What is SEO?

In this article, we will answer the question - What is SEO?

SEO is the practice of optimising websites to increase their visibility in search engines. This involves tweaking meta tags, title tags, page titles, keywords and other elements of a web page or blog.

It's important because these elements determine whether a user sees your website in the top positions of a search result.

Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo are essential tools for marketers. They allow us to reach millions of potential customers.

However, they also come with a catch: only 20% of visitors click through to your site from search results. That means 80% of your traffic comes from organic searches. How can you get ahead of the pack?

SEO is a long-term strategy that takes time to see results. If you want to improve your rankings, you'll need to invest in building backlinks (inbound links) to your website.

The more high-quality links pointing to your website, the higher your ranking will be.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of ensuring that your website appears high in search results when someone searches for something relevant to your business.

SEO helps you get found online, and it also enables you to convert visitors into leads and sales.

SEO is about getting people to click on your page, not just ranking well in search results and optimising your site in many different ways, including creating great content, using keywords strategically, and building backlinks.

What is Organic Search?

Organic Search is an integral part of any online marketing strategy. If done correctly, organic search can bring targeted visitors to your site.

However, if not done right, it can also harm your rankings. We recommend using white hat techniques to optimise your site for organic search.

White hat SEO follows Google's guidelines and best practices when optimising your site for search engines.

There isn't a magic number when it comes to using keywords. If you feel you're trying to force them in, go ahead and keep writing naturally. You'll get there eventually.

How Does SEO Work?

Bing uses AI to search through billions of web pages to find the best results for your query. It looks at hundreds of factors, including the title, description, keywords, links, images, videos, and other elements on each webpage.

The algorithm then ranks results based on relevance, popularity, freshness, and authority.

Algorithms then analyse each page in the index, taking hundreds of signals into account to determine the order pages need to appear in the search results.

In our library analogy, the algorithm knows which books will answer your question.

We consider our SEO success factors to be proxies for aspects of the users' experience. It's how search engine spiders estimate how well a website or webpage can provide the searcher with what they're looking for.

Unlike paid search ad campaigns, you cannot pay Google or Bing to rank your site higher organically, which means SEO experts must put in the hard work.

That's where we come in. We help companies optimise their sites for search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Our goal is to increase your company's online visibility while helping you avoid penalties.

Content Quality and Keyword Research are critical factors of content optimisation, Crawlability and Speed are important Site Architecture factors, and Toxins are shortcuts or tricks that might have worked well enough back in the day when search engine algorithms were much less sophisticated.

But, they might not work anymore because they could get you caught.

Knowing the nuances of SEO for local, news, and eCommerce can help you succeed in those areas.

Search algorithms are designed to surface the best possible results when you type in a query.

These algorithms are constantly improving, so if you optimise your page, you will see your results rise in the rankings. To get the best results, you should focus on optimising your content.

SEO Ranking Factors

The SEO industry is constantly changing. As a result, the list of SEO ranking factors can change as well. The following is an incomplete list of some of the most important factors that affect your website’s search engine rankings. This list is updated regularly.

1. On-page Optimisation

On-Page Optimisation refers to all the changes you make to your website’s HTML code. For example, adding meta tags, keyword-rich titles, alt text, and descriptions. 

2. Off-page Optimisation

Off-Page SEO is the process of getting traffic to your website from other websites. This can be done by creating content that is relevant and useful for the visitors to those sites.

The more quality backlinks you have, the higher your domain authority score will be.

3. Backlinks

Backlinks are links pointing to your website from another website. They are one of the most important ranking factors used by search engines.

4. Domain Authority (DA)

Domain authority is a term used to describe the ability of a website or domain name to rank well in search engines. It’s also known as “PageRank”, and it was developed by Google back in 1998.

5. Competitor Analysis

A competitor SEO analysis is a way to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. You can use this information to improve your own business.

6. Website Speed

Website speed is important for SEO because it affects user experience. If your website takes too long to load, people will leave before even trying to read your content.

7. Mobile-friendliness

Mobile-friendliness is becoming increasingly important for SEO. In fact, Google has started penalising websites that do not display properly on mobile devices.

How do Search Engines Work?

A search engine provides results for any search query entered by users. To do so, it surveys and understands the vast network of websites making up the Internet.

It runs a sophisticated algorithm that determines which results to show for each search query. Search engines are often ranked according to popularity, relevance, and other factors.

The most popular search engines are Google, Bing, and Yandex. They all use similar methods to crawl the Web, but each has its own unique approach to ranking websites.

Some search engines also include social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook within their scope.

Google

Google’s core algorithm was developed in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University.

Their idea was simple: create a system that would allow people to quickly find relevant information on the internet.

The search engine grew rapidly in 2000, and today accounts for over 90% of global searches.

Bing

Bing was launched in 2009 by Microsoft. Like Google, it uses a crawler called “CBot” to collect data from across the web.

However, unlike Google, Bing does not index images directly; instead, it relies on third-party services such as Flickr and YouTube.

Yahoo!

Yahoo! is another major player in the market. Founded in 1994, Yahoo! is one of the oldest search engines still in operation.

In 2016, Yahoo! acquired the search engine BrightEdge, which had been founded in 2008.

Why is SEO Important?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. To understand the value of SEO, you need to understand what an organic listing is.

An organic listing is when someone searches for something, and Google finds a website that matches their search terms.

When someone clicks on that link, they go directly to that site. If you want to get on the first page of Google, you must create great content.

