What Is SEO?
Wondering what SEO is? The acronym stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Easily understood as the process of improving your site to increase visibility on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others when people search for services or products that are related to your business.
It also simply means you are garnishing your online business pages to create a presence in the internet world, popping up on a user’s screen whenever they search for anything related to your business. As a result, your business gets a better and higher ranking while your website’s relevance and usability increase, creating more traffic.
How SEO Works
Search engines use many factors to generate results. For example, Google uses more than 200 hundred factors. SEO optimises your site for these factors while getting your site crawled and indexed.
Search engine companies use those factors to determine whether the content is relevant. So if your website content is appropriate, you go on the list; if it isn’t, then sorry, maybe next time. Try harder. More so, search engines will have to crawl and index your content.
Linking and backlinking is essential to SEO. Crawlers, also known as spiders, use links to discover and re-discover existing pages and content on the web.
Search engines index to store web content and deliver it through search results. Once crawling has been done, your content can be indexed but be careful not to fall under the category of blocked, spam, or duplicate pages, or your chances of getting indexed will be rare or none.
Once you’ve passed this level, a search engine will analyse your pages against its factors which are about 200 and even more; for example:
- Content creation
- Keyword usage
- Mobile-friendliness
- Backlinking profile
A good search engine optimisation requires identifying relevant keywords with good search traffic potential, creating high-quality, helpful content, optimising it for search engines and users, including relevant links from high-quality sites, and measuring the results.
Do these, and your site will draw dense traffic, which means more popularity. Who doesn’t want that kind of internet presence?
Now that you know what Search Engine Optimisation and SEO are, let’s talk about SEO on Google.
How Does Google Work?
Search engines like Google follow links from one webpage to another. It has a crawler, index, and algorithm. This search engine crawls through contents on the web, indexes them and makes them visible on search results. This it does, 24 hours, 7 days a week, saving HTML versions of pages on a vast database which is the index and updates anytime new content appears as it crawls back to that web page.
The new version of your page is saved, depending on the traffic your page generates.
For Google to find your site, there has to be a link from another site already on the index. Once a crawler follows that link to your site, it gets saved on the index. Once your website is saved, it gets to appear on Google search results.
However, Google has a specific algorithm that decides which sites appear on search results and in which manner, that is after getting indexed. The way these algorithm works is only known to Google. The algorithms are not static; they are updated often, and we don’t know which factors are more important to follow than others.
Although, we can experiment with many factors like the use of keywords, relevant content, etc. Doing this will give us an experience of what is important or more important to always appear on top of the search result’s list.
Bear in mind that there are organic search results and paid search results. Paid search results will appear on top of the SERP, with organic coming immediately. However, paid or organic target different categories of users depending on the search. So organic search results may reach a broader range of people than paid, depending on the kind of searches.
Links Have Value
The more links a site has, the more important search engines see. Those links are pointers to your page. Internal links (coming from your site) and external links (from other sites) help rank a web page on Google, but some links are more important than others.
Webpages with many incoming links are more important than small sites with fewer links. So gather or build up enough valuable links and be careful about collecting links from shady sites, or Google will punish you.
Links have value. The kind you collect and connect with your site determines your relevance to search engines and whether your content is worth being on the search results.
With that all laid on the table, you can adopt some techniques that could promote your business while benefitting from Search Engine Optimisation.
The Benefit of SEO to Your Business
SEO is a highly beneficial tool for your business. Whether it’s a start-up or already an established company, what keeps your business going is consistent marketing, advertising, and content creation that tells your customers what your brand is all about.
When your customers have a positive experience with your business, you get more web clicks, increasing traffic and your SEO, thereby increasing your rank on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP).
User experience includes how well your customers can navigate your site, find products they search for and get the required results. In addition, they will give you their trust because they know you will always come through for them.
SEO is a platform for visibility. Therefore, knowing what people are looking for by conducting thorough SEO research is vital. This is where knowing your audience and their needs are significant. That is also known as Local SEO.
Local SEO uses the geographical location of your business in search results. Therefore, your location can contribute to your online visibility. When a potential customer searches for a question followed by “near me” or within your geographical proximity, you want your business to come up first. Increasing Local SEO will increase your online visibility, leading to growth in your customer base.
SEO for your business will help deliver an excellent Return On Investment and ROI in addition to its low-cost feature, one of the most significant advantages of the digital era. It provides actionable data and nurtures leads through the marketing funnel. It directs users through a channel that increases your site’s marketing numbers. SEO also has credibility and attracts relevant users.
You can adopt SEO techniques to boost your business and benefit from SEO. But, to achieve that, you need to:
- Find and analyse your competitor’s best pages. Then, take your time to figure out what works for their websites more and how or what helps get their search results on the SERPs.
- Create a content strategy using a keyword Gap Analysis. You can improve already existing content or create new content. There is a stage where most websites have optimised content, and the need to develop new content arises. Create a unique content plan and justify your reasons for putting up that content. However, the easiest way to do that is by analysing keyword gaps. This will help you see keywords your competitors use but don’t, and you can create content around those words.
- Use Digital PR to gain authority backlinks. Backlinks are one of Google’s top-ranking factors. Create relevant, high-quality content that will earn you popularity, getting other sites to link theirs to yours.
- Optimise your topics and not just single words. It would help if you showcased how much of an expert you are in your field. Create supporting content around issues that add depth to your site, improve your page ranking, and help your link posts.
- Focus on Core Web Vitals. Core Web Vitals are a collection of speed, responsiveness, and visual stability metrics. For example, how responsive is your page to searches, is it mobile-friendly (almost everyone searches the internet with a phone now), and what time does it take to load your page content. That is why monitoring how consumers react to your site is crucial.
Sometimes SEO can be a bit overwhelming. Creating content and links that will increase your web page visibility could seem hard. However, it is a good call for your business; if you come to us at Raven and Macaw, we can surely meet your marketing needs. Just list those needs and leave the hard work to us.
