What is “ILIZIEN.COM – SEO Guide for 2021” all about?

I consider myself to be a beginner into the world of SEO and digital marketing. I have tried to address the two main pain points of beginners’ entering the domain of SEO. They are firstly not being very conversant with technical terms of SEO and also getting overwhelmed by the enormity of SEO checklists that are abundant on the internet. “ILIZIEN.COM – SEO Guide for 2021” is my humble attempt towards the same.

I have included a glossary of technical terms for the beginners to understand the check-off list that follows. The check-off list in itself only contains points that I consider are inescapable for SEO and that have also been verified by Search engine owners like Google. I feel that this guide, while may not be as exhaustive as some of the check-off lists that are available on the internet but will certainly help as a ready reckoner for SEO enthusiasts to follow. I feel that this guide will help them build a good foundation to grow their knowledge further and become very conversant with the nuances of this domain.   

Contents

1. Prologue.
2. Glossary of Key Terms.
3. How Do Search Engines Rank Pages?.
4. The SEO Guide – 2021..
5. Conclusion..

1.           Prologue

Ever since Google came out with a fact that they use more than 200 queries to rank a page, internet has been flooded with 200-point check-off lists. While it is commendable that sites have done research to come out with such detailed lists, they themselves will admit quite candidly that not all points indicated in the lists have been verified by any of the search engines. From drawing inferences from top ten sites ranked in search engine results for different queries, to being a bit speculative, sites have populated lists with at least 200 points. I think it has been assumed that anything lesser that 200 would not be deemed creditable by visitors or readers.

To be honest, I want to take nothing away from any of them as it takes knowledge and research way above ordinary to compile such an enormous list. As a beginner in to the world of SEO, these lists have helped me to a great extend to understand SEO and also motivated me to do a research and try and compile a list of my own.

However, I was not motivated to create a 200-point list but wanted to create a guide to a beginner like me, who at the beginning is all lost with technical jargons and the enormity of such check-off lists. I have done my own research from all the reputed site owner’s lists and tried to find if any of the search engines have endorsed the points in the lists to be one that they follow in ranking a page.

I have uploaded the Guide in PDF on my site. Readers can download it here

ILIZIEN.COM – SEO Guide for 2021 – pdf

I have also uploaded a wmv file for those who may like to see it ‘on-the-go’.

ILIZIEN.COM – SEO Guide for 2021 – wmv

Readers can ask me for the power point presentation by mailing me by visiting our contact-us page

