Search engine optimization (SEO) is an act of configuring website pages for spiders’ easy accessibility so they can be indexed.
A spider is a programmed robot search engines used to quickly check millions of web pages and sort them by relevance.
An indexed page is spidered and its content is certified as appropriate to be placed on the search engines results.
Thus, the art and science of understanding how search engines identify pages relevant to a query are called search engine optimization.
SEO offers the most cost effective website traffic.
It delivers better returns on investment (ROI) compared to other web traffic sources such as advertisements, email marketing, pay per click advertising, digital campaigns and promotions.
Criteria to rank on search engines
1. Search engines prefer contents that are original, compelling, unique, and problem solving. When you update the blog regularly with the latest know-how, it aids higher ranking on search engine result.
Also, if you have a website, adding a blog section with organized original content based on your business keyword can attract traffic.
2. Blog posts popular metrics and social sharing meter can influence how you can be ranked on the search engine.
Search engines are increasingly taking into account your website popularity. They are considering your presence on social media, whether you have YouTube videos and the existence of online reviews and forums.
These previously ignored metrics are now being considered by search engines.
Nobody can guarantee your website will rank high in search engine results but with diligence and consistency on the points outlined, you will increase the likelihood of being found on the result page.
3. Apart from creating content that satisfy readers, you must link them with other post either within your website (internal-linking) or outside(external-linking).
This act can make readers spend more time on the website. It serves as a signal to search engine crawlers that this website is increasing in popularity for the keyword query.
Consistent acts like this will be pushing your website to the top of search engines result page and if it’s already there, it strengthens its position.
4. Search engines pay great attention to authoritative websites that link to your website in one of their article.
This act is similar to someone writing a thesis and you are being referenced for your contribution to the topic.
Thus, if you are getting many authoritative websites link with your contents, it is an indication the website is relevant.
Search engines reward websites that have genuine inbound links from authoritative websites while they penalize websites that exercise dubious means to achieve it.
An authoritative website is a website that delivers authentic reliable content and resources to its readers.
It derives this authority from backlinks (reference links from other authority websites), verifiable information and frequently updated relevant contents.
So, if you can be generating backlinks from authoritative websites, it can increase your ranking position on search engines.
5. The number of blog visitors, the amount of time they spend, the number of pages and posts they click, which specific posts or pages they are clicking, where they come from are factors that search engines consider in ranking a blog.
The best way to achieve this is to provide your readers with quality contents that truly solve their problem.
Also, you must be inter-linking related posts.
6. Give your posts and pages a descriptive headline that is keyword rich, optimized and compelling to click.
Search engines display results using the page title. The link has to be enticing or else, nobody is going to click it.
7. Search engines take cognizance of hyperlink. When you link a word or phrase (anchor text) with a web address, that’s hyperlink. An example is hyperlink.
Thus, search engines look at the anchor text from your blog and the web address used to hyperlink it to your blog post or another website.
They are doing this to determine the degree of satisfaction your content gives the readers if it serves their want or not.
If readers are leaving your website too quickly, this is a bad signal to search engines. It keeps telling them this blog post or article doesn’t serve their customer for the keyword query and it will be decreasing in rank.
Thus, make sure you hyperlink with the appropriate words you think will satisfy the readers intention.
The more hyperlink to your blog posts, the advantage it will bring.
Hyperlink is like a “vote” for your blog. If people spend more time on your blog, search engines will assume your website is useful and relevant for that keyword.
It will make your website rank higher than a similar page with fewer hyperlinks.
Tips to improve your blog rank in search engine
1. Research the keywords for your business blogging venture and for each blog posts.
Before you start the blogging venture, research on the keyword which searchers are using.
There are several tools; an example is Keyword planner.
2. Try to be specific about the keywords. Make it targeted keywords with low competition.
You can use Keyword planner to check how competitive the keyword is before deciding to use them.
Be sure that the keywords have enough searches. Try using broad key words too.
3. You need to think outside the box. Don’t settle for the main keywords but long-tail keywords.
You will be amazed the amount of traffic you will be generating from this.
Successful bloggers make use of long-tail because their contents are mostly problem solving.
Long-tail keywords are words that comprises of three or more words and these are mostly questions.
For instance, “where can I found online shoes in Nigeria”?
You have to optimize your published posts base on the keywords of your post.
When optimizing post for search engines, focus on the reader.
5. Ensure the pages and posts have custom titles and description. This depends on the blogging platform.
I will recommend WordPress because apart from being a blogging software perfect for building blog website and other website, it has numerous functionality such as search engine optimization (SEO) plugin.
If your page and post doesn’t have the custom titles and descriptions, it will be hard for Search engines to have you on their search result despite your quality content.
So, let each pages and posts have their own title tags and description tag. All these are readily available on the WordPress platform.
Title tag is important for the SEO of your blog.
Google supports approx. 60 characters in the title, while Yahoo allows for up to 110 characters in the title.
It is important to target the critical keywords in the title. Every page and post should have a unique title relating to the page or post content.
Description tag is important before but it isn’t any more. Some search engines still display it while others don’t.
Some search engines do read the description tag, and do utilize the content found within in the ranking process.
Google, MSN and Yahoo give very little weight or no value to it.
Nevertheless, you can still make use of it in your SEO ranking.
Description tag is the short summary of your page or post which will be embedded with the keywords.
6. Make your structure, navigation menu and URL structure of your site simple enough for search engines to follow.
WordPress, blogger and most blogging platform meet up with this condition.
7. You need to create a sitemap for your blog.
Sitemap tells people where everything is on your site. This make navigation easier and search engine providers also make use of it to crawl through your blog to fill their search archives result and to access whether you have information or content relating to a search query.
Search engines like sitemap.
8. Now that you have determined the right keywords for your pages and posts, create contents and optimize them with keyword to get to the top search engine results.
You have to make posts and pages popular.
How many websites are linked to you and how popular are they?
The more sites link to your blog, the better the popularity and the ranking of your website.
How to make your blog popular
1. Writing articles for blog in your industry can increase your blog traffic.
Add blog address at the end of the article. Your web traffic will increase when people follow the link to your site.
When another blog uses your article, it increases your link popularity and aid quality backlinks to your blog. This can help in ranking higher in search engine result.
2. Publishing your articles on forum platform can aid traffic to your blog.
Remember to add the source website to blog. In doing this, it is important to follow the forum rules and regulations as regards publishing.
3. By investing in paid traffic, the popularity of your blog will increase.
There are many paid traffic websites that can help boost your blog traffic through their platform. An example is the Google ads.
4. Social network sites are good way to promote your blog and make it popular. In fact, some social media sites like Facebook are now ranking higher in search engines.
