Search Engine Optimization is so complex that even online marketing professionals need time to understand it fully. Even once they think they’ve mastered the art of SEO with all its different techniques, tactics, and practices, the rules change and evolve again. But if you want to be visible online and increase brand awareness as well as website traffic, the efforts you put into your search engine ranking are well worth it.
After reading this article, you should not only understand what SEO is and how it works, but also why it is so important for you and the traffic potential of your website.
SEO Basics
The abbreviation SEO stands for search engine optimization. It helps to increase the quality and quantity of website traffic. It operates on a set of rules for optimizing your website in a certain way that it will achieve a higher organic search engine ranking. SEO includes a large number of rules, which evolve as the behaviors of web users change, and new technologies emerge.
SEO has become so significant because it is one of the most important factors in determining your online success. It makes your website more visible, which leads to more high quality traffic, which in turn means more opportunities to convert prospects into customers. In today’s digital world, SEO is an indispensable tool for brand awareness as well as positioning your company or brand as trustworthy and valuable. It can improve your website’s search-ability and visibility, and it has the potential to put you ahead of the competition. Quality SEO incorporates a positive user experience. That being said, the main goal of any SEO is not just to drive more people to your website, but also to help build a better relationship with your audience.
How does SEO work?
First of all, you have to keep in mind that search engine optimization concentrates much more on the users of a search engine than on the search engine technology itself. Before diving into the field of SEO, you should try to understand what and why people perform a search online and what answers they are expecting to find. Online communication isn’t so different from face-to-face communication. Understanding the intentions and questions of your conversational partner will help you connect better and deliver the right answer.
In a nutshell, search engines help users find answers to their questions and problems. To do so, search engines discover available content via crawling, indexing, and ordering the content by how well it matches each search query. This process is called ranking. The order by which the results are displayed is based on complex algorithms. You want to improve your website so that it appears at a top search result positions on Google and competing search engines, like Yahoo. Google is still the clear search market leader and therefore, its guidelines are most important to follow.
Search Engine Optimization Process
While paid advertising can generate traffic as well, organic search is a critical component of your ranking. Organic or non-paid search results are earned through effective SEO. The non-static SEO process can be broken down into three types: Technical SEO is the first stage of the SEO process and by setting up the right configurations it ensures that search engines can crawl and index your website without running into problems—if you want to get into the weeds more on technical SEO, I found that 101domain offers a helpful blog post on the topic. Technical SEO is followed by on-site (on-page) SEO, which primarily deals with content and focuses on providing search engine crawlers with meaningful signals to figure out what the page is all about. Content optimization is part of on-site SEO and can improve the usability of a website. Off-site (off-page) SEO techniques concentrate on backlink building to help achieve a higher website rank in search results. High-quality backlinks from external sites to your site tell search engines that your website is important.
SEO marketing is more important now than ever
There are countless studies on the user click behavior, and even without naming any of them specifically, one thing is clear: the higher you rank, the more likely users are to see you and ultimately click on your link. Therefore, if you’re not on page one, you need to work on your organic search game. People trust search engine results and having a presence in the top positions increases the site’s trust.
The following explain the key elements of every successful SEO:
Content is king
As mentioned above, SEO starts with quality content. Users land on your website for multiple reasons, but only providing valuable content keeps them engaged, which gives you the chance to build a substantial relationship. To become important to a search engine as well as to your website visitors, a solid piece of content must be relevant, engaging, educational, and shareable. This way your traffic has the chance to grow significantly.
Keywords are still essential
Keywords are words or even phrases that help search engines identify what your content is about. In the beginnings of SEO and before the semantic search, placing those words used to be the primary SEO technique. Keywords are still important today, but they must be carefully chosen in order to be effective. According to Google, you should focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately. If your keywords don’t support the content or if the content is obviously written to use a variety of random keywords rather than provide information, your page will be penalized.
Trust, credibility, and authority
Another reason SEO is critical is that it builds credibility and page authority. Establishing trust is fundamental to every business. Google and other search engines rank pages based on how relevant they are. The more authority your site has, the higher your ranking will be. If your page doesn’t appear trustworthy to the search engine and, as a result, to the user, you won’t generate traffic. The goal is to establish a strong foundation for your website that is valuable and can be easily discovered. Keep in mind, establishing a brand takes time, patience, and real commitment. Neither trust, credibility, nor page authority can be built overnight; it is earned and built over time.
Bonus Tip: Local SEO is the part of SEO that enhances your visibility by concentrating on optimizing your website so it can be found in local search results. Since people increasingly use their mobile devices for their search, local SEO is becoming more and more important. 50 percent of people that use search engines on their mobile phones are conducting local searches. Therefore, it is a very effective way to market to local customers at the exact time they’re looking for a service, product, or information online.
