Onpage and Offpage factors.

Now that you have an idea of Search Engine Optimization & Onpage and Offpage , let's have a look at the checklist of the various Onpage and Offpage Factors that affect your search engine rankings.

The main offpage optimization factors are:

• Which websites link to you.
• The number of websites linking to you .
• The Google pagerank of the website linking to you.
• The page title of the website linking to you 
• The anchor text used in the link linking to you 
• The number and type of links linking to the website that's linking to you.
• The number of outbound links on the website that is linking to you 
• The total number of links on the website that is linking to you
• Whether or not the websites linking to you are deemed by Google as an authority website. 
• The IP Address of the websites linking to you.
  

Now, lets have a look at the onpage factors :

• page title 
• header tags 
• alt tags 
  meta tags bolding, italicyzing, and underlining 
• placing keyword in the correct position on the page
  

Happy Seoing!!!!!

- Himanshu Shekhar

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Accessibility of your site.

An accessible site is one that ensures delivery of its content successfully as often as possible. The functionality of pages, validity of HTML elements, uptime of the site's server and working status of site coding and components all come under site accessibility. If these features are ignored or faulty, both search engines and users will select other sites to visit.

The following list includes all the factors which affect the accessibility of your site:

• Broken Links : If an HTML link is broken, the contents of the linked-to page may never be found. In addition, some people give a opinion that search engines negatively degrade rankings on sites & pages with many broken links.
• Valid HTML & CSS : Although arguments exist about the necessity for full validation of HTML and CSS in accordance with W3C guidelines, it is generally agreed that code must meet minimum requirements of functionality and successful display so that your site may be spidered and cached properly by the search engines.
• Functionality of Forms and Applications : If select boxes, javascript or other input-required elements block content from being reached via direct hyperlinks, search engines may never find them. Keep the data that you want accessible to search engines on pages that can be directly accessed via a link. Similarlily, the successful functionality and implementation of any of these elements is critical to a site's accessibility for visitors. A non-functioning page, form or code element is unlikely to receive much attention from visitors.
• File Size : With the exception of a select few documents that search engine consider to be of exceptional importance, web pages greater than 150K in size are typically not fully cached. This is done to reduce index size, bandwidth and load on the servers, and is important to anyone building pages with exceptionally large amounts of content. So it is highly recommended that you keep the file size under 150K . Smaller file size also means faster download speed for users.
• Downtime & Server Speed : The performance of your site's server may have an adverse impact on search rankings and visitors if downtime and slow transfer speeds are common. Invest in high quality hosting to prevent this issue.

Can SEO companies guarantee high rankings?

Some SEO companies guarantee that they will get you a special search engine position if you let them do the work for you. Actually, this is not possible. No company can
guarantee search engine listings.

If a company makes such promises, take a closer look at the small print. Generally, the catch is often that the company selects the search terms. You'll be listed for obscure search terms that nobody searches for.

If you have a unique company name or a unique product name, it's relatively easy to get high search engine rankings for that term. Before paying a company to get high search engine rankings for you, have a thorough look at the company profile and also check the sites for which they have done optimisation. See whether they appear on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) for the right keywords or not and then take a decision.

What is unethical search engine optimization?

Some search engine optimization companies and software developers use unethical techniques and tricks to artificially boost the search engine rankings of a web site. For this reason, the search engines are continuously trying to counter these techniques by penalizing the webmasters or by banning their sites.
They regularly restructure their algorithms to prevent spammers from flooding the results page with irrelevant or low quality content.

NEVER TRY TO USE UNETHICAL TECHNIQUES OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION.

Search engines consider the following search engine optimization techniques as SPAM:

• automatically generated doorway pages
• cloaking and false redirects
• keyword stuffing
• hidden text or hidden links
• pages loaded with irrelevant words
• duplicated content on multiple pages
• misspelling of well-known web sites
• unrelated and centralized link farms
• other methods that try to trick search engines
  

You might get short term results with these techniques but it's very likely that your site will be banned from search engines .

