Research on impact of search engine optimization to internet marketing strategy

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RESEARCH ON IMPACT OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TO INTERNET MARKETING STRATEGY

APRIL 1, 2022 SOFTWARICA COLLEGE OF IT AND E COMMERCE Kathmandu, Nepal 0

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Abstract This dissertation describes and investigates about the concept of Search Engine Optimization in an internet marketing. This study take care about the procedure of the site and implementation of SEO and analyze what kind of data can obtain with the different actions.

The study also explores the theory behind search engine optimization through online marketing related literature. The goal is to identify what steps are needed in the most effective way to implement the SEO in an online marketing. The content creation of the website consists keyword analysis, site management, and content creation for various link building projects. The tool which are used for implementing SEO are UberSuggest, similarWeb, SE Ranking etc. Infographics, competitive link study and data driven projects were the topic of link building projects explored in this study. The key portions of the entire procedure have been acknowledged.

Based on the findings that the website produces, a thorough keyword research which implements search engine optimization to be applied on a website is an important step in the development of a coherent site structure and the most relevant website traffic. It is vital to experiment with several projects when it comes to link building in order to decide which results will be best delivered on the market. SEO is a long-term process, which can take up to months to produce results. Therefore, to see more lasting results and eventually revenue in the website traffic, it is important to keep constantly producing good quality content and monitoring many different parameters.

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ABBREVIATIONS HTML – Hypertext Mark-up language SEM – Search Engine Marketing SEO – Search Engine Optimization URL – Unified Resource Locator EUWV - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors PPC - Pay-Per-Click HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol PESTLE – Political Economical Social Technological Legal Environmental

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Contents 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................7 1.1 Background....................................................................................................................................................................... 12 1.2 Aim of the Study and Research Questions ........................................................................................................... 13 1.3 The Development Task................................................................................................................................................. 15 1.4 Research Method ............................................................................................................................................................ 15 2 Literature Review ................................................................................................................................................................... 15 2.1 Search Engine .................................................................................................................................................................. 15 2.2 Search Engine Optimization ...................................................................................................................................... 17 2.3 Internet Marketing ........................................................................................................................................................ 19 2.4 Social media...................................................................................................................................................................... 20 2.4.1 Social Media Marketing ....................................................................................................................................... 21 2.5 On-Page SEO ..................................................................................................................................................................... 22 2.5.1 Keyword Research................................................................................................................................................. 22 2.5.2 Content Creation .................................................................................................................................................... 24 2.5.3 Search Intent ........................................................................................................................................................... 26 2.5.4 Sitemaps .................................................................................................................................................................... 26 2.5.5 Technical SEO .......................................................................................................................................................... 27 2.6 Off-page SEO and Link building ............................................................................................................................... 29 2.6.1 The birth of Black hat SEO ................................................................................................................................. 31 2.7 SEO factors ........................................................................................................................................................................ 31 2.8 Entering in a market ..................................................................................................................................................... 32 3 Methodology ............................................................................................................................................................................. 33 3.1 Setting the goals.............................................................................................................................................................. 34 3.2 Familiarizing the market and branding ................................................................................................................ 34 3.3 Keyword research and site structure ..................................................................................................................... 35 7

3.4 Content Creation............................................................................................................................................................. 36 3.5 Link Building .................................................................................................................................................................... 37 3.6 PESTLE Analysis ............................................................................................................................................................. 39 4 Results and Findings ............................................................................................................................................................. 42 4.1 Ubersuggest ...................................................................................................................................................................... 42 4.2 SE Ranking ........................................................................................................................................................................ 43 4.3 SimilarWeb ....................................................................................................................................................................... 45 4.3.1 Website Performance ........................................................................................................................................... 45 4.3.2 Traffic and Management ..................................................................................................................................... 46 4.3.3 Marketing Channels .............................................................................................................................................. 48 4.3.4 Referrals .................................................................................................................................................................... 48 4.3.5 Search Traffic........................................................................................................................................................... 49 4.3.6 Social Traffic ............................................................................................................................................................ 49 4.3.7 Outgoing Links ........................................................................................................................................................ 50 4.3.8 Competitive Landscape ....................................................................................................................................... 50 4.3.9 Traffic Sources ........................................................................................................................................................ 51 4.3.10 Demographic View ............................................................................................................................................. 51 4.3.11 Audience Interest ................................................................................................................................................ 52 4.3.12 Keywords................................................................................................................................................................ 53 4.3.13 Incoming Traffic .................................................................................................................................................. 54 4.3.14 outgoing Traffic.................................................................................................................................................... 55 4.3.15 Organic Competitors .......................................................................................................................................... 56 5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................................................. 58 References ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 59

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Table of Figures Figure 1: Scope of SEO .................................................................................................................................................................. 11 Figure 2: Research Question ..................................................................................................................................................... 12 Figure 3: Research Method ........................................................................................................................................................ 13 Figure 4: market share of search engine (Statcounter Global Stats 2019) ....................................................... 14 Figure 5; Pie chart showing market share by search engines ................................................................................. 15 Figure 6: categorization of paid and normal search results .................................................................................... 16 Figure 7: percentage of people visit the first and next pages (Lee et al. 2019) .............................................. 17 Figure 8: keyword research using Kwfinder tool .......................................................................................................... 21 Figure 9: search volume .............................................................................................................................................................. 22 Figure 10: Meta title and Meta description ....................................................................................................................... 26 Figure 11: queries performed on mobile and desktop (Mobile SEO 2019) ..................................................... 27 Figure 12: Backlinks (Ahrefs 2019) .................................................................................................................................... 28 Figure 13: Google keyword planner for sasto deal ....................................................................................................... 35 Figure 14: keyword analysis using wordtracker tool .................................................................................................. 36 Figure 15: ranking of sasto deal website on search engine ...................................................................................... 37 Figure 16: PESTLE Analysis (PESTLE Analysis 2019) ................................................................................................. 40 Figure 17: overview of the visit to the website ............................................................................................................... 43 Figure 18: source of visit to the website ............................................................................................................................. 44 Figure 19: top pages in organic search ................................................................................................................................ 45 Figure 20: Facebook page of sasto deal website ............................................................................................................ 46 Figure 21: ranking of the website .......................................................................................................................................... 47 Figure 22: traffic and engagement ......................................................................................................................................... 48 Figure 23: visits over time ......................................................................................................................................................... 49 Figure 24: website operating by countries........................................................................................................................ 49 Figure 25: Marketing channel .................................................................................................................................................. 50 Figure 26: Referrals ....................................................................................................................................................................... 50 Figure 27: search traffic .............................................................................................................................................................. 51 Figure 28: social traffic ................................................................................................................................................................ 52 Figure 29: outgoing links ............................................................................................................................................................ 52 Figure 30: sites similar to sastodeal.com ........................................................................................................................... 53 9

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Figure 31: Backlinks from different sources .................................................................................................................... 53 Figure 32: Demographic view .................................................................................................................................................. 54 Figure 33: Audience Interest .................................................................................................................................................... 54 Figure 34. Domain rank on audience interest ................................................................................................................. 55 Figure 35: Keywords search ..................................................................................................................................................... 55 Figure 36: Incoming Traffic ....................................................................................................................................................... 56 Figure 37: Incoming referral traffic ...................................................................................................................................... 56 Figure 38: Outgoing traffic ......................................................................................................................................................... 57 Figure 39: Outgoing traffic and traffic share .................................................................................................................... 57 Figure 40: Organic competitors............................................................................................................................................... 58 Figure 41: market share by organic competitors ........................................................................................................... 59 Figure 42: Google ranking of sasto deal website ............................................................................................................ 60

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1 Introduction In the 21st century, the internet has emerged into a massive, dynamically distributed networks. The primary purpose of internet is to discover data. (Reference 2019) Due to the huge size of the internet, it would be very difficult to find specific pages without the support of a search engine. The internet had to be indexed in some form of list to allow the user to locate the information they are looking for. This helps to find online information which results the popularity of search engine namely Google, Bing, and Yahoo etc.

