How to perform image optimization SEO to rank higher in Google Search Results
Have you ever analyzed your choices towards search engine result pages? Generally which pages you spend the most time and feel more informative to you? The obvious answer to this question is those pages containing more image or graphics… is not it?
Two pages there may cater to the same information, but the particular page which presents the information through nice eye-catching graphics and uses relevant images gets visitors’ attention almost instantly.
Why image SEO is important for any site?
Images play a very crucial role to improve the quality of a blog’s content and its visual appeal. Images also make the message of any blog far easier to understand for the reader. Naturally, a content reach with images gets more traffic from the search engine.
Images not only make your webpages attractive, but it also makes you webpage searchable through the image search option. This change is new and Google very recently brought this feature in which, if any visitor clicks any image of his choice found through Google search, it navigates directly to the webpage containing the image.
Statistics showing the importance of images drawing organic traffic
Page loading speed is directly proportional to its size. As the page gets heavier the page loading speed gets higher. Images play a significant role to make a web page heavier. It has been found from web page analytics that in general any webpage, images almost occupy 63% space. The figure below shows the proportionate distribution of different components of a typical webpage.
So, how to strike a balance? Here comes… image SEO
It is now clear that for higher quality content and search volume webpages need images, but again bulky images can cause higher page loading speed. So, to balance the effectiveness of images, they must be optimized to use on webpages.
The infographics below show very important 6 SEO steps for image optimization of any webpage. If should perform all these six checks for any image of your blog:
Six most important actionable steps for image optimization
Conclusion
Proper use of images can enhance the visibility of your webpages significantly. It does not only makes your content more appealing to page visitors but the image search facility can drive huge organic traffic directly to your website.
New inventions by Google like Google lens, incorporation of AI algorithms, use of machine learning products like Vision AI indicate Google’s focus towards understanding web images more categorically. Google wants to provide more and more relevant image as well as content to its users. So, it is very clear that in near future images are going to play a very crucial role in Search Engine Optimization.
Evolution in image SEO is passing through a rapid transition phase. But, the basic steps of image optimization mentioned here will hold true in any circumstances. Follow these steps to optimize images for high-quality content as well as a fast website thus get an edge to rank higher.
You have to stay relevant and dynamic following these steps tips mentioned here and provide optimized high-quality content.
Want to rank your article? Use the best free local SEO plugins for WordPress
The ranking of your blog article mainly depends on the volume of organic traffic. Organic traffic means visitors who land on your website through search engines.
As a content writer, you put your best effort to develop good quality content, do a lot of research, exercise your brain to develop attractive graphics; but if your page is on the 5th page of google search, then no one is there to exhibit your content.
This is heartbreaking. Being 100% focused on content creation is not a wise decision. Particularly if you have a business in mind.
Good content is a must and prerequisite for a successful blog, but a good SEO strategy is also essential to increase its visibility.
Why SEO plugins are necessary?
If your blog is a personal one or you are writing on a highly specialized niche then a content created with the conscious use of keywords may be sufficient; but if you are building a brand and competing with some authority website contents, then a strong SEO strategy is required.
Today a new blogger when writes his first blog, competes with millions of bloggers to make a place in SERP. To survive in this cut-throat competition, your content should be SEO optimized in all aspects. You have to use SEO plugins to optimize metadata, alt text, tag, the content title even images are also nowadays optimized to get better visibility
Google search engine algorithm is continuously evolving and search engine crawlers are collecting data through rigorous surveys on every aspect of your site according to that algorithm. So WordPress SEO plugins are nowadays a must for every site owner to increase his site’s visibility as much as possible.
There are several WordPress SEO plugins available both free and premium. If you just started your blog and right now don’t want to invest much on SEO, then my suggestion is to start with free SEO plugins. They are quite capable of handling basic SEO tasks.
Best free SEO plugins
Here I will discuss 7 best free WordPress SEO plugins, which will be your best friend to optimize your article and rank fast.
Yoast SEO plugin
This is the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress and used by almost 5 million users worldwide. This plugin gets automatically installed while installing WordPress. Although this plugin has a premium version with lots of advanced features, the free version itself also provides basic SEO optimization facilities like the search for keywords in the blog title, meta description, heading, and content; provides the glimpse of a snippet of the blog post; checks the readability and share in social network
These are essential plugins to handle the ALT and TITLE attributes of every image used in your site. These two attributes are important for local SEO of your content. The ALT attribute tells the Google search engine and the users in turn about the image when the user searches any query.
On the other hand, the TITLE attribute shows the title text on the tooltip when any visitor hovers the mouse on the image.
PB SEO friendly image is such a plugin to create SEO friendly images and freely available.
Short Pixel is also a very important WordPress freemium plugin to optimize the images and PDF documents by compressing pixels without losing clarity of images used in web pages.
Thus this plugin helps to improve page load speed, better user experience and ultimately higher rank in Google search results. The plugin is also very handy, lightweight and easy to use.
This is true to the name, an allrounder plugin for almost all SEO optimization purposes. It was first launched way back in 2007. It takes care of the generation of XML sitemap of your site and different images and submission of it to different search engines.
Accelerated mobile pages or AMP is the new sensation in the SEO arena. Mobile users now consist of almost 60% of total internet users. So, this large chunk of visitors to your website can be handled using the Google AMP support facility of this plugin.
Google analytical support, Advanced canonical URLs, Schema.org makeup, generating meta tags automatically, automatic notification to search engines like Bing and Google about any changes in your website are few of the other important SEO activities performed by All in one SEO plugin.
