In simple terms SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization, a common practice to raise rankings in Google, Bing and Yahoo.
SEO is an essential aspect of internet marketing and an indispensable method to make a website with great and massive online presence and reputation. SEO importance cuts across the pre-design phase to the post-design phase. This means that SEO determines how to develop a new website, what changes needs to be done an existing one to improve a user’s awareness.
To a lane man, SEO is a very complicated but in this article. I will make it very simple so as to make you understand the concept, importance and best SEO practices to use.
How SEO works?
Search engine optimization is a very crucial aspect of internet marketing and website design. It operates straightforwardly. Search Engines that act as a very dependable directory for internet users to get the content they interested in. Google wants to help people get what they want by suggesting them relevant websites, while the business owners are looking for potential customers interested in what they offer.
It is reasonable to ask this question: how does Google rank websites? Search Engine has a crawler that goes through websites to know what content is placed on its pages. When anyone comes to Google for instance and searches about anything using a particular keyword, Google will immediately display some websites based on how relevant the searched keyword is what the web page renders.
SEO provides and offers a lot of benefits that cannot be ignored by any website owner, developer or internet marketer. Below are some of the benefits of SEO.
Video – what are some myths about SEO?
What is organic traffic?
In general, traffic means the movement of the internet users into a particular website. Such movement might be affected from various sources like online adverts, search engine result pages, etc.
Through Search Engines displays of websites on search results, when any page appears at the TOP of Google, that website will get lots of visitors. Using Google analytics can help you track your organic traffic.
What are SEO strategies?
Search Engine Optimization includes White Hat and Black Hat/Gray Hat SEO methods.
White Hat SEO involves various practices that are by ethics and regulations of Google. It makes you play by the rules of the game.
Black Hat SEO involves the practices that are not ethical, does not contribute to raising website quality and are against the regulations of Search Engines. These methods are used to reduce the time needed for a website to get ranked. It is very dangerous as any site optimized thru Black Hat methods can be penalized by Google Panda or Penguin algorithms.
Why does Google give SEO advice?
SEO practices are often used
- On-page SEO includes unique content creation, working with usability and speed loading, titles, meta descriptions and H1-H6 headers optimization, etc.
- Off-page SEO includes link building and SERM.
Techniques of On-page and Off-page SEO
Keyword research: content, titles and even URLs needs to be well optimized to effect on the rankings in Google. You can research keywords using Google Keyword Planner or other tools. This will enable you to choose the best keywords that are used in searching for something in your niche.
Website structure and navigation: your website must be designed in a way that all the pages are easily understood by visitors. Each page must be accessible in maximum 3 clicks from a homepage. No one gets to interact with your website pages when cannot find information they need.
Website loading speed and accessibility: your site must be designed in a way that all the pages are easily understood by visitors. Each page must be accessible in maximum three clicks from a homepage. No one gets to interact with your website pages when cannot find the information they need.
Website loading speed and accessibility: this technique involves making the website with good loading speed and be accessible to everyone from different platforms and operating systems. Fast loading of web page enables internet users to enjoy your website. Google PageSpeed Insights will help you analyze how you can make your pages load faster.
Website content: every site must contain interesting and unique content. You must produce tons of new content if you want to be on TOP of Google. If you don’t have a time on it, just hire a content writer to get things done for you.
Link building: this includes the linking to your articles or services pages from different websites which are of high reputation and authority. Don’t wait! You can do that by placing information about your company in directories or writing guest posts for websites in your niche. You must build quality links from reputable websites for getting the best outcome.
All these and other SEO strategies are very effective for website ranking. However, you must know that SEO is a continuous practice because the algorithms of the search engines change and this causes a kind of table shift. Start the Search Engine Optimization and make your website well known by all.
