SEO 101: Understanding the Basics Of Search Engine Optimization
When you need new marketing ideas, what is the first thing you do?
My guess is that you turn to Google.
People use search engines to find what they’re looking for online. They are the go-to sources of information on everything. Search engines are a frequent starting place when you need information, and they provide a fantastic opportunity for business owners to send relevant traffic to their website.
Although search engines are viable marketing channels, businesses need to understand how to position themselves online for optimal visibility on search engine result pages. This is where SEO comes in. Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is the process of optimising a website’s technical configuration, content relevancy, and link popularity so that its pages become findable, relevant, and popular to user search queries, and as a result, search engines rank them better. It increases a company’s visibility in organic search results and through these efforts, the company’s website receives more visitors, increasing their chances of conversion, resulting in more customers and revenue.
Typically, the goal is to rank at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) for search terms or keywords that are important to your target audience. So, SEO is as much about knowing your audience’s wants and needs and about the technical aspects of your website.
How do search engines work?
Search engines provide results for any search query a user enters. To do so, they survey and “understand” the vast network of websites that make up the web. They run a sophisticated algorithm that determines what results to display for each search query. Some examples of search engines are: Bing, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo! etc.
Rankings
This is how search engines determine where to place a certain web page in the SERP. Rankings range from zero to the whole number of search engine results for the query, and a web page can only rank for one position at a time. A web page’s rating may fluctuate over time owing to age, competition in the SERP, or algorithm changes made by the search engine itself.
Visibility
This metric explores how visible a particular domain is in the search engine results. The lower the search visibility, the less likely the domain is to be displayed for many relevant search queries, and the higher the visibility, the better the search visibility.
In sum, ranking and visibility are both essential to SEO’s goals of driving traffic and increasing domain authority.
A comprehensive approach to determining relevance and authority can be achieved by using the E-A-T framework. In SEO, E-A-T stands for “expertise, authority, and trustworthiness; and although this acronym is not a direct ranking factor it can help improve your SEO content, which in turn impacts and influences direct rankings.
Why is SEO important?
Google considers several variables when determining the rankings of websites on its SERPs. Typically, they want content that is relevant and valuable to their users.
Previously, ranking high on Google’s first page was considered an indicator of SEO success. However, ranking high for a term does always guarantee results.
Sometimes you’ll rank well for terms that aren’t relevant to your business, and your website visitors will realise you’re not what they were looking for. You don’t get customers from this traffic and ranking high for this specific keyword might not be useful.
Furthermore, you don’t have to be in the top three to be successful. Indeed, even if you rank well on subsequent pages, you may still have a high click-through rate, albeit with less traffic. That’s great news for marketers who can’t seem to get their pages to the first or second page. The quantity of traffic to your page is less important than the quality of that traffic.
SEO virtually assists you in positioning your brand throughout the entire purchasing journey, ensuring that your marketing strategies match the new purchasing behaviour.
How does Google determine which pages to rank?
The main purpose of SEO is to provide the most relevant answers or information to users.
When you use them, their algorithms select the pages that are most relevant to your query. Then, organise them by authority or popularity, displaying the most authoritative or popular first.
Search engines consider two factors when delivering relevant information to users:
Authority: This is determined by the popularity of a website on the Internet. Generally, Google assumes that readers value more popular pages and resources.
Relevance: the relationship between the search query and the content on a page. Search engines evaluate it based on various factors such as topic or keywords.
And to analyse all this information, they employ complex equations known as search algorithms.
Search engines may not publish their algorithm. However, SEO experts have identified some of the variables they consider when ranking a page over time i.e., ranking factors. Ranking factors are signals search engines use to sort the search results according to their quality and relevance to the query. Ranking factors are the focal point of an SEO strategy.
An SEO marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan for increasing the number of visitors to your website via search engines. A successful SEO campaign utilises both on-page and off-page strategies, including intent-based keywords and inbound links which generate backlinks from other websites.
Components of Search Engine Optimization
The three main components of SEO are:
Technical SEO
On-page SEO
Off-page SEO
Technical search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of preparing a website so that search engines are easily able to crawl, index, and render it. Marketers and business owners use technical SEO to increase their website’s chances of ranking well on search engine results pages (SERPs).
For your website to rank, a search engine must locate your web pages, scan them to comprehend their contents and identify their keyword and finally, it must add them to its index, which is a database of all the content it has discovered on the internet. Although it seems that at this point you can easily visit your site without issue but that might not be the case for google, as a website can appear differently to you and the search engine.
This is where technical setup, also known as on-site optimization, comes into play. It ensures that your website and pages are easily scanned and indexed by Google. The most significant factors influencing it are URL links, page speed, deadlinks, sitemap and robots.txt files etc.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO, or on-site SEO, is the process of optimising various front-end and back-end components of a site to drive traffic and to rank higher in search engines. On-page SEO components include content elements, site architecture elements, and HTML elements.
On-page SEO is important because it tells Google just about everything there is to know about your website and how you provide value to visitors and customers. It aids in the optimization of your site for both human eyes and search engine bots.
Creating and publishing your website isn’t enough; you also need to optimise it for Google and other search engines to rank and drive new traffic.
As its name implies, on-page SEO improvements you make to your website can be seen by visitors (whereas off-page and technical SEO elements aren’t always visible).