Are there thousands of search engines?

It might have happened to you that someone has asked you to pay a certain amount and get your site submitted to thousands of serach engines . Don't fall for these traps. There aren't thousands of search engines on the Internet. Most of these so called"search engines" are free for all (FFA) link pages or special interest web pages. Submitting your webpage to thousands of FFA sites means that you'll end up with thousands of spam email messages.

There are four major players.

There are only a handful of search engines that can really bring visitors to your web site. As always, it'squality that matters, not quantity. So,you should concentrate on the important search engines when you submit your web site to search engines.

Currently, there are only four major players: Google, Yahoo, MSN Search and Ask.com. They are responsible for the bigger part of the search engine traffic you can get because they also power othersearch engines, for example the search engine on AOL.com displays Google results. In addition, there are country specific search engines. If you have a Russian web site, you should also submit to the popular Russian search engines.

In general, there aren't more than three or four relevant search engines in a country. The majority of the web surfers uses the same search engines.

Internet directories can be a good addition.

Internet directories are different from search engines because all web site submissions are reviewedby humans. You should also submit to topic specific search engines. Even if they send you only a few visitors,they could improve the link popularity of your web site which helps your ranking in other search engines.

Does Page Length Matters?

Size matters.

And the same is true even in doing search engine optimization services. Too short could make the page wanting is some material respects. To long could make it unappealing. Just by looking at it could lose readers' interest.To remedy the dilemma, it is better to set an ideal page length. SEO experts say each page should have at least 700 words, but no more than 1500 words.

Why should you limit your web pages between 700 and 1500 words?

The reasons for this are simple. Having web pages with content of 700-1500 words will please visitors and search engine spiders. Pleasing both will help your site get significant web traffic and become successful. Anything less than 700 words and search engine spiders might just skip over your web site. Meanwhile, anything more than 1500 and spiders won't take the time to search through the content for keywords.

Is Google the only search engine?

When there were no computers people had basically only three activities – eating , sleeping and working. With the advent of computers and internet we have started to spend a considerable amount of time working in front of the system. Today, computers have so obvious that we cannot imagine our life without computers.

With people spending a considerable amount of time working on the internet, they are rapidly getting accustomed to search engines. Among all the search engines, Google has affected a significant number of Netizens. More than 65% of search engine market is that of Google , Yahoo, AltaVista, MSN etc forming the rest. Unfortunately, most of the SEOs think that Search engine Optimisation starts and ends with Google, but that’s not true.

You might say: “ But Google get the highest traffic”

True , Very True. But then you cannot risk not paying attention to the other key players.
With millions of searches done worldwide even a small share is a huge number.

Two reasons why SEOs should not ignore other search engines are:

Varied Demographics : It might happen that the people in a particular region of the world prefer search engines other than Google

Lesser Competition : On other search engines it might happen that your site is not visible due to heavy competition. So , you can try on optimizing on other search engine to make your site visible on that search engine .

So the next time you start optimizing your or someone else site just keep in mind that search engine optimization is not limited to Google and if you are considering only Google and nothing else while optimizing a site then ,my friend, you are moving in the wrong direction.

-Himanshu Shekhar

What can outgoing links do for your web site?

Don't be afraid that you drive people away by offering links on your web site. You either have interesting content on your web site or you have not. People eventually will leave your web site, no matter how interesting your web site is. Even you don't visit your own web site all the time. If you don't have outgoing links or if you hide your links, then you send your visitors back to search engines. If you offer your web site visitors links, you can send leaving visitors to other web sites that can send you their visitors in return. Carefully chosen links to outside resources can improve the experience of visitors who visit your web site.

Outgoing links:

• show your web site visitors that you have confidence in your site
• allow you to direct people to special pages instead of driving them back to search engines
  help people to see your site in a larger context
• add value to your web site by providing additional resources
• allow you to build business and traffic relationships with other sites

- Himanshu Shekhar

What can inbound links do for your web site?

