What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization Full Guide

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what is seo

When a person searching for something on any search engine, he can possibly reach millions of websites. If you consider taking each web page, the results can be even bigger numbers.

That implies the internet is like the massive and ever-expanding universe. So only indexing your site is not sufficient to get traffic. The targeted audience should see the website. In other words, you need to improve the site’s visibility. This is where you need SEO.
Contents

What is SEO?

SEO is the abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice doing to make your website reach the top of the search engine results page (SERP). Getting more organic traffic is the primary objective of SEO. So if you want more traffic, then you should incorporate this with your digital marketing strategies.

SEO can get you the attention of the targeted audience. This is done in many ways like building high-quality content, optimizing the content with suitable keywords, building backlinks, improving user experience, etc.

To understand SEO you should learn How Search Algorithms Work.

Types of SEO

Depending upon the methods used to optimize websites, you can classify search engine optimization into different types. Those types are given below.

1. On-site SEO

On-site SEO is also known as on-page SEO. The things you do to make web page rank higher Google or other search engines can be listed in this classification. This includes writing high-quality content that is helpful for your website visitors, adding meta tags for Google bots to understand the content, highlighting the headlines using HTML tags, etc.

Ensuring there are no broken links or duplicate content/pages inside the website is also falls under the on-page SEO. Creating simple URL structures and ordered naming for the pages comes under the same category are belongs to this search engine optimization technique.

2. Off-site SEO

Off-site SEO is also referred to as off-page SEO. This term related to the things you do outside the website to increase its visibility. Building links from trusted websites that have a similar domain as yours, social media marketing, having positive reviews on various online platforms, etc., are belong to this category.

3. White-Hat SEO

White-hat SEO is that which contains all the optimization techniques that obey Google’s search engine guidelines. This requires you to be patient to see the results. Because generating genuine web traffic takes effort and time. Since this a legit way of optimizing websites, you don’t have to worry about site gets blacklisted from search results.

White-hat SEO has a very low risk and if you do it correctly, it guarantees maximum benefit. Authoring relevant and useful content after doing keyword research is an example of this method. Based on the quality of your on-page content, you can earn links from high authority sites.

4. Black-Hat SEO

As the name suggests, black-hat SEO is the direct opposite of white-hat SEO. Google’s algorithm has many loopholes and weaknesses. Black-hat SEO using these loopholes to rank a website on top of SERPs. The results can be seen quickly than legit methods.

Black-hat SEO doesn’t follow search engine guidelines. Link spamming, paid link building, keyword stuffing, cloaking which is showing different content to crawlers and humans, etc., are the major methods in it.

The biggest risk of using this is that your site’s rankings may drop or the site can get blacklisted.

5. Grey-Hat SEO

Grey-hat SEO techniques can also deliver quick results and from its approach, it falls in between white-hat and black-hat tactics. It uses some methods which seem wrong but not break Google’s webmaster guidelines.

Using clickbait content is an example of this method. Excessive link exchange between websites and paid reviews are also coming under grey-hat tactics. But it is far better than using black-hat techniques.

6. Technical SEO

Technical SEO is what helps search engine crawlers to crawl, interpret, and index the pages of your website. You can help the crawlers to sort and categorize the web pages according to their content by creating sitemaps, making it mobile-friendly, and adding structured data. You need an expert SEO manager to make it happen.

SEO Ranking Factors

Search engine crawlers analyze different aspects of a website to rank them. Here are the top 10 factors that influence search engine optimization ranking.

1. Content is King

The main factor that affects SEO ranking is content. The first thing you should be taken care of is content quality. The right incorporation with significant visual content and written content will provide real value to the user.

Even though the content quality is more important in the ranking, content quality also matters. Moderately longer and comprehensive content can achieve higher search engine optimization ranking.

Getting the service of an experienced content writer is the better way to get relevant and high-quality content.

2. Freshness

Google Freshness Algorithm is first introduced in 2010. This can have a huge impact on website rankings. Updating old content that does not rank with new and relevant content will give positive results. This is because Google always favors fresh content.

The impact of the freshness algorithm is faster than other core algorithms. You can see the effect of updating content in a few days in the SERP.

Backlinks are one of the major ranking factors in Google’s search algorithms. If you have more links from high-authority sites, then you have more chance of ranking high for top keywords.

Digital marketers should focus more on their backlink profiles. Because the Google Penguin 4.0 update filtered and removed many websites with low-quality backlink profiles.

4. Mobile-First

Google introduced mobile-first indexing in 2016. This indexing method affects search engine rankings based on the website’s mobile device compatibility.

Previously, websites are made for mainly targeting desktop users, but things are changed. Now, mobile users are exceeding the number of desktop users. To give better user experience to more users, the websites should give more priority to mobile versions.

