Itzfizz Digital

Category: SEO

How Do Search Engines work? A Guide on Crawling, Indexing & Ranking
Table of Contents
What are search engines?
What is the aim of search engines?
How do search engines make money?
How do search engines work?
How do search engines rank pages?
How do search engines personalise search results?
Conclusion
Frequently Asked Questions
Internet search engines work continuously, collect information from the world’s websites, and organize that information to make it easy to find.
The process is simple from the outside: Here you type in a keyword, and you get a list of relevant pages but there are a few more steps that allows Google to show relevant results.
Let’s begin with the basics:
What are Search Engines?
Search engines are the tools that allow a user to search for a query. The content on SERP is then matched with the most relevant results.
Major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo consist of two main parts:
Search index. A search index helps users find information quickly on a website. It is a digital library consisting of information about web pages.
Search algorithm(s). Search algorithms are computer program(s) that rank matching results from the search index
What is the aim of search engines
Web directories often change their ranking algorithm (the program that ranks the results) to improve user behaviour.
Every popular search engine aims to understand the way users search to show them the best answer to their search queries typed on the search bar. This means giving higher priority to the highest quality and most relevant webpage of a website.
How do search engines make money?
Google provides two types of search results:
1. Organic search results
This comes directly from the search index and you don’t have to pay anything here. Search results are listed based on relevancy to the keyword.
2. Paid search results:
This comes from advertisements for which you need to pay. Often referred to as Google Ads or Adwords
Whenever a person clicks on a paid search result, the advertiser pays the search engine. This process is known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
How do search engines work?
Search engines crawl, index, and rank content that helps you to rank your website in organic search results often referred to as SERPs for popular and relevant search terms or keywords.
Google’s search engine crawler works in this 3 step process:
A. Crawling
A crawler is a program that is used by all web directories. The crawler visits a URL(website) it finds, collects all the website’s content, and stores it in the database. It even stores all the external and internal links to the website.
B. Indexing
In this process Google stores and organizes the content found during the crawling process. Once a page is indexed, it is then considered to be displayed as a result of the relevant user query.
C. Ranking
Ranking provides the piece of content that will be the best answer to a searcher’s query or search term. The search results are ordered from the most relevant to the least relevant.
So how does a search engine decide the most relevant result?
Based on the guidelines set forth by Google, these are the few things that are checked
Step 1. URLs
The first step begins with discovering a known list of URLs. This can be done using the following methods:
a. From backlinks.
Backlinks are also known as inbound links. These are the links from one website to a webpage on another website.
Google has an index that contains trillions of web pages. If someone adds a link to one of your web pages by hyperlinking it on one of their articles or pages, Google considers that link a credible source of information.
b. From sitemaps.
Sitemaps contain a list of all of the important web pages on your website. When you submit your sitemap to Google, it helps them discover your website faster. Search engine submission can be easily done by submitting a sitemap to the search console.
c. From URL submissions.
Google also allows the submission of individual URLs through Google Search Console.
Step 2. Crawling
Search engine crawlers are a program used by search engines to collect data from the internet. The crawling of a website begins by downloading its robots.txt.files which contain rules regarding what pages the search engines should or should not crawl on the website.
The robots.txt file may also contain relevant content about sitemaps.
Google crawls the pages and queues URLs for crawling based on a few factors, that includes:
Page Rank of the URL;
how frequent the URL changes;
whether the URL is new or not.
Step 3. Processing
In processing, Google works to understand and draws out relevant information from crawled pages.
In this process, Google extracts the links and stores the content for indexing.
Google has to render web pages to completely process them, to understand how it looks for users.
Step 4. Indexing
The indexing process is adding the processed information from crawled pages to a big database called the search index. The search index is a digital library of trillions of web pages from where you get Google’s search results for a relevant query.
When you type a query into Google’s search bar, you’re searching Google’s index of web pages. If a web page is not present in the search index, search engine users will never find it.
Therefore, getting your website indexed in major search engines like Google and Bing is important.
There is also a situation where a URL is not indexed by Google. This may be due to:
Robots.txt file exclusions – This is a file that tells Google what web pages it shouldn’t visit on your website.
Restrictions on a page can notify Google not to index a particular webpage (no index tag) or to index another similar webpage (canonical tag).
Search engine algorithms declare the webpage to be of low quality, or containing duplicate content.
The URL shows an error page (e.g. a 404 Not Found)

How do search engines rank pages?
Once the discovering, crawling, and indexing of content is completed, search engines need to perform search engine ranking. This includes web directories to rank matching results with the users’ search intent.
Every web directory has its unique algorithms for ranking web pages. Google has 200+ ranking factors. Some of the key ranking factors are:
1. Backlinks
Backlinks are one of the search engines most important ranking factors.
The quantity of backlinks doesn’t matter because not all backlinks are created equal. It’s even possible for a page with a few high-quality backlinks to outrank a page with lots of lower-quality backlinks.