This is a very helpful plugin to which uses Artificial Intelligence technology to perform SEO optimization. It goes through the WordPress environment and generates meta tags on its own in any language you want. Thus, it saves considerable time of yours enabling you to be more focussed on content creation.
This plugin is for finding out a broken link on your site. Broken link checker looks for links that don’t work, images that are not uploaded or not visible and redirects. It also monitors all your posts and pages, comments for any possible problem and notifies you through the dashboard or via email.
This plugin is highly customizable; you can adjust is to make broken links appear differently in posts and prevent search engines from following broken links.
It is an SEO made easy tool. In today’s’ world success of blogging largely depends on a good SEO strategy. So, sometimes for a blogger SEO for his/her blog becomes such a big concern, that he/she starts spending more time on search engine optimization even than creating high-quality content.
Rankmath plugin here provides a helping hand to bloggers to focus more on content writing leaving the job of SEO for it. Rankmath totally automated the SEO task and thus is a very important plugin in WordPress.
Some of the major features of this plugin are like Google schema markup or rich snippets integration, optimization of the content using up to 5 keywords, Google search console integration, Google keyword ranking, LSI keyword i.e Latent Semantics Indexing keyword search, monitoring 404 error, Local business SEO, suggesting internal links, etc.
Rankmath free WordPress SEO tool
All in one Schema rich snippets
Snippets are the new mantra of success of your blog. A good eye-catching rich snippet results in search engines significantly increase the chance of readers clicking your page link, thus, increasing organic traffic.
A rich snippet is a brief summary of your blog page content showing a glimpse of related images, author images or key tables in a nice format. This snippet is displayed in the search result pages of google, bing, yahoo search engines or a news feed of Facebook quickly drawing the attention of visitors.
This plugin provides a search engine the precise information for creating snippets Thus, helping you to stand out from the cut-throat competition and rank higher in search engine results.
The SEO plugins mentioned here are all either free or they have their freemium versions which you can use without investing a rupee. So, if you just have started your blog and worried about its optimization, these tools are your best friend for basic SEO tasks.
Write great content and optimize it using these tools, you have a great chance to rank your page only with on-page SEO strategies. So, no more waiting and go on trying these tools. SEO can be best learned by experimenting with different SEO techniques. Apply something new and wait for a few weeks, see how did the changes affect your ranking and accordingly change your plan. You can read thousands of pages on SEO and hundreds of videos about how to do SEO, but without applying it practically, you can never learn the technique.
How to find low competition long-tail keyword using free tools?
Long-tail keywords are very important from an SEO point of view. If you are a new blogger and just entered the blogging arena, you should avoid direct competition with pro bloggers. And to do this you have to take the help of low competition long-tail keyword and a higher chance of ranking. This article discusses some SEO tools (obviously free) which can guide you to find low competition long tail keyword quickly to create your content.
What is low competition long-tail keywords?
Long-tail keywords are those keywords with four or more characters and are low competitive compare to those short-tail ones. These keywords are generally very specific in nature and laser-focused on the subject of interest. Marketing strategy believes in a theory of the customer pyramid.
General visitors of your website belong to the base of the pyramid and search for a very general keyword. But any visitor when they search for a long tail specific keyword, he is a potential customer and chance of conversion is much higher. That’s why the long-tail keyword is so important from a marketing point of view.
Using long-tail keywords in your content is a very effective SEO tactic. Long-tail keywords have comparatively lower search volume than a short-tail keyword. But, the conversion rate is higher. And as competition is lower, you have a very high chance of top ranking in SERP (Search Engine Result Page)provided your content is of good quality and useful.
Why not short-tail keywords?
Short tail keywords are general keywords with higher search volume and high competition. Short tail keywords generally consist of one or two words and their search purpose can be of various types.
For example when a user types the keyword “Mobile” in the search engine, then he may be searching for anything about mobiles like mobile technology or mobile devices. Now the intent of this particular visitor is only to gather information.
Now when anyone searches for “best mobile”, he is a more focused visitor and looking for the mobile handset. Thus, as the count of words increases for a search like “best mobile under Rs 10,000”, the higher the chance of a conversion. So here the search term “best mobile under Rs 10,000” is a Long-tail keyword.
How do I find low competition long-tail keywords?
If you are a new blogger and feeling overwhelmed by reading all those famous blogs with mention of paid SEO tools; my suggestion will keep them aside for your later stage of blogging career.
There are so many free and very effective tools available, you can easily take the help of them to start your blog. After all your content is the heart of your website, as they said: “content is the king”. If you have written a useful content SEO tools will definitely give you a good chance to rank higher.
Tools to find low competition long-tail keywords
Lots of free tools are available there to research on long-tail keywords. Google itself has provided multiple keyword research tools. Google keyword planner, Google correlate, Google related searches are all from Google and very efficient.
Neil Patel, the Italian SEO genius has created Ubersuggest which is also a very powerful tool. It provides keyword research facilities as well as in-depth keyword analysis of any other website/page of your domain.
Answer The Public (ATP) is another very good free tool for long-tail keyword research. It provides questions related to the keyword with very attractive graphic design.
You all have used Google autocomplete facility knowingly or unknowingly that it is also a keyword research tool. And to me, it is the best and most easy option to find a long-tail keyword.
As you type the keyword in the search engine, it starts suggesting you related keywords. You then select one of the suggested keywords with two words and as soon as you put a space, again google autocomplete will suggest the next relevant keyword with more words.
But which one is the best?
