Mastering Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Key Techniques and Strategies
Introduction
Have you ever asked yourself how Google or other search engines rank websites when you search for something on them?
Why is the first webpage shown worthy of the first spot, while another page -probably on page 21 or more- deserving of the ranking allocated to it?
The simple answer to this is that websites are ranked by how much they adhere to laid-out guidelines by these search engines.
The act of following these guidelines is known as Search Engine Optimization(SEO).
In this article, you would understand the following concepts:
What is SEO?
Why should you care about SEO?
Types of SEO
Step-by-step process on how to optimize the website.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the conscious effort to improve a website so that it can be organically ranked higher on a search engine results page(SERP) when users search for goods, services, or a particular knowledge this website provides.
When you improve your website, you are essentially increasing your visibility to anyone who searches about any service your website provides.
It is however important to note that a page may rank high on the search engine results page(SERP) if it is a paid ad. This is known as Pay Per Click(PPC)
Therefore, the distinguishing factor between SEO and PPC is that while PPC is a result of monetary privilege, SEO is organic.
Why should you care about SEO?
There are five major reasons why you should care about SEO;
It increases your visibility: Once you take the time to make your website search engine friendly, your visibility increases. When a user searches for anything, the search engine looks through its index for every website that can render the service. It ranks these websites according to how search engine friendly they are. The search result will be sent back by how high they rank. So if your website ranks high, it becomes more visible to people.
It increases traffic to your website: Once your website becomes more visible, traffic tends to increase on your website as people click the result brought back by the search engine.
It increases customers: Increased traffic means an increase in customers, which in turn means an increase in return on investment.
Better reputation: This is probably one of the most important reasons why SEO is important. If your webpage consistently ranks high on search engines, people tend to trust your brand. Take for example when you search for a particular product online and the search engines rank high a particular brand. You search for another thing on a different occasion and this same brand comes up again. The next time you need something, you might just go straight to that website without even searching at all.
Sustainability: This is perhaps the sole advantage SEO has over pay-per-click (PPC). This is because once you stop funding PPC, traffic stops coming to your page. However, for SEO, traffic might even increase over time.
In essence, the effort you put into optimizations pays dividends for a very long time.
Types of SEO
Throughout this article, there has been a constant call for the optimization of websites. However, I never touched on how to optimize the website.
This section represents what you have to look out for when building a website. It represents the three constituents of an optimized website. All top-ranking websites exhibit the following SEO :
On-site SEO
Off-site SEO
Technical SEO
On-site SEO
On-site SEO in simple terms is tailoring your website towards the needs of your potential customers in a clear way to the search engine. It means the driving force behind the creation of that website should be the interest of the people. You should be able to ask and answer successfully questions like:
What do my customers need?
What words do they use when searching for it?
How do they search for it?
How are competitors addressing this issue?
What can I do better than my competitor to give the potential customer overall satisfaction?
After answering these questions, you still have to organize the answers in a way the search engine will understand it. This can be done by:
Using the right tags eg title tags, H1 to H6 tags, and so on.
Adding meta description to the head of the HTML document.
Adding alt text to any image on the website.
Off-site SEO
Off-site in its simplest form is your website's reputation among other websites. This manifests when trusted and high-ranking websites point to your website by adding a link within their website to your website. When search engines crawl such pages and find a link to your website, your website becomes known to the search engine, and then depending on how good your website is, it becomes indexed into the search engine catalog.
The simple way to achieve this is by promoting your website or article anywhere marketable. Talk about your website, and your article on all your social media pages till people know about it.
However, beware of paying the websites to link to your website because you could be potentially penalized if found out.
Technical Optimization
This involves the architecture of the website itself.
Here, web core vitals are important parameters that must be within an accepted range to the search engine.
Also, the internal linking of your website matters. Are all the pages of your website linked to one another properly? When this is done properly, the crawler will be able to traverse through all your web pages to find answers to a potential customer's query.
Your website must also be mobile-friendly and accessible.
How to optimize for search engines
According to Search Engine Land, optimizing for search engines entails six steps:
Understanding how search engines work.
Researching.
Planning.
Execution.
Monitoring and maintenance.
Analyzing and assessing performance.
1. How search engines work
All search engines work similarly. For this article, I will be using the Google search engine to explain.
Typically there are four stages to search engines' working principle:
Crawling: Google regularly sends out crawlers to search for any new content on the web, be it webpages, pdf files, music, or anything on the web. These new webpages could be discovered directly or from websites that are already known to Google crawler if it contains a link to the new website.
Rendering: After the crawler discovers these pages, it renders it the way a browser will render a website. It also tries to go over all the pages on the website via the internal links of the website to have an idea of the website's content.
Indexing: If the crawler successfully renders and understands the website, it puts it in a huge database for future use.
Ranking: When a user searches for something on the internet, the search engine goes through its index to find relevant answers to the search query and then ranks them according to how search engine-friendly they are.
2. Researching
Now that you know how search engines work, you need to make research on your customers' needs, the keywords they use, and when they seek these needs.
You also have to make research on your competitors; what are they doing right? so you can also do it. What are they doing wrong? so you can take advantage of their ignorance in this aspect.
It should be noted that the end goal is providing satisfaction for your potential customers.
This is perhaps the most important step and this is where most people cut corners, so be aware!
3. Planning
The next step is to plan how the project should go. You now have two powerful pieces of knowledge; the working principle of SEO, and your customers' needs.
Plan how this knowledge will fit together to satisfy the customer before beginning any building. This will save you time and stress.
4. Execution
Now it's time to execute your plan. This could be in the form of creating new and useful content, updating old content, or even total removal of substandard content.
5. Monitoring and maintenance
This entails constant monitoring of the website to make sure performance is optimum and nothing breaks on the website.
6. Analyzing and assessing performance
After you successfully create the website and all goes well, you still don't have the luxury to rest on your laurels. Rather, you still need to analyze and assess the working condition of the website regularly.
NB: Google Analytics and other similar tools provide an easy way to do this.
This goes on to show that SEO is a continuous task. It is difficult and time-consuming, but it yields dividends. You have to keep up with trends in the SEO community so that your website continues to rank high.
Tools to learn SEO
The following are recommended tools that you can use for further studies on SEO:
Conclusion
It is clear from this article the financial importance SEO has for online businesses. It may be time-consuming and stressful, but it's worthwhile. Take your time to follow the guidelines and you'd be shocked at how much visibility your website will enjoy.