Sarika SEO Analyst

Starter Guide To Google Analytics

2017-07-14T00:02:00.000-07:00

What Is Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a tracking software of google that tracks and reports website traffic. It is a free service that will allow you to track the behavior and visitors on your website. It will also find the performance of your website. It is the most widely used web analytics service on the internet.

By using google analytics, we can find the following details regarding our website or blog.

How many people visit my website?
Where the visits from?
Devices used to visit
Which pages on website are most popular?
What blog content do visitors like the most?
How can I improve my website's performance?

Google analytics is connected to our website with a tracking code. It is a Javascript code in our analytics account.

Get Started With Google Analytics

To install google analytics, first you need is a google analytics account. If you have a google account, then we can set up google analytics with that google account. Set up of the account can be done in the following way.

Login to your google analytics through the link google.com/analytics.
Click Sign In on right side of the window.
Click Analytics button and you will redirect to the following page.

Click Sign Up button and it will redirect to the following page which shows the information of your website.

Select the website tracking method, which will be default there. And setting up the account by adding account name.
Setting up the property by adding the website name or blog name.
Add the website or blog URL in the next text box with https:// certificate for the security of sites.

Select the Industry category as per the website's requirement. For a blog we can add reference or other option.
Choose the Reporting Time zone as per the working country. Here we can choose India.
After setting up the account click the Get Tracking ID button.
You will get a google Analytics terms and conditions, which you have to agree by click I Accept.

Then copy the Tracking ID in the format UA-XXXXX-XX and go to our blogger.
Take settings > Other and paste Id on google analytics text box.
Click save settings and go back to analytics page.
Copy the tracking code. Because we have to install this on every pages of website to know the website status.
Go to blogger. Select Theme > Edit HTML. Paste code inside the head section (before </head>)
Click Save Theme.
Now Analytics tracking code is installed.
Then go to Google analytics. Click on All Website Data on the top left hand side and choose website data.
Next step is to view the google analytics data. For this go to google analytics page and click Real time > Overview. Then we can get the real time tracking overview of our website or blog.

By this tracking report, we can know the current status of websites like number of visits, devices used to visit, time of visit etc.

You may also like to read my previous post Verification of site ownership with Google Webmasters Tools

Sarika Vivek

Verification Of Site Ownership With Google Webmaster Tools

2017-07-13T22:46:00.001-07:00

What is Google Search Console

Google search console previously known as Google webmaster tools, is a free service by google for webmasters. Search console is a mok point which help webmasters to communicate with google and vice versa. It will let you learn information about website and people who visit it. It also used to find out how many people are visiting website and how long they are spending on site, devices used to visit whether it is mobile phones or desktop computers, which pages on the site etc. Search console will help to find and fix website errors, submit a sitemap, create and check a robots.txt file.

Adding And Verifying Ownership Of A Blog in Blogger.com With Webmaster Tools

Google can confirm the ownership of the blog by adding and verifying blog in search console. Verification can be done through the following steps.

Create a blog in your blogger.com account.
Login to your search console through the link google.com/webmasters/tools/
Copy the URL of your blog with .com extension. If the URL is with .in extension, replace it as .com/ncr and press enter. Then we can copy the URL with .com extension.
Go back to webmaster tools and paste the URL of blog in the text box provided with "Add a Property" button.
Click the "Add a Property" button.
Next you will be asked to verify your blog. And there are a few verification methods. For a blog, select the "HTML tag" verification method and copy the "meta tag" data given in the text box.
Go to the blogger dashboard, click on Theme and Edit HTML.
Paste the copied meta data inside the <head> section ( just before the </head> ). Click Save Theme button.
Go to search console and click verify button.
Now we can get a verification message from google.

Fetch As Google And Submit To Index

After clicking the continue from the verification message, the page will redirect to the blog dashboard.

On the left hand side of the screen, we can see "Crawl" option. Click on it and choose "Fetch as Google".
The page will redirect to the following screen

If you need to fetch entire blog, then leave the text box blank. Otherwise enter the URL of the page you need to indexed.
Click "Fetch" button.
After the indexing has finished, there will be a "Request Indexing" button.
You will be given the options of "Crawl Only This URL" ( fetching/submitting one specific page) and "Crawl This URL and its Direct Links" (index the blog and its links).
Select as per the need and click Go.
Wait for the indexing to complete and you are done.

