Search engine optimization, typically called SEO, is the process of content optimization in order to be discovered online. In easy words, the higher the quality and optimization of the content is, the higher the number of people can reach you through an online search result. It is now one of the most used and the most crucial digital marketing strategy since the search engines developed. SEO allows you to grab organic traffic and grow your business faster.

Learning SEO can be complex, but this article is going to let you understand the basics and answer all important questions you should know about SEO. We will be going through almost all the relevant information on Search engine optimization (SEO). Get ready to become a pro, from a beginner!

Why is SEO important?

I want you to google any brand name or a product. Let’s say you are a computer manufacturer company and you searched for the keyword (don’t worry about the terms, we’ll be discussing them in the article below) “Best Computers,” you will see billions of search results of different brands and businesses.

Feeling scared to rank your business on the top? Don’t worry, a Search engine remains updating the rankings of the search results based on the algorithm and content SEO. There are also different sources of gathering online traffic, but more than 70% of the traffic comes from search engines. Therefore, it is important to learn and implement Search engine optimization (SEO) in order to grow your business faster. If you want your business visible on the internet, you really need to know SEO. Search engine optimization elevates your searchability and lets people recognize you. There can be many different answers to the question of why SEO is important? However, the best part about SEO is that it promotes your business and lets people recognize you. Which, ultimately, results in your business growth.

SEO increases your brand’s reputation and builds credibility. Other than growing Internationally, search engine optimization (SEO) allows you to target locally. SEO provides you with the capability of targeting any specific niche. For instance, if you want sales in your specific location, you can simply target that area and get an organic audience through SEO. Learning Search engine optimization (SEO) lets you be aware of the online environment and about your competitors. Also, SEO is a lot cheaper than any other marketing strategies.

What is keyword research? And how to do Keyword Research?

The word that you search in any search engine is known as a keyword. People search for different things online, with different keywords. So, for instance, if you want your brand to come up in search results and get a higher traffic then you should be using the keyword which has a higher search volume on the internet and a low or moderate competition. Keyword research involves selecting a topic and relevant keywords on which you want your brand or business to appear, on the internet. You should have your buyers persona, along with the keyword research, in order to target the exact audience you need. So, let’s dive into the keyword research process.

How to do Keyword Research?

Well you, now, know what is a keyword? and what does keyword research mean? So, let’s see how you can do keyword research for your business. There are a lot of ways, tools, and techniques to perform keyword research. Here is a list of some useful methods for performing keyword research.

5 Quick tips for keyword search:

2. Google algorithm helps its users to find their desired search result using suggestions. You can see suggestions under the search bar, which indicates the audience preferences and searches. This keyword research strategy is quite helpful and productive for SEO professionals.
3. Try to research and gather some long-tail keywords and use them on your content. These head terms and long-tail keywords are very crucial for your content. For instance, if your keyword is “SEO”, the long term keywords can be what is SEO? SEO benefits, How SEO works? And many others. Long-tail keywords can be of 3 to 4 words.
4. Google provides tools for keyword research. Tools like Google keyword planner and google trends are very helpful in keyword research. You can see the latest trends and the search volumes for those trending topics.
5. Dig into your competitors websites. Your competitors have already researched well and are using essential keywords. You can simply analyze your competitors website and grab a useful set of keywords. In order to analyze your competitors’ websites easily, you can use some online tools like Ahref, Moz, and SEMrush.
6. Make a list of all relevant keywords. Keeping your main topic in mind, make a list of relevant keywords like synonyms of your keyword or some relevant words to your niche. These keywords are very helpful for a good amount of traffic. Insert these keywords in each paragraph of your content to increase the probability of appearing in search results higher.

How does a search engine and search engine optimization (SEO) work?

You probably have seen that every time you search something on Google, it shows millions of Search results on SERP (search engine results page). Here, Google has to decide from those millions of search results where each search result or website should rank. Every search engine works on an algorithm. The strategy of Search engine optimization focuses on crawling, indexing, and finally ranking your content.

We’ll see these terms in-depth, later on. Let’s just focus on how a search engine works? And how search engine optimization (SEO) works? A search engine crawls hundreds of millions of web pages and shows the most relevant results to the user, depending on some factors like keywords, freshness of the webpage, or user engagement on the webpage. The structure of these web pages is known as Index. A search engine indexes each webpage as per its algorithm, which is developed to serve each user with their exact required content.

