The word SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has been with us for a while now. A lot of online marketers coined SEO as the most crucial concept of digital marketing. But what really is search engine optimization? Well, search engine optimization is the science of improving the website’s ranking on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) so that the website can rank higher on the results, making it easier for customers to access it. With more visibility you get on a website, you will have a higher chance of conversion, and you will be able to gain more traffic on your website as well.
In this article, we are aiming to educate our readers about one of the most fundamental concepts of online marketing, which is search engine optimization (SEO). We are going to showcase how SEO makes a difference in your online business. Besides, we will also discover some of the most effective techniques that every website owner must know to increase the SEO and stand out from the rest of the competition. So, let’s begin!
How Does SEO Work?
When you are online, the first website you see is a search engine such as Google, Bing, MSN, Yahoo!, and more. These search engines use artificial intelligence-powered bots that will crawl websites and web pages. These bots will crawl from one website to the other, collecting tons of important information from the web pages and then putting them in the index. Now you might ask, what do you mean by index? Well, think of the index as an extensive library where you can go and pull any book from the shelf. These books will help you find exactly what you need in the first place.
The books in the library are your web pages, the shelves are the search engine result pages, and the search engine on which you are searching the information is your library. The bots, on the other hand, are the librarians who manage SERP and make sure that the websites present on them have helpful information available to them.
But bots are not responsible for providing search engines with the position of where to put the website in the SERP. That job is given to algorithms. The algorithms are the ones that will analyze the page present in the index. There it will take into account hundreds of ranking factors to determine the order of the website or the way they appear on the SERP for any given query.
SEO is quite different from paid ads, and you cannot pay the search engine to provide your website a higher ranking in competition with the other higher organic results. That means SEO experts have to work hard to put good quality content on the websites. So that the algorithm will automatically pick their content against the others while indexing.
Importance of SEO
The easiest way one can measure the website’s visibility is its placement in the search engine ranking. Companies always prefer to have their website shown on the first page of the search result. That’s because, in most cases, nobody cares about scrolling to the next page. They will likely change the query to find the answer. You can even pay for the ads that will ensure you secure a specific place on the first page of SERP. But the advertisement per view or click is going to cost you a lot if your SEO isn’t commendable in the first place.
Every person is searching for something on the Internet. On average, an individual conducts more than 1 billion searches each year. Often with one intent of finding more information about the product or the service that they are likely to buy in the future. Search is the primary source of Internet traffic, and even YouTube is a search engine in its own way. With a higher ranking and visibility on the search results, you will have a material impact on your bottom line.
But, one thing everyone needs to know about search results is that they are evolving with time, and Google, along with other search engines, is constantly releasing new sets of rules and even algorithms that will increase the accuracy of a website’s ranking. The search results are more inclined to provide users with straight answers that will keep the user on the same page for a longer time than driving it to the other website in search of better results.
One more thing to know is the importance of features like rich results, knowledge panels, and more that are part of search engines that will help in increasing the visibility of your website if you are creating content specifically for them. If we have to sum it up, SEO is the base foundation of a holistic online marketing ecosystem. You need to understand what your website’s users want and make changes to your campaign accordingly across the website, social media platforms, and more to gain online business.
Different Types of SEO
There are different types of SEO that you can work with to make your business grow online. Given below, we have described all of them in brief. So you can find out which set of SEO techniques suits your requirement the best.
1. White-Hat SEO
The SEO practices that are in line with the norms of Google and other search engines are known as white-hat SEO. These techniques will follow every term and condition that is given out by the major search engines. With the implementation of white-hat SEO, you will slowly improve your search engine ranking while maintaining the integrity of your website. White-hate SEO is the best way to create a website.
Some of the common things you need to follow with white-hat SEO is using keyword-rich and descriptive meta-tags. Make your website easy to navigate from one page to the other. Lastly, white-hat SEO is all about providing users with quality service and content. So they don’t have to look anywhere else on the Internet once they arrive at your website.
2. Black-Hat SEO
The black-hat SEO techniques are the ones where you are trying to find ways to exploit the weakness in search engines algorithm to rank your website higher than the competition. Black-hat SEO includes spammy or paid-link build strategies, keyword stuffing, cloaking, and more. All of these might give you a head start against the competition. But in case the bot is able to find the misuse of techniques, your website will rank low, and it could also get banned if you have crossed some strict terms and conditions.
