Bharati Ahuja

How SEO Is Like Yoga for Your Website. Happy International Yoga day !

The first International Day of Yoga was observed world over on June 21st 2015 by PM Narendra Modi. The United Nations has declared June 21^st as the International Day Of Yoga. On this occasion I just thought of listing out the similarities between Yoga and SEO.

Yoga is not about exercise but to find out the sense of individuality within one’s self, the world and the nature. Similarly, SEO is not about rankings but about establishing your brand online

In Vedic Sanskrit, yoga means "to add", "to join", "to unite", or "to attach" in its most common literal sense. Yoga can take on meanings such as "connection", "contact", "union", "method", "application", "addition" and "performance". In simpler words, Yoga also means "combined".

When we optimize a website we literally try to see that our website gets correlated to the targeted search queries and thereby the targeted audience. But, before this happens the site has to be as per the norms of the search engines and needs to be crawled and indexed regularly by the search engines. All this has to be achieved harmoniously via a step by step process .

yoga and SEO

Just as in Yoga the union of the body and soul is achieved gradually with regular practice and patience, the SEO results need patience and regular monitoring of the website.

According to David Gordon White, from the 5th century CE onward, the core principles of "yoga" were more or less in place, and variations of these principles developed in various forms over time:

Yoga, as an analysis of perception and cognition
Yoga, as the rising and expansion of consciousness
Yoga, as a path to omniscience
Yoga, as a technique for entering into other bodies, generating multiple bodies, and the attainment of other supernatural accomplishments

SEO also can be compared to Yoga as per the above 4 points:

SEO helps the search engines in the perception and cognition of the content of the website so that it can correlate it to the relevant search queries.
As a result of genuine SEO the website gradually expands its search presence by adding various formats of content so that the brand can be found on various platforms of search, like image search, blog search, videos, etc.
Hence, genuine SEO helps the website to be found on search engines via any devices and in various formats.
Apart from the content format and the type of search results, SEO also makes the website capable of being found globally by gradually attaining search presence on increasing no. of country domains like, Google.com, Google.co.in, Google.co.uk, Google.com.au, etc. (In short international SEO helps you to achieve international search presence)

Apart from the spiritual goals, the physical postures of yoga are used to alleviate health problems, reduce stress and make the spine supple in contemporary times. Yoga is also used as a complete exercise program and physical therapy routine.

The three prominent types of yoga are:

Karma yoga: The yoga of action
Bhakti yoga: The yoga of devotion
Jnana yoga: The yoga of knowledge

Apart from attaining good search presence for targeted search queries, the main goal of SEO is to help build a brand for the business , win the trust of the users and help in retaining it for a long time.

All this can be possible by working on :

On-page factors
Technical factors and
Off-page factors

While the practice of yoga continues to rise in contemporary American culture, sufficient and adequate knowledge of the practice’s origins does not. According to Andrea R. Jain, Yoga is undoubtedly a movement for spiritual meditation, but now is being marketed as a supplement to a cardio routine. This scope "dilutes its identity." Contemporaries of this faith argue that the more popular yoga gets, the less concerned people become about its origins in history.

While the SEO industry shows a promising growth quantitatively and qualitatively, the true meaning of SEO is tarnished by black hat SEOs and newbies who promise quick results and measure its success by rankings alone. This dilutes the true meaning of SEO and defeats the main purpose of optimizing a site.

Yoga is both an Art and a Science...

SEO too is considered as an Art and a Science...

SEO - 06/21/2016

Test Mobile-Friendliness And Page Speed With Google’s New Tool

Last week Google introduced an easy way to measure your site’s performance across devices. This tool https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/ gives a list of fixes to be made on the site to improve the performance of the site.

The visits from mobile devices are increasing over time and many online customers are lost if the website loads slowly.

google-test-tool

Google says:

You don’t need a lot of technical knowledge to understand your site’s performance. Just type in your web address and within moments you’ll see how your site scores. You can also get a detailed report to give you an idea of what to do next, and where to go for help at no charge. We recommend sharing it with your webmaster to help you plan your next steps and implement our suggested fixes.

