Many organizations want to know the meaning of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In this blog, you will learn to improve your SEO by making some positive changes. 'What is SEO?' is a million dollar question and we will provide the answer for the same. We have listed some of the SEO basics that can help you to understand the impact of SEO on your business.
A. SEO Meaning: Search engine optimization (SEO) helps your website to get displayed on the search engine results page (SERP). Several factors impact your ranking and thus SEO can get quite complex. Search engines deliver results that are relevant to what the searcher is looking for. Whenever search engines crawl different websites for better understanding, relevant results will be shown to those who are searching for certain topics. Search engines reward user friendly websites with higher rankings based on navigation and readability. Organizations make sure that their websites are well optimized to rank high in the search engines for relevant keywords. Consider your website has an article on 'Kindergarten'. You will always try to optimize your article for the keyword 'best kindergarten school' so that it will show up as a top result for anyone who searches for the optimized keyword. With SEO, you can bring in more targeted organic traffic and expand your visibility on the search engines. We will discuss the factors that impact Search Engine Optimization and these include both On-Page and Off-Page factors:
B. On-Page SEO: The elements that happen on your website are termed as On-Page SEO factors. You can follow best practices for SEO and work to improve these factors over time. Improve your search ranking with the following On-Page SEO factors:
Title Tag: This tag informs the search engines about the web page. Title Tag should be 70 characters or less and make sure that you include both the keyword and your business name in the tag.
Meta Description: Tells search engines a little bit more about your web pages. If it is relevant, Meta Description helps visitors to get a better understanding of each web page. This should also include your keywords and provide enough details.
Headings: You can use H1, H2 and H3 heading tags to improve your SEO and help search engines better understand the content.
Internal Links: Search engines learn more about your website by linking web pages internally. For example, you can link to the product page from a blog post describing several products.
ALT Tags and Image Name: Always include keywords in the Image name and ALT tag and this will help search engines to index your images in a better manner.
You should avoid over-optimization whenever you plan your On-Page SEO strategy. Google and other search engines will penalize your page if the keywords are used several times in your web page. Make sure that one or two keywords are used for each piece of content. Creating a sitemap and building internal links between your web pages will provide a better understanding of your content to search engines. Your website should be mobile friendly whenever it comes to structuring. This not impacts the user experience but it can also affect your SEO.
C. Off-Page SEO: You can increase the visibility of your website in search engines by having Off-Page SEO factors to work out in your favor. Following are some Off-Page SEO factors:
Trust: This is an increasingly important factor in Google ranking of a website. Building quality links from authority websites are one of the best ways to improve Trust.
Links: Build relationships with fans and influencers who will link back to your website in their content. Be careful of spamming sites that will get your web pages banned from the search engines.
Social: Look for social signals such as likes and shares on social media websites. You will be able to get people to share your content with others if you publish more quality content.
The linking and sharing your content on social media will increase if you create more interesting content. Valuing your content by search engines is in correlation with people trusting your content.
D. Content Marketing: Digital Marketing Boy suggests you focus on a few types of content to help improve your search engine rankings - social media posts, videos, infographics, articles, whitepapers and tutorials.
E. White Hat VS Black Hat SEO: Two approaches can help your sites get optimized for search engines. Black Hat SEO involves tactics that can make some money in the short term while White Hat SEO is an effective approach to build a sustainable business online. In Black Hat SEO, your website may not be able to come back from penalties depending on the severity of the offense.
F. Final Takeaways: Valuable and relevant content to your intended audience is the most important thing to consider in SEO. The magic of search engine optimization will take time and it may take months to enjoy the results of hard work. Boost your rankings on SERP by implementing changes on your website.