Every aspect of on-page SEO is entirely up to you, which is why it is critical that you get it right. On-page SEO elements include high-quality page content, page title, headers, page url, internal linking, mobile responsiveness, structured mark-up, and so on.
Off-page SEO
The term “off-page SEO” sometimes known as “off-site SEO” refers to efforts conducted outside of your own website to influence your ranks in search engine results pages.
Building backlinks is integral to off-page SEO. Backlinks are used by search engines to determine the quality of the linked-to content, therefore a site with many high-value backlinks will normally rank higher than an otherwise similar site with fewer backlinks.
A backlink is a link created when one website links to another. Backlinks can also be referred to as “inbound links” or “incoming links.” Backlinks are particularly significant for SEO since they reflect a “vote of trust” from one site to another.
In essence, backlinks to your website are a signal to search engines that others approve of your content.
In addition, when determining a page’s ranking, search engines consider a wide range of factors. Although some of the factors are based on the content and performance of your website, Google also gathers information from sources outside your domain. As a result, off-page SEO is very valuable. A common off-page SEO strategy is link building. Google is built on PageRank, an algorithm that assesses the quality and quantity of a page’s backlinks.
A well-designed off-page SEO strategy supports your website’s efforts (i.e., on-page SEO) and helps you establish credibility, relevance, trustworthiness, and authority. Developing an off-page SEO strategy is just as important as optimising your website. They both work together to give search engines a picture of your brand to determine your ranking.
Technical SEO, On-page SEO, and Off-page strategies all work together to help your pages rank well in search results.
Monitoring and Tracking SEO Results
Technical SEO, content, and links are all important factors in ranking a website in search results. Monitoring your efforts allows you to improve your strategy even further.
Measuring SEO success entails keeping track of data such as traffic, engagement, link growth, increase in organic growth, ranking for keywords etc.
Although most businesses develop their own sets of SEOs KPIs (key performance indicators).
Local SEO
If you own a local business, Google enables you to specifically target potential customers in your area. To leverage this opportunity, you employ local SEO.
Local SEO is a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that promotes search engine visibility for local businesses with physical locations or serves a geographic area. Businesses can improve organic traffic from searches performed by customers in nearby areas by adhering to local SEO best practices. Local SEO is a two-sided game; Google displays two types of search results for local searches. These are “map pack” and “blue link” organic results. You can rank on both
To gather information for local search, search engines rely on signals such as local content, social profile pages, links, and citations to provide the most relevant local results to the user.
Local businesses account for 46% of Google searches. People search for vendor recommendations as well as specific business addresses and they tend to act this knowledge they’ve gained from their search i.e. Within 24 hours of their search, 72% of searchers visit a local store or company’s location.
Local Search Ranking Factors
Google considers the proximity of a searcher’s location when analysing local websites. With the rise in local searches containing the phrase “near me,” it’s only logical that Google will prioritise the businesses that are closest to you.
Keywords are also important for local SEO. However, the presence of a company’s name, address, and phone number on a page is an additional element of on-page optimization. It’s referred to as the NAP in local SEO.
The search engine needs a way to assess the company’s location. In local search, Google looks at factors other than links to determine authority. Authority is also emphasised by reviews and citations (online references to its address or phone number).
Lastly, the information a company includes in Google My Business — the search engine’s platform for managing local business listings — has a significant effect on its ranking.
BlacK Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO is defined as a disapproved practice that may increase a page’s ranking in a search engine result page (SERP). These practices violate the terms of service of the search engine and may result in the site being blacklisted from the search engine and affiliate sites. On Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines, a list of tactics and strategies employed by black hat SEO practitioners has been openly repudiated.
Grey hat SEO refers to SEO tactics that are slightly unethical. While they do not violate any search engine’s prohibited practices, they are slightly unethical and may be prohibited in the future. Grey hat SEO is tightly linked to black hat SEO. Grey hat tactics are typically not listed as prohibited practices in webmaster guidelines, but they are questionable. Many grey hat practices have evolved into black hat practices as search engines became aware of them.
White Hat SEO, on the other hand, is an ethical approach to SEO that focuses on producing high-quality content and providing a positive user experience. White hat SEO refers to SEO strategies that follow the rules and standards of search engines and searchers. It entails employing techniques to boost a website’s search engine ranking without relying on tricks to thwart a search engine’s algorithm.
How To Avoid Black Hat SEO
Undoubtedly, black hat SEO is a risky business that should be avoided.
The following are best practices for avoiding black hat SEO:
- It is imperative to treat both searchers and search engines equally. You should avoid “cloaking” or tricking search engine crawlers by redirecting them to another page. Your efforts should always be geared towards solving for the searcher and creating a great user experience from search engine to the website.
- Provide high quality original content and avoid keyword stuffing.
- When adding structured data to your website, adhere to the rules and guidelines. Ensure that any schema markup you add is accurate and does not mislead users.
- Never buy or sell links, and if you are unsure whether an exchange is unethical, consult the FTC endorsement guidelines.
- Avoid establishing a private blog network solely for the purpose of obtaining links. Differentiate your website and content so that people organically link to you.
- Keep abreast on webmaster guidelines to avoid black hat tactics that search engines prohibit.
Finally, it is critical to consider as much information as possible when deciding whether to work on SEO yourself, delegate it to another team member, or completely outsource it. You need to proactively position your content in search results, and this can lead to more visitors, conversions, and sales by increasing your search visibility. SEO is not a one-time event and it requires constant readjustments.