This what the scores say:

Mobile-friendliness: This is the quality of the experience customers have when they’re browsing your site on their phones. To be mobile-friendly, your site should have tappable buttons, be easy to navigate from a small screen and have the most important information up front and center.
Mobile speed: This is how long it takes your site to load on mobile devices. If customers are kept waiting for too long, they’ll move on to the next site.
Desktop speed: This is how long it takes your site to load on desktop computers. It’s not just the strength of your customers’ web connection that determines speed, but also the elements of your website.

Search sessions at Google I/O 2016 were also focused on mobile and With Google working towards improving the mobile experience in so many ways, it is needless to say that ‘Mobile Search’, needs to be the current focus for all search marketers and website .

Google / News / SEO - 06/06/2016

Search At Google I/O 2016 Dominated By Updates On Mobile Search,App Indexing And Structured Data

Google today published a recap of 8 things about the Search happenings which were discussed at Google I/O 16 and they are:

1: Introducing 'Rich Cards'

Google announced “Rich Cards” which is a new search result format which uses schema.org structured mark up, just like the Rich Snippets format.

The focus is to provide a more rewarding experience to the mobile user.

Currently this is on an experimental stage and available only for Movies and Recipes but Google seems to be having promising future plans in taking this ahead for other content categories too.

http://www.webpro.in/google-announces-rich-cards-for-recipes-and-movies-for-mobile-serps-an-upgrade-on-rich-snippets/

2: New Search Console Reports

Google launched a new report in Search Console to help developers confirm that their rich card markup is valid. In the report Google highlights,“enhanceable cards,” which are cards that can benefit from marking up more fields. The new Search Appearance filter also makes it easy for webmasters to filter their traffic by AMP and rich cards.

3: Real-time Indexing

Google has always given importance to the freshness index for content. Instead of waiting for content to be crawled and indexed, publishers will be able to use the Google Indexing API to trigger the indexing of their content in real time. It’s still in its early days, but Google plans to launch a pilot later this summer.

3: Getting up to speed with Accelerated Mobile Pages

AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages is an open source initiative by Google launched in October 2015.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are lightweight pages designed to load quickly on mobile devices. AMP-compliant pages use a subset of HTML with a few extensions.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), is a very accessible framework for creating fast-loading mobile web pages.

The AMP project aims at improving the performance of the mobile web. Further, the intent is that the webpages with rich content like video, animations and graphics should work alongside smart ads, and load instantaneously.

I/O 16 attendees could talk directly with Googlers at the Search & AMP sandbox.

5: A new and improved Structured Data Testing Tool

The new Structured Data Testing tool is tightly integrated with the DevSite Search Gallery and the new Search Preview service, which lets you preview how your rich cards will look on the search results page.

structured-data-testing-tool

6: App Indexing got a new home (and new features)

Google announced App Indexing’s migration to Firebase, Google’s unified developer platform. Watch the session to learn how to grow your app with Firebase App Indexing.

7: App streaming

App streaming is a new way for Android users to try out games without having to download and install the app -- and it’s already available in Google Search. Check out the session to learn more.

Revamped documentation

Google has revamped the developer documentation, organizing the docs around topical guides to make it easier to follow.

With Google working towards improving the mobile experience in so many ways, it is needless to say that 'Mobile Search' needs to be the current focus for all search marketers .

Google / News / SEO - 06/03/2016

Satya Nadella , Microsoft CEO Impressed By An 8 Year old Indian app Developer

The Microsoft CEO, recently was on his third visit to India since he took over as Microsoft CEO in February 2014. He emphasized on how Microsoft can help the country in its ‘Digital India’ initiative and build technology around augmented reality and virtual reality.

He recited a couplet written by the poet Mirza Ghalib to express his feeling and passion for the two main passions of his life –

“Hazaaron khwahishen aisi ke har khwahish pe dam nikle, Bahut niklay mere armaan, lekin phir bhi kam nikle”

Satya Nadella

The couplet translates as,

“Thousands of aspirations such, that each aspiration takes your breath away… I had many dreams, but they still weren’t enough.”

