What is SEO
“Marketing is a skill only experience can teach”
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process that is used to attract traffic to a website from a search engine’s organic ranking. Organic search is one way through which people can discover content online. A higher ranking means higher organic traffic to a website. SEO includes content and technical practices that are aimed at syncing with the best search engine algorithm requirements. The basic SEO practice includes creating high quality content, building backlinks and optimizing content around any specific keyword.
When done in the correct format SEO can improve the website’s visibility in search engines like Google. It helps in generating more and more organic traffic. On the grassroots level, SEO is just about fulfilling a user’s needs by creating relevant and high-quality content and providing the best possible user experience. It is a very useful practice that will let people know about you or your brand when they search for;
• Products you sell•Services you provide
•Topics of your expertise
Better visibility on a search engine means that your website is more likely to be clicked on, hence improving your interaction rate. Ultimately, the main objective of search engine optimization is to help attract people who will be your customers, clients, or repetitive audience.
How Does a Search Engine Works
The job of a search engine is to crawl over hundreds of billions of pages using their web crawlers. These web crawlers are referred to as bots or spiders. A search engine navigates through the web by downloading web pages and following the links on these pages.
Let's take an example of how google search engine works.
When you search for something on Google, an algorithm runs in the background which works in real-time to identify the best results possible. From hundreds of billions of pages, it brings out that one page on top that suits your search the most.
How Google Chooses the Best Results
Google is very protective about its ranking metrics and there is not much information available about that. However, based on expert research it is determined that it uses crawlers and bots to gather the information available on the internet. While navigating the internet, the bots read internal and external links to understand the context of a page. Then the search engine gives out the best results according to the page visibility. Although Google never shares the working mechanism of its search engine, there are several research that give an idea of how Google search engines work.
Below mentioned are some factors that are focused on when giving the ranking to a page.
Relevancy
Search relevance is a measurement of accuracy between the search query and the intended result. Domains that have accurate and relevant information about the query, rank on the top. That is why keywords are given so much attention when writing something for a website. It looks for the pages with the most relevant keywords or closest related keywords according to the search query.
However, Google does not rank the most relevant pages at the top because there are thousands of relevant pages for every search term.
Search relevancy is important because mismatched results will give an impression that the website is unprofessional and unreliable at the same time. It provides a poor experience to the user and there is minimum probability that the user is going to visit the same website again. That is why it is meant that the content posted should be highly relevant and target driven.
Authority
Authority is a way for Google to determine if the website is delivering what it is expected to or not. It is useful for users to figure out if a website is trustworthy or not. Authority refers to the overall reputation and influence of a domain under a specific niche. If the website or domain is being accepted more, google will take it as a vote for trustworthiness.
It is an important factor for any website because it establishes the ability to provide value. If other players in the same niche accept your unique views and look up to you as a thought leader. Other domains can easily connect with your domain through backlinks. This is interpreted as a vote of confidence by Google, hence providing a better ranking.
Usefulness
Content can be relevant as well as authoritative, but if it is not useful there is no sense in positioning that content at the top of search results. Google has always given priority to quality over quantity for providing the best results. Usefulness refers to providing engaging, relevant, and valuable information to visitors.
The format and choice of words also play an important role in the positioning of a website. Usefulness covers the value of organic traffic for any search intent.
How SEO works
SEO works by optimizing a website according to the search engine they are going to be ranked in. Google is the most common browser used so we will go by its example. The job of an SEO expert is to make sure that the search engine sees your page or website as the best result for multiple search queries of the same niche. How the browser determines the best result depends on the algorithm that takes into account a huge number of factors such as authority, relevancy, and the speed of loading the page.
No one completely knows how the algorithm of Google actually works. However, a basic understanding of the process can do wonders for your website's performance. If we go deeper into how SEO works, there are six crucial areas, a combination of which helps in the ranking of your websites. Let's look into these six key factors.
How Search Engines work
As mentioned above in the blog, a search engine crawls through millions of pages to find the most relevant website according to the query. It uses four processes to determine the usefulness of the website.
