.com, a simple business
website should have between 2 and 7 main categories.
URL Structure

Next step, would be to give some meaningful URL structure to all the pages.
Say your structure looks something like one shown above.
Shallow Website

The idea is to have a “shallow website”.

It means that any page on your website must be reachable in 3-4 clicks from the
Home Page.
Creating very deep pages poses a problem for the user as well as the crawlers.
SiteLinks

If the site structure is well-designed, Google will reward it with SiteLinks.

These are nothing but additional contextual links that are available in SERPs for
a single result.
This is not something that every search result will have. It needs to be earned.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
With the availability of SiteLinks, a website’s CTR increases.
CTR is nothing but Click-Through Rate.
In simple terms it means how many times a page was made available by Google
v/s how many times was the particular link clicked.
Sitemap.xml and Robots.txt
 Webmasters and Analytics

Next important step is to actually get your website up and running.

Once done, make sure to tie it up with important platforms like Google Webmasters, Google Analytics and
others.
With this, Google knows that this site is tied with my platform and will start generating insights for you.
A simple business can work out basic issues with these platforms itself, without going to external crawlers
and finding issues.
 Sitemap.xml

Sitemap.xml is the modern way of submitting your webpages to the Google search engine.

Once your site is completed, you can use an online tool to generate a Sitemap for you.

This file lists down each and every web page linked within your website.

In short, all web pages’ URL of your website on a single sheet.

Sitemap.xml

This is a SEO good practice as it makes the job of the GoogleBots quite easy.

How actually GoogleBot uses this sheet is a different case altogether.

Think of it as Google asking for your opinion on which pages should be crawled and so on.

Use it appropriately.
 Robots.txt
With Sitemaps.xml,
to Google. you gave a snapshot of your website
With Robots.txt, you inform Google about
that are a strict NO NO to be considered. the web pages
Very less relevant pages on your website must not be
considered for crawling and hence the need for this file.
Say certain pdf or img files. Not
respect to indexing. So ignore them. needed for any good with
Robots.txt
A robots.txt file’s syntax is very simple.
User-agent relates to the various
BingBot, FaceBot, MSNBot, etc. crawlers like GoogleBot,
* - is a wildcard entry which means ALL.
Disallow tells about
considered for crawling.various URL which are not to be
Putting just
disallowed. “/” means the entire domain is to be
 Robots.txt

For each page that is to be disallowed, you have to put in a new “Disallow” entry.

In the above image, all pages that have “mobile” as sub-directory are blocked.

You can also use wildcard entries within URLs as well.

Robots.txt

Similar to Sitemap.xml, even robots.txt have to be placed in the domain root folder.

One information around this that you may find interesting is that this file is publicly available.

Just go to any website and type “/robots.txt” at the end of the home page URL.

If that website indeed have used robots.txt then it would be visible.

 Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml

Also it is best practice to mention the sitemap.xml URL at the end of the robots.txt content.
Something the way shown in the above image…
Also, a single domain can have multiple sitemaps generated.
Over here, Workday is maintaining a unique sitemap for each of its language-specific web pages.
Introduction to Keyword Research
Introduction to Keyword Research

Introduction to Keyword Research

We have traversed through a lot of SEO related stuff.

In this topic we would be looking at something really interesting.
It’s Keyword time!!
 Users / Consumers

As we already know, users search their queries in a Search

Engine.
These queries are nothing but keywords.
Let’s call these users as “Consumers”.
 Providers

On the other hand, there are “Providers” in the form of people or

businesses owning a particular website.
They build their content around certain keywords.
Providers and Consumers don’t know each other.
 SEO

What we just saw was the entire SEO industry rolled into two screens.
Now, the question is how do providers choose the right set of keywords
to build their content around.
This topic is all about taking a deep dive on this question.
Keyword Research - Steps
 Knowing the Business

Any provider will broadly have a high-level idea of what their website
would be about.
A florist’s website would obviously cover content around flowers.
So will a Gym Instructor’s personal website talk about body-building
techniques.
 Step #1

So what is the first step in Keyword Research?

