SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Full form or SEO stands for (Search Engine Optimization). SEO has become a very popular methodology that is used for improving the traffic of a website when it is searched in a search engine. It is based on many factors that are used to ultimately increase the visibility of the side. A website with high visibility will rank higher in the search results when a user looks for a certain kind of information.

What is SEO?

SEO is basically aimed at increasing the quantity and quality of the traffic of a website when some information is searched organically. It is used to target different search results such as image, video, academic search, text, product search, and searches based on any particular industry. When a user searches for information in Google, SEO gets into action by determining whether the website is easily accessible, has words that the people are using to look for information and is of high quality.

There are many factors that make a website visible to the user. Important SEO ranking factors are as follows:

• The site is accessible and secure
• The page loading speed
• Overall user experience
• Responsiveness in different devices
• Quality of the content
• Number and quality of the backlinks
• Page Authority, domain name, headings
• Encryption

There are other factors such as social signals where the content is shared more on different social media platforms and it positively affects the search rankings. For targeting locals customers, authentic business information such as name, address and phone number is important.

On-Page and Off-page SEO

Every Search Optimization Strategy is divided into two types – On Page SEO and Off Page SEO. Both are equally important for a successful SEO campaign.

On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO deals with the act of tweaking different sections for the website that can affect the search engine rankings. Some of the most important sections that website owners optimize are:

• Title tags – They are the most important tags in a website that describes the page content. The users see the title in organic and paid ads when they look for some information. Therefore, the target keywords must go in the title of the webpage.
• Headings – Every web page contains multiple headings tags starting from h1 to h6, h1 being the most important that describes the article or blog name. There should be only one h1 and the target keywords must be on this heading.
• Page loading speed – The pages loading speed is important for good user experience. A faster website will rank higher while searching. Steps, like removing ads, cleaning up the HTML/CSS code, check the browser cache, minimize the number of redirects, and optimizing the plug-ins, can help speed up the website.
• Content – The page content has to be useful and easy to read.
• URL structure – The URL structure has to be short, precise and must include the target keywords.
• Internal linking – The number of internal links that direct the user to quality sources improves the quality of the content. It also strengthens the keywords.

Good on page SEO make the crawlability of the site better and makes it easy to index the site by the search engines.

Off Page SEO

Off Page, SEO is aimed at improving the domain authority by obtaining links from other websites. It involves the actions taken externally that affect the website ranking within the search engines. This is achieved when other sites, notable personalities, and platforms promote the website and vouch for the quality of the content.

Some of the most popular ways to develop links to the website are:

• Creating valuable content that users would love to link
• Social media marketing of the website content
• E-mail marketing and reaching out to important companies or personalities of the specific filed
• Inviting prominent bloggers for guest blogging on your site
• Other brands and websites can be promoted that are less popular

How do Search Engines Work?

The steps that are taken by search engines are:

• When a search query is made, the search engine sets out is web crawler to look for relevant information, through an automated bot called spider. Its checks the images, content, titles, keywords, and links for the required information
• Every link on that page is collected and is added to a list. The web crawler visits the next page in this list and repeats the process
• All the sites are indexed in a database called Caffeine
• When a search is performed, this index is scanned by the search engine to provide relevant results to the users
• The search results are shown based on a Page Ranking algorithm. This algorithm determines the usefulness and popularity of the website. The greater is the number of links pointing back to the site, the higher will be its rank
• The results that appear higher in the results are considered the most useful

What is White Hat SEO?

White Hat SEO involves any action that improves the website search ranking and the quality of the website while staying within the rules of the search engine. Examples of this technique are as follows:

• Developing a site that is easy to navigate
• Creating valuable and unique content
• Responsiveness
• Fast page loading
• Meta tags that consist of keywords

White hat techniques are important to be verified by the advanced algorithms developed by Google. Failure to implement best practices will result in banning of the site. Such a scenario will lead to a significant drop in the site’s popularity and traffic.

What is Black Hat SEO?

Black Hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive practices to gain higher site traffic and page rankings. The most popular tactics include:

• Hidden links and texts
• Pages, domains and subdomains with duplicate content
• Article spinning
• Doorway pages
• Automated Google queries
• Link scheming
• Unavoidable redirects
• Phishing
• Sites containing trojans, viruses, and malware

Engaging in these practices will result in permanent banning for Google and other search engines.

Conclusion

The main aim of all the SEO techniques discussed above is to generate more traffic to the site and make it appear among the first five search results. While a combination of both On Page and Off Page SEO is important, they must follow the search engines terms and conditions.