In this internet world, if you want success in your business or blog, then SEO can be a powerful tool for you. SEO is “Search Engine Optimization” which is a process that makes your website visible on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
SEO can also known as Organic Search !
In the organic section of such search results, the ranking of your site improves and you also know that the site which has a good ranking also gets more traffic and more traffic means more success. Therefore, SEO is a very important tool and process in blogging.
So today,I am going to explain to you the concept and the power of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). As you know that Google is the most popular search engine, so in this article, we will focus on SEO related to Google search engine.
I will clear many points related to SEO, such as What is SEO, why SEO is so important, Types of SEO, What is SEO ranking factors and what are the page tips for your blog.
So let’s start by knowing about SEO in detail. SEO optimizes your website so that Organic or unpaid traffic can come on it easily. It can also be understood in the way that SEO means to make some changes in the design and content of your website so that your website will be attractive and engaging on the search engine.
So there is a possibility that your post ranks among the top results of the search engine results page (SERP). It’s a fact that search engines always give the best user experience and service to their readers while appreciating the high-quality content.
For this, search engines always crawl different sites timely so as to fetch maximum quality and relevant content on a particular set of keywords. On SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), search engines also decide whether the site is easy to navigate and read. And those sites that prove to be user-friendly are given a high ranking on the search engine results page (SERP).
After fulfilling all these conditions of a search engine, SEO helps in getting a high ranking in search results.
Why we need SEO ?
To understand this, let’s use a basic example.
Let’s say, You’re a food blogger and you’re passionate about food. Let’s just say you have a blog on this. For this, you are working on a niche called “ice cream”. You have a lot of ice-cream recipes posted on your blog. You want to get traffic to your blog through these blog posts. Again you want people to read your blog.
But unfortunately, your blog is not ranking !
Subsequently, resulting in no traffic to your blog. Now, it’s a big question for you – why your blog post doesn’t appear at the top of organic rankings when people are typing “ice-cream” in Google’s search bar!
There may be a number of reasons for your blog posts that haven’t ranked in Google.
1.More Competition
Usually, the number one reason maybe there could be somebody else out there who is also passionate about ice cream and has been blogging for a long time than you. He/she might have richer content, more blog posts and more pages at his or her blog for Google to rank.
2.The other reason may be usage of improper keywords
Keyword usage in your content plays a bigger factor for your post to be ranked in Google.
Now it’s a question for you –
what kind of keywords do you want to rank for ?
how do we work with those keywords into the content ?
That’s really what we’re looking for when we talk about usage of keywords.
3.Poor link building practices
Really this matters a lot. The meaning of poor link-building practices is how our blogposts are being linked with each other and how do they link themselves to blog posts of other websites in this internet world.
So it’s all about link building .
Link building is also two types
i) Internal linking :
Here we are we linking from one blog post to another post present in the same blog.
ii) External linking:
Here we are linking our blog posts to other websites through a specific link present in our blog posts that attracts readers from other sites to ours. These links are generally high-quality links for a blog.
4.Slow Page load time
For example, you are running your blog post on WordPress.Now, your blog post isn’t loading fast enough. In this case, let’s think that you are Google. Would you really want to rank a website or blog post in this example to No.1 on Google if that particular page loaded very slow?
Of course, you wouldn’t. It’s just because when somebody clicks on that link in organic search and goes to your website. They will definitely have a bad experience because the page is going to load very slow.
In the same manner, Google also doesn’t want its users to have a bad experience. So that’s why web page load time is a critical factor for ranking. We need to make sure that our web pages load fast and people have a good experience when they go from their search engine to your website with a faster load time.
5.Spam Contents
Google doesn’t want any spam content. Google also doesn’t want any pop-ups or overbearing ads on the web page.
When people searching for something in particular, Let’s just say “ice cream recipes”. In this, they want to find a relevant website that has ice cream recipes. So that they will click on that link and read some good content about ice cream recipes. It’s that simple, right!
That’s really what Google is trying to create in their environment and that’s what you as an end-user also want.
Also as a website owner you want your users to have a good experience.
To overcome all the obstacles and to drive more traffics to your ice-cream website/blog, it’s very much necessary for your website to rank in Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
For this, there exists only one tool in the internet world and that is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If you learn it properly and practice it through your different blog posts, then you will definitely become an SEO Expert in no time. After that, your posts and your website/blogs will start rankings in Google SERPs. By that, you will welcome huge traffic to your sites while earning dollars through AdSense or through other affiliate programs.
Why SEO is so important ?
The followings are many reasons to know why SEO is so important for online success.
1.SEO provides high conversion ratio.
2.SEO is a passive cost effective method to promote one’s business/blog online.