A good backlink is attributed to the following factors:
Link authority
Backlinks from authoritative websites create a strong impact on rankings. Authoritative web pages and websites are those that have many backlinks.
In Ahrefs, there are two metrics to estimate the relative authority of websites and web pages:
Domain Rating (DR): This shows the relative authority of a website on a scale from 0–100.
URL Rating (UR): This indicates the relative authority of a webpage on a scale from 0–100.
Link relevance:
Link relevancy refers to how useful and topically similar a website is when they link to your website. Links from relevant websites and web pages are valuable for ranking.
2. Relevance
Web directories determine a webpage’s relevance by looking at whether the webpage contains the same keywords as used in the search query.
Google uses interaction data to evaluate whether search results are relevant to queries.
3. Freshness
Fresh content is content that has been published recently. The freshness of content is a query-dependent ranking factor. Google ranks newly published or updated search results higher
4. Page speed
Page speed is the measurement of how fast the content on your webpage loads. Page speed is also a critical ranking factor.
You can check the performance of all web pages of your website using the Core Web Vitals reports in Google Search Console.
5. Mobile-friendliness
Most of the Google searches happen on mobile devices. That’s why mobile friendliness has been a major factor when it comes to SEO. As 50% of the traffic is driven by mobile search, a lack of mobile-friendliness can affect ranking your websites’ ranking.
How do search engines personalize search results?
Web directories tailor the results for every user because they understand that different results appeal to different people.
A personalized search result is the web search results that have been tailored specifically to an individual’s interests.
According to Google the information such as your location, language, past search history and search settings help them to customize the results to what is most useful and relevant for a user at a particular moment.
Understanding how web directories work is the first step taken for ranking higher in Google and getting more organic traffic. Website owners use Search engine optimization to improve the chances of their websites’ content ranking higher in Google.

Conclusion :
If you have any questions mention it in below in the comment section and I will be sure to discuss it.
Additionally check out our guides on digital marketing, keywords & how to use the keywords in your content.
In summary, search engines are essential resources in the digital age because they help users find pertinent information on the vast expanse of the internet. Their main goal is to efficiently satisfy user queries by offering precise, fast, and customised search results. Search engines use algorithms to rank pages according to relevance and authority; advertising is how they primarily make money.
Additionally, they use personalisation strategies to adjust results based on user preferences. To maximise their online presence and visibility in search results, businesses and individuals need to understand how search engines operate and how they rank pages.
Get in touch with Itzfizz‘s knowledgeable services by clicking this link if you need help with branding, social media marketing, UI/UX, or marketing.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) :
June 18, 2021
How to Do Keyword Research for SEO. A Beginners Guide to SEO
Keywords ( SEO keywords) are the words or phrases searchers usually type in search engines’ search box to find what they are looking for.
If you’re here to learn the process of finding the right keywords, grab a cup of coffee, sit back and give this a read.
Table of Contents
What is keyword research?
Why is Keyword Research Important for SEO?
Process of Keyword Research
How to perform Keyword Research for SEO?
Keyword research tools
What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the process of discovering and analyzing words and phrases (aka “keywords”) that people type as a search query on search engines, like Google to use that data for performing search engine optimization (SEO).
Why is Keyword Research Important for SEO
Keyword research has a significant impact on an SEO strategy. This includes finding content topics, on-page SEO, email outreach, and content promotion.
Keywords provide you with the directions for all your SEO campaigns: they tell you where to go and whether or not you’re making progress.
Keyword research helps you understand your target audience‘s search intent behind a given query.
This is because keyword research provides you insight into what target customers are searching for and the exact words and phrases that they use in the Google search box.
It allows you to discover opportunities to drive more organic traffic to your website.
Keyword research can get you thousands of keywords through which you can form a content strategy as well as a larger marketing strategy.
Keyword research also helps you to find answers to questions like:
How difficult is it for a particular keyword to rank?
How much traffic is likely to drive if you rank for that keyword?
What kind of content should be created to rank for that keyword?
Are people searching for that keyword likely to become your ideal customer?
Process of Keyword research
Keyword research starts with finding out how potential users might be searching for your business or website. Knowing it can make it easier to use keyword research tools to find related keywords.
Keyword research will also help you in making a list of relevant topics based on your business.
A. Brainstorming ‘seed’ keywords
Seed keywords are the basis of the keyword research process. They help you in defining your niche and help you identify your competitors. All the keyword research tools need a seed keyword, through which it can generate a list of keyword ideas.
B. Competitors Keywords
Knowing the keywords that already create traffic to your competitors’ websites is regarded as the best way to start keyword research.
Just search on Google for one of your seed keywords on Google with uber suggest chrome extension & you can get the list of keywords your competitor is currently ranking for.
