What Is SEO? Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most effective technique or strategy to improve your website’s visibility on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. But what is SEO? And how does SEO work? SEO is simply a process used to optimize the website’s technical configuration, content relevancy, and link popularity so the pages become popular and relevant to user search queries. As a consequence, search engines rank them better.

SEO stands for (search engine optimization or Optimizer). Let’s break this into three key terms:

• Search: Users search when they want answers to any queries, product, or service that meets search intent.

• Search Engine: Platforms like Google or Bing where a person surf Internet to get answers & search information to their queries.

• Search Engine Optimization: Process of getting traffic from free, editorial, organic, or natural search results. 

Benefits & Importance of SEO: Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is versatile and helps online business in many ways, let’s know some importance and benefits of SEO:

• Even More Website Traffic: When the site is optimized for the search engines, it gets optimized traffic, which translates directly to increased brand awareness. 

• More Clients: Your website must be designed to target keywords, which are the search terms used by your potential clients or visitors. This will increase the amount of relevant traffic that your website obtain.

• Better Reputation: When you rank higher on Google builds credibility of the Company. If Google trusts then users will instantly reach your site.

•  Increased Conversions & Higher ROI: Investment made in website and in campaigns shows fruitful results for business pages. The best-performing site enriches returns of such campaigns, making your money worthwhile. 

So whether you want more brand awareness, online visibility, leads, sales, or loyal customers, SEO is your answer to it all.

Three Key Pillars Of SEO: On-page, Off-page & Technical SEO

On-page SEO

Optimizing the quality and structure of content on a page. Quality of content, keywords, and HTML tags are key players for on-page SEO.

• Keyword Research: keywords are the theme that correlate with search user intent. You need to discover appropriate business-friendly keywords concerning the content available on the site you are visiting. To find the relevant words you can use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest.

• Title Tags: This HTML element informs search engines of the purpose of the page. Make sure your title tag contains your main keywords pertinent to the content on page.

• Meta Descriptions: In search results, the meta description is the synopsis that shows beneath the title tag discoverable by bot and crawlers.

• HTML tags known as header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) serve to denote the hierarchy and organization of the page’s content.

• URL Structure: Make sure your URL structure is clear and easy to understand. It should contain your main keywords as well.

Off-Page SEO

Getting other websites and pages on your website to link to the page you are attempting to optimize is known as off-page SEO. Your off-page MVPs are backlinks, internal linking, and reputation. Most frequently, link building is involved.

These links are called backlinks, and they help SEO by signaling that your website is useful and trustworthy. Other off-page tactics such as managing social media, online reputation management, and email marketing, indirectly support your SEO, by promoting brand awareness and engagement.

Technical-SEO

Improving site performance on search engines as a whole. Site security is a key factor, using SSL certificates, UX, and structure. Using meta robots tags and robots.txt to control how search engine bots behave? Creating an XML sitemap to help search engines better understand your site structure and build internal links to assist bots in making your site discoverable to users. After proper crawling and indexing, focus on user experience factors such as website page speed, security, and mobile-friendliness. 

Three Subtypes of SEO are:

• Local SEO:  Discover your business (products, or services) to rank as possible in Google Maps and on the local search results of the SERP. Reviews, listings, and Google Business Profile (earlier GMB)are the key.

• Image SEO: A mix of both on-page and technical strategies to get images on your website pages to rank in Google image search.

• Video SEO: A combination of on-page, technical, and off-page tactics to get your videos to rank in YouTube.

How Does SEO Work? 

Now let’s look at SEO in a broader term, how does SEO work? It works with the combination of four things people, processing, techniques, and activities.

• People: The person or team responsible for doing or ensuring that the strategic, tactical, and operational SEO work is done. eg. Website Management,

• Process: The actions taken to make the work more efficient eg. Keyword Research, Competitor Analysis. 

• Technology: The platforms and tools usedeg. Google Search Console, Analytics, HTML

• Activities: The end product, or output. eg. Uploading the optimized content, Checking Updates

In simple words, SEO works as a complex feedback system to provide the most trustworthy, accurate, and relevant result of any search using your inputs, google, and different searches. Your main role is to create content that satisfies (E-E-A-T) experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.

Factors That Affect SEO Rankings 

As we know, SEO is an ever-evolving term, Google and other search engines launch different algorithms daily. Google and other search engines regularly launch different algorithms and change SEO ranking factors. It’s hard for digital marketers to keep up with the regular updates. So log on to Astha Technologies with latest updates and factors affect your website:

• Google has advised website owners to move over from HTTP to HTTPS. Although converting to HTTPS does not directly improve your SERP ranking, Google began to favor mobile-friendly sites on its SERP in approximately 2015, you must ensure your site is mobile-friendly or responsive for better visibility and mass penetration among audiences.