3. SEO increases flow of free organic targeted visitors to your site.
4.SEO ensures more profits by providing high ranking for your site/blogposts in the SERP
5. SEO provides permanent and long-term results in comparison to highly paid advertisement techniques. 6.SEO helps you to stay ahead of your competitors. It’s because when your website is well optimized, then the traffic come to it will be more.
What is Ranking in SEO ?
Ranking in SEO means the position of your content/blogpost in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
The hashtag one ranking means – Your webpage will be shown at the first position of the 1st page of SERPs when people search for a particular term/keyword.
Google’s search quality ratings checks all the following factors to rank your post in SERPs.
a) Purpose of the page
b)Content Quality
c) Website Information
d) Website Reputation
e) User Interaction
f)Expertise
g) Authority and Credibility of the blog If your website meets all the above factors then it will be very easy for the website to get a high ranking in SERPs in Google.
Types of SEO
SEO is a wide concept. As a result, there are different kinds of SEOs.
A) Black Hat SEO
This type of SEO gives fast results at a very lost cost. This type generally takes shortcuts to reach the top in the SERPs while working against the Google Guidelines.
For better results, black hat SEO takes advantage of any loopholes or weakness present in the Google search algorithm for better ranking on such SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). By using this technique, the ranking of your website may fall in long run. Your site/blog may get banned on search results.
So its better to avoid Black Hat SEO.
Examples such SEO technique are like keyword stuffing , cloaking and Plagiarism .
B)White Hat SEO
This SEO type follows Google guidelines. But it often takes more time and cost to implement. Whereas the risk involved in this is extremely less or ZERO. It also supports long-lasting results.
Most reputed SEO and content marketing companies use white hat SEO tools and techniques for better risk-free results. Writing relevant and useful contents are the basics of white hat SEO tools.
C) Grey Hat SEO
As for the name, You must have understood that it is somewhere between black and white Hat SEO. Using this SEO tool can also be not considered safe because it can lead you towards demotion and penalty. Gathering paid reviews, making spinning content (article spinning) are included in Gray Hat SEO.
D) On Page SEO
This type focuses on the SEO of your website/blog and content/blog posts. The aim of such an SEO tool helps the user to find your content easily on the SERPs of any search engine. This means that searchers can easily find, use, and understand your content on the search engine. It also helps Google and visitors to decide whether your content is useful, unique, relevant, helpful, or not.
Meta text, matter descriptions, heading (H1, H2, etc), paragraph, images, and URLs are the basis of on-page SEO tools.
E) Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is completely managed outside of your website and contributes to its ranking. This has nothing to do with your blog.
Social Media Marketing, Influencer Marketing ,Guest Blogging comes under this.
Link building is also an example of Off-page SEO and it plays a very important role in getting traffic and ranking your site.
To bring traffic to your website, you have to get good links from the relevant websites continuously. For this, you have to build good links. Link building is such a strategy in which hyperlinks from other websites are placed on your website. This allows users to easily navigate between different pages on the Internet. The search engine is also able to easily crawl the pages of your website.
Its very important to have strong social skills ,excellent communication and creativity.
F) Negative SEO
Negative SEO comes into the picture when somebody wants to create any damage to his / her competitor’s website while ensuring bringing their own sites/blogs up in search results. This type of SEO is basically done using both Black Hat and Grey Hat SEO tools.
Hacking the website of your competitor, sending thousands of spam links to a competitor’s website, copying the content, and distributing it everywhere on the Internet comes under Negative SEO.
G) Technical SEO
This type of SEO makes an easy visit for Crawlers and other website visitors while doing server optimization. This affects the conversion rate, lead Generation, and Sales activity of your site/blog positively. So with this help, you can bring your business to a higher rank in search results.
Internal linking and site maps are proper examples of Technical SEO.
Essential SEO Tools
While discussing the types of SEOs, you should also know the names of some essential SEO tools which can help in getting a higher ranking to your website in SERPs.
These are
Google Analytics – A traffic analysis tool
KWFinder by Mangools – A Keyword research tool
Linkminer by Mangools – A Backlink analyst tool
SERPWatcher by Mangool – A Rank tracker
SEO and search engines are closely related to each other. So before knowing SEO ranking factors, let’s know how a search engine works.
How Search Engine Works ?
Search engines works flawlessly with the help of the following three major components.
i)Web Crawlers,
ii)Database and
iii)Search interfaces
The search engine uses software to search information related to it in the database by placing keywords in the index. This software component is called a Web Crawler or Spider Or Bot. When the crawler finds those pages, then the search engine shows the relevant web pages as the search results.