Further he said,

“Creativity in India can make poetry as well as technology for the world,”

“I learn something new… there are so many layers there… My interpretation of that is… it’s not just your dreams being fulfilled, it is your ability to dream that is worth dying for. It is a source of inspiration,”

On his recent visit to India, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella met the Indian Prime Minister, entrepreneurs and various government officials. But, it was an eight-year-old Mumbai-based student, Medansh Mehta, a gaming app developer who impressed him with his vision of balancing technology and environmental sustainability.

He presented his app "Let There Be Light" during a meeting between Nadella and student developers from India. The boy left Nadella so impressed that the Microsoft CEO later mentioned him in a keynote speech.

“I MET AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD, AND THIS IS PERHAPS THE TIME WHERE I FELT THE MOST INADEQUATE. HIS DREAM IS TO CREATE A SOCIETY THAT KNOWS HOW TO BALANCE ECONOMIC GROWTH WITH ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY. THIS IS THE GOAL HE HAS AND THEN HE TRANSLATED THAT VISION, THAT GOAL, INTO A NOVEL GAME THAT HE’S BUILT.”

His game is called ‘Let there be light’ and it focuses on balancing the environment along with industrial development, which lets players build factories, farms and earn coins if the city becomes prosperous.

The kid has solid ambition. He wants to become the CEO of Microsoft and wants to build it into a technology company that can take over all the companies in the world.

News - 06/02/2016

Google app Now Faster for iOS Users with AMP Pages

Google has cut down the loading time and updated the app with some new features for a faster user experience for the iOS users.

These small improvements will save app users a combined 6.5 million hours this year.

Google app faster for iOS users

A few months ago Google announced the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for the mobile web. Google app will be using AMP for news articles from a vast array of publishers and the pages will load instantly for a better user experience. Look out for the lightning bolt and “AMP” next to articles in the “Top Stories” section of your search results and enjoy blazing-fast news.

AMP Results in Mobile Search

For Sports Fans:

You can instantly watch sports highlights right from your Now cards. When you get a card with sports highlights, just tap the and watch it right from the app. Score!

So, whether its news, sports or videos you are interested in, you can be assured of a faster user experience.

Google / News - 05/31/2016

Top Contributor Program By Google

The Top Contributor Program is a group of Google product enthusiasts who earned the distinction of Top Contributor or Rising Star by sharing their knowledge in Google Help Forums and Help on Social.

Google says last year, Top Contributors helped more than 55 million people with 30 different Google products, answering questions and providing tips. The super users in the Top Contributor program come from 60+ different countries. Google asked a few Top Contributors to share a bit about themselves and they shared as follows:

Jo says: As a writer, editor, and all-around book enthusiast, I spend a lot of time using word-processing programs. I first discovered Google Docs when I saw a Chromebook ad on TV. I was intrigued by the idea of working in the cloud and not needing an external hard drive to backup my work.

Kojo says: I grew up in a small town in the central region of Ghana, the oldest of five children—which meant I learned how to work hard. Being the oldest meant I had to set a positive example for my siblings and cousins. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with honors from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, where I’m now a teaching and research assistant.

If you enjoy helping others and want to get involved with the Top Contributor Program start participating in a Google Product Forum or on social media, and let Google know you’re interested. Once you’re helping people on a regular basis, you may be invited to become a Rising Star, the first level in the Top Contributor program.

What Top Contributors gain when they use their Google product knowledge to help others:

Google - 05/26/2016

Google Search Console Allows You To Group Or Combine Sites Together Via Property Sets

Google adds another feather to the Search Console cap.

Google introduces the concept of "property sets," which let you combine multiple properties (both apps and sites) into a single group to monitor the overall clicks and impressions in search within a single report.

To get started You Need To:

Create a property set
Add the properties you're interested in
The data will start being collected within a few days

URLs of the included properties in the property set will be included as a single presence in Search Analytics feature of the Search Console and you will be able to get collected/grouped data.

This feature will work for any kind of property in Search Console. You can use it to gain an overview of:

International websites
Mixed HTTP / HTTPS sites
Different departments or brands that run separate websites
Monitor the Search Analytics of all your apps together

This will be rolled out in the next few days.

If you have any questions, feedback, or ideas, you can go to the webmaster help forum, or read the help documentation for this new feature

Google / News / SEO - 05/24/2016

Google Announces “Rich Cards” For Recipes And Movies For Mobile SERPs (An Upgrade On Rich Snippets)

Yesterday, Google announced a new search result format “Rich Cards”which use schema.org structured mark up, just like the Rich Snippets format.

