TGTG-Whitepaper-SEO

1. 90% www.... SEO Ready to Rank? A Beginners Guide to SEO www.thegotoguy.co

2. Did you just Google - how to rank on Google? You might have spent hours building your attractive website but is it optimized for the search engine? What you need right now is Search Engine Optimization (a process of improving positions in organic (non-paid) search results in SERP). Before we discuss what SEO is, let’s look at what it is not. SEO is not a shortcut to success. It doesn’t take your business to great heights in a short span of time. It takes consistent efforts for a long period of time. But the long-term rewards are worth the wait. So, if you are in for the long haul, keep reading. This white paper is designed to describe all major aspects of SEO, from finding keywords that generates quality traffic, to building links and marketing your site. 02 www.thegotoguy.co

3. What is Search Engine Optimization? Let’s start with the absolute basics so we make our foundations stronger as we dig deeper into what SEO is all about. SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of website traffic by improving the presence of your website on internet. Most of the people believe SEO is all about search engine itself, but it is actually understanding what people are searching for online, the phrases they are using, and the kind of information they wish to consume. Search engine results pages are often termed as “SERPs” are filled with both organic and paid results. Organic results can be influenced by SEO. The goal of search engine is to generate results that deliver accurate information to the user. In order to this, search engine picks relevant information and rank the websites in order of quality and relevance.  There are 200 ranking factors in order to decide which website goes first and which doesn’t. These 200 ranking factors, if implemented right, could boost the ranking of your website manifolds because these are directly from Google. It’s basically them saying what they want to be done. And if you do, as they say, you end up on their porch and if you don’t you might not even find a corner in their backyard. 03 www.thegotoguy.co

4. Why Search Engine Optimization? While paid marketing and other online platforms can generate traffic to websites, still organic search is contributing a huge part in making conversions. Customers often do research before buying something, this is the point where SEO comes into action. SEO can be a game changer for most of the businesses to attract customers by enhancing their visibility on internet. It is a long term strategy, which holds results for a quite long time with zero cost. How Search Engine Works? Search Engines provide answers to queries by bringing in information from millions of sources. How do Search Engines manage to do that? Well, there are three functions that a search engine performs that helps it provide users to answer their queries. These three functions are: Crawling the web: Crawling means scanning websites with its content, headings, hyperlinks, keywords and images by Google bots. Indexing the content: Once crawling is done, Search engines store and index the content they find, ready to be shown in results for relevant queries. It takes approximately 1 to 10 days for a website to be indexed. Picking the results: Based on the relevancy of the content with the query, Search Engines rank the web pages, from the most relevant to the least 04 www.thegotoguy.co

5. What are the factors that influence SEO? On-page SEO Google ranking completely depends upon the way you perform optimization for your website. On-page SEO refers to the activities you do to optimize your content and HTML source code of a page to rank higher. Content One of the most common saying in the world of SEO is “content is king.” Your content shouldn’t just be gimmicky It should be unique, relevant, informative, educational and provide value to your readers. Make sure your targeted keywords are stuffed in the content with proper headers and sub-headers. Best content speaks directly to users. Keywords If Content is king, keywords are the advisors. When a user looks for something on the web, she/he searches by a particular word or a phrase. That’s what we call a keyword. While picking a keyword, you need to follow tripod rule (three legs for a keyword research) Picking an apt keyword for your business is an initial task. There are so many tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner and SEMRush on internet to help you find variations of your keyword and analyze what your competitors are targeting. - Relevancy - Search volume - Keyword difficulty 05 www.thegotoguy.co

6. Preferring Long tail Keywords would be more benefitted as visitors through long tail keywords will engage with content a lot more, as the query is specific enough to find relevant results. Or else you can take a smart move by using Google features like Google Autocomplete, People Also Ask or Related Searches. Meta tags Meta tags are a part of the HTML code, which provide search engines with information about your page. Title Tags – Title element of a web page summarizes the content found on a page. Always keep in mind that, title tag should include relevant keywords and phrases that describe what that page is about. Meta Description – While the title tag is very limited, a Meta description gives you a bit more space to tell users what your business is about, and it’s an opportunity to give them a compelling reason to click through to your page. Character limit for both title tags & Meta Description varies as per Google Updates. Heading Tags <H/> Landing page should include heading tags, from the h1 to h6. Among all, most important is h1. You can include multiple h2’s or h3’s, but should never use more than one h1 tag on any page. Using headings to represent different sections will impact both SEO standpoint and a usability standpoint. 06 www.thegotoguy.co

