Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing your website’s visibility when people search for products or services online.
SEO is important because searching online on Google or Bing is the most widely used way for people to find what they are looking for. They look for quality and trust in search engine suggestions by going to the websites displayed at the top of search results.
What is SEO?
SEO includes improving the organic traffic of your website and your ranking on search engines results page. It requires the creation of high-quality content and monitoring the technical health of your website. SEO persuades search engines to recommend your content to users as the best solution for their searches.
Results in search engines are presented in an order where the higher you rank, the more traffic your site receives. Search engines like Google use algorithms to determine which pages to display on which rank for any query searched online. These complex algorithms take into account hundreds of factors. The optimization of your website based on these factors is called SEO and since it builds upon itself, SEO grows stronger over time fetching you long-term and long-lasting results.
It is important to note here that SEO deals with only organic or unpaid search results and sometimes on the sides of the organic search results section on a SERP and has nothing to do with the paid ads that you see below.
Think of SEO this way: Google and other search engines have access to all the information on the internet and work hard to organize or index it in an efficient manner. This is so that they can offer a user, relevant and useful search results whenever they have a search query. While Google’s search algorithm is highly classified, SEO experts have been observing certain trends and patterns in the way it goes about fetching the correct information for users. Add to this the various patents filed by the world’s top search engine and the announcements it has made about numerous updates to its search algorithm, and we have a pretty legitimate way of saying what will get your web pages to rank better.
Why is SEO Important in Digital Marketing?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the life force of websites across the globe. It is the practice of refining the technical elements of your website, along with conducting off-page activities, to help websites rank better on search engines.
SEO includes a plethora of activities, each holding its own relevance in the eyes of search engine algorithms. Some common tasks that go into SEO are keyword optimization, creating authoritative or high-quality content, building backlinks, and website audits.
SEO holds unparalleled importance for businesses online, as it is the main factor that affects your site’s rankings organically on search engines. Now that you know what is SEO, let us dive deep into what it entails and how it works.
How Does Search Engines Work?
Search engines are essentially modernized versions of libraries, only digital. Instead of being a place for books and magazines, they store copies of webpages and trillions of bytes of data that comes within them.
Whenever a user types in a search query, search engines process their collection of webpages (called the index) and try to provide you with results that seem most fitting. This work is done by search engine algorithms. While there is no text that explains how search engine algorithms work exactly, Google has provided some clues as to how they work.
In Google’s words, their search engine algorithms assess a multitude of factors, including words in a search query, the relevance of web pages, the authority of webpages, location, personalized settings, and much more. How much each factor affects the decision to display web pages on search engine result pages (SERPs) varies based on the search query and other factors. For instance, if you search for current news, the freshness of the content is considered a major factor in determining if it shows up on SERPs.
While there are many other search engines apart from Google, the algorithms from the search engine giant are considered to be the strongest.
How SEO Works?
SEO is a process that works towards building up your website and content in the eyes of search engines. It demonstrates to search engines like Google that your content is relevant, authoritative, and the best match for search queries to rank high on SERPs.
Each search engine has its own ranking factors and algorithms, so we will focus on the most popular search engine in this section — Google.
Google has one goal with its search engine — providing the most suitable and best results to the users based on their search queries. To rank high on SERPs and gain organic traffic, you need to cater to the ranking factors of Google’s algorithm.
Google uses over 200 ranking factors in its algorithms but only some of these factors are known. Additionally, Google ranks web pages, not websites. To understand how SEO works, it is imperative to know about Google’s ranking factors. Some of these factors include:
- Crawlability
- Mobile-Friendliness
- Page Speed
- Search Intent
- Backlinks
- Content Quality
- Authority
Your SEO Team or your SEO Service provider should always follow SEO best practices if they need your website to rank higher on SERPs. Search engine optimization takes care of your on-page SEO elements such as adding relevant content, title & meta description, URLs and various other factors. SEO also takes care of off-page activities such as building links from related and high-quality domains. Both these methods when combined with a proper SEO strategy, helps Google to understand your webpage which ultimately leads to a higher ranking on SERPs
Why Does Your Website Need SEO?
Google is the source of more than 60% of all the search traffic in the world — if you combine this with the pulling power of other search engines like Bing and even Yahoo, this figure goes up to 70%. Another essential online search fact to consider is that if your website is ranking on the #1 position, there is a good 40% chance that the user will click on your website to solve its query. For example, if 100 users search for a specific query, there is a strong case that 40 users would land on your website if you are ranking on the #1 position. Imagine 40 users with an investment of almost zero rupees. This is why SEO is essential for your website/business. Although SEO takes time and effort, it is a gift that keeps on giving. Here are a few of the most significant benefits of SEO:
- SEO is the largest source of the site of traffic
- SEO helps in higher ROI (Return On Investment) and conversions
- SEO is a long term game. i.e. your investment on your website’s SEO would lead to better results in future
- SEO builds brand credibility and trust
- SEO improves your website’s user experience (UX)
- No need to spend on paid Ads
So if you are willing to increase your website’s organic traffic, build an SEO team in-house or onboard a professional SEO Company.