Since Google came to existence, SEO is a practice that is simply used by online sellers. Today, SEO has been a necessity to companies if they want to have a tight online occurrence. SEO assists online sellers to aim their content to people about products and services they offer and help getting business without commercial advertisement and old broadcasting.

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1.1 Background In today’s world, internet has become more relevant and significant tool for marketing. It helps to provide many possibilities for businesses to increase advertising and fresh clients.

Though, the cruel internet world don’t need the businesses to have social media exposure and up-to-date websites. Everything comes to findability. Although the search engines are designed to provide keywords for the most relevant websites, these results can be affected by understanding of how search engines list the outcomes, in the order of rank and relevance.

This phenomenon has emerged into a new industry called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

The main function of SEO is to influence the search engine results.

Search Engine Optimization does not deliver the quickest outcome, then in the extended period, the ROI becomes very high. It is possible to reach the highest position with regard to relevant keywords in search engine results by means of comparatively easy approaches reliably on the website and off the website.

SEO could be inexpensive than traditional advertising in the small period, but not always modest and cool. Search engine continuously change its search algorithm, so SEO is a continuous procedure of finding to access the upper of the results page. It’s a exciting pitch in the online markets when going for new markets, it is even more challenging.

Many SEO service companies have emerged as a result of the company’s demand to attract more visitors to their websites. SEO service companies provide services that aim to improve a website’s visibility and position in a search engine. The greater the number of visitors to the site, the higher the website positions in the results for any keyword. The more popular the keyword generally becomes, the more challenging it is to get a top position.

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Figure 1: Scope of SEO

1.2 Aim of the Study and Research Questions Main goal of the research is to find out how search engines and internet have influenced marketing and to understand SEO’s benefits and its potential to reach new clients. This research provides a clear overview on the concept of SEO and educates the reader about the relevance of Search Engine Optimization.

This study examines the process of how business should develop visibility with SEO in the form of online promotion. Research will emphasis on the philosophy behind SEO, clarifying all of the ideas means and how to execute them in philosophy.

The purpose of this thesis is to give the reader to have an easy and understandable impact on their search engine results. The study focuses on optimizing search engines and the algorithms used by Google. Google search engine is selected as a main search engine because currently it is the world’s number one search engine. Ebizmba positions Google as a top search engine having 1800,000,000 monthly visitors in contrast to the biggest Bing with 500,000,000. (ebizmba 2019) The study consists of classifying potential keywords that would drive to more customers to the company. The key factors for obtaining top position in Google are also observed. The 13

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research also determines which keyboard would be practical to compete for the better position. Furthermore, it ultimately concludes whether it would be possible for company to achieve the highest position in Google for the chosen keywords.

Some questions were raised before initiating the research work. This research tries to find the answers to these questions to get into a concrete conclusion.

Is SEO an effective tool for online marketing?

Is SEO effective to get ranked in Google search?

For small and medium enterprises, is it relevant to perform SEO? Without professional help, is it possible to improve the existing site of the company?

Is social media can be used for operative advertising channel?

Figure 2: Research Question

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1.3 The Development Task This task is to analyze and document the procedure in which SEO was implemented during this process when the company launches its website to a market. The process is critically observed and compared with SEO theory and marketplace diffusion. The consequences obtained during the procedure would be considered and associated to the activities to determine whether there is correlation between the results and the actions. This task helps to deliver improved information and tools if the company desire to go into fresh marketplaces by their companies. By generating the procedure through serious analysis and remarks, businesses would understand which procedures have functioned ‘and wherever they might progress their measures and actions afterwards.

1.4 Research Method The theory behind SEO and bazaar infiltration can be gathered from desk analysis, and commencing various unlike sources comprising books, blogs and websites, online courses etc. The information for the report would be obtain as of the analysis of keyword study, link building plans. The consequences with regard to revenue and traffic ranking position will be acquired from Google Analytics, Kwfinder.

Figure 3: Research Method

2 Literature Review 2.1 Search Engine Finding an appropriate material on the internet could be a hectic task in the absence of search engine. Search engines are the software that allow users to find the right information by

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filtering the list of various date present in the web. After that user decides to follow the link given in the first page or to continue the search on the next pages. (oreilly 2019) Among various search engines in the market, Google tops the war with other two main competitors Microsoft’s Bing (www.bing.com) and Yahoo (www.Yahoo.com). According to the survey of Statscounter, the following graph shows the market share for the top search engines:

Figure 4: market share of search engine (Statcounter Global Stats 2019)

The statistical view of these data can be shown as follows:

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Figure 5; Pie chart showing market share by search engines

Even before completing the search phrase, when people attempt to search using a search engine, the search engines are sending bots or spiders to the internet to survey the web pages and create their database. The bots will then locate the web pages with repeated keywords contained in the search phrase and helps to index them on the search page. (WSI 2019)

2.2 Search Engine Optimization SEO helps for improving website pages in a way that they should be appear as trustworthy, and desirable over the sights of search engines. It’s a practice of online advertising and a technique of manipulating results of the search pages. The goal is to rank high in search engine results and to increase traffic and exposure on the website by using the relevant keywords. This takes place via various strategies which consists HTML content, and other strategies such as text content in a suitable arrangement comprising the mass media and other useful essentials like gaining links to the domain from other high standard domains.

(Bible and Ledford 2019)

SEO is a broad topic that involves Search Engine Marketing (SEM). SEM is the trend that consists of all advertising techniques for search and visibility in the internet. Visibility on the 17

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Web, especially in search engines is very important from a business point of view. SEM affects both paid and organic search results. Paid results for a specific keyword for example “inbound marketing” appear in the top of the web page whereas organic results appear after the paid advertisement. SEO is a practice to improve natural or organic search results in the website and helps to make the website more accessible to people who are looking for product or service by using search engines. (Hubspot 2019)Following figure shows the organic and paid search results in a search engine.

Figure 6: categorization of paid and normal search results

SEO can be broadly divided into two classes: off-page SEO and on-page SEO and. On-page SEO helps to optimize website contents in order to match search engine algorithm, and offpage SEO obtains traffic from other domains in the website. Through the combination of offpage SEO and on-page SEO, we can control the value and ranking of a site that helps to visibility of search engine. Although, equally they are vital for well ranking website. Off-page SEO somewhat shows a larger role in the ranking of search engine, but must constantly be based on a continuous optimization of on-page SEO. (Stanis 2019) Most of the people focus on the first page in their search for a result and few people literally jump to the next page of their search result. Therefore, potential customers and traffic can be

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visible to the first page. A search engine optimized website will rank high, bringing it to the first page of the customer search result. (Lee et al. 2019) According to the study of Chitika, following graph shows the data of people actually visiting the first page and the rest moving to the next pages.

