A Guide to Search Engine Optimization | My Blogs, Middle East Bloggers and PR Community

A Guide to Search Engine Optimization

seo - A Guide to Search Engine Optimization
This article is submitted by Mr. Zubair Laghari
Years of experience and passion of learning various digital marketing techniques develop, huge set of ideas and skills in our minds but as the data in mind is always in tacit form, we do not understand mostly what we are capable of? I believe in knowledge management and SKA (Skills, Knowledge, and Abilities) development, and have always tried to initiate something new in this process of learning.
Search Engine Optimization is also one of those skills which I learnt, practiced and added in my “digital skills” session of resume. I never thought of writing an article on this skill as the field is so vast that one article or a research paper may not define it at its full extent, but one of my friend Altaf Hussein encouraged me to write something on this and here I am, trying to explore the tacit knowledge that I have in my mind on this skill to share it with others.
images blog article 2015 10 Oct search engine optimization 300x190 - A Guide to Search Engine OptimizationI will try my best to explain the field of SEO in most narrowed manner possible, but believe me that the field itself is huge and requires knowledge of almost every word, code, or command involved online. Search Engines today like (Google, Yahoo, and Bing etc) have become lifelines of people who need their desired information on the web. In real world, customers can access information on products faster than ever before, and do not attempt to buy the product unless browsed complete details online.
With hundreds of options available online, search engines index and categorize the websites based on a number of factors. These factors may include the back end information, search engines collect from the searcher’s device and the keywords they used to search their needs. The other side of information is collected by the search engines from the website options available throughout the world.
It is a different and huge study to understand how search engines work and index the websites to show the best possible results to the browsers, and what search engines examine in each website throughout the online media. I will share some other day, they best articles and videos to understand it or will try to write an article to explain it as each search engine works in different way and there is no single rule to follow.
Usually the business owners feel on launch of their website that they are in the online market NOW, but they understand the reality after losing years without attaining their ROIs. There might be a number of other reasons as well but one of the major reason for the failure of some businesses lie beneath the understanding of today’s customer and his online presence to choose the best to satisfy his need. The customer might not choose the best but he will choose the product he could see on the first page of search engine, where usually customers do not even bother to browse more than first 3 pages of the search results.
I would say in simple words, “The website is in the air” and the servers are just “morning roses” in your office, if the website is not shown to your customers by the search engines for the searches on the keywords of your products.
The difference of opinion may occur, but those will agree with me who have studied the human psychology at different ages, or difference between X,Y and Z generations, that knowledge sharing in Y generation and onwards completely rely on digital media.
It also depends on the focus of the company and their target customers and segments of the market, as the online presence of all different type of generations vary and is also not identical at all locations.
Search Engine Optimization has two major sides – On Page SEO and Off Page SEO
On Page Optimization:
On page SEO is more focused on the domain name, links, sub links, contents, site map, keywords, size of files, meta data, page links, tags, URLs, codes correction in languages used to build the website,  and indexing the whole website in the search engines etc. On Page optimization involves complete keyword, title, and site description Meta tag optimization for each page on your site to make certain your code conforms to current search engine standards, followed by load time optimization, code validation, keyword density, and more. Each term mentioned above is a field in itself and I would try my best to write on each term to explain it further, however below are some of the major on-page Processes we usually run to optimize the websites initially:
  1. Unique title tag optimization.
  2. Unique Meta keyword and Meta Description tag to each page of the website.
  3. Heading tag Optimization.
  4. ALT tag optimization for images.
  5. URL optimization of the pages of the website.
  6. Anchor text (internal) linking optimization to the pages of the website.
  7. Content optimization. (Keywords density check)
  8. Analytics setting to track the traffic on the website.
  9. Search engine site-map optimization.
  10. 301 redirect.
  11. 404 not found page optimization etc
Off Page Optimization:
Off page optimization is mainly focused on generating variety of channels to bring traffic or the potential customers to your website, where some of the major processes we usually run to optimize the website are as given below;
Back links’ generation to gain more channels of traffic to the website
  1. Directory submission
  2. Social Bookmarking sites submission
  3. Articles posting in different articles sites
  4. Press Release submission
  5. Analyzing Search Engine Ranking Reports
  6. Forums Posting
  7. Classified Submission
  8. Web 2.0 submission  
  9. Profile link creation etc
I hope this article might have given you a glance of the field, however I would love to receive queries and comments to refine my SKA.
Mind Sharing?