Head over to Google’s “Keyword Planner” tool.
Absolutely wrong!!!
 Know your customer (KYC)

The first step is to clearly know your customers.

Create a persona about these people in your head.
It is as simple as writing down, “My customer is …….”
 Customer Demographics

For a Gym Instructor, it would be something like:

“People in the age group between 20-40”
Of course, it would be different for different Gym Instructors as well.
 Step #2 - Customer Topics

Once you know who your customer is, the next step is all about researching

Over here, we would try to understand where our customers are present over the internet.

It can range from a Facebook page to a regular blog updated every week.

Step #2 - Customer Topics

The idea behind this step is to understand what they are talking about with respect to our product.

In our example,

Are the customers talking about a lack of physical fitness in their daily schedule?

Step #2 - Customer Topics

Knowing about such topics would always give you an upper-hand in generating traffic.

Your website would be talking the terms that your customers want to know more about.

This kind of research can be done over the internet as well as by doing primary research via Online Surveys.
 Step #3 - Generating Keyword Ideas

Now is the time to pen down as many keywords as you can.

Of course! Choose the ones which you really think make sense to your business.
But over here, do not think if the particular keyword would work or not.

Generating Keywords

In order to pick keywords that are actually being used by consumers to find content…
We can make use of the Search Engine itself.
Let’s start with various places on the Google Search Engine itself.
 Area #1 - Google Suggest

Ever noticed how Google shows you various suggestions while you are typing in your query.

If you think that those are aimed at just completing your query faster, think again.

Google is actually showing you the most prominent keywords which other users might have used in the past.

Area #1 - Google Suggest

Nevertheless, you can use those suggestions to your advantage.

Also, try playing around by putting in a space at the start of the keyword.

A completely new list is suggested by Google.

 Area #2 - Search Related
Terms

You can find this at the bottom of your SERP.

This is again a readymade keyword list provided by
Google.
 Area #3 - Wikipedia

We all use Wiki to know more on a certain topic or person. Your potential
customer might be first doing the research on Wiki as well.
But have you ever noticed the tons of internal links that are displayed on a
particular Wiki Page.
They all are potential keywords along with other words around those links.
 Completion of Keyword
Generation Ideas
This completes our sub-topic on Generating Keyword Ideas.
This list can be created with or without the usage of the methods shown
above.
Before we move onto the step of identifying the final list of keywords,
there is one more topic to understand.
Long Tail Keywords
 Long-Tail Keywords

A user typing a query on Google will have at least 3-5 words mentioned as part of the query.

A query can be of one word also.

But to get better results, people tend to use more words in their query.

Long-Tail Keywords

This usage of more words is known as long-tail keywords.

You would be surprised but close to 70% of all search queries are essentially long-tail keywords.

It is always beneficial to target such keywords…

 Long-Tail Keywords

Long-Tails are something that consumers are actually typing out.

These types of keywords deliver more conversions rather than simple two-worded keywords.

Because people tend to refine their search after looking at the SERPs.

And the biggest benefit is low competition present in this area.

Long-Tail Keywords

So the question now is that can you generate long-tail keyword ideas?

Of course! There are tons of tools like:

• UberSuggest
• KeywordTool.IO
• KWFinder
Google Keyword Planner and Trends
 Google Keyword Planner

Okay! We are on the last part of this topic.

We have got tons of keyword ideas by now.
But which ones to choose?
Now is the time to use Google Keyword Planner tool. At the very end.
Input all your ideas generated into this tool now.
 Keyword Metrics
We will be choosing our keywords based on these two metrics:
• Commercial Intent - (Amount paid by bidders to rank at top for this
keyword)
• Search Volume - (Number of times the keyword was searched in a
month)
Commercial Intent relates to the Paid Keywords area.
But SEO is all about Organic Marketing, right?
 Commercial Intent

We use just the Bid value as a reference to understand how important is a

particular keyword.
Higher this value, higher bets are placed on this keyword to perform by Ad
Marketers.
But mostly this value would be high for two-three word queries which are quite
high in competition aswell.
 Search Volume

In order to further refine our list, we use the next metric of Search Volume.
The idea is to not run behind only the high search volume keywords.
A mid-level number is also good enough to start with.
But Google’s tool provides a huge range for this metric.
Search Volume

Nevertheless, Google’s free tool can give a range to start with.

