SEO has become a ‘buzz’ word today in the digital marketing world. Most businesses now have their website and they want people to see their products and services first. Prospective customers tend to visit websites that appear on the first page of Google or other search engine results pages and ignore the other pages. So, to be competitive, companies need to secure a position on the first page.
SEO For Your Website
If you want to learn more about SEO and how it works, then you have come to the right place. Here we will discuss in detail about SEO. You will know why it’s important and how to use it most effectively to rank your website on search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO can get you ahead of your competitors. So, it’s worth learning about it.
SEO vs Paid Search
To understand how SEO works, you need to first know the differences between SEO and paid searches. Here are some things you should remember:
- In paid search, you get the result instantly, but SEO takes time.
- You need to fulfill various criteria set by Google and other search engines to be ranked higher organically. So, you can trust these sites rather than those that appear due to paid search.
- You need to set up a budget for paid SEO, but SEO can get you organic traffic for free.
- Though paid search puts your website on top of the organic searches, only 20% to 30% of people click on them; whereas, in the case of SEO, 70% to 80% of people click on the organic search results.
Paid and organic searches have some similarities too. You need to do keyword research and create landing pages in both cases. The ultimate goal of both types of searches is to get more traffic.
SEO Strategy
SEO has three components: on-page optimization, technical optimization, and off-page optimization. You must improve the ranking factors in these areas to optimize the site.
On-Page Optimization
You must ensure that the search engine finds your page, know what the page is about and get the keywords. The search engine will then add the information to its database. Did you ever wonder why content is so important in SEO? This is because the way you see the website as a collection of text, graphics, and animation, the search engine only sees it as text. So, if the search engine cannot recognize something in the content, it will go unnoticed which might affect the ranking. Here are some tips for on-page optimization.
– Keyword Research And Content
You should do SEO not to get just any traffic to your site, but rather those traffic who are interested to buy your products or services. So, you should choose the words that they use to look for these products or services. Now Google must understand which word you are using as a keyword. For that, you should optimize the keyword by placing the keyword in the following places:
- Post’s Title
- URL Of The Webpage
- H1 Tag
- The First Paragraph Of Your Website Content
- Meta-Title Tags
- Meta-Description Tags
- Image File Names
- ALT Tags
Adding multimedia, long content, and internal and external links are important ranking factors. Including these in your website is also on-page optimization.
– Links And Navigation
The search engines go through your website to find content. If they find links, they will use them to find other relevant content. So, site navigation must be easy and the links must take the search engine crawlers to useful content.
– Simple URL Structure
You should make the URL simple by making it short. Try to accommodate the main keyword here. The complex URL name is difficult to remember.
– Good Page Speed
If the search engine takes a long time to read a page, then your site won’t get a higher rank on search engine results pages. Your image size and other features may be affected due to the slow page speed.
– Avoid Dead Links
When you click on a dead link, you will be directed to a page that doesn’t exist. This provides a bad experience for the user and the search engine won’t be able to index the content properly.
– No Duplicate Content
You must avoid duplicate content on the website as the search engines may get confused as to which one to index. You may be penalized for duplicate content and your website rank may come down.
– Share Content On Social Media
Regularly sharing blog posts on your social media will earn referral traffic. So, you will get more backlinks. The more users get engaged with your content, the better your website ranking will be.
– Develop Brand Reputation
Google looks at your ratings, reviews, awards, and listings to determine your brand reputation. So, you should ask for reviews from users, get positive press feedback and optimize your listings.
Technical Optimizations
Technical SEO takes place on the back end. You should ensure that your site meets the site security features of Google. Here are some areas you must concentrate on.
- Have optimal page speed
- Use HTTPS instead of HTTP for security
- Be mobile-friendly
- Improve core web vitals
- Organize site structure
- Improve site architecture
- Include sitemap and robots.txt to improve crawlability and indexability
Off-Page Optimization
Off-page optimization involves building backlinks; that is other sites will contain links to your site. This increases the credibility of your site and you will eventually have more traffic. Quality backlink means having a link from sites that have relevant content and are popular. For link building you should do the following:
- Write good content and email it to different online magazines or blogs. If they find the content interesting, they will give a reference to your site in their magazine or blog.
- Start guest posting by choosing relevant third-party websites.
- Analyze the competitors’ backlinks and recreate those.
- Add the link to the site to online profiles.
How Search Engine Works
The search engine works according to its algorithm. If you know how the search engine works, it will be easier for you to do SEO on your website. Here are the steps it follows.
– Crawling
Search engines send web crawlers or spiders to find web pages and write notes about them. these crawlers check the website content regularly to know if the content has been updated.
– Indexing
In this step, the search engine decides whether the contents that have been discovered by crawling can be used or not. If they use it then the content is added to the index. When a user searches for something, Google gets the results from its index.
– Ranking
The third step is the most important, and that is ranking. So once a search engine has crawled and indexed your site, your site can be ranked. Google uses an algorithm to rank websites according to various factors like quality of the content, relevant content, and others. Google then notices how people interact with the results and the popularity of the site is also considered when ranking the site.
SEO Tools
You cannot do effective SEO unless you get data properly. For this, you need good SEO tools. Here are some tools you can use.
Google Analytics: measures your overall site performance including traffic, engagement, and others.
Google Search Console (GSC): helps in technical SEO like Core Web Vitals, indexing, and others.
Keyword Research Tools: finds appropriate keywords in terms of competition and search volume.
SEO Software: useful for getting backlinks, advanced keyword data, and competitive information. Some popular SEO software are Moz Pro, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, and others.
Website Graders: provides guidance and makes SEO simple.
Local SEO
If you have a local business, then it’s worth doing local SEO. Google will position your business in front of the local people who might buy your products or services. About 46% of the time people search Google for local businesses. So, local SEO can be very profitable for your business. In local SEO, Google looks for phrases like ‘near me’ and presents the business closest to that location. In local SEO, you should include the company information.
Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO practices are common and can have serious consequences. It is the process of manipulating the algorithms of search engines using activities that are not mentioned in the search engine guidelines. These activities include stuffing, buying links, and cloaking or hiding keywords in code. People use black hat SEO to get quick results as raking normally takes a long time. But they don’t realize that this can end up disqualifying their website and hamper brand reputation. You should always avoid black hat SEO practices.
Conclusion
SEO takes time, so you need to be patient. The best SEO strategy is to search for the right keyword, focus on quality content, update content regularly, and track your progress. If you are not getting satisfactory results, you can set new goals to fulfill your objectives.
