4 Types Of Seo Specialists Who Can Work On Your Website

SEO is broad, a single person cannot perform all the SEO tasks that are needed to be done. Most probably you might have already encountered a person claiming as an all in one expert though. Trust me, he is either a rookie or does not know about SEO at all.  

If you even casually divide the work done in a typical SEO, it splits into four different areas and each area can be mastered only if someone works delicately in it. Over the past few years of my experience as a developer and working with the website SEO, I have identified that there are typically four types of SEO specialists. It’s not a formal classification, but my views, you are free to disagree with me.  

In this article, I have tried to explain four major SEO tasks and how they are headed by respective experts. So, let just dive in.  

1. The data Analysts

Data analysis is certainly the most crucial part of the website SEO in every sphere. Whether it's an eCommerce store or a blogging site, understanding of large sets of data and the ways to parse them into useful information is an art, and it requires an analytical mindset.

An SEO specialist with the proficiency in the data sciences, statistics, can work best as an Analytics SEO. Such SEO practitioners have significant experience with data interpretation and can transform a raw data into useful SEO insights.  

For example, it's not that easy to understand most of the data that is shown to you by the Google Analytics. It requires a great mindset to read those data and utilize them to make an interpretation that would guide the teams to make the further strategies for the SEO improvement.  

So, I think it requires the skill sets of both the SEO and analyst to own a task of correlating data, building dashboards, and making audit reports that can be trusted by all.    

2. The Technical SEO 

Technical SEO may come from the development and design backgrounds. These professionals are either former web developers, Web designers, or software engineers. The motive for getting into the SEO task is simply to ensure that SEO is intact right from the development phase of a website. Moreover, due to their technical background, web development experience, and now working for SEO, they can be a useful asset for your website SEO as well as optimization. 

You would hardly find a developer considering the minute SEO aspects in the development phase. With a technical SEO in the team, the same can be made sure, and further more, other aspects like W3C compliance, JavaScript Usage, Image compression, CDN implementation can be well monitored by him.  

You can also expect these SEO professionals to work on On-page SEO, UX, and UI optimization as well. For example, a technical SEO would know the best practices to design the Web forms for optimized UI and UX.  

You might want to give more than just the admin panel access to a technical SEO to thrive and enact the code changes as well.   

3. The content SEO

The content SEOs are well aware of the on the page SEO techniques and their constant focus lay on almost all the aspects that determine the improvement in the search ranking organically and inorganically. From on-page content optimization, keywords research, back-links earning, to Guest blogging, a content SEO can handle every aspect that comes on the page.  

It is mostly due to the previous careers as writers, branding experts, corporate communications, PR, and Social media management, content SEO have a better understanding of how things can be written so that the search engines can rank them well in the SERPs.  

They play an effective part in the content marketing strategy preparation and implementation. They are also well equipped with the analytics skills to discover the content performance issues and prepare a road map to fix them.  

The major aim of the content SEO specialist is always finding the new ways to route website traffic to their sites and earn new backlinks in collaboration with the content developers. This field is not limited as the soul of the on page SEO lies in the content optimization for improved ranking.   

4. All rounders or Novice  

These are the learners class of SEO professionals who often rely on SEO plugins and tools. With lesser experience and willingness to learn new things they are not meant to be discouraged or ignored. I have come across various rookies who with their simple approaches and with the help of popular tools, have succeeded many times.   

Most often these SEO plugins and tools claim to provide an all in one SEO for the less experienced practitioners. And due to the extreme success of some of these tools, they might come to you with one-size fits all approach. Eventually, the learners do become the experts as the time passes and they find that there is nothing like one tool can fix all issues.   

So, if you ever encounter any such SEO- be encouraging with them! In fact, if your SEO budget allows you to hire just a single person to run the SEO marketing, this novice class of SEO practitioners would work the hardest and cover most of the things. 

Everyone starts as a novice, every SEO learns through the wining history and SEO mistakes as well. Eventually, the learning curve increases and with the experience the novice becomes an expert. So never under estimate them. They are enthusiastic and always ready to fly higher without fear.

Are You Optimizing For Google Image Search Results?

We have been making enormous efforts in improving the SEO for web search results on Google search engine. We have also been applying the same intensity of efforts on Google Voice search results. But, there is really a lesser segment that really cares about the Google Image search results. 

It has been so underutilized without knowing that Google image search is the second most used search platform after the Google web search or so called Google.com. That say’s an article on Moz.com. 

Are you really taking images seriously?

