What Is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it is a strategic practice that is used to rank your website and/or any other type of online content at the top of relevant search engines like Google and Bing, etc.
This means that your website, thanks to SEO, now has better visibility for relevant searches. This increases the visitors’ traffic on your website because your website is now visible to a larger audience as it is being displayed at the top of search engines like Google.
So, increased traffic on your website automatically helps in attracting more customers to your business and potentially earn more money through advertisements.
How Does SEO Work?
In layman terms, the basic premise of SEO is that it demonstrates to search engines like Google and Bing that the content on your website is one of the most suitable and relevant search results on the internet.
It is important to understand that different SEO techniques come into play when we talk about different search engines. This is because different search engines have different algorithms that function in such a way as to display the most relevant search results to the users.
Before we take a deeper dive into the intricate world of SEO, let us first look at some of the technical terminologies that we need to be up to speed with.
Quality of Traffic
This basically means that the interests of your audience must align with the products that you are selling on your website. For example, if you have an e-commerce website that sells clothes by the name of Mango and Google redirects users that are looking for an online marketplace for fresh mangoes to your website, it defeats the purpose of having greater traffic on your website since the visitors are not interested in your product. Instead the aim should be to attract an audience that is looking for the particular type of clothing you are selling.
Quantity of traffic
This refers to the number of visitors on your website, if you are attracting the right kind of audience to your website then the more, the merrier for your business.
Organic results
These are search engine result pages that appear because they are relevant to someone’s search terms and are not paid to be displayed on top of the search engines’ results list. For example, if you are a dentist and have had proper dental SEO done on your website, then when someone searches “best dentist near me” or “oral surgeon” or “family dentist in … whatever city you’re in” they should be able to see your website pop up on the results and click on it from it’s ranking status on the search engine.
Key Building Blocks of SEO
Strategy
It is imperative to have a strategy that you can refer to during your SEO journey. This means that you must be aware of the major SEO technicalities, for example, the keywords that you need to use to attract maximum customers to your website.
On-Page Optimization
Your website is the central point of your business. Therefore, it should be your main focus area. In addition to using suitable keywords, your aim should be to make the website as user friendly as possible. In recent times, search engines like Google have started putting increased emphasis on mobile-friendliness and page speed for optimal user experience.
Content
This is one of the most overlooked factors in SEO. As an online business, posting the latest and most relevant content on your product website should be your topmost priority. The use of keywords and links within your content can help maximize the ranking of your webpages.
Data
Once you start applying the aforementioned SEO techniques to boost your website’s ranking, the next logical step is to look at data analytics of how your website is advancing on target search engine result pages. This will give you an idea of the effectiveness of your SEO techniques and if you should change something to further boost your website ranking.