I would suggest you use google autocomplete couple with keyword everywhere chrome extension for best performance. With the help of this tool, you will also have the idea of the competition and search volume of the particular long-tail keyword.
Let me explain the use of these two tools with an example. Just follow the image below; suppose you are searching for a long-tail keyword related to the keyword “keyword”. So, as you type in the keyword, google autocomplete will suggest you with next higher-order keywords. Just look at the screenshot no. 1 in the following image.
The keywords with more than one word suggested by Google having the word “keyword”. Now each of the suggested keywords is associated with its monthly search volume, CPC and competition; these numbers are provided by Keyword Everywhere chrome extension.
You must look for a keyword that has a competition value of less than 0.1 to rank fast in the search results. In the second stape suppose you go for the keyword “keyword planner” which has monthly search volume 246,000 and competition 0.17. So, it is also two much competitive to get success.
So, you go for further higher-order keywords and in the third step, you select the keyword “keyword planner for youtube”. Now you can see the search volume for the keyword reduced to only 1,900 but the competition is still 0.13, too high. Although it’s a long-tail keyword, you should go for another longer tail keyword with lesser competition.
So, you move for the next keyword suggestion and suppose you select “keyword planner for youtube free”. Here you can see that this long-tail keyword has a competition value of 0.08. Now it is a long-tail keyword that can do the work for you. Although it has a CPC value 0, don’t bother much for this. As it is a competitive keyword it will definitely have much high CPC value.
Google autocomplete
Conclusion
So, now you have a winning long-tail keyword to start with your blog writing. You can try several tools for this task and come up with long-tail keyword ideas. But always keep in mind that these tools are merely a data aggregator of different search engines. Which may sometimes show the wrong statistics about keywords and mislead you.
So, always use your common sense or intuition about whether the particular keyword really makes any sense or not. If you find it a helpful keyword, do follow your instinct even an SEO tool gives no search volume for that keyword. If it is helpful to you rest assured millions out there are also looking for that keyword.
So, go on start creating good content on that keyword and over time it will surely rank.
Rank your blog without Backlinking: 15 proven tips
Backlinks are not indispensable for your blog’s ranking. You can also rank your blog without Backlinking; yes it is very much true and I will demonstrate to you through this the blog itself you are reading. It has no backlinks and all I have done here some on-page SEO techniques. These techniques I will share here with you and if you are also writing your blog with WordPress, then I bet, these techniques will help your blog to rank too.
Is it really possible to rank without backlinking?
In short, the answer is…yes definitely. Gone are the days when Google algorithm was no different than other search engines like Bing and Yahoo, only relying on factors like backlinks count, keyword density, spurious links created by software, etc. to rank any content.
Nowadays, Google analyzes the content quality in a much more humane way applying far more complex algorithms. It not just accounts for some mechanical parameters but most importantly if the content is truly providing any value to its reader. And, in this process backlinks get less importance today and user experience is the topmost priority.
What backlinks do to improve the visibility of a website
It is a fact that for any competitive keyword to rank in google, backlinking used to be one of the most helpful SEO techniques (no doubt, that’s why the requirement to write such a blog arises in the first place). Backlinks from an authority website enable your website to get fast recognition from your target audience.
Though it is very much true that, if you have written a great blog which is really helpful to the readers, it is for sure that over time it will get backlinking naturally. But, it takes time and like opening a shop in a congested market area without telling anyone and just praying that customers will come to your shop by chance.
Backlinks are believed to not only improve the rank in Google, but it also helps to build domain authority. Domain authority is something that builds the trust of your website amongst your target audience and establishes your brand.
But good content & on-page SEO done correctly can compensate for backlinks
Having said all the capabilities of backlinks, it is also true that Google is changing its search engine algorithms so fast that no one can predict what will be their ranking criteria tomorrow.
So, it may happen that backlinks become of lower priority in future algorithmic changes and your blog’s rank is solely in the hands of on-page SEO. In that case, you may stand a chance to rank without any backlinking if your other SEO techniques are sound.
This is also true that if you are a beginner, getting backlinks at the initial stage is not easy. Backlinking needs promotional and marketing skill, you have to pitch for your content. For an introvert and shy person marketing his product is one heck of a job. I know this very well as I am of this personality. So, I have to depend on on-page SEO to rank my page as backlinking is no option for me.
But, to rank without backlinking you have to follow and implement the following tips religiously. These tips are proven and believed as the factors Google takes into account to judge the user experience and content quality.
Always go for the long-tail keyword which is low competitive but also has low search volume. There are several tools to search long-tail keywords, Google autocomplete can also guide you to find out a long-tail keyword. For long-tail keywords, the competition becomes very low as these keywords target a very specific area and the audience is very targetted compare to any short tail keyword. Although these keywords have low search volume, the conversion rate is higher as the audience is very targeted. When a particular reader is visiting your page, it is very clear that he is already funneled down and very focused to make a decision.
Tip#2: Optimize your content with the focus keyword
Select a compelling focus keyword, for which you want to rank your article. You can see here the focus keyword for this post is “Rank your blog without backlinking”
The keyword should have its mention at the beginning of Title and Headings. But do remember placing the keyword in the content should not appear mechanical otherwise it will disturb the flow of your post lading to bounce of your readers.
Tip#3: Write long articles
The length of any article is often considered as an important parameter to judge its quality. A long article (more than 1,500 words usually) ie generally of standard length and assumed that to be containing all relevant information to satisfy the queries of its readers.