Interestingly, it does not always happen that you rank on the same index on google as on any other platform, like Bing or Yahoo. Each search engine has some different factors and a different algorithm for serving search engine results pages (SERP). There can be several factors on which a search engine performs indexing process and rank content. For instance, the location of the user or the location searched in the search query, the device, the history that a user searched for, and the used language. However, the copied content or the low-quality content can affect your rank in search results. Now, in order to move as per the search engine algorithm, we need to use a search engine optimization strategy.

Search engine optimization includes all the steps and measures to satisfy the search engine’s algorithm and crawl up in the search results. For example, keyword research and keyword stuffing with a certain percentage of the keywords (known as keyword density) helps the search engine to know about your content and serve it to the users. Similarly, Search engine optimization strategies like on-page SEO, off-page SEO, Backlinks, competitors research etc help you to bring your content on a level where the search engine algorithm directly picks your content whenever a user comes up with a relevant query.

What is Crawling?

Crawling is the process of searching for the most relevant content in order to index them as per algorithm and user search. Search engines bots dig into the content (text, images, videos, and other formats), recognized with the links and crawl through all of them. This crawling process lets bot recognize the content and help them indexing, managing and arranging them accordingly.

What is indexing?

The process of formatting and structuring content, by a search engine, is known as indexing. Search engine bots, after crawling through the content, align and structure the content based upon different factors. This indexing process let the web pages enter the ranking process.

What is ranking?

Ranking, in search engine optimization, is said to be the process of appearing in the search results. Search engine tries to get the best possible solution for the searcher’s query. Therefore, after crawling through all the content and indexing them accordingly, it ranks each web page as per its SEO score and the factors discussed above.

What is White hat SEO?

White hat SEO is the practical implementation of search engine optimization while remaining in the boundary of legal policies and legal terms and conditions. In white hat SEO, the main focus is to perform optimization while keeping all legalities in mind and a basic awareness of internet laws is a must.

What is Black hat SEO?

Black hat SEO is the opposite of white hat SEO. It is also known as spamdexing. In digital marketing and Search engine optimization, black hat SEO is the process of manipulating search engine indexings while crossing the line of legal policies and laws. Back hat SEO Increases a website’s rank on a search engine by violating the terms of a search engine.

What is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO is very crucial for your content, as it tells the search engine about the content and the search engine matches it with the searcher’s query. It is the direct optimization of the content and HTML source code. There are a few on-page SEO factors that drive your on-page SEO optimization process. Factors may include, your website’s architecture, crawlability of your website, click-through rate, readability and user-interface, optimization of images, Speed of the website, outbound links, Mobile-friendliness, authentic and trusted protocol like HTTPS, and finally use of relevant and targeted keywords.

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO includes all the measures you take outside of the website or the platform. For example, building up links, sharing and marketing, Forum posting, blogging, directory submission, using social media, online question answer, video promotions, and gathering positive reviews etc.

What is a Backlink?

Backlinks are the links between two or more websites, which increases the credibility of the content and let google take it as a ranking signal. The more backlinks you have the higher you will rank on search engines.

How to Create Backlinks?

As discussed above, backlinks rank your content up and increase the credibility of the web pages. There are a lot of different ways to create backlinks for your web pages but let just focus on the easiest ones. So, one of the most used methods for creating a backlink with a website is to guest post on a website. Other useful methods are blog commenting, method of broken links. Try to check them out one by one and experiment with different backlink creating methods.

What is competitor analysis?

Competitor analysis is a very important part of search engine optimization. Competitor analysis is the assessment and analysis of the adoptable and productive measures that a website has taken. This will let you see a clear picture of the competition and the things you need to put efforts. There are also some online tools for SEO analysis and competitor analysis such as Moz and Ahref.

What to avoid in SEO?

Search engine optimization is not a very simple thing to work with. There are a few things which need to be overlooked in order to avoid common SEO mistakes. Firstly, people try to rank the content on a single keyword which is not going to work. As discussed above, you should use different combinations and alternatives for your main topic. Secondly, you should keep in mind that there are more than 5 billion mobile users around the globe. So, the content should always be mobile-friendly. Thirdly, analyzing web pages speed is very crucial. Also, people focus on quantity over quality which is a noticeable mistake. It has been seen that, usually, people neither create unique content nor avail blogs opportunity for SEO. Lastly, it is good to explore all platforms and try to grab more traffic, but some people only focus on google and neglect other search engines.

Final thoughts

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the need and skill of the time. It can build any business and grow any brand. In order to get traffic and leads you need to dive into SEO and start practising it. It can be complex sometimes, but don’t get confused just keep your pace and remain practising until you get in on your finger tips!