Also, most of these tools accept URLs as a starting point as well.
You can put in your competitor’s link to see what keywords they are targeting.
 Google Trends

The very last thing in this topic is to introduce Google Trends to you.
Let’s say you are not able to decide between two keywords.
Just put them in Google Trends.

Google Trends

This tool tells the number of times a keyword has been searched globally.
Thus talking about its Trend.
Chuck out the keyword which has a downward trajectory as it says that it is becoming less popular amongst users.
Understanding Google’s Content Strategy
Content is King!

So let’s see what we have seen so far.

We went through topics like On-Page, Technical aspects and Keyword Research.

But there is a reason when we say that content is the actual king.

Content is King!

There is no doubt that all other aspects that we’ve seen aren’t important.

But the volume of this business lies in the area of content.

This is what Google and other Search Engines aim to demystify

Introducing BERT

By now, we know the rationale behind a Search Engine.

The marriage between a search query and the resultant pages that are shown is all what SEO is about.

It has also become even more important to take great care of a webpage’s content because of BERT.

We all know by now that Google keeps changing their search algorithms.

Moreover, it has been working really hard on understanding the intent of a particular query.

Remember, every single day, even Google gets to see almost 15% of new queries.

BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoders Representations for Transformers.

No! We won’t use any word from its full form. I promise.

BERT is a Machine Learning model that helps Google in understanding the intent of a search query by
keeping its entire context in mind.

Say, your query was “Can I get a visa to the USA?”

Without BERT, Google would provide results that might lead you to a certain Travel Office Website.

But maybe your idea is to only gather information on the procedure of applying for a visa.
SEO Content

Therefore in this age, it is much more important to have a Content strategy in place.

Also, there is a reason this topic comes so late.

Because, all previously discussed topics are kept in mind while deciding on Content.

So let’s take a deep dive into the SEO Content.

Building SEO Content
Building SEO Content

In this section we will discuss the few pointers while building SEO Content.

But first, what is SEO Content?

It is basically the content written so as to be in the good books of both, Google Bots as well as your Users.

Of course, you cannot aim to please just one of these two.

But the method to win both of them is fairly simple.

Let’s start with the types of queries that people type in.
Types of Queries

User Queries can be broadly divided into the following major intents.

Transactional: Queries like “buy or sell”

Informational: Queries like “how to”

Transactional Queries

Here, we are trying to understand what type of search queries will our website answer.

Depending upon that, the content strategy will change.

If your website is Transactional in nature, then you will need to showcase lots of Product Pages.
Informational and Navigational Queries

Similarly we will be using Blogs more if our website caters to Informational queries.

For navigational queries, the website must have localization elements added into it.

This one is something that we will be looking at in the next topic.

Topics

Let’s say, we now know the types of queries that we wish to target.

Next comes the Keywords or Topics to choose.

For this a lot of free and valuable information is available already via Google SERPs.
Free Google Cards

We’ve already seen those in the Keyword Research topic.

Free Info from “Google Suggestions”, “People also ask” for and “Related searches”.

These all areas point us to the topics which a lot of people are looking for.
 Competitor Analysis
Post this, go through the top pages that are already ranking for these topics.
Do an in-depth study on how they’ve used the content in their webpages.
This will again point you in a certain direction on what kind of content should be worked upon.
Keyword Placement

Next up is related to sprinkling of keywords.

If a page’s main topic is your keyword as well, then it must be used in the Title of the
page as well.

Similarly, it should be placed in other sections as well, like Header Tags and Internal
Linking (Anchor Links).

Lots of SEO Practitioners have stated that there is a strong correlation between Top
Ranking pages and their usage of keywords in the beginning of the content.

Now, this is not a rule to be followed by heart.

