Most of us have heard of Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. In this article we are going to discuss what is meant by SEO or Search Engine optimisation. Why SEO is important for Website Owners and how you can improve the Site SEO for your website.
Let’s start with the basics of SEO first. Let’s suppose Alex just bought a new website and he starts uploading food recipe content to it. Another person John, started an online e-commerce website which sells Pancake. As I said, Alex has been sharing cooking recipe on his blog but John needs to find the exact ingredients needed for his Pancake Store.
Alex has already submitted his website to Google by creating a file known an (www.example.com/sitemap.xml) which essentially contains all the details about his website. Google knows that Alex uploads food recipes on his blog. So what happens when John goes to Google and searches for “how to make a pancake?” essentially, he get’s to know about Alex’s blog and can read the content which has been put out there already.
Now you might ask my, why is that even relevant?
Simply, making a website is not enough to get people find you. You need to make the Search Engine Algorithm of Google, Bing, Yahoo love your website. How to do that ? By using SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.
Let’s Elaborate More on this point.
As I said earlier, when you make a website nobody get’s to know about it other than you. So if you put out any content on it without informing Google or other search engines, what happens is that. You don’t get discovered on the internet. Google uses Bot’s to crawl across the sitemap of your website and it keeps discovering links to find your latest posts, pages, categories, updates and more. So when you post a new article, Google get’s to know about it from your Sitemap.
If you are using WordPress to host your website, you can install a plugin called as Yoast SEO, which automatically generates a Sitemap.xml file for your website. After that, you need to install a plugin named as Google Site Kit for WordPress and get your website verified as your property.
That’s it, now you can submit the sitemap file to Google Search Console and it will take a few days for Google to rank your site.
Coming to Content, what to post on your website?
Every website has a different category, it might be a blog, e-commerce site, community etc. In order to make it SEO friendly you need to really organise your site for Google to crawl on it.
We will cover the rest of this article for a blog. In order to get discovered on Google, you need to make original content. Rest all aside, this is the first and the foremost criteria which you should keep in mind. All your articles need to be original at first, irrespective of what type of content you are posting. Try to follow a minimum word length of 300 words on each post and be consistent. A website need not be restricted to only a single niche, you can cover absolutely anything on it with the points I mentioned above in your mind. As said earlier, the more the number of posts, better your chances are of getting ranked on Google.
I would suggest you to keep the language really simple. It should be absolutely easy to understand, short and compact. Try to avoid writing long paragraphs with no Heading Division or Spaces. Similarly, avoid too long sentences. The key formula is to keep it simple and short.
General Site Navigation
Always, make sure to split your content as per their categories. As mentioned above, your site needs to be easy to crawl by the bots. Make pages to keep content divided as per their topic, use clear thumbnails, have proper tags. Make sure you have a Privacy Policy page and a Contact Us page. I strongly oppose people to copy their content from other sites. Be original and that is what matters the most.
Backlinks
Try to use backlinks or incoming links to your blog from other websites, in our case, we use our YouTube channel and Telegram Group to redirect traffic to this blog. As I said, if you have a social media with good number of people who follow you, get your audience read the content from your website as well.
I believe, backlinks play a crucial role in search and ranking on Google. From my experience, I can say that backlinks help Google Bots to understand what your content is all about and rank all your media handles together. Don’t forget to use backlinks whenever possible.
This article will keep getting updated and more and more points will be added in future.
