Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques are the set of specific strategies that an SEO company would dispatch when hired by a client to get better search engine rankings with an increased volume of targeted traffic. Here targeted traffic is mentioned as increasing incoming traffic is not enough. It's the volume of specific audience for whom the webpage or the website has been put up on the Internet matters. The underlying intentions for SEO are to promote a brand, spread awareness, and increase visitor to customer conversions. Effective optimization can bring about these results easily, but one must keep patience.
SEO starts with requirement analysis where the client communicates their goals and what they desire and expect from the SEO company. The SEO team at the service provider end analyzes the current client website and builds a report detailing the current rankings and usability of their website. Fruiting SEO techniques successfully requires prime knowledge of the search engine behaviors and logics, and understanding the targeted market sector intensely.
Here we will have an insight into what actually goes in the detailed SEO report:
1. Search Engine Presence. It shows at what position is the website at. There are many search engines thriving in the market today, but to have the task made easy, the report contains rankings from the three most reliable and widely used search engines: Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The detailed report states two things:
i. Index Pages. Index pages are the web pages that the crawler has cached or "downloaded" on its listing. The number of indexed pages shows the vitality of your website to the search engine, ie the more number of pages indexed by the crawler the better it is from an SEO perspective.
ii. Back Links. Back links are the links that point to your website from another website. Google considers this of ultimate importance and thus having a larger number of alien websites pointing / referring / recommending your website sets a base to get higher page ranks.
2. Google PageRank. Google PageRank is the logic algorithm set by the Google standards through which the search engine measures website signal on its listings. The PageRank has been patented by Google and the ranking system ranges on the scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best, ie a website / webpage with ranking 10 is of the utmost importance to Google. The PageRank of any website / webpage depends on its linking structure and the number of genuine back links, though these are not the only factors that affect the PageRank these are the most important indicators for your PageRank.
3. Last Google Cache Date. Google time to time updates its listings database by caching and indexing your website regularly. The search engine sends automated robots on your website that download your online content to refresh Google's database. Each time Google robots crawl your website, they leave behind a date. This date becomes obsoleste with time, since the latest being the best.
4. Domain Name, Age, and Expiration Date. The domain name and more importantly the creation date are of importance to the search engines. Older domain names are cached more time and hence get more PageRank value. The longer a website has been in existence (and by the expiration date intends to stay in existence) the more trustworthy it is to Google.
5. Title Tag. The Title comes in HTML tags and hence the name. Title of a website is the content that is displayed on its title bar. Not only the Internet spiders but also the physical viewers of your webpage get a complete idea of what your webpage is all about, so your content within the page has to be loyal to the title. Google title tags are always preferred by Google while considering the PageRank of the webpage. Title tags are always displayed on the search engine results page (SERP). A title should encourage the search engine user to visit your webpage by following the link.
6. Meta Description Tag. This is another content in the HTML tags that is held accountable by the search engines. The Meta description is a summary of your webpage that too is displayed on the SERP to encourage incoming traffic. A good Meta description may contain targeted keywords for its webpage, but it must not be overdone as too many keywords and no legitimate content is called keyword stuffing which should be avoided all the times.
7. Textual Sitemap. Textual sitemap is a comprehensive webpage that displays links to every page of your website. The sitemap should be well structured so that it is easy to read and understand as which page lies under what directory and sub-directory. A sitemap always helps a user navigate through a website with a large number of pages.
8. Search Engine Sitemap (sitemap.xml). The search engine Sitemap (note the capitalized S here, not to be confused with the textual sitemap with a small s) is the Google's version of a regular sitemap. It is easy to generate and submit a sitemap.xml copy of your website to the search engine listings. The robots use this Sitemap to analyze and report back visibility of your webpages on search engine indexes. It is really profitable to submit a copy of sitemap.xml after creating new webpages to keep your website listing updated on search engine index.
9. DMOZ Listing. DMOZ is the largest and most comprehensive human-edited web directory. Having an entry on the DMOZ listing tat points to your website significantly increases the chances of getting higher PageRank and better visitor's traffic. Search engines put a lot of importance on DMOZ listings.
10. Robots.txt. Robots.txt is a text file representation in the root directory of a website to control which pages are to be indexed and how by the search engine robots. As a Internet spider begins a crawl of your site, the Robots.txt file is the first place they look for. This is a fast and easy way of finding the web pages that they need to crawl. Having a Robots.txt implemented in your site also speeds up the process in which your website is crawled by the search engines.
11. Keywords Research. While creating a webpage and writing content for it, specific keywords are used strategically. These keywords tell the viewers (physical and electronic alike) what exactly your webpage targets. Careful selection of keywords marks good SEO content writing skills. Keywords are selected to rank higher up the SERPs.