What is SEO?
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search engines like Google and Yahoo provide their users with results like web pages and other content (usually videos). Those results are shown and ranked according to what the search engines consider to be more relevant and authoritative to their user’s searches. SEO improves the organic (unpaid) traffic visibility of your website on search engine results. It basically is a combination of techniques that help your website rank higher in search engines, making your site more visible to people who are looking for your service, brand or product.
The search engines look for keywords, title tags, internal links, domain age, site structure, image tags, visitor behavior and engagement, and much more in order to determine how highly ranked your site should be. Search engines measure different signals across the web constantly so they can figure out which websites people prefer the most. So understanding what the importance of the SEO is and the potentials it creates it can be crucial to the success of your business.
How important is SEO for your website?
If you have a webpage, blog or online store, your goal is to be placed in the top 5 spots on the returns page of the search engines. Over 90% of online users start their online journey with a search engine and research shows us that 75% of them do not click past the first page of results.
Users trust the search engines and being on the first page can massively increase your web’s site trust. Attracting new visitors to your page is the most important thing in order for your website to grow but converting those new visitors into regular readers is equally important. SEO is not only about search engines but can also help you improve the user experience. Above all SEO is a marketing method that can provide your site with web traffic, branding, credibility, visibility, customers and qualified leads. It will also help you with the competition because a search engine optimized web site is more likely to have more visitors and make more sales. SEO can help you with your social campaign too because it’s more likely people to promote your website on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social media networks if it appears on the first page of search results in Google or Yahoo. It’s the most cost-effective way to bring in new readers to your website because simply it’s free but it takes time and patience to get the right results. Success won’t happen overnight.
Search engines are constantly working to improve their technology to crawl the web and return better results to their users but they still need help and SEO can help you connect with thousands of visitors and share your content with them.The Internet is a very competitive place and the ones who understand how to use SEO correctly will have an advantage over their competitors. SEO isn’t only about making your website search engine-friendly but also making better for people too.
On-Page SEO
There are a few things you can optimize in your web page so you can rank higher and increase your traffic. The first, and most important, is content. When you write your content you should take into consideration the quality of your writing, keywords use, keyword research, image optimization, internal links and how often you publish.
The next thing you should consider optimize is HTML and more specifically the page title, meta description, text formatting and the use of subheads. You can also use an HTML sitemap for users to provide links to all of your site.
You should also make your site mobile–friendly and optimize your page speed. Make sure your site loads in less than 4 seconds.
Off-Page SEO
Another way to improve your ranking position is by using off-site SEO techniques and by that we mean building links. Back-links are a part of SEO and definitely, they are not everything but there are plenty of ways to get them. When it comes to links the most important is the quality and not the quantity. Links increase your ranking position if they are coming from trusted sites and you should probably avoid paid links. Prefer links that sound natural and are incorporated in your text. Page trust is also an important factor for Google and it mostly depends on your domain and page authority. Remember domain age matters so be patient.
Social media can also play a factor of your off-page SEO. Sharing your content through social media can be beneficial for your ranking position and it depends on the number of shares but of course the quality of the shares matters more.
Good content means everything with or without SEO
You probably have heard the phrase “content is king” by Bill Gates and it’s very true. SEO can’t help you if you don’t have good content and in that case, your chances of succeeding are minimum. If your content is good SEO will give your website an extra boost. Like any other marketing tool out there SEO will be useless if your product (content) is bad. Good content is still the most important factor in order to have a successful blog or business on the Internet and that simply means a lot of work and effort.
Bonus videos
If you want to find out how to use SEO in a better way click on the links below:
How to Install Google Analytics Using the All in One SEO Plugin
How-To” Install & Use the All-In-One SEO Plugin
If you have an experience with SEO you want to share with us or if you want to ask a question you are more than welcome to leave a comment below.
I like how you broke down SEO, It is very interesting and i learned a few things that I didn’t know. when you say domain age is important, does that mean how long you have it?
Hello Angela and thank you for your comment.As for your question about the domain age the short answer is yes but there is more than that. An important factor Google considers when they determine how to rank search engine results is the age of your domain but they don’t just mean how long you have owned a domain name but how long it has been since it was indexed by Google. Someone can buy a domain name that has been registered for years but if there is not a link to the domain and by that i mean an actual site indexed by Google then it’s the same as a domain you just bought.
Hi Nikos,
I wonder if you can help me:
I understand that providing quality content is priority as far as search engine rankings go and I am putting the work in to write 2 posts per week. I make my posts informative, engaging and helpful.
What I can’t seem to find the answer to is:
How many words should we be writing per post. What do the likes of Google class as a well written post. Are we talking 500, 1000, 2000 words?
I still haven’t found the answer to this.
Thanks for your time,
Simon.
Hello Simon and thank you for your comment. Now when it comes to the amount of words a post must have i don’t believe there is a specific number that guarantees instant success. In my opinion the debate between short post vs long post is like quick sand. The more you get into it the harder is to get out. I believe it depends on your personal writing style, your niche and above all what your audience expects from you. By that i mean if you are writing for example a review about a new laptop and you want to cover all the technical characteristics and your audience expects from you to inform them about all the details then your post could be 2000,3000 words or even more. But usually what people are looking for is useful information that are easy to read and not a massive amount of words. If i could you give you a number from my experience and from what i have seen in other blogs anything between 500 and 2000 words is a good post. Less than 300 words usually doesn’t look that good. Finally you could try to break down your long posts and create a series of posts. Lets say you have a 3000 word post. You could instead create 3 posts of 1000 words each. Plus it will be easier to edit them.