You can also try searching for relevant auto-suggest queries. Once you find some of the websites, you can put those websites on a competitive intelligence tool like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.
There you can check the top pages report and track their estimated monthly search traffic. The report even shows each webpage’s “Top keyword.” which generates most of the organic traffic.
C. Use keyword research tools
Keyword research tools are a great source of finding keywords for SEO.
You type a seed keyword in a keyword research tool and that tool will pull keyword ideas from their database based on that keyword.
Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer are perhaps the most well-known sources to find relevant keyword ideas.
Once you’ve got that covered up. You probably are looking for an answer to this question.
How to perform Keyword Research for SEO:
1. Analyzing keywords
A keyword analysis is the process wherein keywords are analyzed to attract visitors to your website through organic and paid search.
Finding the best keyword idea from numerous keyword ideas can be difficult but using SEO metrics you can narrow keywords to only relevant keywords required for your blog post. The analysis of keywords can be done based on the following SEO metrics:
Search volume
Monthly Search volume tells you about the average number of times a particular keyword gets searched by a potential customer per month.
Keyword tools like keyword explorer show the SEO metrics such as monthly search volume and keyword difficulty for a keyword.
Here you also need to take care of two things:
Filtering out very high-volume keywords.
Filtering specifically for lower-volume keywords.
Clicks
The clicks metric in the keyword research tool tells you the average number of monthly clicks on the search results for a keyword.
The clicks filter in the keyword research tool can help you in taking out keyword ideas with poor search traffic potential.
Traffic potential:
Traffic potential is defined as the number of organic search traffic a webpage, or group of webpages will receive from Google’s SERP on average per month.
It’s always advisable to look at how much traffic the current top-ranking pages get for popular keywords, using Keywords Explorer.
Keyword Difficulty:
Keyword difficulty is also known as SEO difficulty. This is a process of evaluating how difficult it is to rank in Google’s organic search results for a particular keyword.
SEO professionals usually measure the ranking difficulty of a search term manually.
There are many different factors to judge how hard or easy it is to rank a keyword:
Number and quality of backlinks;
Domain Rating (DR);
Content relevance;
Usage of the target keyword, and synonyms;
Search intent;
Here is a guide on keywords to help you get started. Tools like Uber suggest help you identity keyword difficulty.
2. Targeting keywords
Every website needs to target a set of well-researched keywords. They inform both Google crawlers and users about the information present on your website
You can analyze the following three C’s of search intent to understand how to target the right keywords:
Content-type:
The type of content usually falls into one of five categories: blog posts, product, category, landing pages, and videos.
Content format:
Content format applies mostly to displayable ‘informational’ content. How-tos, news articles, opinion pieces, and reviews are some examples of content format.
Content angle:
Content angle is a brand’s unique perspective or opinion. it is the main selling point of the content and it sets the tone for the entire content.
3. Prioritizing keywords
Once you have searched the keywords, analyzed their metrics, and grouped them, prioritizing them becomes critical.
Prioritizing keywords means having a balance between many competing forces: relevance, volume, competition, click-through rate (CTR), and more.
Search volume, traffic potential, difficulty, and search intent are important factors to consider, but you also need to consider the quality of traffic you can expect from a keyword. Is it adding any value to your business?
Some of the things you need to focus on:
Prioritizing keywords that have the highest return on investment.
Focus on short, medium, and long-term ranking goals. Focusing only on short-term goals will never make you rank for the most lucrative keywords.
If you only focus on medium and long-term goals, it’ll take many years to get any traffic.

Keyword Research Tools
Let’s look at a few popular keyword tools that will help you find valuable keywords for your websites’ content:
Google Keyword Planner:
Google keyword planner can help you search for words or phrases that are related to your products or services. It is widely used for its unique and competitive keyword suggestions and up-to-date CPC values.
Google Trends:
Google Trends is a tool by Google that provides keyword-related data including search volume index and geographical information about search engine users across various regions and languages.
Google Search Console:
Google Search Console is a free SEO tool that can be used for checking the top 1,000 keywords your website already ranks for and how much traffic those keywords bring on to your website.
Ahrefs’ Webmaster Tools:
Ahrefs’ Webmaster tools help in keyword research strategy by checking all the keywords your website currently ranks for, along with their estimated searches per month, keyword Difficulty, traffic potential, and other useful SEO metrics like backlinks.
Keyword Generators:
Keyword generators provide you with keyword suggestions for paid and organic search marketing campaigns by generating hundreds of free keyword ideas from a seed keyword.
One great tool for this process is called lsigraph.com which allows you to generate a lot of keyword variations
Keyword Difficulty Checker:
The keyword difficulty tool helps in checking the ranking difficulty of a keyword, as per Ahrefs’ Keyword Difficulty (KD) score.
