Websites today are highly advanced and amazingly structured, which has caused the competition in the industry to increase to a completely new level. The technological changes have allowed websites to get better than ever and this is why web crawlers and search engines have to go through a strict process of indexing websites in order to determine the ranks. It might be possible the knowledge you had two years ago about SEO might not come in handy now so it is important that you stay updated with all the changes in SEO and its techniques in order to make your site successful. If you own a website, you should pay attention to it if you want to make it a highly visited and well-known one. This can be strenuous and that is exactly why many website owners hire in-house SEO professionals. However, if you have a good knowledge of SEO, have a well-structured website and work under Google’s guidelines, you can easily do the job yourself and would not have to hire an additional team. In this article, you will find various online tools and ways of how you can create a successful site to run your online business or carry out an online marketing campaign.

Basics for Beginners

If you are a beginner or starting a site from scratch, it is important that you understand the basics. There are many things you need to know about before creating a site:

1. Web Crawlers

Google and other search engines analyze sites on a regular basis to get an overall picture of the site. This is done to get results that are then used for ranking purposes. The engines crawl all over the sites to understand their structure, content, and navigation.

2. Page Rank

Whenever you search for something on Google or Bing, you notice how links to different sites appear in a column-like manner. Well, that column shows the rankings of the sites. The search engines compare the pages of different sites to rank them accordingly. So, you might want to make all the pages of your site eye-catching, simple, easy to load and relevant.

3. Traffic/Visitors

If you make your site highly authentic and simple to use while providing interesting and original content, you should make sure you attract the right target market. If you do not reach out to the correct target market, there would be no use of your website. The higher rank your website achieves, the more traffic it would attract and the cycle keeps on going.

Tools for SEO

To run and optimize your site for a better ranking and healthy traffic, you would have to use different tools that you can find online. Most of these tools come with a price tag of $0 so you do not have to create a separate budget for them. Here are some free and advanced tools that you can use:

• Google Webmaster Tools: This is one of the best and most easy-to-use tools you can find on the internet. Google provides this tool so it is safe and authentic.
• Microsoft SEO Toolkit: You can also use Microsoft’s tools for SEO. This toolkit contains a number of necessary tools that allow you to optimize your site for better results.
• Majestic SEO; Back-linking is one of the most important factors that play a significant role in determining your site’s rank therefore you should make sure you do not leave any loophole. This user-friendly tool allows you to manage all the back-links to your website.
• Keyword Suggestion Tool; It does not matter if you are new to SEO or have already been in the industry for a long time, you should know that keywords have the utmost importance in SEO. Without a relevant and frequently used set of keywords, you can put your site at risk. This tool allows you to create a better set of keywords for your site or pages by giving you a list of suggestions.
• Anchor Text over Optimization; If there is too much anchor text on your site, it might be penalized. This tool shows you the flaws of your sites so you can correct or delete them before facing further problems, like decreased rank or loss of potential customers.
• Test Page Speed; As the competition in the market is tough, people have a wide range of websites where they can land and find whatever they are looking for. If your site or its certain pages were slow, people would take no time in switching to any rival site. This causes long-term damage to your site, as people usually do not revisit a slow website. You should make sure your site does not take too much time to load and display all its content. To make your site fast and light, you can use the Test Page Speed tool, which is also provided by Google.

Keeping the Site Updated

In order to keep your site successful, you need to keep it updated. Google’s algorithm changes every now and then, which means the indexing procedures change too. It is important that you regularly look for updates. Here are some resources you can use to stay updated. The following resources would also give you suggestions on what should be your next move based on the update.

• Google Webmaster YouTube Channel: You should definitely subscribe to this channel as it provides you all the updates on Google releases. It also helps you know how exactly you would use the updates. Moreover, you would be informed every time this channel uploads a new video.
• Kissmetrics SEO Posts: Here you can find blogs about different updates about SEO.
• SEO Roundtable: This is a platform that not only informs you about the latest updates about SEO but also allows you to discuss the updates with SEO experts from all over the world.

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