One of the key goals of an internet business is to increase visitors to a website. The more prominent you are, the more customers will notice you, resulting in greater sales and revenue. SEO is the greatest approach to do all of those things, which is one of the main reasons SEO Services are in high demand right now.
So, what exactly is SEO?
What Is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the act of preparing your website so that Google recognises and prioritises it. It may appear to be a technical phrase (and it is), but if you understand the foundations, it is simple. Whether you run an established business, an enterprise, or a startup, improved exposure on search results is critical to gaining more attention and attracting possible clients.
Why Is SEO Important? What Are Its Goals?
Businesses want SEO to prepare their website so that it can do its job and function optimally every day. SEO is vital because it improves online exposure, increases site traffic, and enhances user engagement, all of which lead to an increase in sales and revenue.
Millions of websites exist now, and more are being produced on a daily basis as the need for information and online services develops. Only in 2019. The Philippines scored top in the world internet usage index, and the country’s internet users increased to 73 million in January 2020, up from 69.6 million in 2018. The market is migrating online, and it is more visible now than ever before. It is now your responsibility to respond to changes in user behaviour and maximise your online assets.
Understanding How SEO Works
Millions of people are now using the internet to find information, to educate themselves, to connect with others, or to share and pass the time. There are numerous reasons why a user would surf the web, but one constant remains, and as Google stated: “Everything begins with a search.”
SEO is comprised of two components. The first is the search engine (in this case, Google), and the second is the webpage.
How Do Search Engines Work?
Understanding how search engines work is vital because if you understand how the system works, you can figure out how to use it.
Google controls 95.79 percent of the search engine market share in the Philippines alone, with Bing holding 2.08 percent and Yahoo holding 1.7 percent.
Consider Google to be a web-based library. It has saved all of the pages on its server. It accomplishes this by crawling the web for each and every URL. The Google crawler, often known as the Googlebot, then searches every single webpage at breakneck speed. The page is then indexed or saved, and it is added to Google search.
When a user enters a query, Google retrieves the results from its indexed pages. Which brings us to another question: how does a website rank first in search engine results? How can you ensure that Google prioritises your website?
Google considers a number of ranking indicators when deciding which websites to prioritise and which material to promote. You may find out more about it in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. However, there are three ranking elements that you should keep in mind:nbsp; Links, content, and Google BERT will be discussed further below.
It is important to note that different search engines have distinct algorithms and, as a result, use different ranking variables to process results. This is why the results differ when you search on Google or Yahoo.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines
Now that you understand how search engines work as well as Google’s ranking factors, it’s time to optimise your website so that it is understood by both Google and the user. Although having a good web design is crucial, getting recognised by search engines requires more than just aesthetics. Google ranks a website based on hundreds of ranking indicators, but three should be prioritised.
Three important ranking factors:
Links. This is essentially a link from one website to another. Consider Google reading the links as votes for your website and its relevance. Of course, Google does not provide equal weight to all websites. CNN’s website, for example, exceeds a random blogger’s website. Make an effort to obtain links from reliable websites, since the more high-quality links you have, the better you will rank in search results. A backlink is the phrase for a connecting connection from another website to your page.
Content. High-quality content is vital for boosting your digital marketing strategy and increasing the worth of your website. Content will always be the gasoline that keeps your engine running. To make any digital marketing campaign successful, the content strategy must be developed and designed in such a way that it is aligned with the audience and your aim. This includes optimising it so that it is relevant to both users and search engines.
BERT. Google RankBrain, a machine learning system that prioritises SEO and high-quality content optimization, was unveiled in 2015. Machine learning is increasingly being used to interpret or guess what a person means when they conduct a Google search. Google followed RankBrain with Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or BERT. According to Google, BERT has the capability of near-human understanding and can assist computers in understanding language in a manner similar to how people do. The goal of BERT is to better understand human intents when people search, so it is critical that your website be understood by BERT so that it can match it to the search made by the users.
