No big talks as this topic is already known to almost all of us here. Hence, I will start right away. But before that I would like to say, with SEO being a very common topic now and every other person is writing on the same so this article too may give you an impression that it is just like any other article which speaks of things that is already known to us but I would suggest you to have some patience and go through it and I am sure you will definitely learn something new here as I have made sure to include almost everything that is related to SEO.

I have divided the article in four parts; The On-Page Optimization (will speak about it now), The Off-Page Optimization, Black Hat SEO and The SEO concepts and tools.

So sorry guys, have patience for one more minute and I promise to get into the business right away. So what it is anyway?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines. (Wikipedia)

Answer is very simple; if you have a site or a blog on Internet that means you have put it there for general public to view it and search engine are the guys who actually let people know about the site/blog all around the web. Life would have been easy had it been just getting your site/blog getting noticed by search engines but the fact is, even though search engines show a huge list of search result but more then 90% of search engine users do not even bother to see results beyond first page of SERPs (seach engine result page). Hence, webmasters around the world are always in the lookout to make sure to bring their page on the first page of SERPs. This is where the SEO come into play.

This is a series of steps that should be performed on the pages of your site to optimize it for the search engines. So let’s begin.

Keyword research: This is the first thing that must be done and it should be done patiently. You very well know the content of the page or the site. Hence, create a simple list of important words. Using those words with the help of the keyword constructing tool create a whole bunch of keywords for your site or page or blog (I have explained how to do this here at SEO Concepts and Tools). Identify the important keywords for your different pages and also for your site as a whole. We will use important keywords at important places and less important keywords at less important places.
This is the most important step and I would suggest you to spend considerable amount of time here. This is the base of your SEO efforts. Hence gather as much keywords as possible and categorize them as important, average or less important keywords very carefully. You will really need them throughout the SEO process.

Text content: This is the first and foremost important rule of all; Search engines love good quality text content that is original. Spamming and copied contents are a big no for them. They also give importance to pages that update their contents regularly. Hence, we must follow these steps;

• Write good quality content on your page and make sure they are original. Search engine especially Google has become very smart, it even checks the use of proper spelling and grammar in your content.
• More is the number of texts on page better it is. So, What is the minimum number of words for SEO? Doing some research on the net, I found that there is no such rule about the minimum number of words that should be put on a page for SEO but everywhere they have spoken that minimum number of 150 to 250 words on a page is a good practice. Also make sure that good number of words are used on home page too as it is this page that will be linked most (usually) and hence will be the first target to search engines.
• Keep updating the contents of your pages regularly.
• The contents of your site should be clean html code that is W3 compliant. This ensures that web crawlers can easily crawl through your site. To validate that a page is W3 compliant go to http://www.w3schools.com/site/site_validate.asp

Quality is what we all look for and if you can maintain the same in the content of your site then it will ensure that visitors return to your site, which is a very good sign. Search engines give those sites more value where the percentage of returning visitors are high.

Using keywords in content: It is very important to know the way one must use the keywords in the content of the page. One must be very careful while using the keywords as too much of deviation from the correct practice can be harmful. Following points should be kept in mind.

• The foremost thing to keep in mind is the amount of keywords use on a page. This is measured by keyword density. It is defined as follows;
  
  Keyword density = (Number of keywords used * 100) / total number of words used.
  

  Here when we count words then it should include words used in all meta tags, alt text, tooltip, text used in the body of the page etc. and these words should not include following part of speech.

  Adverbs e.g. now, then, today, once, rarely etc.
  Pronouns e.g. he, she, him, her, it etc.
  Prepositions e.g. to, by, at etc
  Conjunctions e.g. and, or, but, so etc
  Articles e.g. a, the

  However there do not seem to be any defined optimum keyword density that should be used for SEO. Search engines never reveal anything about the way their algorithm work and hence webmaster around the world have found different figures by their experience. I did some research on the matter and found that for the best result the keyword density will vary from 2% to 10%. If the total number of words is less then 150 then keyword density should be between 2% to 3%. This will gradually increase and will keep between 7% to 10% for total number of words greater then 1500. However, in no case the keyword density should cross 10%. Use keywords wisely and as per requirement.

  I have mentioned about some of the tools that can help us calculate the keyword density on a page here at SEO Concepts and Tools.
• Use the important keywords at the beginning and at the end of the page. One good way to include important keyword at the end of the page is by including it in the footer of the page. While for the beginning of the page, it should be in the page heading.
• Always use keywords in the natural flow of the content. It should look that the keyword has come naturally in the content.
• Make sure keywords are distributed uniformly throughout the content of the page.
• Make the keyword strong, italics and underlined as and when required in the body of the page. Do this only once per keyword. Do not over do it. You will notice I have spoken about making keywords strong and not bold. It is because making a word strong is for SEO purpose while making it bold is only for the presentation purpose though both gives the same effect on the page.

Domain name: I have not seen or heard about a single case where domain name is optimized as a part of SEO. What domain name should be chosen, is beyond the scope of SEO for the time being. Hence, stay chilled!
Having said that, it should be borne in mind that page URL does play a role. Name of the page should be chosen such that it is related to the contents it has.

Page Title: A page title should give us a fair idea of what that page is all about but at that same time, it should be precise. Hence, the use of page title for SEO is very important. Always use the most important keyword here keeping in mind that it is precise. Less is the number of words used in page title, more will be the importance given to each of them.

Separate a keyword from the other using “|”. For example give page title as “Health | Fitness” instead of “Health and Fitness”

Never use any adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction or article in your page title as they will unnecessarily dilute the importance of main words used in the title. In fact, make sure not to use any word other then your main keyword(s) in the page title.