Keywords Explorer:
Keyword Explorer helps in finding the best keywords or keyword phrases for your website. You can find tens of thousands of keyword ideas in just seconds, filter the keyword ideas for keywords that matter to your business, and assess their traffic potential and ranking difficulty with ease.
Keyword research helps you build effective keyword strategies for improving or expanding your websites’ content to acquire higher rankings, to rank on a wider variety of potential keywords, and to ultimately drive in more relevant organic traffic to your website.
If you’re using WordPress tools like Yoast & Rankmath make allow you to improve your on-page SEO for each page. Additionally, you can read this guide on how to create an effective on-page SEO strategy to help you get started.
Adding on to this if you’re looking for digital marketing solutions like SEO, Social Media Marketing, Branding & Web Development services you can connect with us here and we can help you get started.
If you have any questions please feel free to share your questions and thoughts in the comment section and I will be sure to answer & discuss the same.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) :
June 12, 2021
What are Keywords? Using it the Right Way for SEO
Everyone wants to rank on Google, but not everyone can. If you want the secret to ranking better here’s a guide on keywords and how you can improve rankings on SERP
Fun Fact
Did You Know?
Around 15% to 20% of all search queries on daily basis have never been searched before on Google. (source: readwrite)
What are Keywords
SEO keywords also referred to as “keywords” or “keyphrases” are terms added in online content to improve search engine rankings for content on a website.
In simple words, keywords are the words most searched or typed on Google which users type to find what they are looking for.
Why are keywords so important in SEO?
Keywords in your content make it possible for people to find your website on search engines. When you optimize your content using target keywords that people search for, your website tends to rank higher for those keywords.
Keywords help in understanding what people are searching for and allows you to meet their needs.
They also provide a clear strategy towards which marketers can focus while curating content for a blog or a website

What are the most common SEO Keywords
Here are the most common types of keywords:
1. Branded Keywords:
Branded search terms are the keyword phrases that contain content related to a brand in a search query.
This could include the name of your company, business or brand names, branded campaign names or taglines, or anything else with your brand name in it.
2. Unbranded keywords:
Unbranded, or non-branded or common keyword, terms are the keywords that do not reference any brand name (including any misspellings).
Unbranded terms often describe the users’ problem or your business offering.
3. Page-Specific Keywords:
Page-specific keywords are the keywords that apply to a single page or set a number of pages on a website.
4. Head keywords:
Also known as head terms with the high keyword search volume and popularity. Head keywords are also very competitive and have high keyword difficulty. These core keywords are competitive & difficult to rank for on SERP.
You can use the ubersuggest chrome extension to check various metrics like keyword volume & difficulty.
5. Long-Tail keywords:
Long-tail keywords are search keywords or phrases that have a longer word count. The long-tail query is more specific and gets less search traffic, but usually has a higher conversion value.
6. Primary Keywords:
Primary keywords are also known as targeted or focus keywords are used to describe the context of your content and help you to focus yours on the target audience.
7. Secondary keywords:
Secondary keywords are the supporting keywords that include all other keywords you are targeting to rank for.
Secondary keywords act as semantic or long-tail support to your primary keyword.
8. Evergreen keywords:
Evergreen keywords have a higher search volume with less variance over time. Usually, people prefer to create evergreen content because it can be a low investment compared to the long-term value to the long-term value it produces.
9. Topical keywords:
Topical keywords are the keywords that can be either seasonal (e.g., Diwali gift ideas), or consistently relevant (e.g., weather report).
Google often favours new content for topical keywords.
10. Negative Keywords:
Only used in Google ads, are used to exclude irrelevant traffic to your website. Using negative keywords you can filter the traffic towards relevant audiences for your business.
What is Keyword Strategy?
A keyword strategy is an essential way to develop a successful search engine marketing campaign.
Here are some of the guidelines you should follow to have a winning keyword strategy:
Don’t just start with keywords:
Before you start writing your content about your offerings, it’s important to learn about your customers. Focus on gaining some real empathy and understanding about the customers you’re serving and their respective perspectives.
Building a seed keyword list:
Once you have gained an understanding of your customers’ needs and wants, prepare an initial list of words and phrases that effectively describes your business offerings.
Gathering the current keyword data.
If your website already exists, gather a list of what keywords are currently generating traffic to your website. You can use the Google search console and Moz keyword explorer tools to gather current keyword data.
Expand the list using various keyword tools.
You should always lookout for new keyword groups, synonyms, common modifiers, and long-tail permutations. You can use the following SEO keyword tool for this purpose:
a. Answer The Public
b. KWFinder
Group keywords by search intent.
Organize your keywords in a way that will be simple and useful for everyone who looks through them. This can be done by classifying them into audience-type, topic, or phase of the funnel.
Add keywords to content.
Choose 1-4 primary keywords to add on each page to maintain a balance between keyword difficulty, relevance, and search volume. Once those are chosen, find semantically related and long-tail keyword searches to support your primary keywords.