Figure 7: percentage of people visit the first and next pages (Lee et al. 2019)

Search engine algorithms of Google change constantly, about five hundred to six hundred times a year. Most of the improvements are just a minor modifications, but a few significant modifications change the whole game of SEO. So, it’s practically difficult to tell the most essential aspects of SEO at a given point of time is. (Beginner's Guide To SEO 2019)

2.3 Internet Marketing The practice of having the World Wide Web may be defined as Internet promotion or marketing. It can simply be described as "Marketing goals through the use of digital

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technologies" (researchgate 2019) .This marketing approach includes SEM, email marketing and social media marketing. SEM is defined by optimizing a search engine, pay per-click ads and a funded presences as a process of improving visibility on a website. The definition of findability should first be understood to gain benefits from the SEO. Findability refers to the standard of position or navigation in the sense of The World Wide Web. In other words, it is easy to find the details both outside of the website and users on the website. The principle covers both pay per click and the optimization of the search engine. The highly successful keywords for the company have to be identified to be effective in SEO. That is why we first test pay per click ads as it gives the finest method to know what keywords work. (researchgate 2019)

2.4 Social media There is no denying that social media become the most significant trends on the current Internet. This offers businesses with completely latest platform to meet clients, investors and even potential employees. Social media offers a way to increase a company's image and introduce the company to daily life. The writer considered the description given by OneZeroOne to define the best way: "Par definition the social media consists of the set of techniques, practices and tools for on-line communication, production". (Keefe 2019) Social media is a new phenomenon, people tend to think. The reality is that it is longer than the Internet. Newsletters are like posting a comment on Twitter sharing details in a social group. The difference between social media's recent rapid growth is that social media are productive and accessible. It’s designed to easily understand what is available to users of any specific service and to communicate with other users. Nowadays, new children are taken up with media forms designed and created especially for them. (The Posting Paradox 2019)

As stated, the value of social media has grown rapidly in recent years. 73% of American adolescents who had Internet access already used websites for social networks in 2010. The same figure for adults was 47%. By comparison to previous years, both figures have improved significantly. Nonetheless, the use of social networking websites is almost entirely different between young adults (18-29 years old) and young people (Lenhart, A., Purcell, K., Smith, A., Zickuhr, K. (2010) 2019)

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2.4.1 Social Media Marketing Another way of using the Internet is to promote a company on social networks. Social networks such as Facebook put people from around the globe together and information is easily updated. Networks such as Twitter, for instance, are large networks that attract millions. In 2011, Facebook was the world's most visited website, with 880 million EUMV per month, as researched by DoubleClick Corporation. (Marvin and Marvin 2019) Facebook has the purpose of creating a group or page that can be used to promote a product.

It's free and easy to create a site. An existing user account can create a page. The website can be advertised to friends who make the available, since the more users such as a link, the more Facebook implies that people (friends of friends) like it. There is an unidentified chance available on the Internet to purchase "Likes" from certain sites, such as www.buyilikes.com.

It rises visibility and revenue, but can be seen immoral and the service cannot be guaranteed successful. A party or website is the most widely used advertisement tool in Facebook for small companies. (Appel, 2019) There is however a way that actual advertisement is accessible on Facebook and the displays of selected potential customers. The cost of Facebook ads is as low as $0.01/day, although most are about US$ 20-5000/day. The easiest way to keep marketing costs down is through easy ads that carry the consumer to your Facebook business page. A few dollars is available and the daily budget is tailored for potential customers. (Appel, 2019) You can opt for a per-click cost (CPC) or a thousand-print cost (CPM). There's a distinction, that every time someone clicks the ad, CPC advertiser charges. For every 1000 clicks that the ad is shown, the cost per thousand impressions are measured. This form of publicity campaign is to be regularly tested, controlled and optimized to ensure the effectiveness of the campaign. (Appel, 2019) There are other types of advertisement offered by the Internet. One exposure tool opens up the possibility of making blogs and engaging in forums. We won't focus more on these platforms because there are thousands of websites that provide the opportunity to create a blog or forums for discussion participants. These can be found through standard search

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engines. Nonetheless, it should be taken into consideration that blogging is a resource that cannot be overlooked when we think about leveraging search engine ads in social media.

2.5 On-Page SEO On-page SEO is carried out on the web page in terms of Meta tags and contents. On-site SEO helps to have the best keywords for each page and make the page contents related to those keywords. This optimization process if fully under our control and will change the way search engines see our websites if done correctly. (Freecomputerbooks 2019) On-page SEO is the process of optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and generates more relevant search engine traffic. It helps to optimize both the content and HTML source code of a page, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signs. It considers all facets of the websites that, when put together, will boost the search results ranking. As the Google becomes more complex, the most important factor affecting on-page optimization is relevance. When you are developing the page, you have to think- how relevant is your page to the query? (On Page SEO | SEJ 2019)

2.5.1 Keyword Research Making enhanced content in Google starts through overall research of keyword. It is necessary to take the keywords you need to emphasis on in order to rank on Google.

Keyword research is one of the high return investment and the most valuable to make with SEO. By selecting the keywords that you want to focus on as quickly as possible, we can easily make content which positions good on the result page of search engine. (O’Reilly | Safari 2019) The keywords are categorized into three types: - long tail keywords, broad keywords and general keywords. General keywords are associated to the industry, which consist of only single term describing the service or product. The general keyword’s example is like “coffee machine”. It consist of simply single product in which a business should focus on. Broad keyboards stand somewhat extra precise, but are typically comprise of 2 to 3 words. The illustration of broad keyboard is “coffee machine prices”. Long tailed keywords are common and exact keywords and consist of more than 3 words. The example of Long tail keywords

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would be “which coffee machine to buy.” You can build a well-organized and reliable website and coherent keyword plan with long tail, broad and general keywords. (Soulo 2019) According to the Moz’s, 70% of all searches consist long tail keywords, meaning that, only almost 30% of searches are generalized by high search volume keywords and broad keywords. Most lengthy keywords have a few searches per day, and are meant to be very accurate search intention. It prefers to take in traffic flow that will turn to a purchaser on the website rather than customers looking through the general keywords of greater volume.

Therefore, it’s vital to maintain a stability among the general keywords of high search volumes and long tail keywords of the low search volume. (Keyword Research 2019) KWFinder is a good tool to begin the keyword research. We can discover statistics in accordance of keyword trends and search volume trends by inserting the desired keyword

Figure 8: keyword research using Kwfinder tool

into the KWFinder tool. With trends, we can able to see how the keywords hit their highest search times of the year, and how the search capacity of the keywords developed over time.

These statistics help to control how to rank, and how they are searching regularly. (Kwfinder By Mangools 2019)

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Figure 9: search volume

Although KWFinder shows a good data of the volume of the search of the definite keywords, it does not provide the detailed description of the search engine natures.