5. Page Speed

In the mobile-first indexing method, page speed also becomes more critical. Low page speed having websites require more effort to rank higher. Google pushing forward updates like these to enhance the user experience.

6. Schema Code

Schema Markup or Schema.org is one of the latest technologies in SEO. It represents the microdata of a website’s content that is commonly known as rich snippets.

With the help of schema markup code, search engines can easily understand specific texts like names, phone numbers, addresses, reviews, and many more.

This can be useful for local businesses by applying a site-wide schema code. This way you can tell Google where your business is located. Local SEO experts can use this to get high search rankings for small businesses.

7. Brand Power and Social Signals

Branded searches have a huge impact on Google’s search algorithm. If a website gets more visits from branded searches, then it implies more chances that the site gets recognized by the algorithm.

Social signals from sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, Quora, etc., can also influence rankings. So having a strong online presence is necessary for driving organic traffic.

8. Domain Power

The exact-match domain can enhance your organic search visibility. Having a domain related to the business can get more traffic.

For example, when you search “cars” on Google, you will see websites that contain the word “cars” in their domain name than seeing popular cars’ websites.

9. HTTPS

HTTPS is a protocol that transfers encrypted HTTP data over a secure connection. Since security is a top priority for Google, this is now an official ranking factor. Sites that migrated to a secure HTTPS encryption is always good for data security.

10. User Experience

User experience (UX) is a relevant factor that influences the Google algorithm. But it is hard to measure the effect of UX because it varies depending upon the industry. The UI/UX has a strong help topping the SERP.

Top 15 SEO Benefits

Since search engine optimization becomes a core marketing strategy, many benefits attract people to invest in it. The benefits include boosting brand awareness, reaching more customers, increasing the traffic to your website, etc. The top 15 benefits of SEO are listed down below. Take a look at that to learn more.

1. Improves Your Digital Marketing ROI

When some investing money on digital marketing strategies then they expect a maximum return on investment (ROI). With the help of SEO, you can earn more sales leads every month. This leads to more revenue every month and you get the highest ROI as possible.

2. Boosts Your Credibility

This is a key benefit of search engine optimization. When someone searching for a product or service on the internet they websites appear on the first page of search results feels more credible.

To rank your website on top of the search engine results page, that website needs to be search engine optimized. This can increase the trustworthiness of your business.

3. Drives High-Quality Traffic to Your Website

SEO can get you to earn more organic web traffic to your website. It can help you reach a more targeted audience than traditional marketing. Unlike other methods of advertising your website will appear in front of the targeted audience when they are searching for similar products or services. This increases the possibility of you doing business with them.

4. Measures Your Success with Real Numbers

When a client is investing money on something, they have to see the result. SEO lets you monitor the performance of your strategies. You can use Google Analytics or other web analytic tools to analyze those strategies. These websites offer various tools to observe web traffic, time on site, bounce rate, and conversion rates.

5. Promotes Your Company All Day, Every Day

A website can offer their service 24/7. So the customers should be able to find the website any time they are looking for it. That is where SEO services can really be a boon. The benefit coming from optimizing your website is available all day.

This ensures the business owner to have a better connection with their users. This boosts the value of the business to the customers. From this, it is evident that search engine optimization promotes your company in a non-promotional way.

6. Targets Every Stage of Your Buying Funnel

SEO has become more valuable due to the growth in content marketing. Content marketing includes various types of content such as infographics, blog posts, guides, etc. This lets you connect with your customers in every stage of the marketing funnel.

The customers may read the top of the funnel (TOFU) or middle of the funnel (MOFU) content about a product. This may not convert them straight away, but eventually they will convert. This is why content marketing earns more leads than traditional marketing.

More customers prefer companies that produce original content. This can help you build more brand awareness and get more loyal customers.

7. Increases Brand Awareness Among High-Value Shoppers

Brand awareness among customers is important for getting more sales. The customers tend to search for a service or product through different searches. So your website has to appear on all of them. This increases the brand awareness of your business.

The brand awareness also builds more trust towards that particular brand. With a better content marketing and SEO strategy, you can make a good impression among the customers.

8. Generates More Leads and Sales for Ecommerce Sites

SEO can increase the leads, sales, and market share of the online stores. The main reason for this is your website’s search engine rankings. By using high-value keywords used by the targeted customers, you can get more visibility.

Increased visibility means you will get more clicks or more visits. You can convert most of this leads to sales.

9. Maximizes The Success of Your PPC Campaigns

If you are planning to use digital marketing for your business, then you probably will invest in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns. PPC is a paid strategy to get more visits. Combining PPC with SEO lets you appear on top of search results. This reinforces your brand’s presence in the industry.