Don’t overdo it.
Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of loading more than the recommended amount of keywords in a piece of content.
Attempting to manipulate a website’s ranking in google search results is not a healthy practice. Stuffing a keyword into your content numerous times can cause your content to be removed from search listings entirely and results in an unsatisfactory user experience.
Avoid keyword cannibalization.
When you have too many identical or similar keywords present throughout the content on your website it is called keyword cannibalization. As a result, search engines like Google won’t be able to decide which content to rank higher.
How to use keywords in your content & where to insert them?
Title tags:
Title tags can improve rankings and click-through rate (CTR) of your website and when it is written effectively, keywords can help improve both.
Meta description tags:
Meta description tags are like the title tags, and can help in increasing CTR.
Most visible content:
Google‘s job is to crawl and index both static contents as well as dynamic content. As an H1 tag is at the top of the webpage it is the most visible content and gets more attention than boilerplate content at the bottom.
Image and video file names:
You can include a descriptive name for image and video files by using a relevant keyword.
Image alt attributes:
Alt tags makes your website more comprehensive for your visually impaired audience.
ARIA tags:
Accessible rich internet application tags are similar to alt attributes. They help in making website content more accessible to those with disabilities. ARIA tags can be used on certain types of dynamic content, interactive content, and background images.
Generating Organic Keyword Ideas from Your Website(s)
There are additional tools that can help in recommending new keywords which can drive organic traffic based on your website and content analysis. Let’s look at a few:
Google Ads Keyword Planner
Google ads formally known as Google AdWords,’s planner tool is a great source of finding popular keyword ideas.
You can search for words or phrases related to your products or services on Google ads. This tool can help you in finding keywords that are most relevant for your business.
This research tool can also provide you insight into how often certain words are being searched on search engines and how those searches have changed over time. This can certainly help you in narrowing your additional keyword list down to the ones you want to use.
Google Suggest
Google Suggest is the tool that auto-fills in your searches as you’re typing in the Google search box. Google suggest is also known as Google autocomplete.
Lots of people struggle with Search engine optimization as they target very competitive keyword metrics.
Thus, it is more advisable to use long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are long, usually, 4+ word terms that searchers type in the google search box and Google suggest is the best tool when it comes to finding long-tail terms.
Additionally, you can also tools like Google Trends & Ubersuggest as well.
The best keyword strategy relies on relevant keywords. These relevant keywords are the keywords that closely relate to your business and are associated with your industry.
Selecting the right keyword will help you in driving relevant traffic to your business. At Itzfizz digital we help organizations develop the perfect SEO strategy, get in touch with us now.
Additionally here is a guide on SEO, 10 free SEO tools & on page SEO strategy guide to help you get started.
What are your thoughts on keywords let us know in the comment section.
If you have any questions mentioned in down in the comment section below & I will be sure to answer them.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) :
June 7, 2021
How To Create an Effective On-Page SEO Strategy
Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of a websites’ traffic for a higher SERP ranking. (Google Search)
In today’s digital world whether you have a big or small business, it is important to optimize a website’s on page SEO to improve the websites’ organic search result.
What is On page SEO?
On page SEO also known as on-site SEO is the practice of optimizing a websites’ content to rank higher on SERP. It includes various tactics that help the web pages’ content rank higher for a target keyword and deliver search results that meet user intent.
Why is On page SEO important?
In order to understand your websites’ content and determine whether the content is a relevant result for a particular search term, Google checks some of the following:
1. Fresh Content –
Google prefers if your content is always up to date.
2. Keyword Usage –
The number of times it has been used in a piece of content
3. High-quality content –
While writing any blog or for that matter any piece of content for a website it is important to main quality.
4. Internal & External Links –
Thus, On-page SEO becomes important.
Without this, your website could be missing out on opportunities to rank higher for relevant search queries related to your business.
Without a search engine optimization strategy your website would get pushed down in search results by your competitors.
Therefore, developing an effective on page SEO strategy to improve your rankings in search results becomes necessary.

Here are the key SEO factors you should focus on to create an effective on-page SEO strategy :
1. Target keyword and its frequency:
On page SEO starts with finding the right keyword for a particular blog or article. The target keyword should be relevant to the main topic or theme of the content and should have a high monthly search volume & relevant to your target audience so that it improves your websites’ search ranking.
You should select one primary keyword for your content. You also need to make sure your primary keyword isn’t assigned to any other piece of content.
Once, you have selected your primary keyword you should develop a content plan for your keyword. This would help you in knowing how and where you will use your keyword. You can also decide whether the keyword would be a timely blog post, evergreen content, or a landing page.
After all this, you need to perform keyword optimization to improve keyword rankings. Here’s a quick checklist for that:
Include your primary keyword in the title of your blog post or article.
Use your primary keyword once in the first 100-150 words of your article.
Avoid keyword stuffing.