2.5.2 Content Creation It consists all the materials that is available to customers in the sites and consist of blog posts, and additional content on the websites. Google also offers rules to create content which would place higher in result of search engines. According to the Google’s webmaster guidelines, we must concentrate on the content which is beneficial to people in order to simply look rank high in search engine. When creating content, user friendly should be focused, but we need to measures which are joint to achieve good search engine results. ((SEO) Starter Guide 2019)

The important thing while writing content is the precise density of keyword. Therefore, it is essential to do the research on keyword and create the detailed keyword plan to write optimized content on search engine. The chief keyword that select to appear many times on a content to distinguish from other keywords. This helps search engine to know what the page is talking about. You should choose related broad and long tail keywords to support the 24

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text along with main general keywords. It allows search engines to learn more about the concepts of every pages. Getting good densities of the keyword must be completed in a way which appears to be usual somewhat than unnecessary in a text. (SEO Bible 2019) In most cases, search engine select pages that consume expertise in the topic and keyword, which answers the consumer’s questions in an appropriate way. Search engine does not understand the nature of your text, in what way it has been written. Moz and Buzzsumo carried out the comprehensive analysis of content for millions of Google blogs in 2015, and observed that regular length of topmost articles was seven hundred and fifty words, though the top twenty articles were less than five hundred words long. (Content Analysis & Reporting 2019) That confirms that extensive content is improved for search engines. Lengthier content has often extra links that would further enhance page ranking by their associated keywords. The broad principle is it should be at least 300 words to optimize the text to reach for over 750 words. Through keywords, it will be achieve that seems natural and gives worth to the users, more than willing to achieve some words with small text. (SEO Visionary Jayson Demers 2019) User-friendliness, readability and engagement is very important for search engines. Google encouraged webmasters to ensure that content is very fast to deliver by splitting text into passages and organizing them with headlines. Texting a 1000 words blog without formatting would appear unwanted for together user and search engines, so layout and the text must be prudently understood. Ideally, passages must only be 3 rows long, since that will make the writing less crowded and readable. (Search Console Help 2019) To build the text even more appealing to search engines, a visual element should be present in the text after 3-4 paragraphs. Although, search engine cannot recognize image contents, in which they are conscious that user desire visualized content instead of a lengthy written text.

By way of offering graphic elements, it becomes very easy to keep user consideration on the text lengthy and rise the time spend in the site. In order to bring the most value from the images, the images should be given an alternative descriptive text, so that search engine distinguish whatever the picture is presenting. Videos are also an excessive method to increase the number of times that users spend time on your website. (Content Marketing 2019)

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2.5.3 Search Intent It’s essential to know the intention of the search for keyword research. It gives the answer to the question to look for anything via search engines. If you understand keywords behind the search engine, you will get consumers that are possible to generate income. According to Andrei, it is distributed into three categories: Informational searches, Transactional Searches, Navigational Searches. Informational searches performed to answer questions or learn something. In informational searches, customer is searching to collect data about product or services. Navigational searches performed to locate a specific website. Through navigational intent, customer practices keywords to move through a determined end point. Transactional searches performed to buy something. With Transactional searches, users are looking where they would buy it. They also compare the charges and try to seek the finest solution. These keywords have minor search volume as comparison to other. (Agius and Agius 2019) Informational intent keyword is likely to take extra peoples to the site via organic searches.

These searches cannot lead to a goal completion because they simply looking for information.

For example, take the word “buy mobile”. It’s obvious that the searcher has the intention to buy mobile phones (Transactional). On the other hand, someone search for “how to tie a tie” is looking for an answer (Informational).

2.5.4 Sitemaps Sitemap is referred to the page in the website containing all of the website information, it offers access to all other website pages. According to the FLEISCHNER, Michael H, sitemaps normally have two purposes.

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Makes easy for visitors to search contents in the site

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Allow search engines spider the websites faster

Sitemaps are mostly created in HTML or XML that is an easy task for most people who use an HTML editor. The sitemap must be a single page that links the other main pages of the site.

This sitemap must be regularly updated to update the contents. By designing the site structure of the website in a natural hierarchy helps Google to see which products and pages are important in the page, and make the most logic to the user. (SEO Made Simple 2019)

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2.5.5 Technical SEO It is included in on-page SEO, rather than a noticeable content, it emphases on HTML code after it. It is called website optimization. Although it is not accessible to the eyes of human, for Google it is essential as written text. It helps to tell the search engines that are related to the essential portions of text in the website and how the pages are linked on the site. (SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible 2019)

The various types of HTML tags, particularly alt tags and title, are the most essential aspects of technical SEO. Search engine does not see, what they represent and these elements be as expressive as possible. By providing precise alt, we can notify the content of the search engine, and link together with the text. Google recommends for SEO that the alt tags and title should be as concise and clear, that keyword associated with the page should also be included. The title tags would make Google to see the chief keyword in which the site point out, and how well the content is designed. (Search Console Help 2019)

Meta

description

and Meta title HTML tags are other essential for the website. These tags describe the result of the search for the page which will look on search engines like Google, Bing etc. A good Meta description and Meta title would allow customers so that they expect to find from the website and to attract users at the same time. (Search Console Help 2019)

Figure 10: Meta title and Meta description

It’s essential for the speed of the page loading website should not be too lengthy to allow user related optimization and search engine optimization. It is better to put little duplicate content because it ensures that the code is not too complicated. Google itself has stated, especially, that page speed should not be ignored as a ranking factor. Many changes take place via HTML code which is used in website, with simple changes to the main content, page speed can be improved as well. One of the major factor is that the media in the pages are not needlessly large. For sample, images can be cropped to ensure that does not lower the quality but the 27

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size can be reduced by 70%. This tool is tinyPNG which compress image by integrating same pixels. It significantly lower the size, but often does not disturb the quality of the image until it is taken too far. Slow page speed can lead to an increase in the bounce level as people become unsatisfied with the time-consuming wait to access the web page, and they just back to the main page. (Researchgate 2019) The main factors in technical SEO is to ensure that site is designed for mobile devices. This helps that mobile users can also access the website and use them conveniently. In the past years, it would not get hurt the ranking of the website by ignoring mobile users. In recent years, more than 50 percent of all internet traffic has been covered by mobile users. (Olsen et al. 2019)

Because of the modification in the choices of the devices, Google took the update and said that penalized the sites that were not designed in accordance with the mobile compatible.

Before desktop and mobile version of the website is indexed in a different way and the rank changes based on whether searches are performed on mobile or desktop. All of this shows that Google place high on pages which considers the user the most, rather than sites which are simply emphasis on building search engine optimized content. According to Google, there are 27.8 billion more queries performed on mobile than desktop. (Mobile SEO 2019)

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Figure 11: queries performed on mobile and desktop (Mobile SEO 2019)

2.6 Off-page SEO and Link building It mainly emphases on the link which is between domain and other domains. The essential factor of the off-page SEO is backlinks. Backlinks are the most important factor in SEO for the longest time, and are one of the biggest singular factors until the present day. Having a number of backlinks tell search engines that people discovery your content valuable and thet want to forward it with others. Google also exposed that links are the top 3 search engine ranking factor in its algorithm (reliablesoft 2019). Brian Dean study found that links are the prime aspects in the search engine ranking. However, having many backlinks cannot guarantee high ranking on a search engine result page, it must be based on good excellence links and based on well optimized content of on-page SEO. (Amacker 2019) To see how many backlinks the website has, you have to put your domain into free backlink checker tool. For example, below I put the domain called www.amazon.com into free backlink checker tool to see backlinks and referring domains. A website which is useful and high quality is more likely to have references (backlinks) from other website.

