My definition of Search Engine Optimization is pretty simple: Befriend search engines.
A Little Background:
I learn SEO by accident. I was just 17 years old when I started my first blog, Wowzers. I used to share my random thoughts, ideas, and travel stories there. It was a terrific blog, and I miss it now. And in only five months, I had traffic of 100K. Back then, I didn’t know the importance of traffic, so I didn’t care. I pursued a degree in Software Engineering and became an engineer. I was still writing for clients and running Wowzers. Now, the traffic was in a million. But again, it was a simple lifestyle blog – my diary, and having all that traffic was incredible but not something to make a profession out of it. As soon as I got my degree, I started applying for various development jobs and always got rejected. It was heartbreaking. It was then that I realized that development is not for me. I googled “best career to pursue in 2016”, and it returned me with a list of vocations, including Search Engine Optimization. I googled “What is SEO”, and then I realized I was not just writing the content but optimizing it for search engines as well. I was doing SEO all this time, and I didn’t know it.
I was using the right keywords, so I was getting all that traffic. I understood that Search Engine Optimization is simple. SEO is to produce the right content for the right audience with the right keywords. SEO matches user intent and makes it easy for users to find me and navigate through my website. So, I took many SEO courses online, got Google certifications, watched multiple videos, joined groups, learned from the influencers, read many articles, and started practicing it.
In this guide, I will share my experience and talk about everything SEO. This guide will answer what SEO is, how SEO works, how to optimize your website for SEO, and the importance of SEO, with some kickass SEO stats. In all honesty, Search Engine Optimization is complicated and ever-changing, but the principles are simple to grasp, and even a rudimentary understanding of SEO may greatly assist. This guide is to educate you on all things SEO. Just like me, gain knowledge here and practice it yourself to become the SEO expert.
So, What is Search Engine Optimization aka SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a process of optimizing websites or web pages for Search Engines such as Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, etc. It refers to improving your website’s visibility when users use search engines to look for services or products you provide. The higher your pages’ exposure in search results, the more inclined you are to draw attention and bring new and existing clients to your company.
How Does SEO Work?
Here is a breakdown of the typical Search Engine Optimization process:
Search Engine Crawls the Website
Search engines use bots to crawl all the pages on the website. They crawl every website on the internet to collect information and understand its niche and intent.
Indexing of the Website
Once all the websites are crawled, search engines put them in an index. An index is a massive pool of web pages of multiple niches, locations, languages, and products. It stores all the information and helps you find the right content (informative or promotional) against your search.
Search Engine Algorithms Rank the Pages
Then, using a myriad of ranking criteria or signals, search engine algorithms examine websites in the index to decide the position they should show in search results for a search term.
Re-Rank the Pages
This process of crawling, indexing, and ranking a website is not one time. Instead, it keeps repeating every second. If a user bounces back from a website, or the website experience is not good, or the website stops complying with the algorithms, or if the website didn’t update itself against the trends, it loses the ranking, and some other website takes its place.
How to Make SEO Work?
Now, since you know how Search Engine Optimization works, the next question is, how to make SEO work? I have divided the answer to this question into multiple parts as well. Here you go:
- Develop a mobile responsive website
- Build an easy-to-navigate website structure
- Optimize content with high-volume relevant keywords
- Add keyword-optimized meta tags
- Strengthen website internal-linking
- Be clear and concise with messaging
- Improve site load speed
- Work on web core vitals
- Add user-interactive buttons, forms, images, & videos
- Build relevant backlinks to the website
- Publish new content daily
- Update existing content periodically
- Build social media network
- Keep website updated according to the latest algorithms
- Audit website quarterly to fix errors
Why is SEO Important?
60% of the website traffic comes from Search Engines. But how does Search Engine Optimization help? The traffic coming from search engines could be paid traffic.
Yes, you can drive paid traffic to the search engines. However, we must make sure the traffic is organic as it is cost-effective, relevant, and converting.
To better persuade you of the importance of SEO. Here are a few reasonable answers to your why:
- It is free
- It brings high-quality traffic to the websites
- It boosts trust and credibility of the website
- It helps in brand positioning
- It supports paid search
- It is your 24/7 sales agent
- Its ROI is outstanding
- It reaches your entire targeted audience
- It enhances user experience
- It stays effective for a long-time
In short, if you are a company with low-budget, SEO is your number 1 go-to marketing strategy. And if you do not have budget constraints, SEO will enhance your brand images and bring that additional business for you. Paid marketing is short-lived, SEO is long-term. SEO is your ultimate stop if you want to sow today and reap the benefits forever.
SEO Success Stats
Nothing is more effective than numbers. Here is an infographic with some of the convincing SEO stats. The data is taken from my researched whitepaper, Ahrefs, Backlinko, & Impact Plus:
I believe these stats are good enough to convince any business – big or small, new or old, to try Search Engine Optimization.
Now, since you have made up your mind to do SEO for your website, why not hire me?
I provide the best SEO services nearby and online. Reach out to me, and let’s work on a plan that ensures success.
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