Use the primary keyword to create a 2-3% keyword density.
Adding the primary keyword to Meta Title & Description
2. Title and Subheading:
Wrap title in an H1 tag:
The title of your page should be wrapped in an H1 title tag. An H1 title tag is an important ranking factor and is used by search engine bots to figure out what a page is about.
Wrap subheadings in an H2 tag:
Wrapping the subheadings in an H2 tag helps search engines identify the subheadings in your content and the main points of your content. Break the content into sections and use descriptive subheadings (H2-H6) for hierarchy.
3. Meta title and Meta description:
A meta title is the first thing that users look at and it is also the blue colour title that appears on Search Engine Results Pages.
Here are a few good practices for creating a good meta title
It should have fewer than 60-70 characters,
Include the primary keyword at the beginning of the content
Add a unique title for each page
Write for the customer
Avoid duplicate title tags.
A meta description is a piece of information that summarizes and describes the content of your web page to help users and search engines understand the content better.
Google often shows a web page’s meta description as a descriptive snippet in the SERP.
You can use these tips to write a compelling description:
Match search intent by providing relevant content for what searchers are looking for.
Use active voice in the content to address the searcher directly.
Be concise.
Include your primary keyword.
Have fewer than 160 characters
4. Internal and External links:
Link building is an important component of SEO. Linking to relevant internal and external sources can help you direct visitors to sources of information. Example: Facts, Statistics etc.
Adding relevant internal links from blogs or pages to other potential pages helps drive traffic to new content, additionally, it is recommended the anchor tag is set to a target keyword to build relevancy.
Links leading to other websites (external links) also helps search engine robots understand your content. Therefore include relevant, valuable, and high-quality backlinks can help direct relevant visitors to your site.
5. Content:
The most important element of SEO is content. Even when you are creating SEO content for ranking, you should always remember that your primary focus should be your readers.
Both readers and search engines like content that is easy to understand. You should aim at creating high-quality page content that is useful, valuable, and well-written.
Having low-quality content or irrelevant content with good quality backlinks on a mobile-friendly site won’t help you to rank on SERP as effectively as reputable sites.
To gain a higher search ranking in 2021 you should focus on the following factors:
The uniqueness of Content: A unique content doesn’t always mean avoiding duplicate content, it involves various other content elements too. The uniqueness of content is defined when something new is added to a piece of content. This something new could be a new strategy, improved design and UX, a new case study, and so on.
Valuable Content: Making content unique to stand out in the competition is necessary, but it’s not enough. So, to make your content more noticeable you need to make it valuable to users.
Here are some of the ways in which you can create user-friendly content:
Details: Adding details such as images, screenshots & videos help improve visual content on a website, this also improves readability
Updates: Regular updates of new strategies, and steps make content valuable.
Experts: When content is written by an expert who has expertise in a particular field, that content holds more value to users.
Search intent: Content that is unique and valuable can help you rank higher on search engines. But, if you want to stay at a higher ranking your content must satisfy search intent. The content on your page should be able to satisfy what a Google searcher is looking for.
6. URLs for SEO:
A Uniform resource locator is mostly known as a “web address” that specifies the location of a web page on the internet. A SEO-friendly URL helps in enhancing user experience and thereby improves the websites’ search engine ranking.
Some of the best practices for URLs for SEO are:
Keeping URLs simple, relevant, and accurate is the key to make both your users and search engines understand them (a prerequisite to rank well).
To improve the readability, you can use hyphens to separate words. URLs should not have underscores, spaces, or any other characters to separate words.
Avoid the usage of URL parameters, as they can create difficulties with tracking duplicate content. If parameters need to be used, use them separately.
7. Optimization for CTR :
CTR refers to the Click-through rate that is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement. Organic click-through rate is important as it is one of the Google ranking factors and increasing CTR helps in increasing more organic traffic to your website.
Organic CTR can be improved in the following ways:
1.Identifying keyword cannibalization:
Keyword cannibalization means all your blog posts and articles on your website rank for the same or similar keyword. For example, if you have two posts on the same topic, Google won’t be able to distinguish which article should rank higher for a particular query.
As a result, both the posts will rank lower. You can identify and fix keyword cannibalization by using keyword cannibalization tools by SEMrush and Ahrefs.
2.Utilize schema markup:
Schema Markup is a structured data vocab that helps search engines understand the content on your website. The user can easily check the details of your websites’ page at a glance which would help them decide whether to click on or move on to a more relevant one.
Good schema markups can even lower your bounce rate and help you get more relevant clicks to your website.
3. Structure content for the featured snippet:
Featured snippet is the search result that is featured on top of Googles’ organic search results, below the ads in a box. It aims at answering a users’ query. Featured snippets can offer higher visibility to searchers and can drastically improve organic CTR.