The thumb rule is to first study the top 10 articles on the same topic, note the word count of each article, calculate average and write an article with word count more than the average word count.
If your topic very unique or you are providing a very specific answer to a question, then the above word count rule needs not to be followed. You can write an article as you find suitable.
But if you have selected a popular topic and there are already blogs from established authority websites, then a small article stands no chance to rank.
Tip#4: Create helpful content
Your content should be useful to solve the problem of your readers. It is even true for creating backlinks too. No authority website is going to link to your website if it contains low-quality content.
In the blogging community, it is frequently said that “content is the king” and it is true in all respect. If your content is not useful, no SEO technique can help you. I admit that creating valuable content is a tough call but it has no short cut.
You have to provide better content than at least 10 main competitors of yours for the same focus keyword.
These days engaging people only using text-based content is not easy. You have to use a content mix strategy to keep people on your page for a longer time. This strategy was devised by Chad Zollinger of Best company. The strategy is to create your content with a balanced mix of text, videos and learning resources like e-books.
Infographics are also a very good medium to deliver important information in a very attractive way. But again creating a good appealing infographic takes a long time and requires designing skills.
Most importantly your content must comply with Google’s recent update called “Medic update”which ensures your content meets the standard set by Google in terms of Expertise, Authority, and Trust; in short, they are mentioned as E-A-T.
Tip#5: Page speed
Optimize your website in such a manner that it becomes enticing to the readers with multimedia content but also don’t make the page to load very slow.
Tip#6: Create a responsive website
Very very important. Always ensure that your website is compatible with all device platforms, be it desktop, tablet or mobile.
Tip#7: Include outbound links of trusted authority websites
Link your content with authority websites. As such outbound links establish the trustworthiness of your website, Google gets a signal to rank it higher. In this post also you can notice multiple links to other reputed websites are provided with relevant texts.
Tip#8: Interlink different related posts of your website
Providing interlinks is a powerful SEO trick that may appear very simple but plays an important role to boost your rank. Provide as many links as possible of your own posts related to any keyword. The words even not necessarily match the keywords. For example, this post can be linked to any other post of yours having a reference of on-page SEO related to backlinking.
Interlinks as like outbound links send a powerful signal to Google to consider a post to be good enough to place it higher in rank.
Tip#9: Social media campaigning
Promote your website on different social media. Social media platforms are those where you can be quickly recognized by the like-minded audience and other players in your field. This is the most important and effective way to let people know about your content during the initial phase of your website.
Get involved in different question-answer sites like Quora, Reddit, etc. Actively participate in different discussions on your field going on in these platforms. Try to help people with their problems by providing useful solutions. Gradually you will build your own following and a known expert in your field and traffic will grow organically to your site.
Tip#10: Analyze your competitor websites
Always study those pages/posts with the same topis of yours and try to understand what they have done differently to secure the top position.
Take note of every component except text used in those posts like:
Images used by the posts
Infographics used by them
Video links embedded in the post
If any animations used
And, then try to incorporate some of these relevant components in your post too.
The best part of blogging is that it is an open knowledge system. Every player in this field is keen to share their knowledge and experience, as it is a win-win process. So, gather knowledge from your competitors too, as many of them are old players and have vast experience in the field. So, don’t miss to take advantage of this knowledge.
Tip#11: Give an attractive title to increase the Click Through Rate(CTR)
SEO title by Yoast SEO plugin
This is also a short and easy trick that may be of help to improve ranking. Yoast SEO plugin comes here very useful to create an SEO title. An SEO title comprises two components title of the article and meta description. As the title display only 70 characters and meta description up to 156 characters, try to limit them within the prescribed length. Besides a good title, a crisp meta description is also important to convince your reader in the first look that the post will serve his/her purpose. For example, the meta description of this post is as following:
To rank in Google, Backlinks are helpful but not indispensable. Use these easy but very effective SEO tips given here to rank your blog without Backlinking.
Also, don’t forget to mention your focus keyword in the SEO title. To check all these criteria Yoast SEO plugin can be your friend. See in the image above, the plugin provides a crisp snippet preview of the SEO title for this present article of mine. This snippet is all that your visitors going to see when they search for that focus keyword. So, it is of great importance and should be enticing enough to compel them to click through your page/post.
Tip#12: Get Feedback from your readers
It is the most effective way to improve your content. Keep your mind open to receive any kind of criticism and if it is constructive, incorporate them in your business model to make it more perfect. Feedbacks are also something that can create a bond between you and your customers; otherwise, people will come, visit your page and go away. In this busy world with so many competitive websites to be engaged with they will not remember you and your content any longer.
Asking for honest feedback from them can be a way to involve them further and create a feeling of a valued customer. Even Google also takes customers’ feedback as the number of stars and analyzes the sentiment of reviews to decide their local SEO strategies.
Tip#13: Study the backlinks used by your competitor websites
Some SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Ubbersuggest, etc. help you to spy (nothing unethical) on your competitor websites. This is a good way to have an idea about important and popular keywords you can also go for.
Tip#14: Optimize post images
Image optimization is a vital SEO strategy. Try to optimize your image with an appropriate size, don’t use a heavy image unnecessarily when a smaller size image can serve the purpose. Use your focus keywords in Alt and Title text of the image, Google’s crawlers decide if an image is SEO friendly by reading these texts.
Tip#15: Few more points to remember
Keep navigation easy: Limit adds and affiliate links to an optimum number. So that they do not distract the reader from the main content. Strike a balance between your monetizing policy and good user experience.
