SEO basic concepts

seo graph

Search Engine Optimization is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP).

Proper SEO requires a team, than is consisted by persons who work at various fields, like programmers, marketers, designers, analystists, and plenty more can be used, according to the badged of the business.

In the real world thought, SEO is still unknown for many webmasters, and many others perform very basic SEO. So you can take advantage of this absense of knowledge and with a little efford to accomplish great results!

Developers side

google's web crawler

Automated search web robots crawl the web, follow links, and index content ,in keyword based indexes, in massive databases. Millions of smaller databases, each centered on a particular keyword term or phrase allow the engines to retrieve the data they need and send it back to us in milliseconds.

Your most important content should be in html format.

Use effectively the title tag.
It’s contents will usually appear in the first line of the results.Create unique, accurate page titles.Words at the beginning of the title carry more weight.

Use description meta tags.
It’s contents displayed in the results.Give a summary of what the page is about.Differentiate the descriptions for different pages.

URI Vs URL

Improve the structure of the URLs.
Displayed in search results.Use words in them.Create a simple directory structure.Avoid subdomains and the root directory accessing the same content.Avoid using odd capitalazation.Use hyphens(-) to separate words in URL’s.

Make your site easier to navigate.
Plan out your navigation based on your homepage.Use ‘breadcrumb lists’ (home > blog > recent articles).Allow for the possibility of a part of the URL being removed.Prepare two sitemaps. One for users one for engines.Have a usefull 404 page.

Write better anchor text.
Avoid writing generic anchor text like “page” or “click here”.Avoid writing the page’s URL.

image gallery

Optimize your use of images.
Use the “alt” attribute.If you are using an image as a link the alt text will be treated similarly to the anchor text of a text link.Consider consolidating your images into a single directory.Avoid using generic filenames like image1.pngSupply an image sitemap file.

Use heading tags(<h1> – <h6>) appropriately.

Make effective use of robots.txt
Restrict crawling where it’s not needed.

Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links.
Tells to the engines that the site owners do not want this link to be interpreted as an endorsment of the target page.Add it to comment columns and message boards.

Be aware of rel=”canonical” for links.
Use it within pages that contain dublicate content. The target of the canonical tag points to the master URL that you want to rank for.

Create sitemaps.
help engines find and classify your content.use xml, rss or txt formats

google crawling the web

Be aware of <meta name=”robots”> tag.
with content=”noindex” the page will not be indexed.with content=”nofollow” the pages links won’t be followed.content=”noarchive” is used to restrict search engines from saving a cached copy of the page.content=”nosnippet” informs engines that no text appears next to the pages title and URL .the X-Robots-Tag http header directive also accomplishes the same effects on a page.

Marketers side

The main objective is for you to target the right words/phrases for which you will deliver quality content to make your visitors request fulfilled. Then they maybe come back again for more information, or even better link your pages to others.

For the year 2016 some of the most popular keywords according to google were: 1.whether, 3.maps, 6.g, 20.games, 21.map etc.

keyword demand
long tail graph

The long tail

In order to understand better how people react with the engines, take a look at the keyword demand graph. The x axis represents the number of keywords searched for, and as it expands to the right, the search query people searched for gets bigger in aphanumeric characters(also punctuation characters, dates, prices, spaces etc). The y axis represents the popularity of searched terms(keywords, phrases), and as it increases the number of times these keywords searced for increases.

Popular keywords (like maps) are on the red area of the graph and more particulary very close to the section between the y axis and the long tail curve.

As we get from the left red area closer to the dashed vertical line the queries get a bit bigger in characters and a bit less popular. Searches like “best horror movie 2016” or “cheap shoes in Milan” should be contained here.

The long tail(green area on the graph) is represented by bigger searched terms like “the cheapest hotels in Crete near Chania”, or “how to survive naked in Alaska whith two matches”, or if you are interested in money “cheap black chanel boots size 37 attica”.

The green area(long tail) represents the 70% of the total searches.Searched terms in the green area are hundrends per month.Searched terms in the red area are starting from thousands and ending to many millions per month.When someone searches long tail phrases, is statistically more determined to proceed to an action(buy something, or collect more spesialized information, find a particular image etc).

google's search bar

Deciding keywords

In order to determine for which keywords you are targeting for, you have to do a little research.

Google the terms you target for, and watch who you have to deal with. Look for online tools that provide information about the amount of the searches that were made at the terms you are targeting for.Find what keywords are bringing you traffic, and built upon them.

people hold links

Linking

It’s wise to build as vast and varied a sites link profile as possible, as this brings the best search engine results.

Links from sites within a topic-specific community maters more than links from general off-topic sites.If dozens of links point to a page with the right keywords that page has a very good probability of ranking well for the targeted phrase on that anchor text.Earning links from highly-trusted domains can result in a significant boost.Don’t link to spammy sites.Continue earning additional links over time.Share links through social services(google+, fb).Beeing linked to a page with few links is better.

Use on-line tools

Nowdays is very important for a SEO to be aware of the various tools that exist on the web, which can guide him to make important decisions, and to organize his stragegy more effectively.

online tools

AdWords previews tool.
change the location for your keywords
can see the results on mobile basis
??bersuggest tool
identify you keyword targets.
Seo analyzer
check if the keywords are in the right location
Buzzsumo
shows you the most shared content for a site(backlinks)
Portnet.com
ideas generator with relational keywords
Google search console
get indexed by google
Fat Rank plugin
measure your rank on google across keywords
Rank Checker for firefox.
freedly.com tool
manage your own newsletter
sitemap tool
create your sitemap
Google analytics
explore your visitors in depth

Referances

Google’s SEO guide
moz.com SEO guide
jmprg channel you tube SEO tutorial 2016