2.           Glossary of Key Terms

•  Keyword – A word that a user enters in search.
• Search Engine Results Page (SERP) – The page search engines display to users after conducting a search. Typically, search engines show about 10 organic search results, sorted by relevance.
• Title Tag – An HTML meta tag that acts as the title of a webpage. Typically, the title tag is the title search engines use when displaying search listings, so it should include strategic and relevant keywords for that specific
• Traffic – The people (and sometimes bots) who visit a website.
• Landing Page – A standalone web page, created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign. It is where a visitor “lands” after they click on a link in email / ads / other places on the web.
• Webpage – A document that is viewed in an Internet Can be accessed by entering   a URL address into a browser’s address bar.
• Sitemap – A list of pages on a website. There are two types of sitemaps:
  1. HTML: This type of sitemap, typically organized by topics, helps site users navigate a website.
  2. XML: This type of sitemap provides crawlers with a list of webpages on a website.
• CSS – A Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is the code that makes a website look a certain way (ex: fonts and colors).
• Critical Rendering path – The sequence of steps a browser goes through to convert HTML, CSS and JavaScript into a viewable web page.
• Rendering – The process of a browser turning a website’s code into a viewable page.
• Render-blocking scripts – A script that forces your browser to wait to be fetched before the page can be rendered.
• PHP – Hypertext Preprocessor is a scripting language used to create dynamic content on webpages.
• Page Title or Title tag – The name you give your web page, which is seen at the top your browser window or browser tab. Page titles should contain keywords related to your business and the web page content.
• Meta Description – A tag that can be added to the “head section of an HTML document. It acts as a description of a webpage’s content.
• Headings – Text on your website that is placed inside of a heading tag, such as an H1 or H2. Presence of keywords help in SEO
• LSI Keywords – Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords are conceptually related terms closely tied to target keyword that search engines use to understand content on a webpage. They are NOT synonyms.
• Pagination – Splitting a page into multiple parts in a sequence (helpful on very large pages).
• Lazy loading – A way of deferring the loading of an object until it’s needed. (improves page speed).
• Breadcrumb – A navigational element that helps users easily figure out where they are within a website.
• Schema – A form of microdata which, once added to a webpage, creates an enhanced description (commonly known as a rich snippet), which appears in search results.
• Alt text (Alternative text) – Used within an HTML code to describe the appearance and function of an image on a page.
• Link – A connection between two websites built using HTML code. A link enables users to navigate to websites, social networks, and apps. Links play a critical role in how search engines evaluate and rank websites.
• Outbound Link – A link that directs visitors to a page on a different website than the one they are currently on.
• Internal Links – Hyperlinks that point at (target) the same domain as the domain that the link exists on (source).
• Link Building – A process designed to get other trusted and relevant websites to link to a website to help improve organic search rank and visibility.
• NoFollow – Links marked up with rel=”nofollow” do not pass PageRank.
• An application programming interface (API) – Allows for the creation of applications by accessing the features or data of another service like an operating system or application.
• txt – The Robots Exclusion Protocol is a text file (at the root of a website) that tells search engine crawlers which areas of a website should be ignored.
• Rel=canonical –           Is a way of telling search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. It prevents problems caused by identical or “duplicate” content appearing on multiple URLs.
• Organic Search – The natural, or unpaid, listings that appear on a SERP. Organic search results are designed to give users the most relevant result based on their query.
• On-Page SEO – The activities within a website to increase listing in organic search. Publishing relevant, high-quality content, Optimizing HTML code (e.g., title tags, meta tags), information architecture, website navigation, and URL structure.
• Off-Page SEO – Demand generation and brand awareness activities outside of a website. Link building, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Offline Marketing Channels (OOH)
• Search volume – The number of times a keyword was searched.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR) – The rate (expressed in a percentage) at which users click on an organic search result. This is calculated by dividing the total number of organic clicks by the total number of impressions.
• Conversion – When a user completes a desired action on a website like Completing a purchase, completing a form, downloading content, Subscribing, Video views etc.
• User Experience (UX) – The overall feeling users are left with after interacting with a brand, its online presence, and its product/services.
• Page Experience – Measures aspects of how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page.
• Core Web Vitals – Set of real-world, user- centered metrics that quantify key aspects of the user experience such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads.
• Mobile Friendliness – Optimization of content of a website to suit the smaller screen of mobiles and tablets. Included in page ranking by google.
• Intrusive Interstitials – Showing a popup, displaying a standalone, that covers the main content, either immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results, or while they are looking through the
• Session Duration – Measures time spent on a site by user.
• RankBrain – Uses historical search data to make predictions about previously unseen queries.
• Average Time on Page – The amount of time visitor spends on one of the pages, on average.
• Bounce Rate – The percentage of website visitors who leave without visiting another page on that website. It is the percentage of single-page sessions divided by all the sessions for a website.
• Dwell time – The time a user stays on the result before going back to the SERP.
• 301 Redirect – A signal to the search engines that a web page has moved. A person attempting to reach the original page gets taken to a new page that’s the closest match.
• 404 Error – A type of technical SEO error that signals the web page could not be found (often because it has been moved or deleted).
• Sitelinks – Up to six algorithmically chosen links that appear below the listing for the same website of a top-ranked organic search result.
• Cache – Technology that temporarily stores website content in order to improve the load time of web pages.
• PPC (Pay Per Click) – A type of advertising where advertisers are charged a certain amount (usually determined by bid, relevance, account history, and competition) every time a user clicks on the ad. Combining PPC and SEO can result in more SERP real estate, clicks, and conversions. Also, PPC data can inform your SEO strategy, and the reverse is also true.
• Sources/ References
  1. https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/seo-glossary
  2. https://www.searchengincom/seo-101/seo-glossary-terms-definitions/
  3. https://pathfinderseo.com/guide/seo-glossary/

3.            How Do Search Engines Rank Pages?

Web Crawling

• It is searching the World Wide Web & copying what is on web
• Automated programs are used for
• These programs are called bots /crawlers /spiders / web crawlers.
• Web pages are repeatedly checked for
• Any changes found on web pages are copied repeatedly.