SSL certificate:This also determines the rank of any website to some extent as SSL certificate ensures users’ security
How old the domain is and activity:An old domain (at least one-year-old) has more chance to rank better if it gets regularly updated
Use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Keywords: Use related keywords also in your content along with the focus keyword
Conclusion
So, hopefully, you don’t have any doubt after reading this post about if your rank can rank without backlinking. All the tips discussed in this post are all tried, tested and proved to be super helpful to rank good content without any backlinks.
The only thing you have to do is to write a really useful article and optimize your post with the methods mentioned here. And, if it is really good content, over time it will acquire backlinks automatically.
Though backlinks are very useful without any doubt. But Google is always changing their crawling algorithm and backlinks may be of not that useful in the coming days. So, your website ideally should sustain without any backlinks too.
Best SEO tools available free for a new blogger in 2019
The purpose of this blog is to present the most helpful guide to select the best free SEO tools in 2019. The vast collection of free, as well as paid SEO tools, throws a tough challenge towards a new blogger to select a set of tools to start with his blog. This comprehensive guide of free SEO tools is to help them out.
To help you with SEO tasks, so many tools and plugins both free and paid are available. Some of them are really awesome and make the optimization task really easy. For new blogger the constrains are mainly tight budget and lack of knowledge. Free tools are the most convenient way to overcome budget limitations.
SEO tools to begin with
But the problem for a newbie, when looking for guidance on the internet about SEO tools, he finds all pro bloggers in their popular websites using premium SEO tools. It is quite frustrating when you think to give them a competition armed with free SEO tools.
But believe me, the free SEO tools I am going to mention here are no way less than their premium counterparts. WordPress SEO plugins are also very helpful, a comprehensive list of these SEO plugins you can find here. If your content is better than others, you already deserve to outrank them. Now as you have written a very useful content for your readers, an appropriate SEO strategy will help the search engine to understand the relevance of your content. And the result is improved ranking in SERP.
It is like scoring in exams. If your answer is wrong, good handwriting can not fetch good marks for you. But if your answer is correct then good handwriting is always an edge for you.
Options of SEO tools are so large that for a beginner it is quite tough to select the most appropriate one for him. So, here category-wise top 10 free SEO tools are listed.
Most helpful free SEO tools
If you are a beginner in blogging, I will suggest, start with free SEO tools. You can go for paid SEO tools at the later stage when the blog starts getting traffic. You will be a lot more confident by then and can choose wisely which SEO tool worth your investment.
1. Google search console
A keyword analysis is the first and most important step in SEO. The ranking of your website primarily depends on the selection of the right keywords. Keywords are those word or phrases which are searched by people in search engines. If keywords are used properly in the content search engine will drive traffic to your site.
Google search console itself is a very good tool for keyword research. Be it short tail or long tail google search is the best place to research. As millions of people are typing billions of questions every second to find a solution in google search, the intelligent google search algorithm indexes them. Now when you type any keyword in Google search, it suggests you with the most relevant long-tail version of that.
2. Keyword everywhere:
This is another very effective and easy tool to give you an idea of potential keywords. This tool comes as a browser extension. As you type any keyword in Google search, the tool will immediately provide you the statistics related to monthly search volume, cost per click and AdWords competition then and there. You will get keyword ideas in “people also search for” section as well. The tool has an option to download the Keywords in CSV too.
It’s a free tool but when the first time you are doing research on any keyword, this is your best friend. You go to google keyword planner and set your target region, one or multiple countries can be selected. Then type keyword or combination of keywords of your interest and it will give you keyword ideas with an important statistic on monthly search volume, competition, and cost per click (CPC), based on first-hand data straight from google search engine
This is the last tool in this category. It is also very helpful to get an idea of what type of questions can be asked by people related to the keyword. You have to just put the keyword in the search box, ATP will generate a cool graphic displaying questions and other relevant phrases around the keyword that people tend to type in search engines.
It is one of my favorite tools to research the long-tail keyword. It lets you generate keyword ideas related to your search, provides highest-ranking pages on that topic and in-depth research on those websites. It’s a very easy to use and effective tool for bloggers writing content targeting a particular niche. Ubersuggets helps to perform a quick search long-tail keywords with low competition and moderate search volume. Ubersuggest collects all these data mainly from Google suggest which also gives you an idea of related keywords.
The tool has been developed by Neil Patel, an Italian guy, and a renowned SEO expert. His famous blog neilpatel.com is a treasure trove for all bloggers to acquire digital marketing skills.
Your website is successful when it gets a high volume of traffic. And, in today’s era, more than 60% of internet users access internet content through mobile phones. So, now it is obvious why your site has to go through this test. If your webpages are not mobile-friendly, then you are straight away deprived of half of the total traffic. In this tool, you just enter the URL to see how your pages score.
It’s the most popular analytic tool to analyze the traffic to your website; it enables you to identify which pages and links are clicked maximum by users and helps to group visitors in different segments. Thus with the help of this tool, you formulate a sound strategy to grow your business. It has free as well as paid services (in that sense called “freemium”) with advanced features.
8. Google PageSpeed Insights
This tool is to check the speed of your website on both desktop and mobile devices. You just give the URL of your site, it will instantly analyze the page load speed and tell you if your website is fast. If it scores between 0 to 49, its a slow site, if the score is between 50-89 then medium and if between 90-100 then it’s a fast site. This information is of utmost importance for a website. As, if the website loads slow, the bounce rate is higher. On the other hand, if the site is fast it has a better chance to rank higher in Google search results.