7. Internal Linking Links carry high weightage in SEO. Inbound links are HTML hyperlinks that are included in the content of a web page and takes the user from one page to another, which indeed tells Search Engine that all linked pages are important to crawl. By interlinking your pages, you are giving audience further options to stay on your site. Image Optimization You have to use alt attributes, which is an “alternative” text version of an image in your website for google bots to crawl. Scaling the image is very important, as larger the image, longer your page will take to load. Use images, infographics, charts and videos to engage more visitors. URL structure As per SEO specialists, shorter URLs tend to rank better. Words in the URL should be separated by a hyphen (-) and not an underscore (_). Always keep your primary keyword in the URL. If there are two pages displaying same content or information, set up a 301 redirect or canonicalization tag (rel=canonical) to the page you want to show up on google SERP. This gives Google a clear picture about which page to rank. 07 www.thegotoguy.co

8. Technical On-page SEO Search Console Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools) is an effective tool that was created to help website owners to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites. In addition to this, it can also help you track the backlinks, mobile usability, and possible Google penalties. Website Speed In today’s competitive world, people don’t want to wait. If your page loads slowly, they immediately shifts to another webpage. Image compression and optimization are the factors that decide speed of your website. Mobile Optimization Since most of the users access the internet on their mobile phones these days, it’s very important that the websites are optimized for mobiles as well. This means making sure that the user experience of the website doesn’t waver even when used in a tablet or a smartphone. It involves optimizing the site structure, the designs, and the speed of the website. Use the Mobile-Friendly Test Tool to understand how a Google bot is viewing your page. Sitemap Sitemap is a file where all website sections are listed. It is very good to provide an information about the existence of all the pages you are running to search engine. The Sitemap shouldn’t contain more than 50,000 URLs and cannot exceed 50 MB. 08 www.thegotoguy.co

9. Robots.txt Robots.txt is a file that tells search engine which page you want them to access and which page you don’t want them to be accessed. HTTPS vs. HTTP Ensure your site is SSL certified, as Google will boost rankings of HTTPS/SSL websites. Crawl Errors Avoid crawl errors like broken links, 404s, errors in the robots.txt files and sitemap errors. Schema Markup Schema Markup can be a very effective tool for you if you want to build a high authority website since it provides users with small snippets of information from the overall content and helps them skin through before they read the whole thing. This helps the users in providing them with the exact information they were looking for but it also helps in SEO as whatever you update on your website is effectively reflected in your snippet. You no longer need to tell the changes to the Search Engine every time you change something about your website. Rich snippets make your webpages appear more prominently in SERPs. 09 www.thegotoguy.co

10. Off-Page SEO Off-page SEO is promoting your website out in the open, in places you don’t have full control over. Link Building If a lot of other websites and web pages link back to your website because you provide insightful, authoritative content in a specific industry, the Search Engine will rank you better because now it knows that you are providing some quality content. Earning links from quality sources and authority sites like .gov or .org strengthens the domain. This helps build a trust factor. When Google tracks that you are well-connected, it gives you importance. TXT T T Aa TXT TXT T 10 www.thegotoguy.co

11. There are two types of backlinks: Do-follow backlinks: Which passes authority of the linking page to the linked page, which is usually termed as “link juice”. No-follow backlinks: Quite opposite to Do-follow, won’t pass the authority to linked page. Tips to gain Backlinks: Guest posting – Write a post and publish it in other website (Quality website) Competitors’ backlinks – It is always effective to find what works for the others. Check your competitor backlinks using tools like LinkMiner and approach them Submissions – Do all kinds of submissions like bookmarking’s, document sharing’s, forum postings, press releases, SES etc., to earn backlinks Build Authority The kind of content you publish on your website affects your rank considerably. By providing in- depth industry insights and relevant information, you can build an identity and authority for your website. 11 www.thegotoguy.co