Meta tags: We must use meta tag for SEO to its full potential. Make sure to write a good quality and precise Meta description. Include important keywords here. It is this description that is displayed by search engines in the search result. They also mark the keywords contained in it in bold so that they are able to catch the eyes of the user.

Header tags: These tags are used in the heading of a page, topic or sub-topic and hence it is given an extra weight by search engines compared to other contents in the body of the page. Let use see how to use header tags for SEO.

• Use H1 tag to display the heading of the page. I would suggest to use it only once on the whole page as it is given the highest importance among all text contents in the body of the page. Put the most important keyword (page specific) here.
  Place this tag at the beginning of the page not only because it will contain the heading of the page but also because it is important to place important keywords at the beginning of the page (I have already spoken about it earlier in “Using keywords in content”)
• Use H2 tag to display heading of any topic in the page. It is not given so much importance as that given to H1 tag and hence it can be used more then once at the beginning of each topic on the page. Use other keywords here as per requirement.
• Use H3 tags to display the heading of sub-topics on the page. This tag is given the least importance and hence it can be use more often on the page body. Make sure to use keywords too. It will contain not so important keywords and can be more detailed when compared to H2 tags.
• Rest of the header tags i.e. H4, H5, and H6 are treated more or less like any other text in the body of the page. Hence their use isn’t so important so far SEO is concerned.

As told already that header tags are given special treatment when compared to other content in the page body so they must be used for the purpose they are meant for; displaying headings. Do not use them like other general contents of the page body. Misuse of this tag is considered a serious spam.

Images: Use images to make your page more attractive. However, don’t just add images make sure to define a value for the “alt” attribute of the image tag as well. Having said this I would like to say that avoid putting keywords in alt attribute. Texts in “alt” attribute is not meant for user in true sense as it is visible only when image is not displayed for some reason. Hence, words used here will not hold so much of importance but if you still want to put keyword here then make sure they are least valuable one.
You can also define value for the title attribute of the image tag. Texts defined in title attribute are shown as tool tip when mouse pointer is over the image.

As I have already said that texts in image tags are not given so much of value, that does not mean we should not use it at all. Don’t do that, always use alt attribute as it comes into play when search engines search for images, it is this time when alt attribute comes handy. Search engines while looking for images depend on alt and title attribute. This is the reason to use image for SEO.

So how does image search help in SEO? Actually, when we click on any link on SERP for image search we are taken to a page where not only the image is shown but the it also shows the page where the could be image is found.

Force search engine to read keyword first: Well I know it is not always possible to do this because it might not be compatible with the agreed upon interface of the page but if there exists any room to change the GUI of the page then go ahead with it.
Generally, we put out our navigational links on the left side as shown below in a simple skeleton of a page.

Now since search engines read a page from top left to bottom right so it will read the link first and then it will come to read the body text that may contain your keywords. To make search engines read your keywords first, follow either of the structure as shown below.

In both the cases shown above, search engine will read your body text first and hence will read your keywords first. Now the question here is, why are we doing this? As told earlier (Using keywords in content) we must put our important keywords in the beginning and at the end of the page. This is the reason why we are doing this!

Silo Structure: In very simple term, Silo is a structure that is used to store materials in bulk (Wikipedia). For your site too it is very important to have it structured properly in the very beginning. At a later stage when the number of page grows it will become very difficult to re-organize them.
We can define a proper silo structure of a site based on different categories in the site. Each category defines a silo and it could be represented by a folder or a sub-domain. How you define categories for your site depends completely what the site is all about. Categorization could be based on region, country, language or anything else. For example, look at the following sample structure;

Above is just a sample structure where we see only one sub-level of silo. The number of sub-levels can be more as per requirement. A proper silo structured site will not only be liked by the visitors of your site but it is good for search engines too. It is easy for search engines to crawl and index pages of a site if it is following a neat structure. Not only this, when search engines find that your site has a good structure it will at once know that it will be liked by visitors of the site and hence your site will be given more weight on the SERP.

Sitemap: The sitemap is a page, which contain links (with the proper anchor text) to every pages of your website. Please note the following things on how to use sitemap for seo.

• If the number of page is too large then the sitemap should be divided in two or more pages and the link to the other sitemap pages should be put on the first sitemap page.
• Keep in mind to give it the name as sitemap.html or sitemap.aspx, or sitemap.jsp, or sitemap.php etc so that it could be easily be recognized by search engines. Try to keep it simple i.e. sitemap.html.
• Be sure that all the pages of your websites are at only three clicks from your homepage. It's better to get them crawled easily by the search engines.
• Make sure that you structure your site map just like your site. Just because you have to put all links to your site here does not mean you will put it just like that.

This is one page that a search engine will look for at the very first place. It is because this page will easily direct search engine robot to all the pages of the site and save time. This page in fact is meant only for the search engines in true sense. Do not ignore this page. Make sure it is there in your site.

RSS Feed: It is a very powerful method of distributing articles to your users and can prove to be an equally powerful tool for SEO. Using feed one can help distribute article to different sites the moment it is published. You can include link to your site, which will ensure enumerable links to your site being distributed all over the network and this is how RSS feed can be used for SEO. I have explain how distributing your links on other sites will help you here at Off Page Search Engine Optimization.

Breadcrumb: Lot of sites has this. It is mainly thought to be a guide for the visitors to let them know where they are in the site. But it is not known that even breadcrumb helps us in SEO. So how breadcrumb is used for SEO? Including a breadcrumb will ensure that pages in a site are interlinked thereby ensuring easy crawling by the search engines. When compared to site map it may not be such an important factor but it does contribute towards your SEO efforts and moreover it will make your site even more user friendly. Just for your reference, this is how a breadcrumb looks like.

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