Indexing

• The copied data by ‘crawlers’ is stored in search engine data centers.
• The data and pages are organized so they can be searched quickly.
• This process is called ‘Indexing.’
• The repository of web pages is referred to as the ‘Index’
• The pages & data from ‘Index’ is returned for relevant results to search queries.

Algorithm

• • Stored webpages are retuned in order of relevance of a
  • This requires Ranking of web
  • Done to ensure that the most relevant pages are displayed first in the
  • Inbuilt algorithms is used to rank pages
  • There are queries are built into the algorithm.
  • Pages are evaluated against inbuilt queries.
  • More than 200 queries to evaluate a web page!
  • Typical queries are:-
    • Does this page contain your keywords?
    • Are the keywords in title or URL?
    • Is the page from a quality website?
    • What is this page’s page-rank?
    • How many important outside links does the page have?
    • And many more…

4.            The SEO Guide – 2021

The check-lists for SEO have been covered under 3 main groups for brevity and simplicity:-

4.1.    Optimize for Searches.

(1)      Find suitable Keywords or Key Phrases you want to rank your page for.

• Understand what searchers are searching for in connection with what you are offering on your site by typing keyword in search engines.
• Get keywords suggestions from Key words everywhere / Keywords surfer by downloading extensions for your search engine.
• Upload suggested keywords/phrases and in Google Adwords – keywords planner.
• Choose the low competition high average month searches keywords.

(2)      Choose Long tail Keywords.

• Long keywords are what serious searchers use to find products / services. Almost 70% of searches in search demand curve are for long tail keywords

https://moz.com/blog/illustrating-the-long-tail

(3)      Make your Meta Description aligned with the keyword you are optimizing for.

• Meta Descriptions do not boost SEO, but a Meta description is something that a searcher will see under your URL.
• However, Right content in Meta Description will increase chances of click to your website.
• Use of keywords in Meta description increases the chances of Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

 (4)      Use keywords at the start of Title Tags

• According to Moz , title tags that starts with a keyword tend to perform better than title tags with the keyword towards the end of the tag.
• Google only displays 60 letters of your title or 600 pixels. Searchers decide on opening / not opening a site after reading one or two words of the title.
• Keyword in beginning of Title tag thus result in higher Click Through Ratios

(5)      Use keywords in URL

• Users are more likely to click on your website if they see the keyword domain in the URL when compared to other domains that show up in the search results.

4.2.   Page Optimization

(6)      Use focus key word / phrase only once.

• The main reason why one should not use the focus key-phrase more than once is to avoid competition within the pages for a position in Google.
• This phenomenon is called keyword CANNIBALIZATION.
• If one optimizes two different articles for the same focus key-phrase, it is like telling Google that both are suitable for people searching for that keyword!

(7)      Use Unique Keywords

• Include modifiers like “best”, “2016” etc. to stand out and to pick up long tail searches. https://www.completedigitalmarketingcourse.com/seo- checklist/
• Absolutely avoid default titles, like “Home” or “New Page” — these titles may cause Google to think that you have duplicate content across your site. https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag.

(8)      Use keywords in H1 Tag

• Search engine spiders read the HTML code and identify which sentences are the heading tags (h1, h2, etc.).
• They consider these as indicative of the page content.
• Use of keywords in H1 tag, helps search engines understand what a page is all about.

(9)      Optimize Keywords in content – Not less than 3% & not more than 3.5%

• More the frequency, the more relevant the page is to the keyword.
• Term frequency–inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) measures the importance of a keyword phrase by comparing it to the frequency of the term in a large set of documents.
• Search Engines use this to gauge relevance of page to the keyword.
• However, use of keywords more than 3-3.5% of total words is called “Keyword stuffing”

(10)   Use Optimum Content Length

• The average Google first page result contains 1,447 words. However, while content length is corelated to page ranking, it is not a proven fact!
• However, if you are a beginner, avoid risk of Google flagging you for thin-content or duplicate content by pushing out posts/blogs with fewer than 250 words
• Do not waste your time in writing unrelated content just to meet 2000 words requirement that most SEOs will tell you! Instead write quality articles!

