Currently, Google has become the answer to almost all of our questions. Owing to this, many websites and business owners worldwide are doing everything possible to ensure their information is accessible on Google through SEO. Since organic search remains the most prominent way for users to discover and access online content, having a good SEO strategy becomes essential to improve the quantity and quality of traffic to a website. So what is SEO?
Well, Search Engine Optimization or SEO refers to the practice of optimizing websites to rank well on search engines through organic or non-paid searches. This is the most crucial marketing approach for any business.
Since Google aims at providing a positive and reliable user experience for all users, it has to ensure that only the best possible information is available. This article will therefore highlight more on SEO and how it works.
How Does SEO Work?
Search engines work by using robots that crawl webpages on the internet to determine the kind of content they contain and what details the pages offer. These bots will scan the code while picking up any written text, video and images, and anything that appears on the web pages to gather as much information as possible. Once they have gathered the much-needed information regarding the type of information that is available on the page and determined that the content will be useful to searchers, they then add the pages to their index.
The index is simply every possible web result that the search engine stores and provides to potential searchers. Search engines will assess the best result based on what searchers are looking for and the related information that exists online. When you search for certain information, the algorithm will match your search query to relevant information in the index, thus providing you with an accurate answer to your query.
The platform will then use hundreds of signals in determining the order in which the content will appear for every searcher. These signals are what SEO experts have been trying to master.
What are the Main Types of SEO?
SEO is a complex and broad channel for digital marketing. This means it can be divided into different parts, including three main parts. These parts include On-page SEO, Technical SEO, and Off-page
1. On-page SEO
On-page SEO refers to anything visible to users that affect your website. The content of your website is vital as it is what search engines and Google read and also index. When people search and view the result page, the website content is what they see first. This means you must focus on nothing but quality content.
So, how will you ensure you come up with SEO-optimized quality content? Well, this can be broken down into several steps, including:
Understand the main purpose of your content
Always think about your main intentions when creating the content. This includes your target and the purpose of the content – are you trying to sell a product or simply tell a story? What will be the user’s intent when they search for your keywords?
Keywords Research which can either be Fat Head or Long Tail
This is an important part as far as on-page SEO is concerned. Using Google and the available online keyword research tools, ensure you identify which keywords perfectly relate to your topic. Using a mixture of both fat head and long-tail keywords will work the magic.
Fat keywords are the most used for high volumes, while long-tail keywords are more specific and extended. If one of your keywords is justifiable fashion, your long-tail keyword will therefore be where to buy affordable, justifiable fashion.
Make use of both H1 and H2 Tags for your Headings
Heading tags helps in creating the perfect structure for your website content. This makes it easier for the users to navigate your website easily.
Write Relevant and Clear Content
Well, this might sound simple, but the fact is that if your content isn’t perfectly written, relevant, or clear, it will certainly not do well. Search engines only favor content that solve the needs and demand for user’s search – a reason why you must think about your user intent and purpose of the content.
Add Meta Descriptions
When people search for a certain keyword, they first see the meta-descriptions and meta-titles on the resulting search page. This means a meta-description and title have a more significant influence in attracting users to your website.
2. Optimize Everything
There is no need to do the best keyword research and fail to optimize your content. You need to include all the relevant keywords in your content, especially in your headings. However, this should not be an opportunity to stuff the keywords as this will certainly put off your users and the search engines.
Add Relevant Images and Videos
A website content that only consists of text-only might not be that appealing to the users. So how do you correct this? Including a few images, graphs, and videos to the content will make the content catchy to the user’s eyes, making them stay more on your page.
3. Off-page SEO
Contrary to on-page SEO, off-page SEO is simply about attracting backlinks to your site using different ways. This can either be links from other websites, forums, blogs, and social media. These links acts as a popularity vote that Google measures.
So, how will you increase your website’s popularity using other sites? This is achievable through following a few key methods include:
Creating Share-Worthy Contents
Creating share-worthy content makes it easy for other people to link the content to their websites. This can either be popular news stories, original data and research, or list of resources.
Link Building
This refers to the process of getting hyperlinks to your site from other websites. Link building is an essential part of SEO that has to be continual. While some of these links can be acquired naturally, you can also outreach where you politely ask other sites to place a link to your website.
Social Media Marketing
Most people are familiar with social media marketing as every business, small or large, has a social media presence. Social media marketing is an easy way of advertising and gaining a huge fan base, especially if you are targeting the millennial or gen-z audience.
With social media, you also get influencer marketing. Working with an influencer gives you a great opportunity to gather more interest in your business.
4. Technical SEO
Technical SEO involves making sure your website manages to meet all the technical requirements set by search engines. It also improves your user’s experience by making the website smoother, easier and faster to navigate.
Does your website load faster? Are there mobile and speed issues? These are some of the questions that you need to ask yourself, owing to the fact that load speed is vital. Many users will certainly not like a website that takes a long time to load. The delay also increases your bounce rate, which eventually hurts the chances of a better ranking on search engines.
Any mobile-friendly website stands a higher chance when it comes to ranking. This is because Google introduced a mobile-first approach to website indexing. Even if your website is perfect with PC but has lots of problems with mobile devices, it will certainly not rank well.
Other important aspects to consider with Technical SEO include security, structured data, and site architecture.
Final Thought
Are you feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information on SEO? Well, don’t be! SEO is simply an art and practice that will take time to learn with things constantly changing in the search engine world. However, with a curious mindset, passion, and the drive to achieve, you will certainly have an easy time understanding what SEO is.
