Introduction:
When it comes to explaining what SEO is, everyone gets technical.
It indeed is a technical concept but I believe it can be explained in a way that’s very easier to understand for anyone.
Consider your website as a new kid in the high school of the internet.
Now, there are two goals your website needs to accomplish, first is to fit within a group of kids where you belong i.e. your web sector and the second is to become a popular kid in the highschool i.e. have a higher ranking with search engines.
First comes the task of fitting into a group.
The highschool has all sorts of groups, the smart ones, musicians, athletes, drama enthusiasts, entertainers and the weird ones too.
You need to understand who you are and identify in which group you fit in snugly.
You carefully observe your target group and mimic their traits, that way you can fit into that group properly and become a contributing part of the web sector.
The next step involves becoming popular, first among your group and then in the entire highschool.
To become popular in the group you just need to outperform others in terms of the quality and value you’re offering.
The talented kids always hog all the limelight.
Once you’re done becoming the brightest star in your group, you need to change the game in order to become popular all over the high school.
The best way to do that is by being helpful and solving the public’s issues while providing them with some value that betters your overall reputation.
All in all, SEO is nothing but all the activities undertaken to become the most popular site in your web sector and eventually on the internet.
Let’s understand SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of optimizing your website and content therein to gain better recognition and reputation from various search engines.
Better recognition and reputation, technically referred to as ranking, translates to search engines displaying your site higher up in results when people search for products, services, information and value you’re offering.
Here’s how Investopedia defines SEO.
“Search Engine Optimization (SEO) aims to draw the greatest amount of traffic possible to a website by bringing it to the top of a search engine’s results. SEO is used by businesses and individuals to maximize the visibility of their websites and content to boost traffic and, therefore, business. Companies often hire SEO specialists to implement such strategies to boost organic traffic.”
And here’s how Search Engine Land defines it.
“SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” In simple terms, it means the process of improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business in Google, Bing, and other search engines. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business.”
In layman terms, SEO helps shine the spotlight onto your website on the crowded stage of the Internet. SEO Strategy is the plan that enables you to shift the focus of the spotlight on you while an SEO Content Strategy is the plan to be so noticeable that the focus of the spotlight shifts automatically onto you.
So how can SEO be useful to your business?
Too many people are searching for things all the time.
Internet traffic is a powerful asset any business can have.
Not only does it introduce your brand, products and services to the world but it also helps you reach the consumers who’re looking for the products and services that you’re offering.
Imagine a million people searching for a question or a query on the internet and you are the first one to answer them.
This is what SEO enables you to achieve.
A good SEO strategy puts you ahead of the competition in the race for the top spot of the Internet Search Results.
Infographic courtesy – moz.com
Another aspect that makes SEO more efficient than any other traditional forms of marketing is the nature of traffic it directs to your site.
Unlike traditional forms of marketing where you advertise to almost everyone, hoping to reach your potential consumer, a good SEO Strategy will present your website to people who are specifically looking for products and services that you provide.
SEO is one of the most important aspects of your digital marketing strategy.
Infographic courtesy – statista.com
A good SEO marketing strategy will prevent wastage of your businesses’ limited and valuable resources while providing long term and significant returns.
Internet traffic is important. If people search for something loosely related to the products and services you offer and land on your website, that is still beneficial for business.
If you’re able to provide them with good information and value, you shall end up as a trusted source to avail themselves the products and services you offer.
It might not result in an immediate purchase but it will eventually lead to one while enhancing your reputation in the market in the meanwhile.
So how can SEO be useful to your business?
There are way too many parameters Search Engines use to rank websites.
The algorithms used to rank websites are updated incrementally almost on a daily basis.
Then there are some major algorithm changes that come once in a while to check the misuse of present algorithms.
The following parameters are widely considered as the most important:
- Content – An axiom of the online world, it is widely understood that the quality, relevance and value of the content you’re putting out on your website is the most important parameter in determining your ranking. The core focus of one’s SEO Content Strategy needs to be ensuring the generation of quality content.
- Keywords – Keywords are the words and phrases in your website content that help users reach you through search engines. You need to research which keywords are most relevant to your business sector and use them to appear in users’ search results.
- Infographics and Images – Images and infographics that appear in google images often lead the viewer to your website. Ensuring the images and infographics are laced with accurate information and are eye catchy, will help one increase the incoming organic traffic.
- Links – Links from reputed sites that provide reference to the content published on your website act as an indicator of content authenticity and accuracy. Effective and relevant use of links in your content helps raise your site’s reputation. Search Engines tend to rank sites with properly utilised links from reputed sites higher than those with none.
- Titles and Metadata – Making sure your titles are keyword rich will ensure visibility in the search result. Ensuring that the titles are interesting and attract users is what will ensure they click on them.
Metadata is the line of text that follows your title in the search results. Metadata grants users a sneak peek into the article. Making sure the metadata creates curiosity within users is what ensures them visiting your site. - Content Length – Yes, Search engines do prefer articles and blog posts with higher word counts. However, there is a catch, the content needs to be relevant. An unnecessarily long post will always do worse than a relevant but short post.
How to optimize your website for better rankings?