Quality of organic traffic: How relevant the user and their query are to the content on your website. If someone types “apple laptop” into Google and your website comes up first, you’ve got high-quality traffic.

People searching for something specific will often click through to your page, and if they like what they see there, they’ll come back again and again.

Organic traffic refers to visits generated by unpaid links. These are usually referred to as “natural” or “organic” searches.

Organic traffic accounts for approximately 70% of all web traffic. As a result, optimising for organic search visibility is critical to the success of any website.

The Role of SEO

SEO is an integral part of any online marketing strategy. It is not just about ranking your site higher on search engine results pages.

You also need to get visitors to your site. If you don’t have enough traffic coming through your site, your efforts will go to waste.

Many companies spend money on paid advertising campaigns, hoping to drive traffic to their sites. However, if you don’t already have a solid organic traffic base, then all those ads will be wasted.

Organic SEO is the best way to ensure that your company gets found when potential customers type in keywords related to your products or services.

The Three Pillars of SEO

SEO is a constantly changing landscape. As search evolves, so does SEO. You must understand what is happening today and plan accordingly.

There are three main areas that you should focus on when optimising your site. These are:

1) Onsite Optimisation - How well does your site rank?

2) Off-page Optimisation - What external factors affect your rankings?

3) Content Marketing - How well do you communicate your message?

Technical optimisation is the process of completing actions on your website that are designed to increase search engine rankings.

These actions may be performed behind the scenes but are still crucial to optimising your site.

On-page optimisation is the process of ensuring the content on your website is relevant and provides a good user experience.

This includes targeting the right keywords in your content and can be completed using a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress, Wix, Joomla, Drupal, and Magneto.

Off-page optimisation is the process of improving your website's SEO through activities outside of the website.

This includes link building, social media marketing, and other forms of outreach. Backlinks are essential in driving traffic to your site, and many SEO experts recommend using them to increase your page rank.

What is SEO Strategy?

A good SEO strategy is an essential aspect of any online marketing campaign. It helps to increase organic search traffic to your website, which increases sales.

On-site optimisation focuses on improving your website's user experience and conversion rate.

Off-site optimisation focuses on increasing your presence in search engine results pages (SERPs), including social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Both types of optimisation help drive organic traffic to your site.

SEO is all about getting traffic to your site. It would help if you started thinking about your business goals first.

What will you accomplish? How will you measure success? Once you've got those answers, you can focus on creating content to help you achieve those goals.

When writing blog posts, articles, press releases, etc., think about what your audience needs to hear. Your goal is to attract visitors to your site, and the best way to do that is to create high-quality content that addresses real problems and offers solutions.

What is Organic Traffic?

Paid search marketing doesn't increase your organic traffic numbers. However, it can help you get more qualified leads and sales.

Look at paid search as an extension of your marketing strategy. If you're already doing well with organic traffic, then paid search will be a great addition to your marketing mix.

You should also consider paid search if you've done all the right things on your site and still aren't getting the desired results.

Social search differs from other types of investigation because it considers what your friends think is relevant and exciting.

It does this by using information about you and your connections to determine what content should be shown to you.

You can see what your friends like and then follow them to discover similar content.

When you're thinking about your online marketing strategy, you must consider how your social media strategy will also fit into the puzzle!

What is Direct Traffic?

Think of SEO as “Search Experience Optimisation.” It’s not just important for your user to find your website – they need to stay there, interact with your content and come back later.

It’s also essential for them to discover you organically. Direct traffic doesn’t just increase your page authority in the eyes of Google – it creates more opportunities to convert an organic visitor into a customer.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an umbrella term for various techniques designed to increase the number of visitors to a web page.

SEO involves technical aspects, including search engine crawling, indexing, and non-technical issues related to promotion, link popularity, and user experience.

Search engine marketing (SEM), sometimes referred to as "search engine optimisation", is the practice of designing, running, and optimising search engine ad campaigns.

What is the Most Critical Factor in SEO Marketing?

relevant keywords and the search engine will return a list of websites that match those keywords.

Google has made it very clear that if you want to rank in Google’s top 10 results for a specific keyword, then your website must be optimised for that keyword.

The higher up you are on the SERPs, the more people who click through to your website.

This means that if you want to improve your conversion rate, you need to make sure that your website is ranking on the highest positions possible.

The main reason why people use search engines is to find something or someone. They type in their query and receive a list of links to pages where they might find what they were looking for. 

Relevant content is a critical factor in SEO marketing. A lot of companies are now putting emphasis on creating high-quality content rather than simply relying on backlinks.

In fact, some studies have found that having lots of backlinks isn’t necessarily going to give you an advantage over competitors.

Inbound links are links pointing to your website from another website. These are considered to be one of the best ways to gain rankings since they indicate that others believe your website is valuable.

Inbound links are often created when other sites mention your company name or product. For example, if you sell shoes, you may get a link from a site called shoeretailer.com.

When users visit the retailer’s site, they are directed to your site.

internal links are links within your own website. You can create internal links by using anchor text which is a short phrase that appears next to a link.

Anchor text helps search engines understand the context of the link so that it can determine whether the linked page is relevant.

Anchor text is used in two different ways:

• Page anchors are used to help readers navigate between sections of a website.

• Internal links are used to connect related topics together.

Internal linking is done by adding a special HTML tag to your website.

This tag tells search engines that this page should be indexed separately from all the rest of your pages.

Internal links are useful because they allow you to easily share information across multiple parts of your website.

FAQ's About SEO