12. Social Media The number of shares you get on social media decides the engagement that your content is having with the audience which is a deciding factor in authority building. Also, who is sharing your content matters too. Sometimes, it matters more than the number of shares. If someone with an influential authority shares it on social media, it helps you build trust as well. White Hat vs Black Hat White Hat SEO is the method employed as per the best practices recommended by the Search Engines and abide by the rules of the Search Engine. White Hat Practices: - Quality content - Brand Building - On-Page optimization - Keyword research - Link building Black Hat SEO, on the other hand, try to fool the system, getting away with it sometimes. However, it puts the website at a huge risk of being taken down by the Search Engine. As Search Engines improve their algorithms, the ability of these Black Hat techniques waver. Black Hat Practices: - Cloaking - Hidden Text - Keyword stuffing - Irrelevant backlinks - Link manipulation - Commenting on other blogs only to include a link to your website 12 www.thegotoguy.co

13. 11. UX and SEO As mentioned before, user experience matters a lot for ranking in a search engine. User experience or UX decides whether the content and other media put up on the website flows well or not. The easier it is for a user to grasp all the information on the website, the better it will be UX-wise and better will be its chances of ranking well. Building an amazing user experience must be an important part of your SEO strategy if you want Search Engines to favor you. International SEO If you do SEO for a global company or if you have a separate website for your overseas business, it’s important that you optimize the website based on the research of that region’s search metrics because the most relevant audience will be found in its geographic area. Doing international SEO for global companies requires targeting different keywords for different regions or building content specific to the geographical area to make it more relatable to the people there. 13 www.thegotoguy.co

14. Local SEO Local SEO is crucial for businesses that serve exclusively to a hyperlocal market. This involves adding the location names in keywords, marking locations, and optimizing Google maps to show up near the user’s location of the search. The biggest advantage of local SEO is the direct conversion which is made possible by a user looking up a business online and ending up in the store or office in minutes due to the accuracy of the distance displayed by the search engine. Video SEO If you have a YouTube channel where you post videos explaining the products you sell or provide information about your industry, you need to optimize your YouTube channel and the video descriptions with the appropriate keywords too. This will drive traffic to your videos and also build better visibility for your website if your YouTube channel is linked to your website. You can cross-promote your platforms for a wider reach. 14 www.thegotoguy.co

15. Keep track on Google algorithm updates Google keeps updating its algorithm to improve the experience for its users. Most of the time, these updates are minor but once in a while, they come with an update that can considerably affect your rankings which is why it’s wise to keep an eye on these Google algorithm updates now and then. These updates usually weed out a lot of spammy websites, cleaning up the mess to leave only the pristine websites untouched. This is where the black hat SEO fails. If a new Google update comes and recognizes the ways in which the search engine has been fooled, the website could be thrown back many pages or worse, taken down permanently. 15 www.thegotoguy.co

16. Site Performance When everything is in place, Use Google Analytics to see how your site is performing. Google Analytics helps you track the performance of your website. It records all visits along with complete visitor details. This analysis helps in identifying what strategies are working and what are not. It helps in creating better strategies in the future. Overtime, these strategies will help you build up domain authority of your site (check your domain’s authority here), and helps you rank better. 16 www.thegotoguy.co

17. Disrupvation Digital Private Limited Corporate Office 101, Block A, Sri Brindavanam, Street #2, Patrika Nagar, Hitech City, Madhapur, Hyderabad, Telangana 500081 Business Office 2/7 Park Glen Huntly, VIC, 3163 Australia Avenue, enquiry@thegotoguy.co +91 86393 26256 www.thegotoguy.co We are Your Idea Execution Agency The Go-To Guy! is a br and under Disrupvation Digital Pvt. Ltd. and is the services arm of the company in the business of providing brand and marketing services. We are "Your Idea Ex ecution Agency". If you have an idea, we will take it to the world. We build brand identities, activate presence & engag e consumers - Online, Offline, Social & Mobile.