The focus is to provide a more rewarding experience to the mobile user.

Google has started showing Rich Cards only for 2 categories, i.e Recipes and Movies and the Rich Cards as of now will show only on mobile SERPs in English on Google.com .

Google has updated their developer site with more documentation and examples to help you learn this new format.

They have also revamped Structured Data Testing Tool of how the rich card might appear in Search (currently available for recipes and movies).

Plus they added a rich cards report in the Google Search Console. It has indexing rates and error reporting to help you implement them.

Currently this is t an experimental stage but Google seems to be having promising future plans in taking this ahead . Google will have a Search and the mobile content ecosystem session at Google I/O (where Rich Cards will be discussed and which will be live streamed!).

Google / News / SEO - 05/18/2016

What Is AMP? All About Accelerated Mobile Pages By Google

AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages is an open source initiative by Google launched in October 2015.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are lightweight pages designed to load quickly on mobile devices. AMP-compliant pages use a subset of HTML with a few extensions.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), is a very accessible framework for creating fast-loading mobile web pages.

Google also wants the AMP code to work across multiple platforms and devices so that content can appear everywhere in an instant—no matter what type of phone, tablet or mobile device the mobile user is using.

The mobile users have increased phenomenally in number in the recent times. Hence, Users now consume content wherever they find it and the experience of reading on the mobile may not be always a good one. Every time the webpage loads slowly on the smartphones that website/blog may lose a reader. This adversely affects the opportunity to earn revenue through advertising or subscriptions also for Google (Adwords) as well as the user (Adsense).

The first group of technology partners planning to integrate AMP HTML pages are :

About The Technical Aspect of AMP:

AMP in action consists of three different parts:

AMP HTML
AMP JS
Google AMP cache

AMP HTML

AMP HTML is a subset of HTML for authoring content pages such as news articles which helps improve UX by reducing the page load time.

Though most tags in an AMP HTML page are regular HTML tags, some HTML tags are replaced with AMP-specific tags. (as listed on https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-html-format.md#html-tags)

Tag	Status in AMP HTML
script	Prohibited unless the type is application/ld+json. (Other non-executable values may be added as needed.) Exception is the mandatory script tag to load the AMP runtime and the script tags to load extended components.
base	Prohibited
img	Replaced with amp-img.
video	Replaced with amp-video.
audio	Replaced with amp-audio.
iframe	Replaced with amp-iframe.
frame	Prohibited.
frameset	Prohibited.
object	Prohibited.
param	Prohibited.
applet	Prohibited.
embed	Prohibited.
form	Prohibited. Support coming in the future.
input elements	Prohibited. Includes input, textarea, select, option. Notably, the buttonelement is allowed.
button	Allowed.
style	Required style tags fo adjusting opacity. One additional style tag is allowed in head tag for the purpose of custom styling. This style tag must have the attribute amp-custom.
link	rel values registered on microformats.org are allowed. stylesheet and other values likepreconnect, prerender and prefetch that have side effects in the browser are disallowed. There is a special case for fetching stylesheets from whitelisted font providers.
meta	The http-equiv attribute is banned. Otherwise allowed.
a	The href attribute value must not begin with javascript:. If set, the targetattribute value must be _blank. Otherwise allowed.
svg	Most SVG elements are allowed.

HTML tags can be used unchanged in AMP HTML. Certain tags have equivalent custom tags (such as <img> and <amp-img>) and other tags are outright prohibited:

AMP JS

To avoid the delay in page rendering AMP manages resource handling and asynchronous loading but third-party JavaScript is kept out of the critical path.

Detailed info on : https://www.ampproject.org/docs/get_started/technical_overview.html#allow-only-asynchronous-scripts

Google AMP Cache

The Google AMP Cache is a proxy-based content delivery network for delivering all valid AMP documents. It fetches AMP HTML pages, caches them, and improves page performance automatically.

The AMP HTML Code:

AMP Code Validation:

You can test the HTML AMP page as per the instructions on:

https://www.ampproject.org/docs/guides/validate.html

AMP And Search Presence:

Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) went live in mobile search results in February 2016. Due to certain limitations and being still at the initial stage currently AMP is more relevant for Content Sites and not for ecommerce sites.

