SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a two-fold thing. For owners of websites and blogs, it brings free of cost and organic traffic straight from (Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others), etc.. Search Engine Results in Pages (SERP). The concept is simple, you type a keyword, we hit search and each of these search engines will provide you with a list of websites, they think are most relevant to your search. Now what you might notice is that there are actually two different types of search results. The paid listings that come top of your search and below them when you scroll down you see listings that are called organic listings and these do not contain add icons.
Now the organic listings should really be the focus of every successful marketer because at its core, SEO is a practice of improving the quality and quantity of traffic to your website that comes through these search engines’ organic listings.
Most of the searches are done through GOOGLE. For those who Google for everything, every result that you see after entering a keyword in Google search engine comes to the surface because someone did a little or more SEO for that web page.
The biggest factor is relevancy. You have to make sure that your website is exactly what a searcher is looking for when they are searching. Google algorithm uses over 200 factors to determine what’s relevant and there is no way that we are going to be able to cover all those, but if we can concentrate on a few then we have a fighting chance to get seen in the first page of search results. In addition to relevance you also have to make sure that your site is useful. All that means is that when a user licks on your website, all the information that they are looking for is easily available.
Ways To Improve The Organic Performance Of Website
Increase your website’s ranking in search engines, so if someone types in a keyword that relates to your site, you don’t want all of the other websites to come over ahead of yours. In Google, or Yahoo or Bing’s recommendations, you want to be on top because the top ranking is specifically the rankings on the first page, are the ones that get the most clicks, and if you get the more clicks that translate to more business.
There are two main buckets of SEO activities that can improve your organic listings. First is Onsite SEO and the other is off-site SEO. On-site SEO refers to actions and optimizations, you can do directly on your site. While off-site SEO as the name implies refers to actions and optimizations you can make outside of your site.
On-Page SEO
On-site SEO tactics that can improve your organic performance, on-page SEO is simply telling goggle and other users that you have everything they are looking for, you have all the indicators. This just means that you have all the right keywords on your website. Now On-page SEO is easier to Deal because most of the changes needed are within your control. For instance, if your site is about medicine, then you have to make sure that your site has the right keywords(best medicine for every situation), the title, the image description, supporting content.
Structured Data, Google use the most efficient process structured data or schema.org (special code used by search engines to help them quickly determine the content of a web page) is one method, it is a standard organizational data that allows search engines to take short cuts in understanding what page content is all about. Adding structured data to your pages, makes them stand out as compared to other pages where Go-ogle doesn’t have those short cuts
Keyword selection, keyword selection is one-way search engines that determine the relevancy of a particular website to a keyword query is through the prevalence of similar keywords contained on that website. Another important word for a keyword is to be embedded into a website that is important for you and your business.
Headers, just like structured data helps the search engines to quickly understand the content, section headers and titles are important for search engines and they will prioritize these when crawling a website. the headers for the individual sections on the web page also provide a quick reference to the website’s subject. Make sure u give a lot of thought to the text and keywords of your section Headers. Important keywords in copy will help tell search engines the topic of a website.
Site Navigation, next is Site navigation and the terms used in is your navigation structure it serves the purpose of directing users to specific buckets of content on your site and because of this search engine uses the navigation menu to understand what types of content a site emphasizes. These are some of the main on-site SEO tactics, you as a marketer do. The keywords use in the site navigation menu are important to search engines and will be the main indicator of the site menu.
Off-Site SEO
Off-site tactics also improve your organic performance. Off-page SEO simply means that you are making sure that other websites are linking back to you, it is Lil bit out of your control because you are relying on other people to believe that your website is worthy of a link but if you are writing great content and networking with your industry then it should not be a problem. It includes Social media working, social bookmarking, Blogs and forum posting, and link building as mentioned.
Back-Linkings, one key principle of off-page SEO is a concept called authority or site authority and authority is really a measure that the search engine uses to understand much expertise a particular website has on a topic. One way your website improve its site authority is by giving other websites with more site authority to link to your website and think of it as a digital form of vouching. You have a credible website in the eyes of search engines, linking to your site. It’s like a website is saying HEY with all of my authority and credibility. I’m telling my users that this website is worth looking at in the process of attaining these links from other websites is called back-linking, sites linking to your website share their domain authority.
User Interaction, Google, and other users very much value in various ways of vouching and one way of vouching is users common on or review a website or business. Lots of comments and positive reviews means that users are overall satisfied and engaging with the content and will boost the authority of your website.
Important SEO Metrics
Lastly, you have done all your on-site tactics and you have done tons of off-site work completed. How do you measure results, lets take a look at some common key performance indicators, that you can use to measure the results of all the SEO activities that you have done?
Firstly, Organic Visits, it is a number of website visits coming from organic search channels. Next is key ranking, this is measured as the average page rank (of a website) each of your keywords is attaining currently. Next is domain authority, this is the overall rating by the search engines of your website’s authority. Lastly, is the number of keywords ranked. This is good metrics because it tells you the number of keywords for which your website is ranked.
If you have a website with some articles on it then you maybe just a few tweaks away from seeing massive results with your traffic, without writing any new content
Concluding
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is basically a set of tried and tested tactics and techniques that every SEO expert tries while working on their website as well as off of it.
- SEO helps bring web pages to better and higher ranks in search results.
- It is done on-site by toying with the site’s content, tags, and structure, etc.
- It is also done off-site by spreading the word about the website and fetching some link-juice from high authority websites.
- SEO brings traffic to the website and with the passage of time, it increases the quality of traffic (organic) as well as the quantity of traffic (number of users)
As we go through the SEO process, just realize that search engine optimization does take time, and sometimes it can be a little frustrating when you are not seeing the results fast. But if done properly the results from your SEO can last months or even years depending on the topic you are in.