You can also incorporate the data acquired from SEO with PPC campaigns. You can even target the landing page with a low Cost-Per-Click (CPC) keywords. This lets your website to have better performance in both paid and organic search results.

10. Helps You Outrank Your Toughest Competitorssc

Most of the customers do some research on the internet before buying a product and most businesses spending money on SEO to appear in these searches. So if you choose to skip on SEO, then that can seriously affect your sales and market share.

Only a very few users will go past the first page of search results and if you don’t appear on the first page, you will get a fraction of the total business. In a competing market, you have to be the first to provide the desired service to customers. SEO lets you do that and outrank your competitors.

11. Makes Your Digital Marketing Strategy Stronger

Search engine optimization is a necessary thing in digital marketing. It improves the effectiveness of your strategy. It can also enhance other digital marketing practices like content marketing, video marketing, and social media marketing.

Building a complete digital marketing tactic gives you a significant advantage over your competitors. Also, you can expect a better ROI from stronger digital marketing.

12. Reaches Every Member of Your Target Audience

Depending on your business, you may have different types of target audiences. SEO lets you reach all those audiences.

For example, you may have a solar installation company that provides both commercial and residential solar services. Business owners looking for commercial solar services and homeowners looking for residential solar services have a different set of priorities. So their travel through buying funnel will also be different.

By using targeting keywords specific to the customer intents, you can reach that group of audience.

13. Decreases Your Advertising Costs

Advertising costs and other marketing expenses of your business can be reduced by search engine optimization. A well planned and executed SEO strategy can help your organization can rank your website on the first page of sear results for the high-value keywords.

That offers your business to lower the advertising expense and lets you reinvest it somewhere else. For instance, rather than running many PPC campaigns, you can run a lesser number of PPC campaigns and use the savings from this on the content marketing strategies.

SEO not only decreases the digital advertising cost but also the traditional advertising expenses can be significantly reduced. Businesses investing in SEO can see the results even within the first year and they realized it gives better results than traditional marketing.

14. Grows Your Local Marketing Efforts

Regardless of whether you own a local business that relies upon offline transactions, SEO can still benefit your organization. Topping the local search results can raise your popularity. The potential of local searches is so high that even studies suggest 80 percent of local searches convert.

In case you’re not investing in local SEO, then you’re blocking yourself from the customers ready to buy from you. This makes your rival companies to easily gain more market share and be more popular among the locals

With the help of local search engine optimization, you can be more competitive.

15. Drives Your Long-Term Success

In contrast with many conventional advertising methods, SEO is an ongoing procedure. Even after years, your company will continue to receive its benefits. To have those benefits you should see local search engine optimization as a long-term investment.

You should incorporate this into your every year’s marketing budget. This will keep your website rankings in the top position, above your competition. Also, search algorithms and user search habits may get updates occasionally, so your site has to adapt to those updates and search trends.

By making SEO and digital marketing as a long-term commitment, you are increasing the ROI. You are getting more audience targeting, brand awareness, lead generation, and many more.

SEO Opportunities

Search engine optimization is providing a huge amount of job opportunities. If you are looking for a career in this field, there are a wide variety of platforms that require an SEO specialist. A brief description of some of those career opportunities is given here.

a) WordPress SEO

WordPress is the world’s most popular platform that lets you build websites. This platform powers a major share of websites online. You can build an SEO-friendly site on WordPress.

Since there are many websites build using WordPress, you can have bigger job opportunities. Also, WordPress provides many plugins that simplify your task. With the combined effort of your knowledge and SEO plugins, you can excel in this field.

b) Joomla SEO

Joomla is a famous platform for developers who have more experience in working with servers. So this one has more advanced functionalities, unlike the beginner-friendly WordPress.

While using Joomla, you will get some basic SEO features out-of-the-box. If you are an expert developer, you can optimize the website using advanced functionalities. If you are not having much experience in web development, this may not be suitable for you.

c) Magento SEO

Magento is the ideal choice for those who want to build an online store and optimize it for search. WordPress users will get a similar experience from Magento. So WordPress SEO experts can easily learn the search engine optimization techniques in this platform.

Some standard SEO functionalities are already built into the system and you need to use additional extensions to get advanced features.

If you have enough SEO experience or time to learn the best practices, then you can do it by yourself. Another option is that you download expansions to help you with simplifying the process.

d) WooCommerce SEO

WooCommerece is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms which is also a WordPress plugin. So while having all the products pages WooCommerce websites are based on WordPress and there plenty of plugins to take care of SEO. The popularity of this platform opens up many job opportunities for SEO specialists.