To know more about SEO introduction and on-page optimization, check my previous posts Evolution & Updates of SEO, SEO On-page Optimization tips and guidelines.

Sarika Vivek

SEO On-page Optimization Tips and Guidelines

2017-07-11T23:45:00.001-07:00

On-page optimization is a webpage optimization practice in order to improve high position in search results. It includes both head and body section optimization.

SEO Optimization In Head Section

Head section optimization mainly focuses on the snippet. Snippet is the overview of a website which gives the page list description.

Snippet includes SEO title, URL and meta description. Snippet can make more attractive using star rating, personalized result etc. It is rich snippet.

SEO Title Optimization:

Title is the focusing keyword with meaningful description. It should be three or more words with 55-60 characters including space and special characters. Title should be of 512 pixel width. Thus title can't include 70 characters. If the title is not given, then google will automatically take H1 tag as the title. There are some rules while writing seo title.

Do's and Don'ts in seo title

Title should be unique.
Title should be impressive.
It includes focusing keywords.
Title should not be in full capital letters.
No spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
Not too small and not too large.

URL:

URL is the address of the webpage. It is Uniform Resource Locator. Some url's include breadcrumbs which used as navigator.

Meta description:

It describes the content of the webpage. It will write inside the meta tag. Rules for writing a meta description are

Description should be unique and attractive.
No spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
Focusing keyword can be used in the contents.
Pixel width can be 1024 px.

If meta description is not given, google will automatically take content as description. There is 155-160 character limitation for page optimization. But in the case of blog optimization, there should be below 155 characters. Because google will show the published date while publishing a blog.

Robots:

Robots.txt file will decide the crawling of pages on the website. If there is no robots <META> tag, the default is "INDEX,FOLLOW".

SEO Optimization In Body section

Header Tag Optimization:

H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 are the body tags. H1 tag is the visible part or identity part of body section. It is generally used for main heading. 8-10 words can be used in H1 tag. If H1 is not relevant, google take heading from H2 tag.

Content Optimization:

Content is the informative part of a website. Content can be text, link, images or any other things. The main part or visible part of content is anchor text which is hyperlink added to the text. Hyperlink can act as a reference link. So focused keyword should not be used as anchor text. Rules to be followed while content writing are

Beginning sentence can include focusing keyword.
Use simple sentences up to 20 words.
Put space before full stop and comma.

There are some myths regarding the use of focusing keywords. Keywords with bold, grey color and written before punctuation marks will higher the page rank. But Matt Cutts clarified that there will not be any change in the page rank by the use of this.

Keyword Density is the percentage of number of keywords appears on that page compared to the total number of words on that page. It is 2-5% in normal way. Keyword density depends upon the length of the content.

Image optimization:

It is based on 3 factors

Alt name of the image
File name
Content near to the image

Authorship optimization

Authorship optimization is the way to connect the article authors with google profile. It disclose the identity of the author to the content readers. Attribute rel="author" confirms the authorship. Through authorship, it improves the validity and identity of the article.

How to do authorship optimization:

Create google plus profile.
Give the label name on your page. Then click LINK button > Add URL of google plus profile > OK
At the left top of the page, click HTML > Add attribute rel="author" into the anchor tag.
Save the page.

To know more about search engine optimization, check my previous post Evolution & updates of SEO

Sarika Vivek

Evolution & Updates Of SEO

2017-07-10T22:30:00.001-07:00

Evolution & Updates Of SEO

Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing the number of visitors to the website to achieve high position in search results.

The three processes of search engine optimization are

Crawling
Catching
Indexing

Crawling is the process of scanning the website to get the information. In Catching process, the snapshot of the page is taken and save it to the database. Indexing is the process of listing the webpages. This is done by the webmasters, who control the website.

Search engine optimization can be done in 2 types

On-page Optimization
Off-page Optimization

On-page optimization includes changes in the activities of website. Off-page optimization means working outside the website by sharing webpages in the social media.