What is the significance of adhering to these standards? They are responsible for ensuring that a website is working optimally. To rank better in Google search results, you should excel at these three. It’s a good idea to start learning how to complete an SEO audit because it will provide you with a report on the general health and performance of your website.
Three Areas Of SEO
Each search engine procedure, or how search engines do their ranking, corresponds to one of three major aspects of SEO. There are three types of SEO: Technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO. When optimising your website for SEO, you should always start with these three areas.
What Is Technical SEO
SEO may already appear to be technical in and of itself, but there is a deeper technical side to SEO and website optimization. It entails optimising your website’s technical components so that it is faster and easier to crawl and index.
Site Speed
The loading speed of your website is an important component in ranking it. Not only does Google need that your pages load quickly, but so must your visitors. People are more likely to abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load.
- If a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, 53% of mobile site visitors leave.
- If a page takes 1 to 3 seconds to load, the bounce rate increases by 32%.
- If the website takes more than 6 seconds to load, the likelihood of a bounce rises by 106%.
- If the website takes more than 10 seconds to load, the bounce rate increases by 123 percent.
- When the load time is delayed by two seconds during a transaction, there is an 87 percent desertion rate. marketingdive
Google understands that a slow website does not provide a good user experience and is less likely to suggest it, resulting in lower rankings in search results. According to Google’s own John Mueller, speed is absolutely a ranking factor.
To see if your website is quick enough for both users and Google, use PageSpeed Insights to test website performance across all devices.
Easy for search engines to crawl a web page
You want search engines to crawl and index your site and all of its pages as quickly as possible. You may best accomplish this by directing Googlebots as they crawl your material. You can instruct them which pages to crawl or establish a signal indicating where you don’t want them to go this way.
The robots.txt file can be used to instruct crawlers. A robot.txt file instructs Googlebots on which pages they can and cannot crawl. This avoids your website from becoming overloaded with inquiries. However, be cautious because a minor mistake could prohibit a bot from crawling or reading critical areas of your website. There are always SEO experts available to assist you in avoiding these pitfalls.
No duplicate content
If you have many pages on your site with the same content, search engines will be confused. In Google’s situation, it wouldn’t know which one to rank, so it would rank all pages lower for having similar information. There are solutions available to prevent this from happening, such as Yoast. Using a canonical URL, for example, tells the search engine which results to prioritise and display to people.
Dead links should be gone
Deadlinks are landing pages that no longer exist. When a visitor arrives at a page and sees a 404 Error, the user experience is ruined. Search engines pick up on this as well. When you move or delete a page, you should redirect it to avoid deadlinks. There are internet tools that check for deadlinks, so make sure to check them frequently, as websites, especially those that are new, have a tendency to ignore them.
Secure
If you have technical SEO done on a website, it should be security optimised. It is a need to ensure that your website is safe for users and that their privacy is protected. One of the most critical things to do is to guarantee that your site uses HTTPS, which ensures that a user’s credentials and privacy are protected. In order to implement HTTPS, you will require an SSL certificate.
HTTPS secures data transmission between a website and the web browser used by a visitor. Security is vital to Google, and it ensures that HTTPS websites rank higher.
What Is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO is the process of correcting and upgrading all of your webpages and internal portions of your website so that they are crawlable and visible on search engine results pages. This includes optimising your website’s titles, meta descriptions, paragraphs, copy, photos, videos, and everything other material.
What Is Off-Page SEO?
Off-Page SEO refers to all actions that take place outside of your website. All of them are external features of your website that have an impact on web ranking and search visibility. Link Building is an example of an off-page activity.
Link building promotes your website by linking to high-authority websites and directing traffic back to it. Links, as previously said, are a key ranking component in SEO and should be prioritised for an efficient SEO campaign.
Understanding SEO Writing And Content
SEO writing aids in the visibility of websites in search engines. The material is based on Google-relevant keywords. It entails being creative and clever in using targeted keywords in a way that not only appeals to search engines but also provides value to readers.