The image searches on Google Image is more than that of the search queries that are performed on any of the top websites like YouTube, Google Maps, Amazon, and also the Facebook. This information clearly means that Google image search shares a huge proportion of overall searches on the internet. However, knowingly or unknowingly, we often make mistakes with the images that we use and thus lose the visibility on this massive search platform.

How we post images and what mistakes we make?

Wrong Names:  People posting the images often overlook to optimize the images to show on the Image search results. They give some really unique names to their images which no searcher will use in the query. They give the names like "IMG_000023", "Image_1", "IMG_Edited_0012" etc. The probability of any user searching on the internet or Google image search with these strings is nearly zero. This means the image will never show up in the search result at least for the keywords wasted in naming it wrongly. And even if the image comes up in any random search result, it is due to the extra information feed (If given) like Caption, description etc. in Image SEO.

Unrealistic image file names can put you at a disadvantage in image SEO.

Wrong Keywords:  Some uploaders use the wrong names or random phrases in the image name, not even relevant to the image. Putting keywords not relevant to the image will push your image to show in the irrelevant search results. So, despite your image get listed on the top, it will hardly get a click.  Below is an example of an image labeled with the wrong keyword that made it appear in a search query for Smart-watches. Would a person searching for a Smartphone image click on it?

Irrelevant keywords can make your images end up in an irrelevant search result.

Stock photos:  Stock photos can be used in various events. However, overuse will make your search image listing unauthentic and unrealistic. Especially in the cases where you put an image to say something about you or your business. For example, the below image screen shot was taken for a search made for "Lawyers in Delhi". The circled images are stock photos which you might have seen many a time on different websites. They do not appeal you to click on them. Hence, Google will eventually lower the ranking of these images. 

Stock images don’t provide the kind of authenticity and authority your image needs to have.

Overly sized:  Large sized images take a longer time to load. You can't expect the users to wait for more than 2-3 seconds. Reducing the file size will considerably reduce the page loading time, but that does not mean you need to compromise with the image quality. There are various free online programs that can be used to cut short the unnecessary data and reduce the file size without losing the image quality. Use these tools to compress the file size and reduce the page loading time. 

Wrong image ratios:  It's important to post the images in a standard expected ratio such as 16:9, 4:3. Google in the search results view, uses the thumbnail views reduced to a small size. In the case of using the images in the non-standard ratios, Google will automatically resize the image to fit the standard ratio frame. Due to this resizing, the image thumbnail might loose the focus and valuable details might get omitted.

What should you do for better indexing and ranking with images?

Google doesn't see the images as it reads the textual contents. So the meta-data, labels, and descriptions provided with the images become crucial for indexing by the Google image search. Google uses this data to identify the images and their context of usage. 

The more easily and deeply the images are indexed, the more is the chances for better ranking in the search results. The following listed details are the main content that you should provide while uploading the images:

File name

As explained above, the file name is a fundamental and crucial entry that can give a context to your image. Never use irrelevant and unrealistic (IMG_00023) file names for your images. You should leverage this entry and provide a more appropriate file name that defines the image and its context. You can use your main keyword relevant to the image in the file name. 

ALT tags

ALT tags or Alternate Texts are the HTML tags that are used with the images to show up in case the image does not load or rendered properly. For example, in a browser where images have been disabled, the ALT tag will show up in place of the images. Also, if your image takes a longer time to load, till the image gets loaded, the ALT text will show up. 

This makes sure the search engines do not feel fishy about your images even if they are not rendered properly. Moreover, it will also give the user an idea of the image till it gets loaded completely on the browser. 

Captions

Captions are simply the text that appears with the image on the browser. Captions will always show up. They are generally shown just below the image. You must provide the captions to describe the context of the image to the users.

Captions provide the contextual meaning to the images.

Description

Descriptions allow you to put an explanation of the image by providing additional details like links, keywords, and context. They are generally used by the search engines to read the context of the image. They show up in the search results when an image is listed in the SERPs.

Descriptions help the search engines to read your images and their context more easily.

Contextual information

In addition to the meta information, keywords, and description, Google utilize various other supporting contents and information to rank the images. The contextual information can be the page content, Page URL, other images around it, the image site map, Page title etc. You should keep these optimized to render a unified, relevant, consistent and related context of the image. 

Summing up

Images have always been an important element on the web. Though Google cannot index the images like the textual contents, it still uses the supporting texts to identify and judge the context of the images. It's really important to understand the role of images in SEO and do not overlook them as something less important. 