Mainly 2 types of SEO practices are there

White hat SEO
Black hat SEO

White Hat SEO is the ethical practice of optimizing web pages while Black Hat SEO is the non-ethical practice of optimizing web pages. Black hat SEO includes over optimization, duplicate content etc.

Evolution of SEO

Early 2000 google has issues with searching and scanning. The problem recognized is the lack of optimization. In older days, the search engines are content specific or niche specific. The optimization is done based on the number of keywords. The website will be on higher position, when it has more number of keywords. Thus users started to do keyword stuffing by adding too many keywords in webpage in order to obtain high rank. The keywords can be added in the blank spaces and making their font color as background color, so that it will not be visible to the users. Also keywords can be added in meta tags which gives a brief description of web pages. This is a black hat SEO practice.

Thus later google replaced content specific from link specific. Link specific indicates more links on website, then site will be on top rank. Thus webmasters try to add more links and it ultimately leads to link selling. But they didn't focus on the quality of websites. So google changes link specific to quality link specific. Which leads to the concept of google page rank with range of 10. Page rank is based on the number of quality links and subscriptions. There are only few number of websites having page rank of 10 like twitter, US gov site etc. Last update of page rank was on 2013. Page rank concept was also become a problem for google because of high page rank link selling. So google introduces passing the juice which means website with higher page rank trying to sell the links to another site, the page rank of the seller site is automatically reduced. After that google came with the concept nofollow links. Which means the equity of the site will not be reduced while passing the links.

When search engine become hit, google introduces google adwords which is a pre-paid advertisement mechanism on google. Cost-per-click is the method of paying website on each click on that ad. The cost will be reduced on each click. Later google introduces google adsense. Which is a method of earn money or commission from google.

After 2008, google introduces new updates based on quality. Thus they make a team called webspam team for updating new mechanisms. Matt Cutts was the head of the team. Google become personal assistant due to this team.

By 2009, google came with the concept, google suggest. Which means page rank will automatically increases when user responses. If user opens a website and closes or suddenly click backspace within seconds without any interactions then page ranking is decreases. This concept is called pogo sticking. 80% of people are spending time on social media. Thus at 2010, google update was based on social media signals. Google introduces social media authority to improve ranking by examine the interaction or authority value of people.

Google updates

Google Panda update

Panda update is raised on 2011 which is against content spamming. It is used to remove quality less webpages from search result. The different types of content spamming are content duplication or content plagiarism, using quality less webpages, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, publishing thinny pages with less content, content spinning with paragraph repeating etc. In panda update, panda 4.0 update at 2014 is very important. Because more webpages removed from search result. Thus google added panda as a permanent filter in their algorithm to easily detect and remove webpages. Webpages with low clarity can be put in temporary database called sandbox.

Penguin update

It was introduced in 2012 to remove link spamming. Types of link spamming are link exchange between different sites, paid links, link farming, comment spamming, wiki spamming etc. Guest blogging is adding links or writing to someones blog as a guest user. After a limit, it will also be a spam activity. Penguin 4.0 update was added to the core algorithm.

Hummingbird update

By 2013, google introduces hummingbird update to add semantic search results. Google give the best results based on artificial intelligence. But the drawback is that google will be misunderstanding in some situations. Rankbrain is the next version of update of hummingbird at 2015. Here search engine automatically upgraded depends upon the search methods.

Pigeon Update

It is based on local SEO where location based search results are given. Five processes of local SEO are place mark, valid address, local directory, geotagging and local interactions.

Pirate update

It is against the copyright piracy. Based on US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we can register complaints and google take necessary steps against copying.

EMD Update

Its a 2012 update called Exact Match Domain update. It is against the websites that use an exact match domain to rank for keywords in Google.

Parked Domain Bug

It is 2012 update used to avoid blocking of sites.

Mobilegeddon update

Google introduces mobile friendly update at 2015 in order to remove non-responsive sites from search engine. Update focuses on the fact that responsive sites on mobile phones will be user-friendly.

Sarika Vivek