Crawling: Search engines use bots to go through all the pages on the web using links and sitemaps
Rendering: The search engine checks how the page will look using HTML, JavaScript and CSS information.
Indexing: Search engine analyzes the content and metadata of the pages it discovers and adds them to its database
Ranking:Complex algorithms are used by the search engine to go through the pages and determine whether they are relevant to be visible when a user enters a query.
One should always keep in mind that different search engines follow different algorithms. However, we are discussing the most common search engine used by the public, Google, so it will be very helpful.
Researching
Research is a very crucial part of SEO. It is not any ordinary research. It requires dedicated research on complex topics like:
Audience Research:It is very important to understand your target market. Are you fulfilling their requirements, who they are, and what are their pain points? There is some major research that you will have to do at an individual level. Every website has its own audience base so you will have to focus on making it your own diary.
Keyword Research: This process is useful to figure out the relevant and valuable search terms that are commonly used by people to find any information related to your niche. It also helps you to figure out the demand and competition in the market.
Competitor Research: When you are in the online game you will have to keep a tab of what your competitors are doing. What are their strengths and weaknesses and what type of content they are publishing? It will give you an idea about what type of content you should upload to get the maximum reach.
Brand Research: What is the vision of your brand and what steps can be taken to achieve those goals are important factors for your online growth.
Website Research:you can schedule a website SEO audit to understand the limitations of your websites. These audits can help you determine the points where you might be lagging from the competitors.
SERP analysis:This will help you to understand the intent of any given query. When you have the insights, you can create content that is more likely to earn rankings or visibility.
These are some factors one should keep in mind while preparing content for their online presence.
Planning
You need to understand that SEO is not a destination, it is a never-ending journey. There is not enough knowledge for SEO. It is a vast ocean filled with different factors that will affect the website’s performance. You will have to create a goal and, in the process, create short-term goals that align with the ultimate goal. The path you choose will determine the strength of your website. Your roadmap should include things like
•Defining KPIs•Choosing and implementing technologies
•Hiring and training a team
•Setting a budget
•Documenting the strategy process
There are many other aspects that you will learn in the process too.
Creating and Implementing
After the research is complete, it is time to turn your ideas into reality. Implement all your learnings into:
Creating new content: you need to make sure that the content is unique, catchy, and attractive at the same time. If you have a team, you must advise them on what type of content needs to be posted.
Recommending Changes in Existing Pages:This process includes updating and improving existing content so that it can give a good impression to the users. Infusing new keywords or internal links can also be done in this process.
Remove Outdated or Low-Quality Content:The content that is not ranking well on the website can decrease the overall performance of your website. Make sure you filter out old and irrelevant content from time to time.
These are steps that need to be taken care of every time you upload new content and maintain your website.
Monitoring and maintaining
You must develop a system that notifies you when something goes wrong or breaks on your website. Monitoring is a very crucial element to make sure that the users are having a smooth experience.
You should know if any page loads slow, if traffic drops on a page suddenly or any page becomes unresponsive. If you do not monitor it continuously, the ranking of your website can drop drastically.
Analyzing, and Assessing Performance
Analyzing the SEO is very important for the regular growth of your website. It helps you in making data-driven decisions about SEO. It can be an easy task if you use:
Website Analytics:This is a tool that is used by most people. It is a set up and use tool for collecting performance data. There are some free tools such as Google Analytics, Bing Webmaster etcetera.
Tools and Platforms: There are multiple platforms that offer various tools, but you can choose to use any one of them for specific tasks.
After collecting the data, it will give you proper insights about how and what type of content is working well on your website.
How Does SEO Help in Engagement
SEO is a way to advertise or make your brand visible to people who will be your potential customers. It provides you with various ways to optimize your online visibility according to your brand’s niche. However, if you ever feel like this is all getting a bit out of hand for you and you do not want to create a full-fledged team for SEO, hiring digital marketing companies such as Unify Wizards can be very fruitful for you. We are digital marketing experts and will take good care of your brand’s online reputation and ranking.
We believe if there is an efficient and hassle-free way to promote yourself or your brand online, it is Unify Wizards