What is Search Engine Optimization?
Do you use search engines to find information on the Internet? If yes, have you ever wondered why you always end up with certain results in front of you? Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is the process of optimizing a website so that it appears in the top positions in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). In order to achieve this goal, search engines need a way to come up with a hierarchy for all pages on the web. They can do this by analyzing all pages.
SEO Definition - Simplified
Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website on organic (‘natural’ or un-paid) search engine result pages (SERPs), by incorporating search engine friendly elements into a website. This can be done through various techniques, which are often collectively referred to as Search Engine Optimization tactics.
Search Engine Optimization is not an overnight magic pill that will make your website rank higher in search engine results overnight. It’s simply part of an ongoing strategy to improve how users discover and interact with your business online – because after all, if nobody can find you online, then you don’t exist!
Search engines crawl the web and every page they find on their way is added to their index, so they can serve the information to you when you search for it.
The first thing you need to know is that search engines are computers. This may seem obvious, but it’s important to state because a lot of people don’t think of them as machines—they just see the results and assume that they’re made by some magic fairy in the sky.
This means that search engines have a number of limitations:
- They can only crawl (find) websites that are linked to from other websites. In this way, every time you create a link on your site pointing somewhere else, it allows Google (or any other search engine) access to more information about what you’re talking about so they can serve more relevant results for searches conducted by users looking for topics related to yours!
SEO Ranking Factors
There are 2 main factors determining where your website will be ranked by search engines: Onsite Factors and Offsite Factors
Now that we’ve covered what SEO is and why it’s important, let’s get into the nitty-gritty details. There are two main factors determining where your website will be ranked by search engines: Onsite Factors and Offsite Factors.
Onsite factors are those that have to do with your website content, structure, and backlinks (links from other websites). Offsite factors include things like social media marketing, PR outreach, etc. As you can imagine there are a lot of different things involved in this process—it’s not as simple as just “make sure everything looks good on your website.”
Onsite factors
Onsite factors are the ones that we have direct control over, e.g. Title tag, Meta description, Keywords, Content Delivery Speed, Backlinks and Navigation Structure etc.
- Title Tag: The title tag is one of the most important onsite SEO factors because it’s what shows up in search results and its primary function is to attract user attention and inform them about what they’re looking at. It should be short but descriptive enough so that it reflects well on your business while giving users a reason to click through to your website from search results pages (SERPs).
- Meta Description: Meta descriptions are meant to describe your website in a way that would entice people who visit SERPs for relevant keywords related with your business or product/service offerings. In order for this section of text to be present in SERP listings, it must be added as part of HTML code within tags of web page. The length should not exceed 156 characters including spaces which makes it extremely difficult for most businesses trying hard just get their point across.
- Keywords: Keyword research will help determine which keywords you want targeted by search engines since they play a vital role in determining whether or not someone finds your content when searching online.
- Content Delivery Speed: This factor refers mainly towards loading time of each webpage/pagelet on site which affects overall user experience when visiting websites with high bounce rate (people leaving after only visiting one page) due high load times related issues such as slow servers or bad internet connection at the end user side.
- Backlinks: Backlink refers to backlink referring sites linking back towards yours through anchor text where anchor text used by link is simply words/phrases displayed next time someone clicks into link itself.”
Relevant & Unique Content
The content of your website needs to be unique and relevant in order for you to rank high in Search Engine Results Pages. Quality content is key to good ranking.
You need to make sure that the content on your website has been created with users’ needs in mind. This means that it should be useful and/or entertaining, but not so much so as to overshadow the main purpose of the page itself (for example, if a visitor comes onto your site looking for information about a specific topic, they shouldn’t have to slog through unrelated articles before getting what they want).
Offsite factors
Offsite factors are usually outside our control e.g. other websites linking to your site as well as how many times they’re linking back to your site (Backlinks), Age of domain name and Authority of domain name etc.
When it comes to ranking in search engines, Google gives more weightage to on-page SEO elements than off-page SEO factors. Backlinks are a sign of trust in your website by other websites and hence, this increases your credibility in the eyes of search engines like Google, Yahoo & Bing etc., which then boosts your rankings on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
The more backlinks you have, the higher you will rank – so focus on getting relevant backlinks from high authority sites rather than any random person or website which has nothing to do with what you do or sell! That way only will help increase traffic on page 1 results when people look up terms related to what they need at present time and place their order online via internet shopping sites like Amazon Marketplace where sellers can sell products without needing inventory stock because these marketplaces take care everything else including customer service support too!
Conclusion
So, there you have it! That’s Search Engine Optimization in a nutshell. Stay tuned for the next article where we’ll go more in-depth about everything you’ve read here today.