Inbound links are links from other web sites that point to your web site. The number and the quality of inbound links is one of the most important factors in the ranking algorithms of major search engines.
The principle is Simple : if page A links to page B then it is a recommendation from page A to page B. The more links point to your web site, the better your rankings.The quality of the links is also important. A link from a web site that has a related topic is much better than links from unrelated sites or link lists.

The benefits that you will have by getting inbound links :

1. Other web sites send you new visitors through the links.
2. All major search engines use link popularity to rank web sites. If your site has a high link popularity then you'll have high rankings on the search engines.
3. Exchanging reciprocal links with other sites will build a great link directory.

Inbound links:

• should be from related web pages.
• should include the keywords for which you want to have high search engine rankings
• should not include exactly the same link text over and over because that looks unnatural to search engines
• should contain different but related link texts to show search engines that your site has valuable information about a special topic

A web site can have different types of inbound links.

• inbound links from Internet directories such as DMOZ.org
• reciprocal links (a web site links to you and you link to them)
• inbound links from people who find your web site interesting
• inbound links from press releases, articles, etc.

- Himanshu Shekhar

Common SEO Terminology (G-Z)

G
Gateway Page : Same as Doorway Pages.

Google Dance :"Google dance" is an unofficial term coined to refer to the period when Google is performing the update to its index.While the update is in progress, search results for each of Google's nine datacenters are different. This can cause fluctuations in your ranking in google.

H

Hits : Requests made to your Web site server.The more the hits the more popular you are.

I

IBL(InBound Links) : Any link on another page that points to the subject page.
The number of IBLs to a page increases its popularity with the Search Engines.

K

Keyword : A word with particular importance to the theme of a site.SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and key phrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries.

Key Phrase : A group of keywords put together make a key phrase. SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and key phrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries.

Keyword Density : The number of times a specific keyword appears on a page compared to the number of words on a page. Higher the keyword density better your chances of ranking ahead for that keyword.

Keyword Research/ Keyword Analysis :The process of analyzing a subject area or web site with the goal of identifying keywords that best describe the subject area/web site.

Keyword Stuffing / Keyword Spamming :The process of stuffing a web page with keywords related or not related to the theme of the web site in a high amount as an attempt to influence/trick the search engines.

L

Link Farm : A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity (or PR).

Link Popularity :The popularity of your web site in the eyes of the search engine, based on the quality and quantity of links to and from your web site.More the link popularity better your ranking.

M

Mirror : In SEO parlance, a mirror is a near identical duplicate website (or page). Mirrors are commonly used in an effort to target different keywords/key phrases.

Meta Tags : Meta Description Content, Keywords and Title are used in the head section of websites. Their purpose is to provide extra information about the web page i.e. metadata. The most influential tags for search engine ranking are the Keywords tag and the Description tag.

N

Natural Links : Links pointing to a web site created because someone found the web site useful and decided to link to it i.e. linked to it naturally.

O

Off-Page Factors/Elements :Elements that are outside the direct control of the web site developer and are influential in determining search engine ranking.

Search engines are relying more and more on these elements when determining ranking because they are more resistant to spamming / abuse.

On-Page Factors/Elements :Elements that are within direct control of the web site developer and are influential in determining search engine ranking.These elements are prone to keyword spamming and other similar forms of abuse so the search engines do not look to them as much as off-page elements when determining ranking.

OutBound Links :Links within a web site that are pointing to outside sites. Do not affect link popularity but care must be taken not to link to a web site that may get you banned.

One-way Links :Links to a web site that are not reciprocated i.e. no link exists to the web site that is doing the linking.

P

Natural Links : Google's proprietary measure of link popularity for web pages. Google offers a PR viewer on their Toolbar.

Q

Query : A search for a word or term in a search engine.

R

Ranking :The position within search engine results that a web site reaches for a particular search phrase.

Reciprocal Links : A reciprocal link occurs when a web site links to a site and in turn the linked-to site links back to the linking site i.e. the link is reciprocated by both parties.