Types of SEO
SEO is broadly divided into 7 types. The below infographic is representing different Types of SEO.
Important factors of SEO: On-page SEO and Off-page SEO
On-Page and Off-Page SEO are two of the most important factors of SEO. Let us find out what each entails.
- On-Page SEO
This aspect of SEO works on ensuring that Google’s algorithms can easily find and crawl through your webpages to be indexed and ranked on SERPs. It includes a multitude of factors like having useful content, having search phrases or keywords you want to rank for, authoritative content, and much more.
There are many ways in which you can optimize the on-page SEO for your web pages. For instance, you should use your target keywords in your title and meta tags. The structure of your content also plays a major role in this, where your target keywords or search phrases should be organically used across the body and headings or subheadings.
- Off-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO, also referred to as link building, is another important aspect of SEO.
Getting mentions on other websites and signalling the algorithms that you have domain authority is an important aspect of SEO strategies. While all off-site links do not hold the same value, it is still an important practice.
To optimize your off-page SEO, you must ensure that you have link authority, get links from authoritative and relevant websites, and do not overstuff links from low-quality websites like directory websites.
Read More
- What is Technical SEO — 15 Major Technical SEO Checklist
- Negative SEO and Its Types: How to Stay Safe
SEO Strategies: White hat SEO vs Black hat SEO
In SEO, there are two types of approaches you can take in order to gain results — White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO.
Generating quick gains through sneaky tactics that can lead to being penalized by Google is called black hat SEO. People who use this approach employ various techniques to get past Google’s algorithms like link scraping and keyword stuffing to gain SERP rankings quickly. While this approach can get you fast results in terms of rankings and traffic, it is a poor approach for the long term. It might take the algorithms a while, but when they catch anyone using black hat SEO tactics, Google penalizes the website and can even blacklist it from ranking ever again.
White hat SEO, on the other hand, is the best approach to SEO. It uses techniques that are sustainable for businesses in the long run. The main focus of white hat SEO is to target and focus on the human audience, as opposed to sneaking around Google’s algorithms. Playing along with the rules and regulations of search engines while offering the best content to your audience can sustain your online business in the long run effectively.
Here are a few things that are considered black hat SEO, which you should avoid:
- Duplicating Content — To rank higher than competitors, some websites duplicate their content and stuff keywords in it.
- Invisible texts — Some websites use texts the same color as the page’s background in order to hide text, which includes keywords at the bottom of their content. This can get you blacklisted by Google very quickly.
- Poor Link Building — Going to a supplier to purchase 1000 links for your website in 24 hours is one way of getting blacklisted. Make sure your link building involves relevant websites in your own niche.
White hat SEO is the best way to go for your online business. Employing black hat techniques is a very risky approach, which can gain you short-term results, but hurt your website in the long run.
Periodic Table for SEO Success
Like Chemistry, SEO to has its periodic table. This SEO Periodic Table would help you to understand the essential factors that Google considers before ranking a website higher on Google SERPs. Keep in mind the Toxins elements should not be implemented on your website. Implementation of toxins elements would result in a drop in rankings for your website.
Organic Vs Paid Results
The results displayed on SERPs are divided up into two sections — Paid results and Organic results.
SEO delves into generating organic results on the web. Organic search results, as their name suggests, occur naturally based on 100% SEO merit. Google cannot rank any organic result higher by receiving any payments.
PPC or Pay Per Click provides paid search results, which appear either on the top of organic results, or under them. These search results are ranked by how much the advertisers are willing to bid or pay for each click from a search result.
While both SEO and PPC have their merits, it is always a good approach to gain results organically, as it is much more fruitful for businesses in the long run.
Search results are broadly divided into two sections: organic (unpaid) and paid results. Below SERP screenshot shows the example of both organic and paid results
Many business owners these days use the combination of both SEO & PPC to attain more traffic on their website. Check our post on SEO vs PPC to understand the difference between both the channels and when to use them.
- Why does SEO matter?
SEO matters the most in today’s world as it is the only marketing tactic that helps businesses to reach out specifically to potential customers. If businesses know what is SEO, they can use the reach of the website by targeting search queries related to the services and products offered by them.