Image Courtesy – moz.com
1. Off-Page optimizations: These activities affect the technical aspects of a webpage and not the user experience in any way, which makes them easier for the search engines to discover and rank higher. Some of the mainstream optimisations are:
a. Keyword Research and Mapping – What Search Engines look out for are the words and phrases the users are entering into the search box. It is through these keywords that a search engine directs traffic towards the intended sites.
Image courtesy – backlink.com
Knowing which keywords the users are using to search for services or products that you offer and including those keywords in your SEO Strategy and Social Media Strategy ensures that the search engines will rank you higher as your website has the keywords users are searching for.
b. Publish Content Consistently – Generating quality content that provides value to your audience is important. Content need not always be texts or articles, you can post informational videos, infographics, quizzes, games, product photos, illustrations or designs and concepts about future products and services.
The key here is consistency. Regularly publishing content makes your website look active to search engines. This attracts their attention which translates into a higher ranking for your website. Your SEO strategy needs to ensure that new Content is published at least on a weekly basis in order to seem active to the search engines.
c.Making your website crawler friendly – Crawling is the process by which search engines discover and keep track of changes in websites. Search engines use bots that scour through websites and follow links they find in each webpage to discover new URLs.
Making sure these bots can crawl through your website properly helps a website be discovered and ranked in accordance with the ranking parameters and should be the preliminary focus of one’s SEO strategy. Websites can be made crawler friendly by making changes to the ‘Robot.txt’ files of your website.
d. High Quality Links – Links refer to the hyperlinks within your content to sites that you’ve used as reference or source for either data, quotes, definitions or infographics.
One can understand which webpages do well and which do not, using analytics. This can be followed up by incorporating changes in your SEO Strategy or by making small adjustments to individual webpages to ensure they perform well.
Image courtesy – ahrefs.com
Having your content linked to reputable sites and well-reviewed articles translates to your website gaining a better reputation.
It is like having these reputed sites vouch for the quality and authenticity of the content that you’re publishing.
e. Strong Social Media Presence – Another organic way of leading users to your website is through social media. A good social media strategy would involve posting interactive posts which generate interest among users and lead them to your website.
f. Understanding Analytics – Regularly analyzing the SEO performance of your website is important. Google Analytics is a powerful tool that enables one to understand how effectively their site is optimized for search engines.
One can understand which web pages do well and which do not, using analytics. This can be followed up by incorporating changes in your SEO Strategy or by making small adjustments to individual web pages to ensure they perform well.
1.On-Page optimizations: These optimisations directly affect the various aspects of your webpage, be it how your webpage is set up, the text styles, title styles, elements in your page, etc. These optimisations are primarily made focusing on the experience the site audiences are being exposed to and to help search engines understand what your webpage is about. These can be:
a.Title Tags – A title tag is a title you give to your webpage that appears on its browser tab. Search Engines are constantly evolving to ensure they can keep in check the aggressive and manipulative use of keywords. That shouldn’t stop you from using keywords that you need your webpage to rank for.
However, another impactful way you can utilise a keyword is by placing it in the title tag of the web page.
Image Courtesy – wordstream.com
The content circled in blue is the meta description of the webpage.
Image Courtesy – wordstream.com
- URLs should be clear in conveying the title and purpose of the webpage.
- URLs need to be as short as possible.
- Keywords should be incorporated into URLs just like in Title tags.
- URLs should not be case sensitive so as not to create unnecessary hassle in accessing them.
d. UI and UX – The design of the page and placement of elements like lists, tables, graphics, images, videos, etc. which you chose to include have an impact on how the webpage is perceived by your audience.
Intensive testing and revisions should be done to ensure the audiences have no issues navigating through your website, reading the published content in text form and understanding information represented in various other forms.
Making sure the users have a pleasant experience visiting your sites ensures they’ll keep coming back and even spread the word about your website generating more organic traffic for you.
A seamless navigation and reading experience for the users, use of infographics and various different mediums of information presentation, making sure your webpage is interactive to generate engagement, etc. go a long way in helping the site generate and retain web traffic and should be included in your SEO Strategy.
Image Courtesy – HubSpot.com
e. Shareability – Once you’ve followed all the steps and suggestions mentioned before in the post, you’ll end up with a website doing relatively good on the internet and you’ll be able to track the progress using analytics.
Analytics will enable you to understand which published articles have been doing well. If an article is generating a significant amount of traffic, it means people are liking it and would prefer sharing the article via a post on social media.
Installing clickable share buttons with logos of the respective sites makes the process of sharing the articles to the user’s social media account seamless. Moreover, it will create more interactions and impressions for you. This makes it imperative to incorporate the shareability feature as a part of your SEO Strategy.
Image courtesy – stantonstreet.com
Image Courtesy – HootSuite.com
Conclusion
The market has always been up for the taking by the ones who’ve solved consumers’ problems, fulfilled their desires and provided them with more value than the existing competition.
More and more people are coming online and using tools like web search to search for solutions to their problems and to have their desires fulfilled. Having a better solution to a problem or providing more value than the competition is no longer sufficient to succeed in the day and age of the Internet.
Combining better problem resolution and better value proposition with exposure to millions of consumers by the way of web search results is what will ensure success for your business from now on going forward.
The billions of searches made every day on the internet are up for the taking. All it takes is a good understanding of how search engines work and a carefully traversed process of trial and error to optimise your website to please the algorithms of the various Search Engines.
So what will you do to make sure your website summits the web search results?