More or less, everyone introduces their keywords and that happens in the beginning
only.
Visuals

Next up: Images!

It is always a good idea to invest in visuals.

Not just to use its Alt Text tag but no one likes to see thousands of words and just words.

Visuals

Visuals have the power of retaining a user's interest.

Also, if used correctly, you can add an extra layer of information around it.

Pictorials like Infographics are a great tool to provide more information apart from just the words.
Long articles

People like good in-depth content.

Those are the pages which live in the bookmarks section

of the users.

They tend to keep it handy so as to share it with others.

In-Depth Content

Point being, it is important to have a well-researched content.

Always link other people’s work so that you create an excellent network via external links.

Even Google likes deep content.

Like Blogs going about more than 2000-3000 words.

In-Depth Content

You might be wondering what’s the connection between long articles and Google’s liking for the same.
Time is Precious
Dwell Time

The amount of time that a user spends post clicking on

the SERP result till the time they exit out of that result is
called “Dwell Time”.
With in-depth or long articles, there is a higher chance of
having more Dwell Time.
Higher dwell time indicates that the user is finding the
information that they were looking for.
And hence better results in SERPs.

Dwell Time

But also, there are times when the result being ranked
by Google is returning shorter Dwell Times.
Google does keep a track of such factors and it directly
affects a page’s ranking in the future.
Another important factor, that Google pays a lot of
attention is known as….
Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate is the percentage of all single-page sessions on your website

against all the sessions that happened on your website.
Too confusing?
Let’s make it simple!

Bounce Rate

Let’s say you have 3 pages on your website, X, Y and Z.

Some user’s search query lands them on to Page Z.
The user spends some time over there and then exits the result.

Bounce Rate

This particular user’s session will be counted when Google calculates the
Bounce Rate of this webpage.
This factor gives an idea about how appealing is the entire website to the
user.
If a particular page’s bounce rate is high, then the user can work upon its
content or internal linking.
 Bounce Rate

Always remember that a high Bounce Rate doesn’t mean that it is bad.

Long articles or blogs are there for a purpose which is to engage the user in the information provided.

As long as that purpose is served, there is no need to worry about Bounce Rate.
Page Speed

An important thing to check with low Bounce Rate is the Page Load Speed.

We as human beings are impatient creatures.

If your page is taking too long to load, say more than 5 seconds, then you are obviously losing on some good traffic.

People tend to interact less with slow websites.

Page Aesthetics

Along with Page Speed, the look and feel of the webpage also plays a major role.

Scrappy font type or disturbing themes affect the readability of your webpage.

This in turn leads to a higher Bounce Rate.

Also uneven scrolling of the page. Too annoying!

SEO Content

This brings us to the end of this topic on SEO Content.

The basic principle is to write for the users and try to make
life simpler for the Google Gods (Bots).
There are of course, more to read on this like Featured
Snippets.
But that is something you can explore more on later.

SEO Content

Also, if someone is thinking where to find the Bounce Rate

metric?
It is available if you have made Google Analytics live on
your webpages.
Anyway, now let’s head to a small quiz.
LOCALIZATION SEO
 Local SEO

Local SEO deals with optimizing a web page for a specific location
modifier keyword.

A simple example: “coffee shops” would provide different results for

different people as per their location.

Search Engines pick the location information of the user via GPS or the
IP address.

Depending upon this, they change the search results accordingly.

Local SEO

These results, as we all know, can change even within cities itself.
Optimizing your page for a particular location is known as Localization SEO.
This type of SEO is hugely popular with mobile-devices.
Importance of Mobile Devices

Close to 50% of all the web traffic happens via Mobile Devices.
And this number is going to increase in future.
People tend to perform location-based searches frequently via mobile.
Therefore, in order to optimize for local SEO, it is a must to have a responsive,
mobile-friendly website.
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool

You can always test your website’s look and feel on a mobile device by using
Google’s free tool….
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool
It provides a screenshot where you can interact with your website and note its
functioning.
Importance of Localization