8.UX signals:
UX means User Experience. UX signals are the behavioural patterns considered by Google to determine the user‘s experience on your website. When your UX is good, more users visit your website and this will increase the chances of your website rank higher on SERP.
Click-through rate (CTR) and bounce rate are two of the most crucial of these behavioural metrics.
Click through rate: CTR is the number of users who click on your website divided by the impressions (numbers of times your site is visible) on SERP for a particular keyword.
A higher CTR helps you to rank better on the search engine results page (SERP)
Thus it becomes important to monitor each page’s CTR. This would help in identifying the loopholes and improving them to have a higher CTR.
Bounce Rate: The bounce rate represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then immediately exit the site without any engagement with the site. A high bounce rate indicates that your websites’ actual content isn’t engaging or valuable to create user interaction.
You can improve your websites’ bounce rate by
1. Optimizing page loading time
2. Structuring content for mobile users
3. Using Internal links
4. Image optimization
Google Analytics: Google analytics can be of great help when it comes to measuring UX signals. With Google Analytics, you can easily monitor CTR and bounce rate. You can also see how long users stay on each page of your website.
Conclusion
An effective On page SEO strategy will help you optimize your content well so that Google improves your visibility on SERPs.
But to get your website to rank better you would also need a complete SEO checklist that means adding off-page SEO and technical SEO checklist to your strategy.
We have upcoming guides on off-page SEO and technical SEO which are coming soon.
What are your thoughts on On page SEO?
If you have questions let me know in the comments below and I will be sure to answer them.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) :
June 4, 2021
Top 10 Best SEO Tools for Marketers (100% Free)
Almost every third household around the globe now has access to basic internet facility, with an increase in the number of smartphone users in recent years it’s now easier to surf on the internet and purchase & sell products and services online.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) has gained a lot of importance in today’s world. The need to rank on Google has lead SEO experts around the world to develop excellent tools which can help you build websites that rank on page 1.
What Are SEO Tools?
SEO tools provide information about SEO health, SEO reports, and other metrics, so you can make necessary changes that can help you perform better on Google SERPs.
SEO Tools also assist in discovering opportunities and identify multiple SEO issues that might prevent your website from ranking.

Here is the list of my favorite top 10 best SEO tools to help you rank on Google.
1. Google Analytics:
One of the most popular tools used by all digital marketers for content monitoring is Google Analytics. It is a well-known and must-have tool for almost all kind of websites.
Google Analytics can help you understand and learn about your customers’ behaviour, habits, and perception of the offerings you mention across your website.
Google Analytics is a free SEO tool that works well with other Google products, like Data Studio, Optimize, and Search Console. With the list of multiple offerings, you can draw a comprehensive list of who your audience is and what their needs are.
This SEO tool even provides you with a lot of data about your website to increase your organic traffic. You can get the number of site visitors, traffic sources, and their demographics like age, gender, city, country, etc.
This analytics tool has a very nice feature that it automatically collects the data and allows you to download the data into Doc file or spreadsheets.
Event tracking is also a useful feature of Google Analytics. Events refer to user interaction with the content present on the websites. So, with event tracking, you can effortlessly track user engagement.
Google Analytics also allows you to create and manage goals. A goal represents a completed action or activity. It can be used to measure how often users complete a specific action.
For example, a goal can include submitting an online contact form for a marketing site. Goals help in evaluating how well your site is achieving its objectives
2. Data Studio:
Google Data Studio helps in visualizing and integrating data from Google’s suite of tools such as Google Search Console, Google Sheets, Adwords, And Google Analytics.
Data Studio is a free tool for SEO. It makes your data into informative, easy-to-understand, and customizable dashboards and reports.
You can take a big chunk of data and convert them into visuals, using line and bar graphs, pie charts, tables, etc. You can also customize the logos and add images.
With Data Studio, you can also easily customize data from a wide variety of sources, without programming knowledge.
Google Data Studio is a helpful tool for online marketers. This SEO tool makes it seamlessly easy to present complex and hard data to clients.
In Data Studio you also get the power to decide who can access your reports. You can grant rights to individuals and groups through which they can edit or view your reports.
3. Keyword Planner:
The Keyword Planner can help you in exploring popular keywords related to your business. You can perform keyword research and select the right terms for your content.
The keyword research tool provides you with a list of keywords that are often searched. This minimizes the massive list of keywords and helps you in keeping a note of relevant keywords to use.
The Keyword planner besides giving you information on single keywords, also tells you their monthly search volume and CPC (Cost per click).
There are also other keyword tools like Kwfinder to help you find long-tail keywords and track your business’ search ranking on Google.
4. Answer The Public:
AnswerThePublic is a nifty tool that keeps an update of valuable questions people ask online. Digital Marketers can get raw search insights directly from the customers and improve their SEO score.
AnswerThePublic’s key feature is to autocomplete data from search engines like Google. Then quickly puts out every relevant phrase and question people have asked around that particular keyword.
