Search engine optimization (SEO) is a popular term that you can come across quite frequently on the Internet. In this blog post, we’re going to be looking at what SEO is, how it works, why it is important, and how you can effectively do it for your website.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. There are different ways through which online sources have defined it. For example, according to Wix.com, here is how SEO can be defined:
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing websites so that they rank well on search engines through organic (non-paid) searches.
This is a good definition, but the way we would do it is as follows:
According to Blogs Nest, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to the steps that you take to ensure that your website shows up high in the search results when people look for terms, words, and phrases related to it.
One thing that we should clarify about SEO is that it does not affect the results that are shown in the ads section at the top.
Understanding search result ads and SEO
When a website puts in a good effort to optimize itself for the search results, it still shows up under the sites that the search engine advertises. Here is an example of what we mean by that:
In the image, you can see that the top results in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) are “Sponsored.” Those results are placed by the search engine at the top because they are paid ads.
Below the sponsored results are the actual organic site rankings. It is at this point that SEO begins.
How does SEO work?
The simple working of SEO can be defined in the following three steps.
- First of all, a website is created and a search engine (for example, Google) indexes it.
- When the search engine indexes the site, it “crawls” the site, which means that it analyzes it. There are various things that it analyzes, such as the page loading speed, metadata, content quality, and so on. These are known as ranking factors.
- Then, once the search engine has analyzed the website, it gives it a ranking according to the SEO-friendliness. For example, if a website loads quickly, has accurate metadata, and also publishes high-quality content, then it would be ranked high in the search results.
This is, in a nutshell, the working of SEO. Although the actual process is much more detailed and intricate, the three points mentioned roughly capture it all.
What are the types of SEO?
When a website is optimized for search engines, there are three main types in which the various steps are divided.
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
These are the three types of SEO. All three of these types have to be properly attended to in order to get the website to a good rank.
What is on-page SEO?
On-page SEO includes all the SEO-related steps that are taken on the website's web pages themselves. For example, if you add quality content to your website's pages, then it would be an example of on-page SEO since you're working on the website itself.
There are various aspects of on-page SEO, such as:
- Creating and publishing high-quality content
- Optimizing metadata
- Adding and optimizing images
- Adding external and internal links
- Optimizing the UI/UX of the website
What is off-page SEO?
Contrary to on-page SEO, off-page SEO refers to the steps and measures that are taken on places other than the website itself.
For example, if you post an article about your website on a social media platform, it will help your website's ranking but it won't be something that you do on the site itself.
There are various off-page steps that you can take for your website, such as:
- Garnering backlinks from reliable websites
- Promoting your website through social media
What is technical SEO?
Technical SEO refers to the steps and measures that are taken to improve a site’s ranking by making changes to the technical aspects of the site, such as the arrangement of code, optimizing the web hosting service, etc.
These technical parts of the website can be optimized so that the user experience is improved. Here are some examples of the things that you have to do in technical SEO.
- Minifying and beautifying the website content
- Adding canonical tags for your web pages
- Adding sitemaps and robots files
- Adding breadcrumb navigation to your website
Why is SEO important?
SEO is important for a number of reasons. But, if we want to encapsulate them all comprehensively into one point, we can say that:
SEO is important because it improves your website’s visibility and exposure on the Internet.
From a business standpoint, having this benefit can be helpful in the following ways:
1. It can help you get more leads and customers
The more leads and customers your business has, the better it is able to perform and grow. There are different ways in which businesses try and increase the number of customers and leads they get. By working on the SEO of your site, you can get this benefit along with a number of other perks.
You can garner customers not only from the brick-and-mortar premise of your business but also from your prominent online presence. People who have never even seen your physical business premise will be able to learn about you just by searching on the internet and coming across your site.
2. It can help your business generate more revenue
This benefit is somewhat similar to the one that we’ve just described but we mean it in a slightly different way.
Nowadays, a lot of businesses exist online. They sell their products and services using the Internet in order to reach more people.
For these types of businesses, having a high-ranking website can mean a direct increase in sales and revenue generation.
3. It can bring an increase in your ad income
If your website is monetized with an ad program, having a higher rank in the search engine results can be very helpful. With more visitors, the ads on your website will be able to get more clicks.
What are some good SEO tips to follow in 2024 and beyond?
We plan on publishing an article on SEO tips separately on our blogs sometime in the future. But for now, we’re going to discuss some tips briefly here.
a. Make sure that your website loads quickly
Website loading speed is a very important ranking factor. Even if you’re targeting search engines that don’t measure SEO-friendliness based on site speed, it is still something you should extensively focus on.
Why?
Because people tend to abandon websites that take too long to load. An interesting statistic about this is that 25% of people will abandon a website if it takes more than 4 seconds to load.
There are different things that you can do to make sure your website loads quickly. They include:
- Minifying and beautifying the code for faster processing
- Limiting the number of plugins the website contains
- Limiting the number of redirects
- Compressing images on the website
b. Make sure that your keyword usage is moderate and natural
Keywords are one of the most important aspects of SEO. You have to use them in various places, such as:
- Meta title
- Meta description
- Main content body
But, the way you use the keywords decides whether or not their usage actually benefits the site or not.
You should avoid doing keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing means adding the primary and secondary keywords repeatedly in the content regardless of whether they make sense or not.
You should also avoid using the keywords in an unnatural way. For example, if there is a keyword “buy cars New York” or something, you should make sure that your adjustment of that KW is not grammatically incorrect.
Ideally, you should use your main keyword in the content once or twice in every 100 words that you write.
c. Make sure that your content is well-researched and informational
Nowadays, Google is the main search engine that most websites aim to rank high on. And Google favors informational content.
Content that is written to manipulate the search engine rankings by just containing a lot of keywords or fluff is not going to help you increase your website’s SEO rankings.
You should focus on making your content as information-rich as possible. Don’t add anything that doesn’t help with increasing the worth and value of the information that you’re providing.
Final Thoughts
And with that, we’re going to bring this post to an end.
In this post, we've looked at what SEO is. SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it is the process by which a website is improved so that it ranks higher in the search engine rankings.
There are different types of SEO, which include off-page, on-page, and technical SEO. We’ve looked at all of these in detail in the post above.
If you want to hire some SEO services for your website, get in touch with us and we will help you out.
Frequently Asked Questions About SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization, whereas SEM stands for search engine marketing. SEO refers to the steps and measures that are taken to make a website rank higher on the SERPs and drive organic traffic. On the other hand, SEM is the term that is used to market your website/brand through search engines in any way. Paid ads also come in SEM.
The main purpose of SEO is to make your website appear higher in the SERPs and get more visibility.
There are three main types of SEO that include on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. All of these three types deal with a different set of steps and measures that are taken to increase a website’s quality and authority.