Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

373

We have come across many people and marketers saying that “SEO is the most important part of Digital Marketing” but many have no idea of how does SEO works, what exactly it is, and how does it benefit businesses all-round the globe. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the art and science of getting pages to rank higher in the search engines like Google, Yahoo, and many more. Due to boosted digitalization all over, it has become necessary for every small and big organization or business to make their digital presence impressive and appear easily when people search for something related to your business.

Searching is the only way in which the audience can discover content online, rank higher in the search engine lists, and increase the traffic on their websites to get organic and perpetual customers for the business. In search engines, the result page usually features paid ads at the top of the page and then the regular ones or the organic search results. Traffic on the website that comes via SEO is often termed as “organic search traffic”. This is to differentiate between the paid traffic and the real traffic on the website. Paid ones are termed SEM (Search Engine Marketing) or PPC (Pay-Per-Click).

Since the online world has advanced in the past decade since then digital marketing is in play and a key factor for every business. SEO has proved to be an essential factor of any business or online marketing because search is one of the primary ways that users use to surf the internet. While surfing on the internet, around 2-3% of searchers go and click beyond 1st-page results, so a slight improvement in the ranking will help you to get the desired traffic on your website. Many business owners use paid tools to manipulate the search results and rank up in the search results. This is where SEO comes into play.

Now we know what is SEO and why it is important for the business or any other sector opting for digital marketing. Now let’s understand how does SEO works!

Search engines have different algorithms and some set rules which they use to optimize your search engine result page and show the page for any given query. The algorithms are believed to be complex and possess thousand different ranking factors to determine the ranking. There are three core reasons by which the search engines evaluate the quality of a site and how it should be ranked.

  • Links: Why would any website owner link to other poor-quality sites on their own website? Sites that acquire links from many other sites gain the Page Rank in Google and are in the eyes of search engines.
  • Content: Search engines analyze the content from the websites. They check whether the content that is posted is relevant to the searched query or no and a large part of SEO is in creating content that has keywords used to optimize the ranking on the search engine.
  • Page Structure: The third core component of SEO is page structure. Because web pages are written in HTML, how the HTML code is structured can impact a search engine’s ability to evaluate a page. Including relevant keywords in the title, URL, and headers of the page and making sure that a site is crawl-able are actions that site owners can take to improve the SEO of their site.

There are different techniques used to optimize the site for search. These techniques leverage the process of SEO. These are some of the techniques which one can use to optimize the ranking.

  • Keyword Research: Keyword research is often the starting point for SEO and involves looking at what keywords a site is already ranking for, what keywords competitors rank for, and what other keywords potential customers are searching for.
  • Content marketing: Once potential keywords are identified; content marketing comes into play. This can be updating existing content or creating brand new pieces of content. Because Google and other search engines place a premium on high-quality content, it’s important to research what content is already out there and create a one.
  • Link Building: Because links from external websites (called “backlinks” in SEO parlance) are among the core ranking factors in Google and other major search engines, obtaining high-quality backlinks is one of the main levers SEOs have.

There are also different tools to implement the SEO strategy and every related SEO. Platforms like Google Search Console, Google Ads Keyword Planner, Backlink Analysis Tools, SEO Platforms, and Social Media can be used for a seamless SEO process and different SEO tools that can leverage the SEO process.