Answer the Public also provides target keyword suggestions using prepositions.
You can discover unexpected insights and unseen niches that can boost your website’s organic search.
It is considered one of the best SEO software that can help you in creating better content that people will like and share.
5. Google Search Console:
Google Search Console ( previously Google Webmaster Tools) is a collection of tools and reports that help web marketers, SEOs and Digital Marketers measure their site’s search traffic and monitor their websites’ performance in the Google search results.
Google Search Console is an excellent tool that lets you check and fix technical issues on your websites. You can even track keyword rankings in Search Console.
The Search console tool also has the function of submitting sitemaps. A sitemap is the blueprint of your website. It helps search engines find, crawl, and index all the content present on your website. Sitemaps also tell search engines which pages on your website hold the utmost importance.
Through Google Search Console, you can also learn how to optimize your search appearance on Google.
6. Backlink Analysis Tool:
For Search Engines, links act as an indicator of a site’s authority. Therefore, building links is crucial for SEO.
A backlink analysis tool works like a link checker. It shows you all of the links that search engines take into consideration and gives you information about your site’s ability to rank well in search engine results.
Backlink analysis can also help you in identifying bad links and links that are unnatural.
However, backlink analysis isn’t only restricted to your site. You can also analyze your competitors’ sites. This would help you in understanding how difficult it will be to outrank competitors.
This SEO tool also shows you potential link opportunities and can give you ideas for your link structure strategies.
7. UberSuggest:
UberSuggest is a free SEO tool highly used for content optimization. It is one of the best keyword research tools which can make your keyword search easier.
Here you can search for numerous keywords for your blog and website. Not only that, you can even get an extensive list of keyword suggestions from UberSuggest.
This excellent tool has an extremely friendly user interface. It provides you with suggestions for primary and secondary keywords.
It proves to be a perfect tool for bloggers, SEO specialists, SEO Copywriters, and online marketers. It serves the purpose of providing a list of long-tail keywords to raise the organic ranking of your websites.
Also, it’s a helpful tool for competitive analysis monitoring your site, research for backlinks and provides ideas on what kind of content you should be creating.
8. Link Explorer:
Link Explorer is the world’s best backlink checker providing over 40 trillion links (Source: Moz.com). This free SEO tool provides basic link metrics to analyze your link profile.
The Link Explorer monitors your backlinks, most valuable pages, anchor texts, and linking domains. This can help you in building high-quality links to operate better in the market.
With Link Explorer, you can form a better strategic approach to link building. Through Link Explorer, you can get complete link metrics for any website, including their page authority and domain authority.
This premium tool offers you to create multiple link tracking lists with targeted URLs of your choice. This can be extremely useful when you are targeting a specific type of link or links from a specific domain.
This tool can easily locate and fix broken links to your website. You can also check the spam score of backlinks. Spam score indicates the percentage of sites having similar features that have been banned or penalized by Google. Thus, Link Explorer decreases the number of spammy backlinks referring to your site and increases the number of quality links.
9. LSI Graph:
LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. It is a great tool that is used for advanced content optimization.
LSI keywords are similar words that are usually found together within a piece of content and which are semantically related to each other. Making it simpler, these are the keywords that you should add to your content to give search engines a better understanding of your content.
LSI Graph is a free LSI Keyword research tool. It has been designed to assist you in identifying the related search terms with reference to your target keyword.
This method uses mathematical techniques to determine the relationship between words and concepts used in your content.
When you are provided with a long list of potential LSI keywords, you tend to use as many as possible. But when you use these LSI keywords in the right way, your SERP score increases.
10. Ahrefs toolbar:
Ahrefs’ SEO toolbar allows you to get important SEO data related to the pages and websites you visit. This is one of the most well-structured SEO and social media marketing suites.
Ahrefs’ SEO toolbar checks the broken links, highlights nofollow links, and identifies redirect chains.
With the usage of this tool, you can locate all outbound links on a page in just one click. The Internal links and external links are highlighted in different colours for easy assessment of link-building opportunities.
It also offers you :
Instant SEO metrics for all the sites and pages you visit.
Keyword metrics, to find search volume and keyword difficulty, directly in SERP.
There are many other free SEO tools such as the ones mentioned above that are available online to help you.
These tools help in optimizing your web content by analyzing content for keywords, backlinks, and other SEO factors.
Additionally these SEO tools are extremely beneficial in boosting up your organic ranking and thereby expanding your business outreach!
Hey, I hope I was able to give you a quick overview on the different SEO Tools.
Additionally here is a guide on SEO and how to get started in 2023
Which of these would like to try out first? Did I miss anything you were looking for?
If have any questions mention down in the comments below
Also, feel free to let me know your takeaways in the comments below.

PS: Here is the beta access to our upcoming FREE SEO Checker & Keyword Rank Checker.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) :
May 1, 2021