SEO Process Overview – 4 Steps to Rank Your Website
Malaysia Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is still new compare to other countries. Based on our past experience, to get top 10 rankings for your website in Malaysia search result is not difficult. This is because there are still a lot of companies didn’t implement SEO or do it in the wrong way.
Contents
This info-graphic indicates the summary view of the SEO Strategies.
#1 – SEO Planning
Planning is an important phase to decide who your target visitor, keywords and location are. First thing you need to decide is who is your target visitors? Does it come from local country? Who are your competitors? What keywords are matched with your business but at the same time do have high search volume within your targeted visitor? It’s all about keywords analysis, keywords selection, domain name and hosting planning.
Here is the summary of SEO planning:
- Keywords in SEO
Keywords selection is the first thing you need to decide in SEO implementation. Keywords in SEO mean the search terms entered by internet users in search engine. - Keyword analysis and selection
In short, choose the common keywords relevant to your business and with high monthly searches. - Domain Name Selection
When it comes to domain name selection, short and easy to remember is always the key factor. - Hosting Selection
Web Hosting selection contains 2 main key factors, speed and support. - Knowing your competitors
This can be a very good reference when you start your planning and implementing of SEO strategies.
#2 – On-Page Optimization
On-Page optimization refers to construct your website to become search engine friendly and appear as good quality content base on your selected keywords to search engine. This step includes optimizing title tag, Meta description tag, anchor text, body text and image alt tag. Domain names, site structure and page name also play an important factor.
Here is the summary of On-Page Optimization:
- Optimize HTML Meta Tag
HTML Meta contains numbers of tags that describe your page content. There are 2 important tags which are Title Tag and Description Tag. The keyword tag is no longer play an important factor anymore and can be ignored. - Optimize site navigation structure & URL with keywords.
The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. - Optimizing Web Page Content for search engine
Once you have decided the keywords, you need to use those keywords frequently in the right place both within the page content and within your HTML code (heading, images, links, and layout position) - Site Map for user and Search Engine
A site map is a single page on your site that displays the structure of your website and usually consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your site. An XML Sitemap file, which you can submit through Google’s Search Console (previously known as Webmaster Tools), makes it easier for Google to discover the pages on your site. - Robot.txt
A “robots.txt” file tells search engines whether they can access and therefore crawl parts of your site.
Find out more why on-page optimize can help your site rank better.
#3 – Off-Page Optimization
Off-Page optimization is all about how to get links from other links to your website to increase your link popularity. Link popularity is about how many links you have. Think of the search engine as a big election. All the websites in the world are candidates. The links to your website are votes. The more votes (links) a candidate (website) has, the more important it is, and the higher it’s ranking. Generally speaking, the more links you have to your site, the higher your ranking will be.
The link building campaign is becoming more complicated when Google Penguin rolls out in the year 2012. Google can find out all the spammy links and de-indexed public blog network which widely used by SEO. Ideally, Google wants the site ranking to be controlled by the quality of the content instead of a group by SEO guys. However, there are still things we can do to improve the ranking without getting penalized from Google. These technics are considered as the white hat as stated below:
- Social Bookmark
The power of social media has become important nowadays. Thus social bookmark is being widely used to share information. More user link your bookmark, the more trust and higher ranking will be given by Google.
- Link Building Campaign
There are many ways to get generate links. The outdated method such as using link partners, forum links and public blog network is no longer valid after Google Penguin rollouts in 2012. However, there are still numerous ways to generate good links but it will be a tedious job.
#4 – Monitoring & Analysis
It is important to monitor your SEO results. Keep an eye on how many links you’re generating, where they’re coming from, and the overall impact on your ranking. From that, you can know better how to fine-tune your optimization. There various tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google website optimizer and Bing webmaster tool to help you monitor and analyze your SEO progress.
Here is the summary of Monitoring & Analysis:
- Monitor how many links you’re generating
There few popular tools can be used to monitor your links which include:- Ahrefs, https://ahrefs.com
- MajesticSEO, https://majestic.com/
- Moz’s Open Site Explorer, https://moz.com/link-explorer
- Monitor your ranking
You should be monitoring your ranking to ensure your hard work is working. If it is not, you will need to change your SEO strategy as needed. - Analyze who are your visitors
The best practice to analyze your visitor is using Google Analytics. - Other free monitoring and analysis tools
There are various tools such as Google webmaster tool, Google website optimizer and Bing webmaster tool to help you monitor and analyze your SEO progress.
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About the Author Adam
Adam is the founder of Adam SEO. He started his SEO journey in 2005 and officially ventured into offering an SEO consultancy service in 2011. He helped numerous companies in Malaysia and Singapore to get targeted traffic and increase their website visibility through SEO marketing.