As a result, it is advised not to use black-hat SEO in any way possible. It is good to know about the things and techniques that fall under the category of black-hat SEO. Apart from that, you don’t need to do anything with this form of SEO.
3. Gray-Hat SEO
Gray-hat lies in between white-hat and black-hat SEO techniques. The gray hat is riskier than the white-hat SEO because here, you are exploiting the terms and conditions of the search engine that are not specified or mentioned. But one thing you need to know about gray-hat SEO is that even if a bot is able to figure it out, you are not at risk of getting banned from the search engine. In other words, the material or the content you have posted under the gray-hat category needs to be removed from the website as it will remain ill-defined.
It can save your website from losing tons of traffic. Many online marketers try to use it to showcase quick results. But you need to be aware of the negative aspects of using it. The negative aspects will surely make you want to opt for the white-hat SEO techniques for long-run success.
4. On-Page SEO
Now that we have mentioned the three different SEO techniques, let’s move to the next set of SEO methods starting with On-page SEO. The on-page SEO is the process of optimizing your own web pages and the fields that are present inside them. These fields include meta tags, HTML code, the loading speed of your website, URL, images, and other forms of elements that combine to make a web page. One of the most important aspects of on-page SEO is writing informative, relevant, and engaging content. The content should be written in a way that it optimizes for the Google bots as well as for the humans. So they can easily read it with no issues. After that, HTML tags are also considered to have great importance for boosting your rank and traffic.
Keep in mind that whenever you are uploading a file on your website, it needs to be of a small size. So when a user is opening it on their browser, it will take less time to upload, and your website will have a better speed. Lastly, your website needs to have a proper structure of URLs. Every URL must be able to convey the information about its page. For example, if you own a website and there is a specific “contact us” page created by your website developer. Then, the URL of that particular page should be in the form “www.mywebsite.com/contact-us-page“. This way, it makes a cohesive user experience, and your website visitors can even remember the specific URL of your website with ease.
5. Off-Page SEO
Everything that you do for your website to rank higher outside its virtual real-estate is known as off-page SEO. It could be anything ranging from getting good social media advertising to getting clients to give your website or company reviews on forums and other websites and acquiring links from credible websites that are part of your niche. Off-page SEO can do wonders if you know how to make it work. Also, both on-page and off-page SEO takes a lot of time to build up. So no matter how hard you are working, you need to be patient and stay consistent in your work.
6. Local SEO
If you are running a business that has a lot of offline customers coming in to buy products. Then local SEO is the way to go for you. Companies that become more visible on the local search results of Google will have a higher chance of securing new customers online. Besides, with local SEO, a business also gets to rank higher on the local map pack along with the local search results. This will not increase your web traffic but will surely increase the footfall of customers to your offline shop as well.
7. eCommerce SEO
E-commerce SEO is the way to get traffic to your website using paid search; in comparison to this, the other SEO techniques cost much less. With the help of eCommerce SEO, you get to rank higher whenever someone is looking for the product or service that you have listed on your website. If you are in the business of selling products, then you need to use eCommerce SEO to make your product visible on the Internet. Companies like Amazon, Flipkart, NewEgg, and more do it. Even now, if you have searched for a product, you can see its ads popping up everywhere on the website that you open. It is also known as remarketing of products.
8. Content SEO
This form of SEO technique is specifically designed to help you create better content online. Content doesn’t have to be in the form of text only; it could be a video, infographics, GIF, structure of your website, keywords, and more. There are three things that you must consider while working on content SEO, and that is improving your copywriting, maintaining an exemplary structure of your website, and finally, working on finding the right keyword strategy for your website.
Conclusion
So, this was all about SEO. Search engine optimization is crucial not only for the new websites that are just starting in terms of creating their online presence but also for the very old websites that are still working and have massive visitor traffic each day. One needs to constantly work on the SEO of their website to keep up with the competition and rank higher than the others on SERP.
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- Understanding Online Marketing
Simran works as a technical writer. The graduate in MS Computer Science from the well known CS hub, aka Silicon Valley, is also an editor of the website. She enjoys writing about any tech topic, including programming, algorithms, cloud, data science, and AI. Traveling, sketching, and gardening are the hobbies that interest her.