Optimize your images everywhere you use them; Articles, product pages, landing pages etc. A proper SEO of images will also ensure the better performance of the contents related to them. Moreover, they can promote your brand, store, products or services in the search results as well. It's time to invest the deserving time on images and unlock the uncharted potentials that you overlook now.

Http Status Codes To Know From SEO And Development Perspective

HTTP status code or call them HTTP response status codes, they are returned to the browser to inform it about a web page or resource it requested from the server. When a browser or a search engine makes a request to the server, it responds to the request with a status code. Now the code it returns depends on the status of the resource or request.

If the request is served successfully by the server, the response status code will return 200. Similarly, there are other response codes as well. All these codes play a great role in both the website design & development and SEO of your website.

Knowing these status codes is very important for the website developers and designers. Skills to read these code will help them identify an error on the page and do the needful to fix it. Moreover, even the SEO professionals should also be familiar with the response code, as some of these are really crucial from the SEO point of view.

So, it’s undoubtedly an important thing to know about your website. So, let just understand them and improve the knowledge base. At least, next time when you see any such code, you can easily identify that error and ask the website development team to look into it.

HTTP Response Status Code Groups

The HTTP status codes are formally divided into 5 groups

100s: Progress- Request received and in process

200s: Successful- Request received and processed successfully.

300s: Redirects- Request received but a redirection required to serve the resource.

400s: Browser errors- Also referred as client errors. The request made by the client, but the page is not valid.

500s: Server errors- Server failed to complete the request

HTTP Response Status Codes- SEO perspective

While there are many more codes in these groups, there are abundant that are important from the SEO point of view. Let’s understand these codes in detail.

200 OK response code

This HTTP response code means the request has been served successfully by the server. Generally, it means no error in the request or from the server side.

301 Moved Permanently

This HTTP response status code is often used by the webmasters from the SEO perspective. It means that the requested resource is not available on current URL. The user must use one of the returned URLs to get the desired resource. In Simple terms, the page your are visiting have been permanently shifted to a new URL, Please use this new URL to visit the particular page from now onwards.

PS: When you move to a new URL and apply 302 redirects on it, It carries forward the SEO of your old URL to the new URL. That is, it does not kill your SEO. 301 redirect is often used in the creation of SEO-friendly URLs.

Read: How To Enable Seo Friendly URLs On Opencart 2.x?

302 Found/ Moved Temporarily

 

This response status code is returned in a similar condition as of 301 but on a temporary basis. It means the page you are requesting for has been moved to a different URL, but you need not use the new URL for future requests as this is just a temporary redirection.

PS: 302 redirection is not a recommended approach. Unlike 301 redirects, it does not carry forward your SEO to the new URL. Pages redirected with 302 codes are not ranked well on the search engines.

404 File Not Found

This is an error code which means that the requested resource was not found on the server. This can happen anytime when the server fails to find a requested page on the site.

A site with too many 404 errors is always seen by the search engines with that doubtful look. This affects the SEO as well. To handle this, webmasters often create a separate page with text written 404 error on it and redirect all the 404 pages to this particular page. In this way, the actual response code received will be now 200 OK but it will show as 404 on the page.

There are some nice solutions given here on this stack overflow discussion thread for Redirecting 404 error with .htaccess via 301 for SEO.

410 Gone

This HTTP response status code means that the requested resource in no longer there on the URL you are looking at and there is no redirection to any new URL to find the resource.

This code is a bit similar to 404. When server knows that the resource is no more available and it's not going to be available in the future as well on this URL, then it gives the 410 Gone response code.

However, when the server does not know if the missing resource will ever be available on this requested URL, then it gives the 404 response.

500 Internal Server Error

When something goes wrong on the server. It's a server side error that has to be fixed on the server. This could be temporary or even permanent till it is fixed.

502 Bad Gateway

When a server communicates with another server, and if the other server fails to respond successfully, then the first server sends this 502 error code to the client/browser.

503 Service Unavailable

When this response code shows on your browser, it means that the server is currently unable to serve the request due to a temporary failure. Generally due to overloading. It generally means that server has gone unresponsive for a temporary period of time.  For example, when the server has to be put down for a short time for maintenance purposes, it's a 503 condition.

Over to you

So, these are some HTTP response status codes which you generally see while browsing the internet or diagnosing your website. Now that you have an understanding of what these error codes mean, you should run the HTTP Response Status Codes Check for your website and find out if there are any error codes. If there is any, ask your web developer to look into it. You should also ask your SEO service provider to keep a track of such error codes, and also check if the redirection has been used correctly.