It is a tool to check domain authority scores and other advances metrics of any webpage or SERPs. It comes as a chrome extension and obviously free. If you want to do some analysis of your competitor websites on the go like domain authority and particular page authority, it is a good option.
As a website, Similarweb which provides web analytics service for business. This browser extension is also very useful and helps you to gain insights about any particular website’s traffic and key metrics like engagement rate, traffic, keyword ranking, etc. on the go.
It is probably the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress. It is with WordPress since 2008. Although it has its premium version with a lot more features; the free version installed by default during installing WordPress is pretty capable of doing the optimization tasks at the starting phase of blogging.
The plugin indicates if the content of your page meets SEO standards in all three sectors like readability, presence of key phrase and social networking. The plugin is loved by millions across the world and if used in its full potential you can always expect good rank in search results.
Yoast SEO
12. Small SEO tools
This is the last tool in my least but not the least. This website presents a collection of some very effective and necessary tool for blogging; all free. It provides a plagiarism checker to check if your content violating any copyright, website SEP score checker, keyword rank checker, keyword suggestion tool, etc.
Conclusion
These 12 tools listed here are all free and you can fully trust them for the SEO task. You just start your blog and focus on creating good, useful content and try to make it visually appealing. As I have mentioned earlier, in the end, you are writing for human beings; if your readers are happy and satisfied then only SEO plays its role.
So, start your blog journey confidently armed with these tools. Please let me know your experience with these tools. If you find any other tool which I should include in this list let me know that too through your comments.
What are the different types of SEO techniques? A comprehensive guide
SEO is the most important technique for any website to decide its ranking in search engine result pages (SERP). It is an art more than the science of combining strategy, technique, and skills to enhance the visibility of a website by increasing organic traffic.
If you do it well, the quality and quantity of traffic to the website will increase significantly.
Different types of SEO
This article is about different types of SEO techniques mostly used by digital marketers to enhance the visibility of their website. You must have thorough knowledge about these different types of SEO to apply them effectively and most importantly to be aware and stay away from any unethical SEO practice which is strictly prohibited by Google Webmaster guidelines. Violating these guidelines fixed by Google for webmasters may lead to serious consequences like demoting in search results to even removal from Google search indexes. This will ruin all your hard work and the huge time you put to develop your website.
So, read this post carefully, all the nitty-gritty of different types of SEO has been compiled in one place so that you don’t have to run here and there.
Before we jump into the types of SEO and other details, let’s understand SEO first.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This is a key term for anyone who deals with internet/affiliate marketing. To rank an article or any content higher in the search results of search engines, SEO is indispensable. SEO increases the nonpaid or “organic traffic” to your site. The knowledge of SEO enables you to optimize the content of posts to rank higher. As the famous line goes “ SEO is both an art and science” is more than true. You have to make your content SEO optimized without compromising its readability.
SEO is like reading the mind of your readers. SEO tries to understand what people search online, what they want. Tries to find keywords that people are looking for and content that can attract people. SEO helps you to know the exact question people are searching to answer so that you can create useful content with the answer.
Different types of SEO
The main purpose of any business is to provide value to people and in turn earning money. In this way business is done honestly creates a win-win situation. But just like two sides of a coin, there are also abusers of SEO techniques, there are people who adopt unethical practices of doing business for short term gains. Such business does not last long and leads to bankruptcy. Both of these situations are primarily determined by how the technique of SEO has been applied by the website owner.
Based on the way SEO techniques are applied to boost the website’s visibility, it can be categorized as below:
White Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO
Grey Hat SEO and
Negative SEO
If SEO is done following search engine rules and ethically is called “White Hat SEO”. The primary focus of white hat SEO is to cater to helpful content to people while abiding by Google WebMaster Guidelines. Using White Hat SEO will get your site a slow but steady growth. After an initial phase of slow growth in the ranking, a snowball effect will drive huge traffic to the site leading to much faster improvement in ranking.
You can find almost all established SEO and content marketing websites like Moz, Backlinko.com, Semrush, Ahrefs, Neilpatel.com follow and suggest to adhere to White Hat SEO using best SEO tools and SEO plugins. Because success has no shortcuts, you have to go through a long and initially hard working phase to reap the sustainable benefit later. You can not just launch your site and get to the top amongst millions of other similar websites who are competing hard to provide more and more value to their readers. If your content is better than others and continues to be so, in a natural way you gradually move to the top.
Go through all these WebMaster Guidelines to check any kind of SEO practice that is not approved by Google and can even lead to the removal from the Search Index.
When SEO adopts unfair means by misusing the search engine algorithm’s weakness to fool the search engine and rank higher, is called “Black Hat SEO”. It may help you to rank your site temporarily but in the end, such unethical practice will put you in deep trouble of the site getting blacklisted and removed from search results. Doing Blak Hat SEO is a complete violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines so not sustainable at all.
Grey Hat SEO is something not really forbidden in Google’s webmaster guidelines that’s why it can not be called Black Hat SEO but certainly not ethical to use. Some examples of Grey Hat SEO are using paid reviews, copied content, using clickbait i.e. to make visitors click any particular link without providing any useful content. Sometimes people are so desperate to rank their sites overnight that they forget the basic principle of providing value through blogs and get trapped by these wrong SEO techniques.
If you are writing anything out of passion, have skills in the field and want to share your knowledge with the world, you don’t have to read any guidelines. Your content will be loved by your readers which Google will also come to know and improve its ranking.