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Figure 12: Backlinks (Ahrefs 2019)

There are several strategies for getting links, and this is called link building. The best method to get links is that user share on the social media channels or on their web pages. This is options for top sites to gain traffic for their contents. Fresh sites should take struggles to make their content available to people. This is usually done when new content is made accessible on the site. Getting links via popular content is called link earning (SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible 2019). For example, if someone like the article and reference it from his/her

blog or website, it’s like telling search engines that the website has very well content.

Brian dean grades some classical methods to earning and building links in his article. The most effective one is content marketing and content creation. Infographics are pictures, which combine data with visual image. They are very easily shareable and easy tool for content marketing, and people prefers visual rather than basic text. This helps infographics fast way to gain links. (Backlinko 2019) In addition to link from various domains, social media links are also portion of the off-page SEO. Social media did not exist in earlier years of SEO. It makes sense that search engine did 30

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not reason to comprise links as factors affecting SEO, when social media started to gain momentum. Although social signals are still not seen. The social media is the integral portion of human day to day activities. Search engines have to look the benefits after links and mentions from social media platform also. Social media links are also often used to increase web traffic and increase the user’s engagement, so they have positive effect on the organic page performance even though they do not form part of search engine algorithms. (Digital Marketing Blog 2019)

2.6.1 The birth of Black hat SEO Link building was a simple way to manipulate algorithm for search engines, which many spammers have taken advantage to use by creating link networks which is so called black hat SEO. Google is very good in identifying black hat tactics and with the release of several algorithm updates and has managed to control the problem and secure its search results from spammers. (Reliablesoft.Net 2019) In addition to this, search engines have implemented so-called “noFollow links” to provide webmasters with a means to link to the website without passing any “link juice”. We can add a special tag to a link that says search engines not to count the particular link as a ‘vote of trust’ to the referenced website.

For example: - <a href="http://www.anything.com"

rel="nofollow">Some url</a>. This has been done to allow you to link with other websites without taking any risk of being caught for exchanging and sharing risk.

In other words, it does not matter how many links are pointing to your website but it is important where these links are coming from. For example- it does not have same value between a link from a normal blog and a link from the New York Times.

2.7 SEO factors Several ideas are available about how to increase natural search results, but you must keep the algorithms hidden through proprietary search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. If not, it will be a way for SEO professionals to use the engines for them. The suppliers of search engines have left hints about how the search engines function and we can be sure of a

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few things. Search engines are used to map the web using crawlers (or spiders). The ranking of the page is not affected by the driver. The crawler gathers then moves information from the site to a data center for analysis of pulled data. If your site is temporarily down when the spider hits the web, then it can conclude that this site has been deleted and decrease the page's ranking in the normal search engine index. (Translate SEO Content 2019) The searchability of a website is one of the factors. A certain link structure must be in place for the website which enables the driver to collect data from all the website pages. A page that is not linked to any other page on your website usually is not disabled until it is sent to the search engine directly. You must also send the article to the search engine. The platform does not automatically guarantee a listing and several submissions can harm your ranking position. Only once should a request be submitted for the brand new domain. The content of a web should be easy to search. It implies in fact keywords or phrases. In reality, if we look at a Web page theme, we come back to this. In short, the website should also be tailored for the keywords. (Translate SEO Content 2019) As described before, it is crucial for the crawlers to connect within the site. But more connections to your site raise PageRank. There’s proof, It applies in particular if the links on the linked websites are identical with the correct "anchor text”. The website must be updated on a regular basis. Search engines prefer fresh details, and the crawlers are looking for that as well. If the website contains old material, the search engine decides that the information is no longer reliable, and the PageRank decreases. (Moz, 2019) If your web site's content changes a lot, Similar Web is a good tool. It can also have an effect on your PageRank as the Google Sitemap pages are spinning more frequently. Spidering is the way that a search engine travels through a web that gathers information and links as previously mentioned.

2.8 Entering in a market While entering into the market, we need careful planning and research. It is very necessary to know the characteristics of the market before entering into the business with the company.

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It is necessary to know what the condition of your product is, who the main competitor are, in what way competitive the marketplace is and how you can succeed. While online translation can yield cheap and fast results, the terminology around the terms is very likely impossible for a person who does not speak the language to figure out.

Branding often easily becomes an issue with international market penetration from the company’s name to the product name, and service provided. Company needs to decide how to brand itself. The branding and the name of the company is typically the first challenge a company faces in the new market. The first questions company must ask themselves is the name global appropriate and makes sense to the market. If one or both responses are no, the company will face the problems. The company will decide if they want to brand the company with a completely different name in the international market. It is not only necessary to analyze the market, but also to get to know the target audience in the market.

3 Methodology The research technique which will be used in this study is both qualitative and quantitative research. A complete, detailed description on the topic has obtained using a qualitative analysis, while the quantitative analysis has been conducted to classify the features, count them and create statistical models for explaining the things observed during the analysis.

The fundamental purpose of this thesis is to find the effectiveness of SEO in the Google listing and internet marketing that follows. A qualitative analysis is conducted in the first part of the study including the literature review and inclusion of theories that were implied in the work done during the practice period. The result and survey results from different analytical tools were the source of qualitative data.

Data collection is the method of measuring and gathering information on a systematic way which helps us to enable specified research question to test hypothesis and to analyze outcomes. The data sources can be divided into three categories. Primary sources include non-interpreted or analyzed original material including journal, articles, and paper reports, desk surveys etc. secondary sources are similarly those which have been abstracted from primary sources and which have already been interpreted and evaluated. For example: -

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dictionaries, journal articles etc. The same applies to the tertiary data that are abstracted from both primary as well secondary data. While preparing this thesis, the data has been abstracted from all the sources.

For the preparation of this thesis, the data is collected from the three main sources. Articles.

Online materials, literature review from the books have been used to collect information on the theoretical side of the study, similarly desk survey technique has also been used to collect information from the experts and other related in the field of SEO. For the sample, different online websites have been used to see the effect of SEO. Similarly data has been abstracted from the different analytical tool present in the market which provides all the performance statistics of the website.

3.1 Setting the goals SEO also requires specific goals to be a coherent strategy. Without aims, it is hard to prioritize action and determine what actions to take to improve the performance of the sites first.

The first goal is simply to make the visibility for the website. Specific goals are difficult to set since the business does not have experience in the completion of market. There are two main target and are receiving traffic via organic searches, and helps to create profits on the website.

The objectives never fixed on paper, exact plan is never made to achieve, but the actions that the company started to take when their website launched. After implementing SEO to the website, the overall goal is to produce any kind of revenue. This seems like a good goal, but again, it’s hard to know the potential to get from the site.

