“Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website in a search engine’s unpaid results – often referred to as “natural”, “organic” or “earned” results.” Explains Wikipedia.

SEO is an on-going process that allows your site to not only be seen when a search query is fed in the search bar, but it also helps you to improve the rank of your website. The result pages are typically a combination of natural or organic results and paid results.

You can target three things through SEO –

#1 Quality Traffic.

You can attract visitors from across the globe or a defined country on your website. However, getting good quality visitors or visitors who are searching for you in the market is referred to as quality traffic. They are in search of a similar kind of product or service. Thus, they are more likely to convert.

#2 The quantity of traffic.

If you belong to the school that believes “more the better” let me correct you. Before you start optimizing your website it’s essential to understand your strength – what is your objective, how many conversions are you targeting, to accomplish your targets how many footfalls do you require, how many leads will you be able to target, and more.

Once you decode the basics, it will be easy for you to define the quantity that needs to be targeted through SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

#3 Organic Results.

Organic Results need to appear natural on Search Engine. To improve the rank of your link on Organic Results, you need to make optimum use of SEO parameters.

 Why SEO Optimization?

SEO Optimization is crucial for your business’s online presence – website. Getting your site on the first page of a Search Engine Result Page is the epitome of SEO. Worth admitting is, most of the digital marketers target Google search results because it currently owns over 50% of the market share of all search engines.

If you optimize SEO parameters, you can attract quality traffic and conversions at almost 40% less cost. There are no secrets for SEO optimization – it just takes a lot of consistent efforts and understanding of people, search engines, algorithms and SEO tools.

How Does It Work?

So here we go… search engines have their crawlers that go out and fetch all the content they can fetch on your website. They bring as much data as they can to get your web page indexed on search engine result pages. While you walk the SEO path, it’s important to remember, crawlers can’t read flash, images and videos.

SEO Parameters

Google announced that there are about 200 parameters on the basis of which, Google ranks the website. Let’s try to figure out a few of them –

A study reveals that only 11% of the web is actually visible. This means, if you want your website to be visible or to get indexed and then to rank, you have to fight really, really tough. Out of 100,000 domains, 75% are with “.com” domain extension, which is by far the most visible top-level domain (TLD) in SERPs.

Here are a few SEO parameters that might be a great help to improve the ranking of your website (please note, the parameters keep on changing as Google refashions its algorithm) –

DOMAIN PARAMETERS

1. Domain Age
2. Length Of Domain Name
3. Domain Validation
4. Domain Extension (.com, .in, .gov, .edu)
5. Domain IP Location
6. Domain History – How Often The Changed The Ip, How Often The Domain Owner Has Changed And So On
7. Keywords In Domain
8. Geo-Target Setting In Webmaster
9. Goal Setting In Analytics

SERVER SETTINGS PARAMETERS

1. Server Geo Location
2. Uptime

ARCHITECTURAL STRUCTURE PARAMETERS

1. URL Structure
2. Interlink Architectural Structure
3. Link Building
4. Canonical Setting
5. HTML Coding

CONTENT PARAMETERS

1. Use Of Language
2. Content Uniqueness/ Duplicate Content
3. Amount Of Content
4. Content Timelessness (Whether It’s Seasonal Or Has Long Shelf Life)
5. Keyword Density
6. Keyword Usage
7. Text Images
8. Malicious Content (Probably Added By Hackers)
9. Mis-Spelling Of Words, Bad Grammar, 1000 Word Screeds Without Punctuation
10. Use Of Absolutely Unique Or New Phrases

META TAG PARAMETERS

1. Meta Keywords
2. Meta Title
3. Meta Description

INTERLINK ARCHITECTURAL STRUCTURE PARAMETERS

1. Of Interlinks To A Page
2. Of Interlinks To Page With Identical Anchor Text
3. Interlinks From Content, Apart From Navigation Bar
4. Of No-Follow Links
5. Interlink Density

WEBSITE PARAMETERS

1. Robot.Txt File
2. Website Last Modified Date
3. Frequency Of Updates On Website
4. Overall Size Of Site (Including No. Of Images, Videos, Plugins Etc.)
5. Age Of Website, Since It Was First Fetched Or Indexed By Search Engine
6. XML Sitemap
7. Website Type
8. Website Loading Time
9. Mobile- Friendly
10. Customized 404 Error Page
11. SSL Certification
12. Coding Errors
13. No Broken Links
14. Redirection
15. Sitemap
16. Indexing
17. Crawling Errors

PAGE PARAMETERS

1. Page Meta Tags
2. Page Age
3. Page Freshness (No. Of Edits On The Page, Percentage Of Content That’s Changed)
4. Duplication Of Content Within The Website
5. Amount Of Content On The Page
6. Page Loading Time
7. Desktop Speed
8. Mobile Speed
9. Page Type (Importance And Priority Of The Page)
10. Page Internal Popularity – How Many Internal Links Does It Has
11. Page External Popularity – How Many Relevant External Links Does It Has
12. Of Outbound Links (That Often Takes You To Other Website)
13. H1 To H5

KEYWORD DENSITY PARAMETERS

1. Keywords In The URL
2. Keywords In The Title Of Each Webpage
3. Position Of The Keywords Page Title
4. Keywords In Meta Description
5. Keywords In H1
6. Keywords In Alt Images
7. Keywords In Anchor Text (Interlink Architecture)
8. Keywords In Bold Or Italics
9. Density Of Keywords
10. Synonyms Of Keywords On The Same Page

LINK BUILDING

1. Relevancy Of Sites From Where You Get Backlinks
2. Relevancy Of Pages From Where You Get Backlinks
3. Quality Of External Links
4. Domain Authority Of Site From Where You Get External Links
5. Is It A Do-Follow Or No-Follow Link
6. Domain Extension From Where You Get A Backlink
7. Domain Age
8. Geo Of The Domain
9. Type Of Site
10. Domain Authority Of The Link
11. Bad Sites
12. Reciprocal Link Ratio
13. SBMS
14. Type Of External Links
15. Consistency
16. Citations In Wikipedia And DMOZ
17. Link Building History (Caught For Buying/Selling Links)

VISITOR’S PROFILE PARAMETERS

1. Of Visitors
2. Visitors Demographic
3. Bounce Rate
4. Session
5. Browsing Habits
6. Type Of Traffic
7. Duration
8. New Or Repeat Traffic

PENALTY PARAMETERS

1. Keyword Stuffing
2. Black Hat Activities
3. Link Buying/Selling
4. Spamming
5. Content Duplication (Internal/External)
6. Penalty History

OTHER PARAMETERS

1. Google+
2. Other Blogs
3. Forums
4. Use of Analytics, Adwords 

How To Make Optimum Use of SEO?

You can optimize your website by simply applying a correct Meta Tags. However, the crucial step of a successful SEO strategy is competition Analysis. Until you don’t analyze your competition, you won’t get the path to follow – the do’s and don’t.

When you begin your SEO, look upon the first five ranking websites on your defined keyword. They are the ones you need to beat.

Design your website in such a fashion that it’s user-friendly as well as crawler-friendly. Even if you think your visitors are familiar with your product or service, still make it easy to navigate and ensure good user experience.

SEO is one of the most powerful online marketing mediums available, and it’s critical for the success of your online business. SEO if done right can enable you to be ranked higher in the ocean of billions of existing web pages.

Stay connected for more on SEO.