What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process to optimize or improve a website to gain more visibility for relevant searches on the internet. It is a practice to enhance the quantity and quality of webpage traffic so that it can appear on the top of the search engine’s ranking.
Before practicing the SEO process you need to understand the importance of keyword placement and the workarounds of the search engines. Let’s have an overview of the major factors of SEO that guide you to rank your website and develop your business on the digital platform.
What is SEO and How it Works?
SEO is a means of digital marketing strategy that enhances your website’s visibility in search results on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, etc. For example, if you run a digital marketing company in any specific location, with the help of SEO any potential customers can find your business services on the top when they search for “best SEO service company near me.” Now let’s get into the step-by-step guide on how it works.
Search engine optimization depends on several factors that help you to gain more traffic towards your webpage. Search Engines use bots to crawl pages on the internet and collect the information in their index. With the help of a complex system, algorithm, search engines show the relevant results for a search query. Search algorithms check several factors such as the usability and relevance of the pages, search words, the content of the page, mobile-friendliness, and your location settings.
Now the whole process relies on the search engine and the content you want to optimize.
Take an example if you need more traffic to web search results then you need to understand Google and other search engine algorithms. Similarly, to increase the video view counts follow YouTube’s algorithm.
What Are The Types & Techniques Of SEO?
There are two major techniques of SEO – White Hat SEO & Black Hat SEO. Including that for a well round Search results ranking, SEO types are divided into three areas On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO & Technical SEO.
White Hat SEO
White hat SEO is the profound strategy or techniques of search engine optimization that target a genuine human audience against the search engine. This process includes keyword analysis, content management, link building, backlinks, and other activities that enhance your visibility. The only problem with white hat SEO is the slow conversation rate and users need to invest a lot to see their business site on top.
Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is just opposite to the white hat SEO principles. It follows the strategies and techniques which are against the etiquettes of search engine rules. Here you will get quick results as it hardly maintains the genuine SEO ranking regulations. It only focuses on search engines by unauthorized means of backlinking, keywords stuffing, hidden texts & links and content spamming. This may result in your website down and decreases visibility on the internet.
On-Page SEO
Both technical and non-technical factors are essential for the search engine optimization of your website. Things you can optimize with the help of On-Page SEO to rank your website:
- You can enhance the meta description and meta title of your website.
- Managing internal links in your webpage i.e. links that open other pages on your webpage.
- You can add images with descriptions, and relevant keywords to the content.
- Improve your headers within the webpage content with the relative keywords.
Off-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO is more complicated in comparison to On-Page SEO as it relies on other people. Here you need to do proper backlinking work on your website which means linking other websites on your webpage and vice versa. To develop this strong connection between two websites, you need authentic content and legitimate websites that highlight your business activities.
Apart from that Off-Page SEO services depend upon other areas such as social media marketing and fantastic content management on your website that helps you to build a bond with Google. Common Off-Page activities include boosting branded searches, building backlinks, and blog commenting etc.
What Is a Search Engine?
A search engine is a tool or an application that enables users to get their search queries on the internet. It’s a program that finds out the content from the database that relates to the keywords or characters defined by the users to access particular information on the World Wide Web. Google may be the common & best choice in search engines list but there are various alternative search engines available such as Yahoo, Bing etc. Search engines work through three different processes:
- Crawling
- Indexing
- Ranking
Every search engine other than Google shows different outcomes based on its search index, keyword density, content related to the respective keywords, and the page title. It uses an automated system or software such as bots, spiders etc that follow every site and information on the internet. In the end, the information stored by the spider is utilized to build an index on the web. The results you get on the internet for a distinct query are termed as SERP- Search Engine Results Page. So don’t expect the same result from other search engines that you get on Google searches.
The SERPs show both the organic results and PPC i.e Pay-Per-Click. Now the twist is organic results are based on SEO, while PPC ads are payable. You cannot pay Google or any other search engines to rank your website organically. However, they earn money from the ads you place on the search engines. That means the more ads they show on the internet, the more revenue they will earn out of it.
What Is a Keyword?
Keywords are phrases or words you search on the internet to find a particular result. It is also called as a search query that helps users to find a specific information via search engine. Keywords are the phrases that portray the message to the Google about the exact query of the user. Therefore, every website or webpage must contain their own set of keywords in order to attain higher visibility and ranking on the Google SERP. In this article, we have highlighted how keyword research makes your website more credible in terms of content marketing.
Types Of Keywords
To attract visitors to your website, you need strong and right keywords related to your content. Various types of keywords are highlighted here that help you to improve the website optimization and drive more visitors to your page.
Primary Keywords
Primary Keywords are considered as target words that provide higher traffic to your webpage. The primary keywords are those words that highlight your content searches on the internet. So you can add the primary keywords in the title of your content, subheadings and anchor links to make the keyword search more relatable to the content. Remember the primary Keyword consists of 2-3 words not more than that. For example- “Best Keyword research tools in 2021” here keyword research tools are the primary and the rest is secondary.
Secondary Keywords
Secondary keywords play a supporting role to highlight the primary Keyword. It gives additional information with the primary keyword. These are the kind of LSI keywords that you provide throughout the content to give a clear idea to the end-users.
