SEO(Search Engine Optimization)
(The surest means of enhancing your website visibility)
Table of contents
No headings in the article.
INTRODUCTION
If you are having a problem understanding what SEO is all about and how it works, then this piece is for you. This article covers the basics of SEO its related terms, how it works, why it is important, and how you can improve your website visibility with it. Let's get into the real thing but first I will use an analogy to explain it before going into the meaning.
Analogy: A million people trying to fit into a small room.
Imagine that a million people are trying to fit into a small room that can house at most 20 persons. Impossible, right? Given the high competition, certain conditions were devised which are used to select candidates that stand out from the crowd and allowed access to the room. In this analogy, a million people here refer to hundreds of millions of websites or blogs pitching for visibility. The room is the 10 blue links in Google or the high-ranked website. The conditions are the SEO ranking factors that have to be efficiently optimized before a website can rank above the others. I hope this analogy gives an insight/overview of what SEO is. Let's now dive into the meaning of SEO.
WHAT THEN IS SEO?
SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization." A search engine is a web-based tool that enables users to te information on the world wide web. The most popular one with over 70% of users is Google. Others are; Yahoo, YouTube, Amazon, Bing, etc. Optimization means making a process as good as possible in some defined sense. Bringing everything together, SEO means improving or enhancing a site's visibility by increasing its traffic through organic ranking.
Organic here means getting traffic to your website naturally and it is non-paid. You don't have to pay any search engine to rank higher, you simply earn it by the quality and quantity of your content. Good news, it is non-paid🙂. Bad news, it is highly competitive and has to be earned😔. But not to worry, once all that is required is done then you stand a greater chance of rolling in the eyeballs of many. You might want to know if there's anything like inorganic or paid ranking. Yes, there is, and going by the name it is simply a paid ranking that appears on top or underneath results and is ranked by the amount paid and that is the key difference between paid and non-paid ranking. SEM(Search Engine Marketing) combines both paid and non-paid to gain visibility.
Since Google is the most popularly known and used search engine, this article will focus on it.
HOW SEARCH ENGINE WORKS: Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking.
The search engine's working principle will lead us to learn new terms. As previously stated, search engines respond to people's questions in order of relevancy.
They accomplish this by thoroughly searching every piece of web content, evaluating it using hundreds of factors, and ranking it according to its relevance. The primary functions of Search engines are listed and briefly explained below.
Crawling: This is the process by which search engines discover web pages. But before a website can be crawled, it has to be visible to search engines if not the website won't show up in SERP(Search Engine Results Page). After discovering your site, the next thing search engines do is index it. That brings us to indexing.
Indexing is the process by which search engines store and organize contents found during the crawling process. Once your site gets passed through this stage, then it is on the verge of rolling in the eyeballs of many.
Ranking: At this stage hundreds of factors are considered before your website can appear on the 10 blue links(the format search engines used to display search results). 10 blue links are usually the first ten sites that appear when one searches. The ranking is ordered based on relevancy.
SEARCH ENGINE RANKING FACTORS
As stated earlier, search engines use hundreds of factors in their algorithm. Hey!, no need to be scared. You do not need to master all the factors to rank high on Google. Proper usage and implementation of a few factors with a bigger impact can do the magic. Some important factors are discussed below.
1. High quality of content: Here, content that is thorough, relevant, and serves the need of the users are considered to have a high quality and rank high on Google. Long, well-structured, and detailed contents usually rank higher than shorter content.
2. Crawlable and indexable page: To be able to rank on Google, your website must be able to be crawled and indexed by Google.
3. Number of backlinks: Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website. The more backlinks a page or website has, the higher it will rank in search engines.
4. Loading speed: This is the speed at which your website loads. This is a significant factor in ranking a website because no user wants to wait for too long for a website to load. A minute delay in load speed can be very dangerous to your website.
5. Keyword usage/optimization: This factor requires that you use the keyword you want to rank for on your page. Caution needs to be taken here not to overdo it as it can lead to "keyword stuffing" which can sabotage your efforts. Including variations of your main keyword is a smart way of optimizing SEO.
6. Mobile friendliness/mobile optimized site: This refers to how appealing and responsive your website or page is across all devices. Poor user experience can lead to a downgrade in the ranks of your page/site. People are more likely to share and link to a user-friendly site and this helps in SEO ranking.
7. Search intent match: Here, Google tries to relate how well your content matches a user's need. If your site provides answers needed by searchers, then it is more likely to rank higher.
Ranking factors can also serve for how to increase your website visibility.
WHY SEO IS IMPORTANT
By the definition of SEO, we can point out its importance. A website or page that is efficiently optimized through SEO generates a lot of traffic. This enhanced visibility means more organic clicks and organic clicks mean more conversion rate.
SEO TOOLS AND SOFTWARE
Tools are needed to optimize the content on Google. These tools help in keyword research and link building. I won't be going into details but I will drop links to them should you want to do more research on them. The most popular ones are;
FINAL THOUGHTS
SEO is a broad term that cannot be fully covered in one piece. This piece tries to cover just the basics. SEO is important as it helps generate traffic to your website or page and this can help your website become very successful.
Let me know your thoughts about this article in the comment section and if there is any other thing you would like to know about SEO kindly leave it below as I am likely to feature it in my next article.