Page load time and speed are ranking factors and user experience has always been the pivotal factor. AMP pages hopefully, should get rewarded by Google on search results like the mobile-friendly pages.

AMP reports are added to Google Search Console and Google also displays AMP as top stories in carousel for mobile SERPs.

AMP In Mobile SERPs

AMP Report In Search Console

The SEO Nuance:

If you have both AMP and non-AMP versions of your pages, include the following links:

On any non-AMP page, reference the AMP version of the page to let Google and other platforms know about it:
- <link rel="amphtml" href="https://www.example.com/url/to/amp-version.html" />
On the AMP page, add the following text to reference its non-AMP canonical version:
- <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/url/to/regular-html-version.html" />
For standalone AMP pages (those that don't have a non-AMP version) the AMP page should specify itself as the canonical version:
- <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/url/to/amp-document.html" />

Some Pros and Cons of the AMP Project:

Pros:

AMP is open source.
Page load time and speed being a ranking factor, it may have a SEO advantage.
AMP articles appear in the carousel spot in mobile SERPs.
Increase in readership due to UX.
There is a WordPress plugin for AMP. https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/
You can implement analytics to measure activity on AMP document. (https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/extended/amp-analytics.html)
Google had added the AMP Report in Search Console too.

Cons:

You cannot have forms for AMP Content.
AMP cannot be enabled for non-publisher sites and ecommerce sites.
Third-party JavaScript cannot be used.
Only WordPress plugin available but other CMS plugins are yet to go live hence implanting AMP can be complicated if you are not a developer and do not use WordPress.

The Future Goal :

The main goal of the AMP project in the coming future is to build more features and functionality focused on:

Content
Distribution
Advertising

Google says:

Webpages built with AMP load on an average of four times faster and use 10 times less data than equivalent non-AMP pages. In many cases, they’ll load instantly. It’s how reading on the mobile web should be—fast, responsive and fun.

AMP Project - A Win-Win Project by Google, for Google And Users

With the mobile web expanding exponentially, the mobile ad blocking also showing an increasing trend. Users do not want to have degraded data experience due to page-load speed issues or low quality ads.

The AMP initiative by Google is surely a win-win one as it not only has a focus on improving the user experience but also helps in safe guarding Google’s interest of displaying ads. seamlessly.

I think its major impact will be felt when AMP will be extended to ecommerce sites as well because the 2015 total retail sales reveal that eCommerce sales continue to grow at a rapid pace, growing 14.6 percent year over year in 2015 to a grand total of $341.7 billion.

forecast-mobile-ecommerce

A BI Intelligence report states that by 2020, mobile commerce will make up 45 percent of total e-commerce, equaling $284 billion in sales. That’s more than three times what’s expected for 2016: BI Intelligence predicts mobile commerce will hit 20.6 percent of overall e-commerce, or $79 billion.

Following are the retailers (from 1 to 10), total digital unique monthly visitors (in millions) in January 2015, and the percentage of total visitors that only shop the retailers on smartphones and/or tablets, according to comScore:

The impact of mobile is huge. Ask these 2 questions to yourself.

Is your site mobile-friendly?
Have you enabled AMP for your publisher site?

If your answer to the above two questions is "NO" then we would love to help you.

Related Posts:

Google / SEO - 05/15/2016

Editorial Policy: Human Expertise, Enhanced by AI

At WebPro Technologies, our content reflects over two decades of experience in SEO and digital strategy. We believe that valuable content is built on accuracy, clarity, and insight—and that requires human judgment at every step.

From 2024 onwards, we have been using AI tools selectively to brainstorm ideas, explore perspectives, and refine language, but AI is never the final author. Every article is researched, fact-checked, and edited by our team, ensuring relevance, accuracy, and originality. AI supports our workflow, but the responsibility for quality and credibility remains entirely human.

This hybrid approach allows us to combine the efficiency of technology with the depth of human expertise, so our readers get content that is both informative and trustworthy.

At WebPro, we see AI not as a replacement for human creativity, but as a tool that helps us raise the standard of excellence in the content we share.

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