Short Tail Keywords
These are the general keyword searches or queries that consist of two or fewer words. It is also termed as ” Head terms”, they define vast searches for information such as “Fast Food”, “Marketing”, and ” Buy laptop” etc. Short Tail Keywords are generic as it covers a certain category to gain high search volumes.
Long-Tail Keywords
Long Tail Keywords are the longer keyword phrases that consist of two or more words. These keywords are more specific and their conversation rate is lower in comparison to short tail Keywords. Suppose “Marketing” is a short tail keyword, in the long tail version it becomes “Best marketing consultant for SEO.”
Misspelt Keywords
Before the Google algorithm, these keywords category was the highest traffic generator. A lot of people type wrong words or make spelling mistakes in search boxes. Examples of such misspelt words are jevelry, dencing and lots more. Search engines fetch the correct information along with other related search results by analyzing misspelt keywords.
How SEO Enhances Your Business Visibility On The Web?
Search engine optimization is an integral part of digital marketing. In today’s market, every business organization either small or big needs online exposure to promote their business services. Every business has its target market therefore it’s better to focus on the topics related to your business activities by which you can reach your target audience easily. Here we have highlighted a few points to make you understand how SEO enhances your business visibility and grow your business on the digital market.
1. SEO Increases Inbound Traffic
When it comes to business exposure, more promotion and online traffic are required. That means you need to invest in various marketing campaigns to rank your business on top of the search results. The best thing about Inbound traffic is that it develops with time and focuses on the fixed target. With effective website optimization, it can also rank in Google’s People Also Ask boxes.
2. SEO Helps To Build Trust And Credibility
To develop a good connection with the customer, you need to make your website authentic and trustworthy. Real authority is something that you can’t achieve in one day. Thus, beneficial search engine optimization can help you to carve credibility and trust with Google, which will increase high traffic to your business brand.
3. Get More Business Referrals
The first page ranking on Google helps you get more visibility and traffic to your business page on the internet. You can’t overlook another beneficiary aspect of SEO that helps you to get more business referrals. That means your business will be enlisted with other businesses sharing similar products and services on the web. Here the possibilities of business growth are bigger and endless as you can merge or link with other businesses.
4. SEO Campaign Has The Best ROI
Whether you distinguish the aspects of an SEO campaign with offline advertisements and other digital marketing means, no one can deny that SEO has the best ROI’s at an affordable cost. The main reason behind this is it can connect more people at the right time and with the help of the inbound marketing strategy you can grab the target audience. If you can properly optimise your business webpage with the keywords related to the services you offer then customers can easily find out your business page.
5. SEO Makes Your Webpage More User-Friendly
SEO is not only about ranking your business page on the top of the search engines, it also enhances the quality of your website. Nowadays, people visit a website that has a better user-friendly experience (UX). A website with poor content, slow loading, and bad navigation will reduce the chances of search engine ranking. With the help of SEO, you can improve the mobile compatibility as well as the user experience of your website.
Major SEO Ranking Factors
There are different factors associated with SEO ranking on Google or any other search engines. Here we have discussed a few major SEO ranking factors that can help you to develop your SEO strategy fruitfully.
A trustworthy and accessible website
The first and foremost factor that helps your SEO ranking results is the right URL. Particularly, Google’s bots can fetch and crawl the URL of your website in the first place. That means your website needs to be perfectly created with proper coding structure, a site map that records all the pages then only Google can find the content of the page through the URL of your website. So make sure that your website is trustworthy, accessible, and provides genuine information about your content.
Mobile-Friendliness
These days every single person uses mobile devices rather than a desktop to access the internet. So to enhance the SEO ranking of your website you need to make your website more user-friendly and mobile compatible. These are the things you need to consider while designing a mobile-friendly website- Automatic resizing ability that fits your device, accessible menus with easy scroll option, and large fonts for clear readability.
Optimized Content
We have highlighted several SEO ranking factors to uplift your website visibility on the internet. This is another crucial factor that helps you to optimize your website and makes it easier to bring forth your page on the web. If your website has relevant information and content proficiency then only Google fetches the data for the right searches. Lack of content will decrease the visibility and users’ engagement on the website which can affect your SEO ranking.
Page Speed
Page speed is one of the significant factors that help you to rank your website. A web page that has a better loading speed and user-friendly experience Google search those websites first.
Search Intent
People search the internet with particular keywords and to enhance the results of your website search on the internet you need to check the volume of the keywords related to your content. There are several free keyword research tools available on the internet, you need to copy and paste the specific keywords that you want to rank on the search list.
Backlinks
Backlinks are another important factor that help Google to index your website as per relevant search query. Backlinks are also termed as the inbound links that deliver signals to the search engine to highlight the relevant content of your website on the internet. To build strong backlinks you need quality content on your website so that Google can relate with another hyperlink website that shares the same information. Avoid black hat SEO tactics such as spamming comments, buying links, guest postings, and links exchanges. These factors can reduce the chances of your SEO ranking.
Bottom Line
Some people still consider SEO ranking as a myth but if you follow the basic principles of search engine optimisation, you can increase the traffic of your website. In this article, we have briefed the major factors of SEO rankings, how it works, what are types of SEO, and all other aspects of it. It might help you to get more organic searches and better visibility of your website on the World Wide Web.