(11)   Improve Content Quality

• Readability is important to your users and to search engines.
• Articles that have compelling headlines, easy structures, and a creative use of images, videos, or infographics are more likely to be seen as valuable to other webmasters as well.

https://linkgraph.io/content-length-and-seo-does-it-really-matter

• Comprehensive content with a high “Content Grade” , significantly outperformed content that didn’t cover a topic in-depth. 

https://backlinko.com/search-engine-ranking

(12)   Improve “Content Relevance”

• The term refers to how well the information on a website relates to a search query. It is one of the most important criteria for page ranking!
• Criteria for Content Relevance:

o   Body copy: This refers to how well the meaning of the copy matches the search.

o   Content language: Supplying content in the same language as the query is made is a must for relevance.

o  Images: Visual images support the text information.

o   Local aspect: Use terms that relate to the certain region.

o   Page title: The page title can indicate the website’s main topic.

https://designlab.net.au/content-relevance-for-seo/

(13)   Earn Quality Backlinks

• Getting backlinks from multiple different sites is one of the best ways for search engines to determine the popularity of a given web page.
• This stems from the idea that external links are one of the hardest metrics to manipulate.
• The metrics used by major search engines these to determine the value of external links: –

o   Trustworthiness of the linking domain. Popularity of the linking page.

o  Relevancy of the content between the source page and the target page.

o   Number of links to the same page on the source page. Number of root domains that link to the target page.

o   Ownership relationship between the source and target domains.

(14)   Improve “Site Speed”

• Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.
• Faster sites create happy users! Recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs.
• Longer page load times have a severe effect on bounce rates. For example:

o  If page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, bounce rate increases 32%

o   If page load time increases from 1 second to 6 seconds, bounce rate increases by 106%

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web- search-ranking.html

(15)   Fix Duplicate content Issues

• Duplicate content refers to content that is shared between domains or between multiple pages of a single domain.
• Three main ways to fix duplicate content are:

o   301 redirect – A redirect is a way to send both users and search engines to a different URL from the one they originally requested.

o   Use Rel=Canonical tag – This tells search engines that a given page should be treated as though it were a copy of a specified URL.

o   Use META ROBOTS with the values “noindex, follow.“ The meta robots tag allows search engines to crawl the links on a page but keeps them from including those links in their indices.

https://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content

(16)   Absolutely avoid Automatically generated content.

• Automatically generated content is content that’s been generated programmatically.
• It can be identified when the content has all the keywords but doesn’t make sense while reading!
• In cases where it is intended to manipulate search rankings and not help users, Google may take actions on such content.
• Read more at

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721306

(17)   Grammar and Spelling

• While Google has not stated clearly whether it penalizes Spelling / Grammatical errors, Bing has been more assertive regarding this.
• Typos certainly diminish user experience and thus increase bounce rate! High bounce rate will certainly affect your page’s ranking.
• Also you will not get backlinks to your page as no one wants to relate to a badly written page.

(18)   Internal Links

• Google follows links to discover content on websites and to rank this content in the search results.
• With internal links, Site owner can guide the page visitors and Google to the most important pages.
• Google divides link value between all links on a web page.
• Internal links can send page authority Page Rank to important pages.

 (19)   Use relevant Anchor Text.

• Anchor text is the “text” in a hyperlink.
• Best Practices – Anchor Text

o   Avoid over-optimization.

o   Keep anchors relevant to content.

o   Avoid links from and linking to spammy sites.

o  Distribute anchors in the right proportions.

o  Focus anchors on deep-level pages.

o   Place anchors where users pay the most attention.

o   Bad anchor text example: Click here!

o   Good anchor text examples: anchor text, anchor text definition, learn about anchor text.