• Website Page speed is the amount of time it takes to display the content on a single page. It should not be confused with “site speed,” page speed for a sample of page views over the whole website, or “time to first byte,” time it takes for the server to send the first byte of data.

• Using a target keyword in page headings/titles. Generic Meta description that is attractive for human readers.

• Using header tags (from H1, H2, H3, etc.). Using target keywords in image alt tags to tell Google that the images used are relevant to the content.

• Implement structured data (schema.org) markup.

• Content Quality, Length, and Optimization No amount of optimizations help if your content is low-quality and is not valuable/relevant for target audience, and not matching the search intent. NLP (Natural Language Processing) is the most significant tool that impacts SEO by enabling search engines to better understand the nuances of human language.

• Exact-match domain names or even domain names that contain your target keyword in the URL help you rank. But this is only relevant and valuable if your website is indeed relevant and valuable for the target keyword. Bear in mind that Google announced they will penalize exact-match irrelevant domains.

• Nevertheless, including your business information on your website promote your site’s credibility and authority.

• Outgoing (external) linkages, internal linking structures, and backlinks are all crucial. Typically, all three connections are connected to an anchor text, and the context between the anchor text and the linked website is also taken into consideration.

What Are The Different SEO Analysis Tools? 

Some best free tools to boost your SEO are:

• Google Search Console: It gives an outlook on how many impressions and clicks a particular webpage is generating, keyword results, position in the search, status of indexing, security issues, and problems with the website. (Earlier known as Webmaster)

• Google Analytics: A platform that collects data from your website and App and create insight information about your business. 

• Google Trends: A free tool that shows the trendy topics users are searching on Google and Youtube in real-time. 

• Answer The Public:  A very handy & free tool that generates keyword ideas. It looks for questions that users ask mostly in the search engine. 

Some of the best-paid SEO TOOLS ( Keyword Analysis & Gauging Website Traffic)

• AHREF: Ahrefs is a popular tool for content publishers and SEOs because it has some of the most comprehensive data-collecting capabilities available today.

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider: The only way to make sure your website is set up correctly for SEO success is to audit regularly. Without a doubt, the industry standard for conducting an in-depth examination of the more complex SEO components is this Screaming Frog tool.

• SEMrush: SEMrush is a software tool that helps the business to manage digital marketing campaigns. 

Best Strategies & Practices For SEO

• Keyword intent matters, so search the keywords you’re trying to target to make sure you have an intent match.

• SEO takes time. Like, a lot of time and a long-term process. It can take a few months before you start to see fruit of your efforts! 

• Your focus should always remain on creating useful, trustworthy content consistently. That is the best SEO strategy above all else.

• Regular refresh of your evergreen pages preserves their SEO value and gives consistent growth in traffic over time.

Become SEO Experts With Astha Technologies: Proven Tips & Tricks

If search engines can’t index or crawl your site your efforts might go to waste. So always start with a technical SEO audit.

• Keyword Research – The search intent behind the keyword is to know what exactly users are searching for. In other words, the type of search intent. This could either be informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional.

• Search Volume(SV): Keyword search volume-it is the average number of searches on Google per month according to our data.

• Trend: How actual search volumes have changed over the last 12 months. This can help you understand if a keyword is seasonal declining or increasing in popularity.

• Creating Quality Content: Once you target the keyword, it is just a matter of creating quality content. Precise and unique content that meets the search intent. 

• Building Backlinks: When other sites connect your URL to their page, it increases trust and authority. Google considers backlinks while ranking the sites. Start building your reputation with the Astha Tech Link Building Tool.

• Track Your Performance Regularly: Track your SEO performance to see if your efforts are working. Then, make adjustments based on what you learn. Take sufficient time before changing your strategy as per various Google updates.

What is The Difference Between SEO, SEM & PPC? 

Search Engine Marketing( SEM) :An overarching term where all kinds of online marketing strategies come, whether free or paid. The agenda of SEM is to boost your company’s website’s visibility on search engines—and by search engines, we mean Google, Yahoo, and Bing. SEM is also called search marketing, and Google is the Internet giant in search engines. 

Pay-Per-Click Marketing PPC: PPC uses a formula to measure the cost of an online ad, and advertisers pay a fee each time a user clicks on that ad, regardless of the outcome. Companies pay for the click no matter what, whether the user ends up putting in a massive order or immediately exits the site.

Search Engine Optimization SEO: SEO refers to the use of different techniques meant to make your website rank higher in the search engine listings; intelligent SEO tactics are what assist get businesses on the first page of the search results. 

Sum Up:

SEO is a race, not a sprint. Keep Refining Your Tactics (Anonymous)!
Practice SEO the best way in the pursuit of learning; possibly this might help generate revenue for your site. Just before going about this, do register with Astha Technologies to access industry-leading SEO tools, hundreds of articles for understanding better the world of Google search.