Since this is an eCommerce extension of WordPress, many of the WP plugins are compatible with WooCommerce too. So if you are familiar with WordPress SEO, you can easily grasp the optimization tactics for this platform.

e) Shopify SEO

Shopify is one of the most notable and famous eCommerce CMSs. It has attractive templates and a user-friendly dashboard. Generally speaking, Shopify is a decent option for online stores with a simplified and out-of-the-box approach.

Shopify additionally has incorporated a strong foundation of SEO for the websites made out of this platform.

Many online stores built on top of Shopify. That implies, with sufficient knowledge in optimizing websites, you can have a promising career as a Shopify SEO consultant.

Conclusion

No matter how good your product or service, the customers should be able to easily find them online to increase conversion rates. You can improve the site’s visibility with the help of SEO. It can have a serious impact on the website’s performance.

Search engine algorithms can change from time to time and so the optimization tactics also require to revamp accordingly. So if you want to hire an SEO specialist, opt to go for an experienced SEO professional who can quickly adapt to the changes.

This article is all about giving you awareness about search engine optimization, its types, benefits, factors affecting it, and job opportunities providing by it.

FAQ

Keyword research, Link, building, Site audits, on-page SEO, Updating web pages with relevant content, etc. are the popular SEO techniques.

Which Is Better, SEO or SEM?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is an efficient method to boost your business in a competitive market. With numerous businesses out there are trying to get the attention of the same customers, advertise online is the way to promote your business. It gets traffic from both organic and paid search. On the other hand, SEO trying to get traffic and visibility from organic search. So SEO is a subdivision of SEM.

What Is Keyword Research?

To get more visibility, you have to optimize your web pages with suitable keywords. Keyword research helps you to find those keywords. Keyword research is a method used to identify the search pattern of users so you can present your pages as the result of those search queries.

Link building is a strategy used to acquire links to enhance a page’s link equity. Common link building practices include content marketing, email outreach, broken link building, building useful tools, and public relations.

What Is Robots.txt?

Robots.txt is a text file instructs the search engine crawlers which pages or files can or cannot request from your website. Most of the search engines recognize robots.txt requests.

Why Isn’t My Site Being Indexed?

There can be many reasons for a site is not being indexed. The entire site may be blocked using robots.txt file. If a Noindex tag is used on a specific URL, that tells the search engines to not index that page. Malware or other security issues on a site also can lead to the removal of that site from search results.

What Is Domain Authority?

The domain authority of a website relates its ability to rank in the SERPs. You can say the domain authority is an extension of link equity. A page’s link equity is determined by the quality and number of its links. Link equity of all the pages is used to determine the site’s domain authority.

What Is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the clickable words in a hyperlink. It uses the target keyword that is relevant to the page content rather than any generic keyword. The common web standard of anchor link is blue colored text with an underline. You can click on them to move from one internet location to another.

Why Does SEO Take Time Before You See the Benefits?

To deliver the relevant and high-quality content, the search engines occasionally update their algorithms. In SEO, you implement strategies to make the website easier to find based on the new algorithm. So the result can’t be seen in one day. It’s a long term process.

How Do I Write SEO Friendly Copy?

There are some basic rules to write SEO friendly content. But you shouldn’t sacrifice the user experience for optimization. The content should be relevant. The readability of the content also should take into account.

Why Is Site Speed Important?

Most people abandon the site if it’s taking more time to load. So you have to deliver the information they are looking for as quickly as possible. The search engines are also similar to users. When users’ time on site is low and the bounce rate is high, that implies the site has a poor user experience. This will affect search engine ranking.

Does Duplicate Content Affect SEO?

Duplicate content certainly affects SEO. The duplicate content issue can occur due to copying content across different web pages. Sometimes having templated content that appears on various pages are recognized duplicate content. Adding original content is the best solution in this scenario.

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO ensures your website and Google business listing gets optimized to attract more traffic from the searches conducted by the people in your locality. Some studies say nearly 50% of the searches conducted on Google are looking for local information. Local SEO is the best way to promote your business to local customers.

What Is SEO Content Writing?

SEO content writing is creating engaging and readable content that can get high search engine rankings. This involves using suitable keywords, headers, and bullet points to showcase relevant information. This is commonly done for marketing purposes.

What Is Mobile SEO?

Mobile SEO is for giving the best user experience to the mobile site visitors. It examines the site layout, page speed, and many other aspects to make sure the visitors stay for a longer time on the site. In this mobile-first world, having a perfect mobile site is incredibly important, so does mobile SEO.

What Is eCommerce SEO?

With a well-planned eCommerce SEO strategy, you can successfully optimize your eCommerce website. Thus search engines can show your product pages based on the user’s search intent, and the online store can attract more shoppers, boost traffic, and generate more sales.

What Is Google SEO?

According to Google, SEO is the process of making your website better for search engines. In Google SEO, you have to optimize the website content, layout, etc., to rank higher on Google search results.

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