As the name suggests, the Negative SEO technique is adopting unfair means to cause harm to competitor websites to rank higher without improving its own content quality. Sometimes people get over competitive and start writing negative reviews about their competitors, steal their content and even try to hack their sites.
These SEO strategies are basically categorized depending on Good and Bad SEO techniques. Except these, SEO techniques are further subdivided into a few more categories which are no way different from each other, rather these breakdown is basically to come up with smaller processes which can be handled better.
These SEO categories are as below:
On-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO
Technical SEO
Content SEO
Local SEO
Mobile SEO
eCommerce SEO
On-Page SEO
It refers to those SEO strategies which are solely limited to website or page content, like keyword optimization, image optimization, creating SEO friendly title, URL and meta description. This SEO ultimately makes the task easy for Google to identify if the content in your site is meaningful, helpful to your readers. Doing on-page SEO is comparatively easier and less time consuming compare to off-page SEO.
Off-Page SEO
This type of SEO refers to techniques that are beyond the content of your website i.e how your website is recognized by your reader community, other popular websites in your niche and social media response. If a website of your niche and with good domain authority refers to your post in its content then its a very important signal to Google that your website has something worth citing in such a popular website. This is called backlinking and is important for ranking. High-quality backlinks indicate the reputation and authority of your website. Use guest posts is an effective way to achieve high-quality backlinks.
Technical SEO
This SEO strategy is concerned with some factors which are not related to the content of the website but are also determining factor for any website’s ranking. Background factors of any website like as mentioned below come under this type of SEO technique.
Mobile-friendliness or responsiveness
Creating an XML sitemap and optimizing robots.txt file
Page loading speed
Security certificate
Site structure
Ease of navigation
Crawlability
You can find elaborate discussion on these factors here.
On-page, Off-page, and technical SEO
Content SEO
This is a part of On-Page SEO only. This is all about writing great content providing some real value to the audience. It also suggests thorough keyword research before you start writing your content. If you are a beginner in blog writing, better to find a low competition long tail keyword for fast ranking.
Local SEO
It refers to optimization strategies applied to any local business i.e. if you have a local store then local SEO will be applied to the website for that store. As your target audience are the customers of your area, so you should use your locality name in your business or website name, contact details, and address. The SEO strategies mentioned above, all will be applicable for local SEO.
Mobile SEO
In today’s world where almost 60% of internet users are accessing the internet through their mobile, it becomes of utmost importance to make your website mobile-friendly in all possible ways. Like your site structure or theme should be mobile responsive i.e. the website will be automatically adjusted according to the mobile screen size, page load speed in mobile handsets must be quick, ideally readers should not have to scroll much in their mobile to get to your page content i.e. you should start your page content just below the page title to make it easy for reading in mobile.
eCommerce SEO
An eCommerce site highly depends on its SEO and it is also far more complex On-Page SEO process than any other website or blog. An eCommerce site consists of a large number of pages and also heavily loaded with product images and details. So, all these components need to be optimized with lots of patience. Especially the Homa Page and Category page are very crucial to attract customers and lure them to make a purchase.
Off-Page SEO for eCommerce sites is also very critical. The promotion of such sites in social media platforms determines the volume of organic traffic to a large extent.
Conclusion
This article covers almost all types of SEO techniques you need to know and apply to enhance the visibility of your site. And, also all those unethical SEO practices you have to carefully avoid to keep your website in the good book of Google and ultimately get loved by your readers.
Here several types of SEO processes are discussed which are purposefully broke down into small processes so that you can adopt them with ease.
Create a great website to cater to really useful information to your audience and then apply the SEO strategies as discussed here, success is bound to come over time. You have to keep patience and go on adding and updating your content and blogs. Google will surely come to know that there is a blog which is providing value and automatically promote it to the top search position.
Event blogging is blogging about a particular event. In an event blog, you target any upcoming event and provide information about that. Unlike normal blogs, its focus will be very specific, less voluminous to drive very targeted traffic from the search engine. There are several festivals we celebrate each year, several events of national or international importance are going on almost every other day. You can target any of these events to write about and provide useful information people look for. The trend is, generally, traffic to such blogs witness rising traffic as the event approaches, at its pick during the event is going on and gradually subsides as the event is over. Some examples of some popular event blogs are like a blog for Diwali wishes, IPL 2019. Keeping in mind the biggest event of sports Olympic going to be held in Tokyo, Japan several event blogs are already drawing huge traffic, one such event blog is to inform people on Japan rail pass.
So, like these blogs, you can also target any upcoming event and write a blog to provide your target audience useful information about the event. If an event blog is created properly, then its earning potential is many times more than normal blogs generating passive income.
Event blogging 2019
Event blogging in 2019 is going to be very lucrative. You can choose any upcoming event like:
Religious festivals: Navratri, Diwali, Eid, Christmas eve, Holi, etc.
Holidays and other days: Independence day, Republic day, Father’s Day, Mother’s day, etc.
popular sporting event: Olympic, IPL, World Cup, Pro Kabaddi League, etc.
Other miscellaneous occasions are there which may generate sudden interest in people like any exam results in regional level or National level,
The duration for the event blog maybe for a few hours, days or a maximum few weeks. It has no relevance once the event is finished. But in these short times, an event blog has the potential to generate income which a normal blog earns in a year!!!
Event blogging example
The scope of event blogging in India is much higher as unlike foreign countries, in India event blogging sites are less. So, this year it will provide a great opportunity for you to select certain upcoming events and start writing your blog. Festival months are coming. India will celebrate big festivals like Navratri & Diwali. People go crazy during these festivals. For example, you can take an example of Durgapuja of West Bengal celebrated during the last four days of Navratri. Its an extravaganza of every aspect of life.