Robot :It refers to software programs that scan the web also called spider or bot. It is important that your web site is indexable by a spider otherwise it may not visit some pages. A common method used to ensure that it indexes all the most important web pages is to include a site map on your site.

Robots.txt : Robots.txt is a file which well behaved spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit.

S

Search Engine: A database of information retrieved from indexing web pages from all over the web.

Search Engine Optimization :The process of modifying a web site's content, structure and link popularity to maximise the chances of a higher ranking within search engine results.

SERPS :Acronym for Search Engine Result PageS.The higher your website ranks in SERPS for your keywords the more the visitors your website will attract.

Spider :It refers to software programs that scan the web.It is important that your web site is indexable by a spider otherwise it may not visit some pages. A common method used to ensure that it indexes all the most important web pages is to include a site map on your site.

Site Map : A special page on a web site that contains a tree-like representation of the link structure of the site.

Stop Words : Words such as; is, am, an, for, do, was and the. Words that search engines consider irrelevant as keywords.

Spam : In the SEO context, this refers to manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service and are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page. Spam could be ground for banning .

T

TITLE Tag :The TITLE tag is used to specify what text appears at the top of a browser window when visiting a web page. It also appears as the link text when your web site appears in search engine results.

TITLE Text/Attribute : Text that be attached to any HTML tag and appears when the mouse is positioned over the relevant tag content.

U

UnEthical SEO :The opposite to Ethical SEO. It involves employing underhand or illegal activites to increase search engine ranking.UnEthical SEOs can get your sites banned from a search engine forever.

Common SEO Terminology (A-F)

A

Anchor text :The visible text for a hyperlink. You should be really careful as to what anchor text appears in links pointing to your web site as it is really important in the process of Search Engine Optimization.

Unique Visitor : A new computer or person connecting to your Website. The number of unique visitors to your page increases the page popularity.

Algorithm : The formula used by Search Engines to determine how any web page will rank in its search results.Understanding a Search Engines algorithm helps you rank better in its search results.

B

Bot : Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. The way a Search Engines bot looks at your webpage affects your webpages ranking.

Back Link : Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called inbound links or IBLs.The number of IBLs to your page increases its popularity with the Search Engines.

Blind Traffic : Lesser quality traffic to a web site obtained by misleading promotions or by spamming search engines.By identifying the sites from which you can get blind traffic can help you save money spent on misleading promotions.

C

Clustering :Phenomenon in which a Search Engine lists two or more pages of a web site for a search query.More the number of your pages listed for a search query, better your chances for getting clicked.
Cloaking :An unethical SEO practice. It involves a different version of a web page being presented to each search engine spider. Each different version of the web page is optimized for the search engine spider it is presented to (i.e. exploiting its weaknesses).You can be penalized heavily by the search engines for doing it, so don't even try it.

D
Doorway Page :A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific key phrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Directory :A directory is a web site that contains a categorized listing of links from around the web.Search Engines use information stored in the directories to rate pages.
E

Ethical SEO :It is SEO executed without resorting to underhand or illegal activities that may cause your web site to get blacklisted by the search engines.UnEthical SEOs can get your sites banned from a search engine forever.
F
Filter Words :Words such as; is, am, an, for, do, was and the. Words that search engines consider irrelevant as keywords.Using less of these words in your websites helps increase the keyword density of your original keyword.

Lets Get Started.......

a) Create traffic targeted content

Identify the keywords, i.e., words or phrases using which your potential customers will search the web. After identifying and gathering a set of keywords, categorize them under various themes and write the contents on those themes. Using a Keyword Suggestion tool, you can see how many people search for a certain keyword. Once you get the right keywords, use it appropriately in the page so that the page is appealing to both the visitors and the Search Engines.

HTML tags also play a role in ranking top on search engines. These tags must contain only relevant keywords. Neither fill these tags with keywords that don't appear in the content nor leave them empty.

b) Make your pages Search Engine Ready

Check if your pages are search engine ready, i.e., are they crawl able by search engine spiders.

