SEO has become a buzzword among digital marketers over the past few years. This is what everyone is talking about and looking for in the digital marketing community.IIn fact, the term “SEO” is searched between 10,000 and 100,000 times on Google every month. It clearly shows people's level of interest.
However, if you are not yet on board with the SEO bandwagon and want to know what the buzz is about, you are in the right place. After reading this post, you will understand all the basics of SEO and the science behind how it works.
What is SEO? | The Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Optimization:
What is SEO?
In a nutshell, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of optimizing a website to get more organic traffic.
This may include changes to the design, layout, content and other technical and non-technical aspects of the website to achieve the best results. Your website should be able to attract enough traffic on its own without having to pay for it.
this is a sustainable way Increase website traffic It's worth the effort in the long run. This is why marketers invest heavily in her SEO and spend a lot of time and effort.
The whole game of SEO is a race to rank a website's landing page on the first page of search engine results for a specific search query.
Let's say you search for the term “best lawyers in New York” on Google. A search engine results page (SERP) appears, displaying websites related to your search query.
You'll see something exactly like this:
Let's analyze these results one by one.
The first set of results are paid search ads, where people pay to appear higher in Google SERPs for this particular keyword.
You can then view Google Maps and business listings for various attorneys. The next section is Google's People Also Ask section, which shows other search queries and answers related to this.
Finally, you'll see 10 different organic search listings for your search query. These 10 organic search listings are what people compete for when investing in his SEO.
There are potentially thousands of people who want to be among the first 10 results for any given keyword on the first page of Google SERP. So, if you put effort into SEO, this is the end result you want.
Of course, you can also rig the game and aim to be listed in one of the top three sections. However, advertising costs a lot of money, and you won't be able to operate it in the long term, especially if you don't have deep funds.And these are some Search Engine Marketing (SEM) It's not SEO.
List yourself on Google My Business and try to get listed in the Google Maps section. This is a part of his SEO called “Local SEO” that is especially useful for local businesses, but that's a topic for another day.
This article will primarily focus on how to leverage SEO to get the most organic traffic. But before we get into the details of how to do that, we first need to understand how search engines work.
How do search engines work?
When a user types a search query into a search engine such as Google, the search engine sifts through millions of entries and displays the most relevant results in order of relevance. They have their own algorithms on how to do it and they keep changing frequently.
However, the basic rule of relevance remains the same. Any search engine will show you the most relevant pages first. This is done by performing a series of functions as described below.
crawl
This is the process by which search engines explore content on the Internet.
Indexing
This is the process by which search engines understand, store, and organize online content.
For every online page, search engines try to understand the content and categorize it in the best way possible. In this way, search engines maintain an entire index or database of results that can be displayed for any search query retrieved.
Ranking
Ranking is the process by which search engines determine which indexed pages to display first for a particular search query. The algorithms behind this change frequently, and marketers need to stay on top of the latest changes.
SEO Basics – How to do SEO effectively
As mentioned earlier, the dynamics of SEO keep changing, so you need to stay up to date with the latest trends and algorithm changes. However, there are some fundamental principles of SEO that remain the same.
These SEO fundamentals or strategies form the basis of how to make it work and increase your website's organic traffic. Use the strategies described below to cover the basics of SEO for your website.
backlink
Backlinks basically mean links from other websites in your niche that drive traffic to your website. Users may link to other her websites to direct users to other useful content or to provide credit for information taken from the website.
The more trustworthy the websites linking to you, the better your own website's reputation will be. Therefore, you should aim to get backlinks from websites with high domain authority in your field.
The quality of your website or landing page links is very important when it comes to search engine ranking criteria. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the more likely you are to rank higher.
Related content
When it comes to SEO, the importance of relevant content cannot be overstated. This is probably the most important criterion in improving your search rankings.
All search engines strive to show users the most relevant results. This is the most important criterion for all search engines. Therefore, to win at SEO, you should focus on improving the quality of your website's content.
Quality means that if you want a particular page to rank for a particular keyword, it needs to provide value to users searching for that keyword.
Stuffing your content with random keywords is no longer enough to rank high. Your content should actually be useful and relevant to your target audience.
Also, search engines are very good at detecting whether something is relevant and useful. Let’s say you rank high simply by stuffing your content with keywords. You also get traffic based on that.
But those people don't stay on your website and leave as soon as they realize your content isn't solving their purpose. Search engines understand such online behavior and take it into account when assessing relevance.
Therefore, any content you create should be created with a specific target audience in mind. Think about what your users want to read when searching for specific keywords.
If you start writing your content with this mindset, you won't have to resort to questionable keyword stuffing tactics. If your content is useful and relevant, it will be ranked. Simple like that.
user experience
This is another very important criterion that search engines consider to rank your pages. How users are responding to your website.
To understand whether people are comfortable browsing your website, you should ask yourself questions such as:
- Are they spending time on it or are they just leaving the landing page?
- How many people actually check out other pages than just the one that landed them on your website?
- Are web pages taking too long to open?
- How easy or difficult is it for people to navigate your website?
It looks complicated, but it's actually not. In short, it's all about simple and user-friendly website design.
SEO is more than just keywords and links. There is a whole aspect of SEO called technical SEO that deals with website design and user experience. Many beginners often ignore this aspect and focus only on keywords and links. However, your SEO efforts will not be complete if you do not also look at this aspect.
Your goal is to make it as easy as possible for users to navigate and browse your website. It may take some time to figure this out, but it's worth the time and effort.
Links, content, and user experience are the three pillars of SEO. If you get these right, you'll have all the basics covered.
What's next?
Now that you understand all the basics of SEO, you need to start implementing them on your website. Let’s start with the three fundamentals of SEO: backlinks, content, and user experience, and get them right.
However, your work is not done yet. Once these aspects are cleared, you can investigate the following: Other SEO strategies And strategy. SEO is not something you do once and expect it to last. This is an ongoing effort and you should be prepared to continue investing your time and effort in the long run.
Good luck with your SEO efforts!