Bengalis start their preparation for this event months before the festival and scour the internet about food, fashion, fitness, tour and travel, and everything.
You can grab this scope and open a special event blog on Durga puja to provide all this information to provide a one-stop solution for all queries of people. Start with 10-15 articles, publish the blog as the festival time approaches go on adding more articles following the recent trades. Optimize your content using SEO techniques and if you are able to rank your blog in a search engine you can earn a fortune in this brief period of 2-3 months of festival.
Event blogging secrets
You must have got wishes from your near and dear ones during any festival, you open the message and enjoy the beautiful message with some awesome photos. Suppose today or tomorrow’s father’s day/mother’s day or valentine’s day. You would also want to send a very personal message to your close one to wish on a special day and start searching google for good content. Not only you, millions and billions of other people will also do the same thing.
So, why not to help them by creating content to provide value to them. If you can create good content, it will make happy whoever will land on your site thus your page views will be more and you will earn good money. It’s a win-win situation. So its no secret that creating good content is of prime importance for a successful blog. But
The negative side of event blogging
Till now we were only discussing the pros of event blogging, how it can earn you a lot of money in a very short span of time. But it has some downside too which you have to keep in mind and be prepared. Even the blog is created keeping a particular event in mind. So, generally, the rush of visitors to such blogs last for only a few days to a few weeks. So, you have to be prepared with the best hosting and bandwidth services to manage the traffics during the pick times. You have to be vigilant about any kind of crash or problem in your site during the occasion and quickly troubleshoot it. These investments and hard work is done in a smart way will ensure the success of your blog.
Event blogging in Hindi
Event blogging in Hindi is always a good choice when you are an Indian blogger and targetting Indian festivals to write an event blog. You can connect easily to your readers with the Hindi language. An online survey revealed that in India there are almost 45 crore people who can read only Hindi. As per google record in recent times more than 0.01% of total content in Google is in Hindi. And the volume of search in Hindi is increasing steadily. So, the future of Hindi even blogs is very bright.
How to start event blogging?
Starting an event blog is no different than creating a normal blog. You have to follow the steps below:
1. The first step is selecting the name of the blog:
A unique domain name is to be created for your blog. The name should be something that reflects the content of your blog. In the case of event blogging, you can choose any upcoming event and the name may use the event name as a keyword. Thus, the reader of your blog gets an idea about the blog at first sight. You should give some time to research on domain name selection. A good domain name helps a blog to rank faster in google search as google gets an idea about what you are blogging about. Besides, the name should be unique and available i.e. it was not registered before by another person, it should be easy and catchy to remember for the reader.
2. Select a host to get your blog online
Select a good host for publishing your blog so that the world can see it. You can start your blog in free in BlogSpot/Blogger or WordPress. The first one is free and you can easily start your blog in BlogSpot. The benefit of starting a blog in BlogSpot is that you don’t have to take any headache regarding hosting plan and maintaining your site Google will take care of it and most importantly… it’s completely free.
But the plus point with WordPress is it looks more professional, the visitors of your site will get the impression that you are serious in your business. You can customize your site as you want and as it is paid, you will get support from the service provider for any problem you face.
My advice will be if you just starting your blog and with a tight budget, start with blogger. Gain some experience and confidence first. When you will see the good response for your blogs you can always start your professional blog with paid hosting.
3. Start writing useful content
The main part of your blog is the continent. as it is said that content is the king so you must put Syria support to create good quality and useful content. content should be like a one to one conversation with your reader. you should assume that your reader is sitting next to you and you yourself are talking to him. so the tone should be casual and easy to understand.
Images, infographics, embedded videos, podcasts, etc. are very good tools to keep your audience involved in your blog.
4. DO proper keyword research
Keyword research is very essential for your blog. It is one of the important (Search Engine Optimization tools) which will help you rank in search engines. SO, do proper keyword research and include long-tail less competitive keywords in your content headings and body. But in this process keep this in mind that this should not disturb the flow of your content, as you are ultimately writing for human not machine.
5. Create backlinks
This is an off-page SEO technique where you create backlinks from some good quality authority websites of your domain. Start networking through different social networking platforms. Take part in different question-answer sites. This will help you get recognition as an expert in your field and help in the promotion of your blog.
6. Monetize your blog
As your blog starts getting the traffic you should monetize it. To earn from your blog you have to monetize your blog. There are several options like Google Adsense, affiliate marketing, selling your own products, etc.
7. Continue to update your content and remain vigilant during the particular event
Now your blog is published with good 25-30 quality blogs for the world to read. As the event date approaches you should update and go on adding relevant content. Adding content at regular intervals is important, as your readers will follow your blog for your newly added blog. Most importantly remain active during the events as there is a chance that the traffic on your site sees a sudden rise during. So, any problem related to your blog like a crash, page error needs to be fixed quickly otherwise you will lose a significant number of valuable visitors.
Conclusion
Bloggers are always proactive to use the opportunity before any special event to earn some good income through event blogging. Particularly a country of festivals like India you can always provide a good source of information through event blogs. If you are a new blogger and wish to write an event blog, the best way to avoid the competition with pro blogger is to select a topic with low competition to rank quickly in search engines. Don’t step back being afraid of competition. If you stay there for a significant time, keep on adding valuable content, it may take time but you will be successful.
SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR…. START YOUR BLOG NOW !!!!
