What is SEO

SEO is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of optimizing your web pages to make them reach a high position in the search results of Google and other search engines. SEO focuses on improving the rankings in the organic search results (non-paid search results).

In other words, SEO involves making certain changes to your website design and content that makes your site more attractive to a search engine. You do this in hopes that the search engine will display your website as a top result on the search engine results page.

Why Is SEO Important To You

SEO is important because it enables your post to land on the first page of Google for the targeted keyword. The main advantage against the rest or your traffic channels is that you get organic traffic.

If your post is ranking on the first page for a keyword that has thousands of search volume per month, you will get more targeted traffic which results in more sales and sign-ups, completely FREE.

How SEO works

In simple terms, SEO works by demonstrating to search engines that your content is the best result for the topic at hand.

Precisely how you do this depends on the search engine you’re optimizing for. If you want more organic traffic to your web pages, then you need to understand and cater to Google’s algorithm. If you want more video views, then it’s all about YouTube’s algorithm. Since each search engine has a different ranking algorithm, it’d be impossible to cover them all in this guide. So, going forward, we’ll focus on how to rank in the biggest search engine of them all: Google.

But firstly, let’s explain the basics about search engines.

What is a Search Engine?

A search engine is an online tool that searches for results in its database based on the search query (keyword) submitted by the internet user. The results are usually websites that semantically match with the search query.

Search engines find the results in their database, sort them and make an ordered list of these results based on the search algorithm. This list is generally called the search engine results page (SERP).

There are many search engines on the market, while the most widely used is Google. Many website browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Edge usually come with a default search engine set as a home page or starting page.

How Does A Search Engine Works?

If you want to search for something online, what you do?

Choose the search engine of you

Type a keyword on the search engine of your preference, hit search button and voilà;

a list of page results show up.

Have you ever wondered how these pages are relevant to your keywords?

How does a search engine works that bring all these relevant results?

All search engines have the same goal: To show the best, most relevant results to their users.

Actually a search engine works in three processes that decide which pages to show up on a search.

1. Crawling – Crawling is a process by which search engine bots scan a website and collect details about each page i.e. titles, images, keywords, other linked pages, etc. In this way, they are able to find new information from each website.
2. Indexing – After crawling websites, bots add these new pieces of information and pages on to the search engine results. This process is known as Indexing
3. Serving Result – This is the final step where a search engine decides which pages to show up for the search query. For this process, it considers more than 200 factors and serves the result to the user.

WHAT ARE THE CATEGORIES OF SEO?

Following are the four categories of SEO.

• White Hat SEO – White Hat SEO is an SEO technique where you follow all the guidelines of the search engine to index your content
• Black Hat SEO – Black Hat SEO is just the opposite of WHS where you don’t follow the guidelines of the search engine and try to index the content with shortcuts or doing things against search engine rules.
• Grey Hat SEO – When you partially follow both white hat and Black hat SEO to index the content.
• Negative SEO – Negative SEO is a method done for other websites or competitors to bring down their rankings in SERP. Like building un-natural links focusing on competitor’s website.

TYPES OF SEO

There are basically three types of SEO:

• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO
• Local SEO

1.   On-Page SEO

On Page SEO refers to the actions performed inside the website or at website back end. 

It relies on the following elements of your website i.e.

• Internal Linking
• Meta Tags
• Page Titles & Meta Descriptions
• Image Optimization
• Keyword Research
• Permalinks
• Quality of code
• Technical setup
• User-friendliness of the site
• Textual & visual content

While doing On-page SEO, all you need to concentrate on optimizing individual pages by targeting certain keywords. You can read more on On-Page SEO by clicking here.

2.   Off-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO refers to the search engine optimization practices performed outside the website.

It’s a method of creating website strength and gaining visitors by creating engagement on several online platforms.

Here are a few Off-Page SEO methods:

• Link Building
• Brand Mentions
• Social Media Posting
• Case Studies Releases
• Podcasts
• Forum Posting
• Videos
• Influencer Marketing
• Directory Submission

3.   Local SEO

Local SEO is a great way to market your local business online by optimizing your website to local customers for relevant local searches.

In simple words, if you own a restaurant in New York and you want to attract customers from New York online, then you need to perform Local SEO on your restaurant website for Local Searches.

So, if anyone searches keywords such as “New York Restaurant” or “Restaurants nearby”, your website shows up.

Here are a few Local SEO methods:

• Online directories and citations
• Claim and optimize Google My Business Account
• Online reviews
• Local structured data markup
• Blog posting based on local news
• Title and meta Description optimized for local geolocation