3.2 Familiarizing the market and branding The business should concentrate on the site that familiarize themselves via the various products and services, competition in the market, and kind of content that would work best.

The employee should have knowledge with SEO and Nepali speaker is essential for a website that would only focus in online marketing through organic search. The major question, company can face is branding, in particular with the name of the website and service. The company should create a name that has the same sprit as Nepali market TO think about options that would be clearer and broader in which the website aimed for providing 34

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consumer service that helps to contrast various factors of the market. The business should guarantee that they cannot limit the business because the aim is to link everything about the market.

3.3 Keyword research and site structure After the name is decided, then we should begin the keyword research. First of all, insert a few translated phrases which are related to online shopping in Nepal, incoming them to Google keyword planner to look which is the highest impression and average position.

Figure 13: Google keyword planner for sasto deal

It helps to concentrate of site and it has good clicks and impression according to Google keyword planner, which has 1.1k impressions and 200 clicks. As the “online shopping” is the widest of the words, and make sense to select in the main seek keyword. The structure is designed which is created on the keywords so that Google can simply can see, what the overall hierarchy and structure of the website is and which pages related to which. By making a clear plan with site structure and keyword research, the pages should be prioritized and focused on when doing link building for specific keywords.

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3.4 Content Creation The development of the content is to carry out a detailed research into keywords. Although the keyword research was conducted at the start of the research process on the whole website, it’s good to build a keyword for each content section, since it helps to go into more depth and find more keywords relevant to the same keyword that could not be found on the research on the original keyword. Google keyword planner and wordtracker were the tools for the comprehensive keyword analysis.

Figure 14: keyword analysis using wordtracker tool

In the above figure, ‘sasto ticket’ has the highest search volume of 6412 in comparison to sasto deal of 5917 in Nepal. They have high competition in comparison to other keyword like ‘sasto bazar’, sasto tickets’ etc.

However, when looking for the keyword, the search results looked at both the organic results and wordtracker results. The main keyword and secondary keywords would be included for each keyword research, average searches per month and amount of keywords to be shown in the content. Content development report includes the planned structure of the headlines.

Many pages should have a title and meant to be 1000 words, the top 4 pages should always be 2000 words long. Content is fairly simple and keyword densities in the content plan were

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closely followed. The first content of all the pages strictly follow the suggested arrangement of text in SEO. Paragraphs must be about three lines, a certain visual element would follow after each paragraphs. It could be an image, bullet points or table. In order to make it clear to Google in what way the image is related, all images also received definition and content related alt tags. Tables cannot be included at this point in the first content pages, but their usefulness was checked later on in the long tail keyword pages. Titles and Meta tags of the content pages should be carefully written and ensure that it should be correct length for the search engine result page (SERP). The next move with the website was to begin the development of a website with long tail keyword content pages. Some of the pages are not traffic that is really important for the website which is faced with the intention to search from the outset.

Figure 15: ranking of sasto deal website on search engine

3.5 Link Building The business has a website that is running in Nepali marketplace, after it derived to building link. The business has a website which is running in Nepal in the past but has not optimum

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link building projects. This means that estimating and evaluating which kind of link building is the best way to operate is difficult, so it is natural to try first to link building projects which has been successful in the market. The first task of link building project on the website is competitor analysis. This is a process which allows you to see the link of your top competitors have with a tool like Ubersuggest, Similarweb etc. and seek to see if there are links to your own page which are also easy to obtain. Sometimes, these simple links are comments on articles and forums or profiles that can be created on various websites, or even folders, to which websites can be submitted. The first step in creating a competitor analysis is to find out who your primary competitors are. The search for these competitors took two key approaches during this project, through similarWeb, UberSuggest, wordtracker, SE Ranking Comprehensive Domain Tool and Google, through the website's keywords. That decided competitor is inserted into the SimilarWeb domain explorer because this is the easiest way to understand each competitor's referring domains. From this list of domains it is easy to see which links, including comments, folders, profiles or forum posts, are made very quickly and easily. A number of promising, high DR connection opportunities were gathered from each competitor. Until actually leaving the message, sending a post or building a profile, each opportunity would be addressed and prepared. In addition, it was agreed to use competitor analytics to connect which pages on the websites. After all of this was prepared, the strategy could be implemented and reported, as all comments, forum posts and directory submission links would be posted and recorded. It is vital to keep to websites as close as possible to your profession, because such links are more useful. The study of competitors provided about 10 simple connections and a strong first increase for the website. However, the improvement was noticeable in the ranking of SimpleWeb, DR which after this project started to increase to 0.

After the completion of the first competitive analysis study, it is time to try developing a link building infographic. In many different markets, the company has had great results with infographics. We are not quite as expected, although the infographic results and traffic have been quite essential for the very first link building project. The projects brought some traffic through social media and connections, as well as e-mail services. The findings were however

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very limited, because only one relation from a different domain was available, all of the other connections being social ones.

The so-called data driven press release project is the third type of project. A company datadriven project is a project designed around or obtained by an interesting data set or found outside of the organization. Such ventures are designed to produce articles that are adequate to enhance the connectivity of large news media and to connect very highly qualified sites to the domain of the business. The subject is not easy to identify for data-driven projects as it often comes from the data itself and its context the method of a data-driven link building project differs from infographic in that it focuses more on data and analysis instead of making something visually appealing. The goals for a data-driven project often vary from those of an infographic project as they typically focus on local news media or other related media. The target group for this project was small media that were especially aimed at comparing cities. In addition to the limited local news media, several national media have also been included. This was a much greater success than the previous infographic ventures.

The small news media was very interested in publishing the details, because it was interesting to see.

3.6 PESTLE Analysis PESTLE is the acronym of Political, Economical, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental. These aspects directly or indirectly affect the business, product and service of the company. PESTLE is a strategic decision-making tool that provides businesses a thorough insight into the world in which they cooperate or plan to launch their products or services. This research can be the foundation for your strategic plan to explain not only the workings of the sector, but also what to do and how to do and demonstrate to yourself.

(PESTLE Analysis 2019)

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Figure 16: PESTLE Analysis (PESTLE Analysis 2019)

Political: - Whether you are working with one or several country you need to know the political background in which goods or services are created and traded. The point to which governments can control this industry is determined by political factors. Such factors tend to lead to legal considerations later on, as new legislation is enacted and existing legislation is changed to suit changing social and technological conditions. You need to take political climate into account if you want to take a strategic view of SEO. (PESTLE Analysis 2019) Economic: - Economic factors derive from the output of an economy that has a straight impression on the industries and a long-term resonance. In the case of SEO, the increasing procurement potential of customers in the second and third world countries will drive a wider use of search technologies and open up new markets for foreign SEOs is one of the key economic drivers of change. (PESTLE Analysis 2019) Social: - Social factors include issues such as cultural trends and demographics of the population, one of the more important forces of change in SEO industry. In these older demographics, for example, much of the increase among online activities is attributed to their use of tablet computing. The digital empowerment of older generations has led to new online markets and increased existing markets ' competitiveness. We have seen the population aged

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45 to 54 become more active online in recent years, contributing to all sorts of changes in search behavior. (Po23lemicdigital 2019) Technological: - SEO and its long-term future have much more to do with technology and a wider outlook needs to take a look at wider technical developments. This must then be understood in the sense of the SEO–in particular, how the purpose of online searches itself is affected. The way in which we look for information online would fundamentally change technologies like wearable devices and embedded devices which may impact the very basis of SEO. Of course this is exactly where searches are performed and transferred to suppliers of information rather than the worldwide Internet doors. (Po23lemicdigital 2019) Legal: - Of example, as Google is to be heavily penalized in Europe of infringements of antitrust, we can see the search environment being dramatically changed. We'll see improvements in how Google displays European consumers the search results at the bottom of the effect scale. Google can opt to withdraw from Europe at the top (and unlike) end completely, which will be no less than a fundamental shift for SEO, because immediately we will need to concentrate on which search engines are built so that we can fill the void.

