Are you at the beginning of your SEO journey? You may have heard that SEO can help drive more traffic to your website and boost your rankings, but you’re not sure how it works and what areas you should focus on? Well, you are in the right place. Read on to find out what every digital marketer needs to know about SEO.
Defining Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Let’s start with the obvious question: What exactly is SEO? SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and gets traffic from free, organic, editorial or natural search results on search engines. process. The purpose is to improve your website’s position on the search results page. Remember, the higher a site’s rank, the more people will see it.
Good SEO involves many different activities, such as:
- Identifying relevant keywords with good search traffic potential
- Creating high-quality, useful content and optimizing it for search engines and for users
- Including relevant links from high-quality sites
- Measuring the results
Differences between paid and organic search
While organic search focuses on unpaid rankings in search results, the paid search focuses on paid rankings. With organic search, companies use SEO to optimize their site’s visibility or rankings in search results. In comparison, paid search allows users to pay for a prominent spot in search results.
The three pillars of SEO:
As a digital marketer, knowing how to get your brand, website, or business found by searchers is a core competency, and understanding how SEO is evolving puts you at the top of your game. can do. SEO often changes little by little, but its core principles remain the same. SEO he breaks down into 3 core components (pillars) that he needs to know and act on regularly.
Technical Optimization: Technical optimization is the process of performing activities on our website aimed at improving search engine optimization, but not content. This is often done behind the scenes.
On-Page Optimization: On-Page Optimization is the process of ensuring the content on your site is relevant and provides a great user experience. It includes targeting the right keywords within your content and can be done through a content management system. Common examples of content management systems include WordPress, Wix, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, Shopify, and Expression Engine.
Off-Page Optimization: Off-page optimization is the process of improving a website’s search engine ranking through off-site activities. This is primarily driven by backlinks that help build a site’s reputation.
How do search engines actually work?
Search engines are used when people ask questions and search the internet for answers. Search engine algorithms are computer programs that look for clues to give searchers the exact results they are looking for. Search engines rely on algorithms to help them find web pages and determine which pages to rank for specific keywords.
Step 1: Crawling
The first step is crawling. Search engines send web crawlers to find new pages and record information about them. These web crawlers are sometimes called “spiders” or “robots.” Their purpose is to discover new web pages and periodically check the content of previously visited pages to see if they have been changed or updated.
Step 2: Indexing
The second step is indexing. During indexing, search engines decide whether to use crawled content. If crawled web pages are deemed valuable by search engines, they are added to the index. This index is used in the final ranking phase. Once a web page or piece of content is indexed, it is filed and stored in a database for later retrieval. Most websites that offer unique and valuable content are included in our index.
Step 3: Ranking
The third step is the most important step and that is ranking. Ranking can only be performed after the crawling and indexing steps are completed. So when search engines crawl and index your site, they can rank it.
There are more than 200 ranking signals that search engines use to sort and rank content, and they all fit under the three pillars of SEO: technical optimization, on-page optimization, and off-page optimization.