To make your pages search engine ready:

• Your website content must be readable: Do not make the content clumsy by repeatedly using the keywords.
• Add only relevant keywords: Do not stuff the website content, title tag and meta tags with too many keywords.
• Do not add invisible text: Most of the search engines find them out and ban those sites. (invisible text is the text written over the same background colour as the text.)

c)Submit your site to Search Engines

Now that you have made your site search engine ready, start submitting it to the popular search engines. That way, they know your site exists. But remember that submitting the site to search engines does not mean that your site will be shown on the top of the Search engine result Pages(SERPs), it simply means that the search engine knows that your site exists.

d)Track your performance

Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing process for reasons like, Search Engines changing their algorithm frequently, new sites coming up for the same keywords as yours, your competitor sites optimizing themselves for search engines and so on. Thus, it is important you keep track of where you rank for each of your keywords in the most important search engines and constantly modify the content so that search engines know that your page is active. So regularlt check your sites position on the search engine and always edit or add new contents by researching on a set of new keywords.

- Himanshu Shekhar

Why Search Engine Optimize?

Everyday, lakhs of people search the web to find out what they look for. If your website does not come up top in the results, you lose your business to your competitors. SEO is important as it brings lots of visitors to your website thereby increasing the returns. Optimizing the site for targeted keywords would bring it to the top results on popular search engines. This would in turn bring prospective customers to your site, which would result in higher sales.But remember, SEO requires patience, careful planning, and a long-term approach..

-Himanshu Shekhar

How Does a Search Engine Index Web Pages?

There are four parts to an engine that you need to know about for optimization purposes:

• The spider is a program that goes out across the internet, looks for and gathers up web pages.
• The database is where the spider will store the pages that it finds.
• The search engine website is where searchers go to pull up information from the database.
• The algorithms are programs that determine which sites will come up when searchers type in a query at the search engine website.

There are two ways that your site can get into the database:

• The spider will automatically find your site from a link on someone else's site which is the path I recommend if you can get one or more quality inbound link(s).
• You submit your URL so that the spider will come out and find it.

- Himanshu Shekhar

Growth of SEO

SEO is a very big industry in today’s world. But without the proper exposure this industry has lagged behind and has not been recognized for all it has done in the internet circle. The entire SEO setup has really been very low profile and hasn’t been given the attention it deserves. If not for SEO, the search engines would not have existed. Nearly 80% of internet traffic today begins at a search engine. Everyone search their favorite and most wanted articles and information through search engines.

The SEO industry is certainly growing and going places. Today, the industry is getting its due credit and recognition by the industry. According to many experts, many people use search engines for simple navigation. In such a scenario we very well come to know the importance of search engines in today’s world.

Search engines are here to stay. However, there was a time when people like us did not know much about search engines. Since Google came into the picture, search engines have developed a new meaning all-together. SEO has played a major role and brought many more people to the search engines. Thus, the industry has grown bigger and is still growing.

My blog is an small attempt to bring to your attention this new and exciting field called Search Engine Optimisation.

- Himanshu Shekhar

What Is SEO?

So, what exactly is Search Engine Optimisation? The following definations, I hope, will definitely help you to make a picture of this new and exciting field.

• The term used to describe the marketing technique of preparing a website to enhance its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine once a relevant search is undertaken. A number of factors are important when optimising a website, including the content and structure of the website's copy and page layout, the HTML meta-tags and the submission process.
• SEO is a process of arranging a web site's content to obtain high rankings in various search engines and includes tailoring on-page text as well as choosing the proper keywords.
• The process of improving web pages so that it ranks higher in search engine for targeted keywords with the ultimate goal of generating more revenue from the web site.
• These are the techniques used to improve a Web page's results in a search.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website in search engine listings. The term also refers to an industry of consultants that carry out optimization projects on behalf of client sites.

I hope, you got an idea as to what SEO is. In the future posts you will find more details regarding Search Engine Optimisation and the relevence and scope of SEOs in India.

- Himanshu Shekhar