(Po23lemicdigital 2019)

Environmental: - Environmental factors can be heavily reverberated by legislation, financial and legal factors to generate profound changes in the way companies operate online at the local, national and international levels. One look at the effect on New Orleans of Hurricane Katrina reveals just how damaging environmental factors can be. Although it may seem to be nasty to discuss how this impacts your business, it is nonetheless important for a long-term view of the SEO for your customers to be taken into account-particularly if your target market is in an environmentally uncertain area. (Po23lemicdigital 2019)

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4 Results and Findings The study on the “Impact of Search Engine Optimization to internet marketing strategy” started with the work placement done in Sasto Deal website named www.sastodeal.com which is an online shopping brand that works in the field of internet providing amazing online shopping experience to the Nepali customers. It provides categories like footwear, accessories, men’s and women’s clothes and more. The website was developed by developers for which the visibility of the website has been checked. Keeping this fact into consideration, the process of search engine optimization was carried out. Numbers of tools and technique have been implemented while finding the website traffic and condition using SEO strategy.

4.1 Ubersuggest After all the above mentioned theories were performed, the following results were discovered. The data are extracted from Ubersuggest tool which provides precise information on all website visits and the details of all visits. (Ubersuggest 2019)

Figure 17: overview of the visit to the website

Figure 13 above explains the total number of visits by people

from December, 2018 to

November 2019. The red line explains the visits/hits to the page www.sastodeal.com. Here we can see that from December 2018 to May 2019, the red line passes horizontally. After that, the visits to the pages started growing and during the end of October, the visit to the page

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started declining. Overall, the optimization process that took place was going on right direction.

Figure 18: source of visit to the website

Above statistics from Ubersuggest illustrates the origin of the visits to the website www.sastodeal.com. The above figure shows the large number of direct visits to the website.

As a big amount of visits are from different sources as shown in figure above.

4.2 SE Ranking Another tool to research organic traffic is SE Ranking which shows the total traffic share by the website and the pages in organic search. It also gives the estimated traffic, monthly traffic cost and keyword number shared by the website. (SE Ranking 2019)

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Figure 19: top pages in organic search

Figure 14 shows the top pages occurs in organic search by sastodeal.com. It shows the percentage of traffic shared by different pages of the website. The number of estimated traffic shared by different pages is also shown in figure above. It shows that the monthly traffic cost is very high on the main page of the website.

One of the process of gaining visitors to the site is through social referrals. Social media like Facebook, LinkedIn etc. have helped getting the traffic to the website. The website is also promoted through the Facebook page. The below figure shows the Facebook page of sasto deal website that was shared in Facebook page for promotion.

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Figure 20: Facebook page of sasto deal website

4.3 SimilarWeb SimilarWeb is a SEO strategy tool to find out the overview of website performance. It competitively analyze the website data and traffic, referral traffic which is divided into two categories, the first one is incoming traffic and the second one is outgoing traffic. It also shows the website audience on a monthly basis. It also shows the People using different device, which is may be the mobile or desktop device to visit the website. It also shows the visit over time by geographic location. It also gives the information about the countries in which the website is visited.

4.3.1 Website Performance The performance of the website is measured by ranking into three categories such as global rank, country rank and category rank. The global rank of the website is 158197th. The country in which the website is operating is in Nepal. It is placed 155th in Nepal. It is ranked 5th in category rank.

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At first, it shows the overall rank of the website. The ranking factor is categorized into three way. They are based on global rank, country rank and category rank respectively.

Figure 21: ranking of the website

4.3.2 Traffic and Management After that, we can see that how many total visit is received by the website for the particular time period. Here we can see the total visits from September 2019 to November 2019. We can also receive the visitors from mobile users and desktop users. Monthly visits, monthly unique visitors, visit duration, pages per visit and bounce rate of the website can also be seen via SimilarWeb tool. It helps to analyze the website traffic easily and understandable way.

The below figure shows the traffic and engagement of the website:-

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Figure 22: traffic and engagement

We can also check the visits over time for the specific time period. In the below figure, there are number of visits from September 2019 to November 2019. In September, there are almost 3 lakh visits and then it start decreasing gradually at the start of the October. After that, the visit is slightly increasing.

Figure 23: visits over time

We can see that in which country the website is operating mostly. The number of visitors from the different country in which the website is operating can also be analyzed by using this tool. In the below figure, we can see that Nepal is the country where the website is mostly

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operating. There are number of people in United stated and India also in which the website is visited.

Figure 24: website operating by countries

4.3.3 Marketing Channels There are number of marketing channel referring to the website. There are number of visits from different channels like email, referrals, social media, organic search, display ads etc.

37.10% of visits from the direct visits. There are 42.60% visits from organic search. There are 18.70% of visits from social media. 0.99% visits are from referrals.

Figure 25: Marketing channel

4.3.4 Referrals After that, we can also check the top referring website. 49.01% of referring comes from the website named www.gr8.com. The second top referring website is www.ktm2day.com.

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11.57% of referring comes from this site. The first top referring category is search engine.

The second category is computers electronics and tele communication.

Figure 26: Referrals

4.3.5 Search Traffic Search traffic can also be determined by using this tool. The search traffic can be divided into two categories: organic search and paid search. The percentage of organic search and paid search can be seen from this tool. To find the website, users may write search term in the search engine. Top search terms to find the website is measured by this tool. In the below figure, there are 100 percent search traffic from organic search and 0 percent search traffic from paid search. The top keyword searched by the users at search engine is “online shopping Nepal” which covers 6.86% of top search terms.

Figure 27: search traffic

4.3.6 Social Traffic We can also check the social traffic from which the users visited the website from different social media. The below figure suggests that 88.79% of social traffic comes from Facebook which is the highest social traffic comparing to others. Here we see that 9.64% of social traffic comes from YouTube, 0.35% from LinkedIn, 0.34% from Reddit, 0.26% from Twitter and 49

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0.62% from other social media.

Figure 28: social traffic

4.3.7 Outgoing Links Outgoing links from the website can also be measure using this tool. In the below figure, www.gr8.com is the top links destination from the website. Google is also the top outgoing links destination from the website.

Figure 29: outgoing links

4.3.8 Competitive Landscape After that we can measure the competitive landscape of the website with other websites in the market. It means we can see the sites similar to sastodeal.com that are already established in the market and the biggest competitor of the website present in the market. In the below

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figure, we can see that hamrobazaar.com is the biggest competitor of the market which is also an established online business in the market and sells different kind of products in the Nepali market. Similarly, nepbay.com and oilzstore.com are also the top competitors in the market.