By clicking on any of the search results, the user can see it. Thus on Google search engine we easily get answer for every questions that we search at search bar.
Let’s go ahead and know about the 8 Most Important SEO Ranking Factors.
Most Important SEO Ranking Factors
1) Site Security
It means the use of “HTTPS encryption” in a site.
Sites that use “HTTPS encryption” have an SSL certificate that makes a secure connection between the user and the website.
2) Mobile Friendliness
This means how your website looks and performs on mobile devices. Mobile-friendly sites provide a good user experience. So it’s important for your site to be mobile-friendly.
3) Site Crawlability
This is a very important SEO factor. Through this, search engines are able to scan a website and review its content. After this, it is decided how the ranking of the site should be.
4) Page Load Speed
It is also a ranking factor related to the user experience. You must have experienced that the user experience of slow loading sites is also bad. Therefore, the page load speed of your site should be fast.
5) User Engagement
This is also a very important aspect of SEO ranking factor.
How many posts are being clicked on a particular site, how long the users stayed on it and what percent people left after seeing the first page of the site — All these factors affect the User Engagement.
And to increase user engagement, you should
i)use high quality website design and graphics
ii)use internal links and SEO meta tags and
iii)optimize your site for placement at featured Snippet of SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages)
Featured Snippets are short text that appears in the box that appears at the top of the Google search result. So as to give a quick answer to the question of any searcher.
6) Backlink Profile
Backlinks tell the search engine that your website/blog is Credible. So to rank your site/blog, you must have high-quality backlinks.
For this, one can use guest posting and digital PR as link building strategy and which is again a part off-page SEO.
Note: Digital PR (Importance)
Improves SEO Ranking.
Grows website traffic
Builds Brand
Generate leads
Increase Sales
7) Consistent Business Listing
Business Listing is the local SEO ranking factor and sometimes it is also called a citation. You must have understood that search engines give high rank only to such brands which are more credible and trustworthy. The website/blog which looks more established online, the more the search engine will increase its search visibility.
That’s why Consistent Business Listing also becomes an important SEO ranking factor. So to get a high ranking for your business, you should also create a “Google My Business Page” and make your business profiles at industry-related directories too.
8) High quality content
This SEO ranking factor can boost your user engagement and can improve your ranking on search engines. In SEO rankings, “content” has a bigger role.
So you should prepare the content keeping these points in mind. To create the best SEO content, write for targeted people using targeted keywords — find out what kind of information/help that your user needs.
For this, you have to do audience research, keyword research, and topic research. You have to focus on its clarity, organization, logic, and simplicity to make your content readable. Use more visuals and images in your content. This is because posts having more visuals get 94% more views than content without images.
Try to give a deep knowledge of the topic in your article. Work on fresh ideas and include only authentic information in your content.
Now tell me if you have also heard the name of SEM apart from SEO (Search Engine optimization).
What is SEM ? How it is different from SEO ?
I think, now, you are confused between these two. If so, then let’s talk a little bit about the similarities and differences between these two.
Both are unique elements of “Search Marketing”.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
SEM – Search Engine Marketing
a) Similarities between SEO and SEM
Both of these help you to bring your brand to search results. Both of them bring more traffic to your website/blog, target specific keywords and both of them require continuous optimization.
b) Difference between SEO and SEM
While talking about the differences between them,
i) SEO search results appear as organic results.
Your post can be shown at Featured Snippets under SEO Sear result
SEO search result comes after SEM of any SERPs.
ii) SEM search results start as paid ads.
Ad extensions can be included under SEM search results. Phone numbers or additional links can be shown in the SEM search result.
SEM search result comes at the top of any SERPs.
You do not have to pay for SEO results whereas in SEM results you have to pay for every click. In such a situation, you cannot choose your target audience for SEO Search, while in SEM Search, a target audience can be specified or selected.
SEO strategy may take a lot of time to implement while through SEM techniques, we can reach our target audience in just a few clicks. In this case of SEO Technique, it takes more time for testing, whereas in the case of SEM, paid ads can be turned on or off immediately at any point in time. In addition to this, at SEM technique, we can revise our ad copy to different areas. New audiences can be targeted and landing page content can also be changed in SEM.
SEM is better than SEO while we are doing any testing. Whereas in SEO, even though the time takes to get a result may be more, but the weightage is always given to “value” than “time” and its results are long-lasting.
While the SEM remains active as long as you pay.
If you reach the top in organic search results, then the click-through rate (CTR) of SEO will be high in comparison to the CTR of SEM.
But if your site is not able to get in the top results and shows on the second page or at the very bottom, then you can get more likes through SDM.
Great post on the most important topic – SEO