Search queries that are localized have a much higher intent than a non-localized
query.
People looking for “coffee shops near me” are more likely to make some contact
with the shop.
Therefore it is very important to have a Localization SEO strategy already in place.
Snack-Pack Results

Let’s start with looking at how a Localization-based SERP differs from the
usual one.
Google now provides a section known as “Snack-Pack” results.
It consists of the basic information of a Business/Store/Shop.
Normally, only 3 best results make it into the Snack-Pack layout.
Snack-Pack

The biggest advantage is that even the 3rd placed Snack-Pack result is ranked higher
than the 1st placed Organic result.
This is why, performing Localization SEO is soooo important for a Business Owner.
From the next section onwards, we will be looking at the basic steps to perform this
type of SEO.
Performing Localization

73
Step #1 - Keyword Research

Of course, by now we have a really good idea on what all techniques can be used for
Keyword Research.
The only difference over here would be the usage of location in the keywords.
“Coffee shops in <city name>” - Too Broad
“Coffee shops in <locality>” - Better fit
Step #1 - Keyword Research

Similarly you can combine your finalized keywords with various locations and get new
keywords.
Of course, all other free Google tools like Autocomplete and Related Searches can also be used
to generate lots of keyword ideas.
You can also put in your service keywords rather than business name along with location,
like…
“Plumbing solutions in <locality>”
Step #1 - Keyword Research
Remember to use as many variations of your service for better coverage of
keywords.
Examples would be:
“Plumber in <locality>”
“Plumbers in <locality>” - Use plurals
Step #2 - Google My Business Listing

For a query like, “<shop name> phone number”, Google’s SERPs include cards which
provide a direct answer to the query.
This clearly saves the user from one additional click or trying to find the answer within
the Meta Description area of SERP.
Do you know how Google is able to pull off such results?
Step #2 - Google My Business Listing

Welcome to Google’s offering called, “Google My Business” listing.

Step #2 - Google My Business Listing

Claiming your “Google My Business” listing is the most important part of Local SEO.
Much of your techniques would revolve around this portal.
You can easily find which businesses have already claimed this listing.
Step #2 - Google My Business Listing

The steps to be followed are also pretty simple.

You have to provide details like the Name of your business, Address, Contact
information, etc.
There are a host of other questions as well, like operating hours, category, etc.
Step #2 - Google My Business Listing
The key over here is to maintain consistency.
Apart from Google My Business, there are a range of other local directories as
well.
Always maintain the same information over each of these portals.
Step #2 - Google My Business Listing

You should also provide pinpoint information on the address of your business.
Use the Maps to actually pin your location correctly.
Further optimization of this can be done via photos, additional phone numbers,
additional services provided, etc.
Step #3 - Local Citations

Local citations refer mainly to your business’ Name, Address and Phone Number.
Collectively known as NAP.
It is important to maintain a good structured presence of a NAP over the internet.
The last thing you would want is inconsistent citations among various listings.
Step #3 - Local Citations

The main priority is to fix any incorrect citation.

A simple way to find this is by performing a search with your <business name>
+ <old NAP details>
If the result still shows various listings, then it is time to fix those.
Step #4 - On-Page SEO
This is again something which we have already seen in the previous topics.
Keywords in H1, Title, etc.
But most handy would be the Site Structure.

Step #4 - On-Page SEO

Since there can be location-specific pages, it is always good to maintain different pages.
This can be done during the Site Design stage itself.
Try maintaining one single page for a location.
Also, choose to create a location page only if you have a physical presence in that location.
Step #4 - On-Page SEO
One should try to optimize their homepage with the location keyword.
As we saw in the beginning, Search Engines provide results as per the location.
Step #5 - Reviews

Google Cards have a designated area for reviews.

It is the job of Business owners to keep interacting with their customers using this area.
They must always be on their toes to respond to such reviews.
If a negative review is received, then a potential action item must be a part of the response.
Business Owners can also use another tool called “Google Posts”.
This service helps in maintaining a feed card exclusive to the business.
It is like a micro-blogging platform only for the business owners to provide important updates to the users on
the SERP itself.