Figure 30: sites similar to sastodeal.com

4.3.9 Traffic Sources We can check the backlinks from different sources in which the website is visited. Large number of traffic sources are from Google search covering the traffic share of 41%. 37% of Google share are from direct sources. Facebook also covers the 17% of traffic share to the website.

Figure 31: Backlinks from different sources

4.3.10 Demographic View Demographic view of the website can also be measured by this tool. Percentage of male and female in which they visit the website can also be measured. The percentage of people under different age group can also be seen. In the below figure, it shows that from September 2019 to November 2019, 73.11% of male visited the website while the percentage of female visited the website is 26.89%. 21.04% of users who visited the website falls under the ager group 18-24, 30.12% of users who visited the website fall under the age group 25-34, 19.06% of users who visited the website fall under 35-44 and so on.

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Figure 32: Demographic view

4.3.11 Audience Interest Audience interest of sastodeal.com is also recognized using this tool. Audience interest means where the visitors of sastodeal.com are likely to browse to. The below figure shows that audience of sastodeal.com are mostly interested in computer electronics and technology.

They are also interested in E-commerce and shopping.

Figure 33: Audience Interest

Top domains they likely to browse are daraz.com and hamrobazaar.com consist the relevance score of 100 and 92 respectively.

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Figure 34. Domain rank on audience interest

4.3.12 Keywords Top keywords used by the people on search engine to find the website can be found using SimilarWeb tool. We can see the number of organic keywords and number of paid keywords.

These data can be purely based on desktop search visits. There are 2,223 number of organic keywords. Also there are zero number of paid keyword. The top traffic shared by keyword is “online shopping in Nepal” which consist of 6.86% of traffic share. People used the word like “lingerie from Nepal “, and “Nepal online shopping” which have 5.32% and 4.95% of traffic share respectively.

Figure 35: Keywords search

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4.3.13 Incoming Traffic In the below figure, total incoming referral visits of the website is 13,676 which is 2.05% of total traffic from September 2019 to November 2019. From September to October, the incoming referral visits start declining. After that it gradually increases till November.

Figure 36: Incoming Traffic

We can see the domain of the top incoming referral traffic and their traffic share. In the figure below, gadgetbynepal.com is the top incoming referral website that covers the 37.21 traffic share. Similarly, ktm2day and googleweblight.com are the second and third highest incoming referral website that covers 13.85% and 11.78% traffics share respectively.

Figure 37: Incoming referral traffic

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4.3.14 outgoing Traffic In the below figure, there are 10,000 outgoing visits which is 100% of total outgoing visits and also consisting 16 outgoing domains. The top category for outgoing link is “computer electronics and technology”. Most of the people going for other website is because of this catgory.

Figure 38: Outgoing traffic

The domain and the traffic share of the outgoing links are given below which shows that gr8.com is the top domain for outgoing link covering 39.93% of traffic share. Similarly Google and Facebook are also the top outgoing link covering 37.97% and 11.71% of traffic share respectively.

Figure 39: Outgoing traffic and traffic share

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4.3.15 Organic Competitors It also shows the organic competitors of the website in the market. The tool shows the list of websites that have similar business in the market and so called competitors. In the below figure, we can see that search volume of the website is 19,125 which is based on 1 year monthly average. There are more than 5000 search visits on monthly average for last 3 months in which 99.07% are organic search visits and 0.93% are paid search visits.

Figure 40: Organic competitors

There are number of organic competitors are found from the tool. Some of them are esewapasal.com, smartdoko.com, daraz.com.np, mamaonline.com etc. In the below figure, we can see that sastodeal.com share the most market than others which is about 33.74% of total market share. Similarly, eseapasal.com share the second highest market of consisting 22.99% of total market share. In the below figure, we can see the market share by different organic competitors of sastodeal.com.

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Figure 41: market share by organic competitors

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5 Conclusion The purpose of this study is to determine what are the techniques and rules of search engine optimization in order to make a website or online business visible in the search engine listings. After reviewing through all of the literature review, methods an online sources in a already established website www.sastodeal.com which sells good and different kind of accessories in the online market that means the tools and techniques described in the literature review for ranking a page really works. Detailed data from different sources like similarWeb, UberSuggest are used for the websites. Being listed in Google or other organic ranking in the first page of search results means that there will be increasing numbers of people accessing the website. It creates the potentiality and helps to market the product to be sold on the website. Below is the final version of sasto deal website ranking on Google search engine result page for the keyword “online shopping in Nepal”.

Figure 42: Google ranking of sasto deal website

Following are the research questions that were intended to answer in the end of this study.

Is SEO an effective tool for online marketing?

Is SEO effective to get ranked in Google search?

For small and medium enterprises, is it relevant to perform SEO?

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Without professional help, is it possible to improve the existing site of the company?

With all the explanations and using different tools and techniques, the research questions were answered. Search Engine Optimization has proved to be an efficient tool for internet marketing in such a way as to boost the search listing in search results, making it more prominent in search engines and greater marketing exposure.

Optimizing search engines is a very efficient tool to be listed / ranked for both Google and other search engines. The analysis and the data from Google's analytics have shown that the search results did not list optimization in the initial months, while a major improvements were made in the search listing in Google after a few months.

In addition the search purpose of each keyword is crucial, as well as the search input with high search volumes and low competition. Through generating lots of traffic for keywords which are not connected directly to your products and services, your chances to gain traffic are substantially less so if you can just channel the traffic to your website through the transactional tunnel. The safest bet is to confirm that most, if not all material and keywords, are relevant to your organization in some way and can lead to a conversion.

Search engine optimization is not a fast process, and sometimes it can take several months to get results from certain actions, and thus it is rather hard to say which changes in ranking positions correlate to which changes on the on-site and off-site SEO. The main thing is to produce consistent and high-quality content, the servers being the user rather than the search engines. In order to provide a clarification for the future pages of contents, link buildup projects and website structures, especially with a new page, it is safe to make different experiments on which works for different keywords and items.

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Appendix To gather relevant demographics, the set of questionnaire were addressed to the people.

What is the area of your focus and expertise?

•

SEO

•

Web development

•

Content writing

•

Others

Do you think online marketing is a cost saving strategy for new and medium size enterprises?

•

Yes

•

No

•

Can’t say

How often do you use search engines prior to making any purchases?

•

Always

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Frequently

•

Rarely

•

Never

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How often do you move to the next pages of search engine results after seeing the result in the first page?

•

Always

•

Sometimes

•

never

What kind of keywords do you use when searching for something in a search engine?

•

Short keywords

•

Long keywords

•

Most commonly used keywords

•

Doesn’t matter

Do you think Search Engine Optimization can lead to a proper Internet marketing?

•

Yes

•

No

What do you think can be the best outcomes of search engine optimization?

•

Ranked high in the search engines

•

Increase traffic to your website

•

Improve social media activity

•

Increase the number of potential customers

•

All of the above

Why you want to use search engine optimization to improve your website?

He: When people browse in the internet, more people will find and notice this website, and get more exposure, so as to get more users.

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