Writing for SEO is a specific skill that requires keyword research, brainstorming, and planning; if you can’t do the wiring, there are SEO writers and copywriters who specialise in SEO. When you outsource content marketing services to an SEO provider, you will receive three crucial talents that every SEO content writer should have: a thorough understanding of SEO, quality writing skills, and the ability to fulfil deadlines.
Best SEO Tools To Start With
Tools are essential for carrying out, implementing, monitoring, and assessing your SEO efforts. It will increase your productivity and allow you to work faster and more precisely. SEO is becoming increasingly important, and as a result, more and more SEO solutions are being developed on a daily basis, to the point where most are nearly identical. Here are a few must-have SEO tools to aid in your SEO efforts:
Ahrefs
This tool, which is popular among both novices and SEO specialists, contains a plethora of useful features that will improve your SEO strategy. It includes a keyword explorer, a site explorer, a site audit, a content explorer, a rank tracker, and an SEO toolbar. Ahrefs provides statistics that will assist you in developing your SEO strategy.
MOZ
An SEO software firm with an all-in-one platform for all of the SEO tools you’ll need to increase your marketing efforts. It offers a strong interface that gives you with precise info right away. This is the tool to use if you need to perform site audits, keyword research, and backlink analysis, among other things.
Google Keyword Planner
Keywords are an important aspect of SEO and the foundation of your SEO strategy. Google offers its own keyword planner that can help you find keywords or key phrases that are related to your website. Google’s keyword planner may be utilised for both paid ads and SEO because it provides insights and details on how phrases are searched, providing you with a plethora of possibilities and suggestions along the route.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a web-based tool for searching for keyword ideas. It provides information such as volume, keyword trends, and competition analysis.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that will help you with your on-page efforts. You can use this tool to do on-page improvements such as SEO analysis, metadata optimization, and schema implementation. It’s a useful tool for on-page SEO, technical SEO, and content optimization.
SEMRush
When you need to run a quick check on the performance of your website, SemRush is the tool to use. It provides precise insights and data on how your website performs online. You will receive traffic statistics, keywords, backlinks, and other useful information. The information it offers will be useful in identifying weak connections in your SEO strategy.
Majestic SEO
Majestic SEO is the tool to use when it comes to backlinks and gathering backlink data. Many SEO specialists regard it as reputable and trustworthy. The tool crawls websites to locate link possibilities and then assesses the quality of those sites’ backlinks. It also includes a browser plugin that allows you to perform backlink research on any website on the go.
Google Search Console
You will need to regularly monitor the performance of your SEO campaign throughout its life cycle. This will allow you to adapt and adjust your plan so that it performs optimally. This task necessitates the use of monitoring technologies.
Google Search Console is a favourite among SEO professionals and seasoned digital marketers alike. This is a free application that displays the performance of a website. Aside from that, it enables you to discover how Google perceives your website in search results.
You will have data on all critical indicators required to track a site’s performance. If you want a more analytical and thorough report, Google Search Console’s reporting approach is quite detailed and can be incorporated into other programmes such as Google Data Studio.
Are You Ready To Be Found?
People will always look for your company. Nowadays, almost everyone chooses to complete work and daily activities in the comfort of their own homes. This means that people will try to find you in the internet market. It is your responsibility as the decision-maker to make it easier for them to find your company.
Adapt to the changes and maintain your position at the top. SEO is an important component of your internet marketing activities, and the time to begin is always now. Keep in mind that, while SEO can be a very powerful technique if you use white hat tactics and SEO recommended practises, it is not a magic bullet. Its effectiveness lasts a long time and saves you money, but it requires time, effort, and the appropriate plan to succeed. If you aren’t willing to wait a month or more for results, SEO isn’t the technique for you. The reason for the length is that your website must be set up and optimised for SEO. Following that, you will begin to witness results that will assist you in attracting the correct traffic and increasing your bottom line.
What many people do not realise is that SEO will continue to be relevant as long as search engines exist and people utilise Google in their daily activities. To be on top tomorrow, the most proactive thing to do is to start now and ensure that you will see the fruits of what you planted today. If you have any questions about how to correctly execute your SEO strategy or how to make it work with other digital marketing services, please contact us at any time.