4.3.   Improve User Experience

(20)   Increase Dwell Time

• Dwell time is the length of time a person spends looking at a webpage after they have clicked a link on a SERP page, but before clicking back to the SERP results.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/dwell-time-seo/294471/#close

• Extremely relevant content presented in a way to make it a good read, use of infographics charts, diagrams all contribute to this.
• Increasing time on site by 3 seconds correlates to ranking a single position higher in the search results.

https://backlinko.com/search-engine- ranking

(21)   Improve Web Page Loading Speed

• Pages with a longer load time tend to have higher bounce rates and lower average time on page.
• Longer load times have also been shown to negatively affect conversions.
• A one second delay in page loading speed can cost you 7% of your ecommerce conversions.
• Analyze your site with Google Page Speed Insights. Aim to score 80+. (https://moz.com/learn/seo/page- speed)

(22)   Improve Mobile-Friendly Test

• The internet searches on mobiles has overtaken desktop searches.
• It is extremely important as now Google’s algorithm favors mobile friendly sites.
• According to Google, 53% of mobile users leave a page if they are waiting 3 seconds for it to load.
• And if loading time rises to 5 seconds, the chances of the visitor bouncing off increases by a massive 90%!

Check if your page is mobile friendly with https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

(23)   Include table of Contents.

• It helps visitors skip to content they specifically want to see and thus increases user experience.
• It increases the time users spend on your site which in effect reduces bounce rate and sends a positive signal to Google’s crawler bots.
• It can also help increase the chance of getting a featured snippet or search features.

(24)   Remove Intrusive Interstitials

• Intrusive Interstitials visually obscure the content present on the page and indexed by Google.
• This reduces user experience because they are unable to easily access the content that they were expecting. Examples :-

o   Showing a popup that covers the main content, either immediately after the user navigates to a page or while they are looking through the page.

o   Displaying a standalone interstitial that the user has to dismiss before accessing the main content.

o   Using a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has been in-lined underneath the fold.

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/08/ helping-users-easily-access-content-on

(25)   Improve Core web Vitals

“We will introduce a new signal that combines Core Web Vitals with our existing signals for page experience to provide a holistic picture of the quality of a user’s experience on a web page”.

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience

(26)   Reduce Cumulative Layout Shift

• A layout shift occurs any time a visible element changes its position from one rendered frame to the next.
• CLS measures the sum-total of all individual layout shift scores that occurs during the entire lifespan of the page.
• Usually happens because resources are loaded asynchronously, or DOM elements get dynamically added to the page

(27)   Reduce Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

• The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) metric reports the render time of the largest image or text block visible within the viewport.
• To provide a good user experience, sites should strive to have LCP occur within the first 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load.

(28)   Reduce First Input Delay (FID)

• FID measures the time from when a user first interacts with a page to the time when the browser is actually able to begin processing event handlers in response to that interaction.
• To provide a good user experience, sites should strive to have a First Input Delay of less than 100 milliseconds.

 (29)   Check to see if your site has any safe- browsing issues

• Pages or sites affected by a security issue can appear with a warning label in search results or an interstitial warning page in the browser when a user tries to visit them.

“In cases where there are many pages that may be similar in relevance, page experience can be much more important for visibility in Search.”

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/page- experience

(30)   Secure your site with HTTPS.

• Migrating to HTTPS has been indicated as one of the core ingredients towards User Page Experience which will be one of the signals that will contribute towards page ranking in 2021.
• “HTTPS currently enables the best performance the web offers and powerful features that  benefit site conversions”
• “As migrating to HTTPS becomes even easier, we’ll continue working towards a web that’s secure by default. Don’t hesitate to start planning your HTTPS migration today!”

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/page- experience

 5.            Conclusion

I have tried to cover all the points that are inescapable for ensuring that a page ranks high in SERP. The list is exhaustive but in no sense will I claim that it is complete. Name of the game is learning as we grow and find verified and significant milestones as we continue on our journey to learn more. I sincerely hope that “Ilizien.com – Guide for SEO – 2021” will serve as a milestone for all SEO beginners and enthusiasts and they will help me in updating the list further to make it more useful. I have added references and links to all the sites from where I have gained valuable knowledge so that readers, if they want to, may follow those links to understand that particular point further. Please do let me know what you think of this attempt of mine by sending me your comments at https://ilizien.com/blog.