SEO 101: Ultimate Search Engine Optimization Guide
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of those buzzwords you’ll hear quite a few times while getting set up with an online presence. Getting people to find your website with its products and services seems simple.
But it isn’t as simple as it looks!
Of course, there’s a lot of work behind that.
You must design a website that appeals to search engines. Yet how to do that isn’t quite so easy, and one can try many strategies before finding the right SEO strategy. This article will define what SEO is, why it is necessary, how it works, how SEO is different from SEM, and offer SEO ranking tips to win the SEO game.
What is SEO?
Well, let’s just start with a very obvious question: what is SEO?
SEO, which stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’, is a process of driving traffic to your site through free, organic, or natural search results on search engines. The main objective of SEO is to drive up the rank of your website on search results pages, or SERPs.
Always remember, the higher the rank, the more exposure for your website.
3 Main Pillars of SEO
SEO may make changes frequently, but the core principles stay the same. For this purpose, SEO has three main components or pillars that you should know about and work on continuously.
1. On-Page SEO: On-page optimization means that your web page should have authentic content and provide a good user experience. This involves determining the relevant keywords for any piece of content and managing it efficiently with ease using platforms such as WordPress, Wix, Shopify, etc.
2. Off-Page SEO: Off-page optimization is another way to drive up the rankings higher for your website, focusing on activities that take place outside your website. It can be achieved by creating quality backlinks, which form a huge part of establishing one’s credibility.
3. Technical SEO: Technical optimization would mean the actions you take on your site only and purely for optimizing your SEO but are not necessarily related to content. In most cases, these activities tend to occur out of sight. For example, submitting your sitemap to Google & directory submissions.
Why is SEO important?
Every day, over 8.5 billion searches are conducted on Google, which dominates the global search engine market with a whopping 91% share.
SEO makes your content visible globally; therefore, it is important for brands. The very moment people are able to view your brand on search engines, they begin to understand it and start to believe in it. And that trust leads you to sell more of your products and services since your brand stands among top search results. In fact, one major aim behind SEO is to drive traffic to a website, which makes a successful SEO campaign really uplift your company’s visibility.
There are some key advantages of doing SEO for your brand:
- SEO research gives you useful insights to help you create or refresh your content.
- It’s an affordable way to drive traffic to your website.
- Ranking well in search results boosts your credibility and trust with your audience.
- When SEO strategies are executed properly, it can give a fantastic return on your investment.
- SEO helps in understanding users’ behaviour or intent.
- It attracts the right users since they discover you by searching for specific terms or questions.
- Last but not least, it helps businesses to market their products or services online through local SEO. Local SEO helps businesses to improve their local searches.
How does SEO work?
In today’s world, everyone wants to know something and looks up answers online through search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc.
Search engine algorithms are simply computer programmes that sort through data to give a user the exact results they needed. These algorithms help search engines find web pages and rank them according to specific keywords.
These three steps broadly describe how a search engine works.
1. Search engine crawling
The first action is crawling. Search engines use web crawlers to discover new pages and collect information about them. For a long time, we have referred to these crawlers as ‘spiders’, ‘robots,’ or Googlebots. Their objective is mainly to discover web pages that are new and periodically visit those they have already visited for any updates or changes. Search engines crawl through website pages by crawling over links they already have visited. Therefore, if your blog is linked from your home page, when a search engine crawls your home page, it will most likely follow the link to the latest blog post.
2. Search engine indexing
The next action involved is indexing. In this process, a search engine decides whether or not to index the content it has crawled. The web page that captures the search engine’s attention and is considered worthy gets indexed. This index is used while ranking at the final stage. After a web page or content is indexed, it is arranged and stored in a database for later usage. Generally, the index gets filled with web pages containing unique and useful content.
3. Search engine ranking
The third one is surely the most crucial step: ranking. It can be done only after crawling and the indexing stage. Hence, when a search engine has crawled and indexed your website, it is ready to be ranked. Search engines use more than 200 different ranking signals while they organize and rank the content. These signals fall within three categories of SEO that can be categorized into technical optimization, on-page optimization, and off-page optimization.
A few examples of signals that are used by search engines are:
- Loading speed
- Content authenticity & relevance
- Backlinks
- Mobile friendliness
SEO vs. SEM. Are both the same?
SEM, or search engine marketing, is simply known as search marketing.
Now, although SEO is a closely related term to SEM, they’re not the same. In fact, SEO is a subset of SEM.
- Search Engine Optimisation: Get clicks from search engines to your website through organic search results.
- Search Engine Marketing: SEM get clicks from search engines to your website through both organic and paid results.
- Pay Per Click: PPC brings clicks through paid results on search engines.
In analogy, you may say SEM is a coin. One side of it is SEO, and the other side is PPC.
How does Google search ranking work?
So what determines what the page ranks on Google?
A search engine’s first priority is always to give users the best answer or information whenever they search anything. This is achieved by running algorithms that filter pages to yield the most relevant ones for a given query and ranking them accordingly, showing users the most authoritative or popular first.
For the right information to get to the users, search engines analyze the five key factors.
1. Purpose of search query, which outlines what a user is looking for and how that relates to content
2. How the content on a page may or may not be relevant to the search query, making judgement calls through topics and keyword research.
3. Quality of content, defined with a framework, E-E-A-T; the quality by which we surface content that looks most helpful based on signals like expertise and trustworthiness.
E-E-A-T basically helps determine relevance and authority. E-E-A-T stands for Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Here’s a quick rundown:
- Expertise: You just so happen to be an authority on the topic you are writing about.
- Experience: You have experience in the matter yourself.
- Authoritativeness: Other people recognize you as an authority on that topic – often with backlinks coming from other sites.
- Trustworthiness: Your site and its material are trustworthy and current.
4. Usability of a site is seen as ease factors such as page speed and mobile friendliness contribute to users easily finding what they want.
5. Context, that considers a person’s past actions and preferences, including where they are.
These processes all happen through complicated mathematical formulations known as search algorithms. Though search companies never share their proprietary algorithms, over the years, SEO practitioners have identified certain factors affecting page rankings, ranking factors, which become the hub of every SEO strategy.
Do you want to be ranked #1 on search engines?
With our comprehensive SEO guide, you’re all set to move and boost your website, sending it sky-high in the Google ranks.
We have attempted to break down SEO, its pillars, how it works, its benefits, and tips to rank on Google. This is all that’s really going to have an impact on your position in a search result.
Are you ready to get your content to new heights in an SEO campaign?
Reach out to us today & let’s get started with your SEO journey today.