Search Engine Optimization?
What is it all about?
It looks like some kind of fancy tech geeks' term.
Not at all.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps us to gain organic traffic via increasing our visibility in SERP by optimizing a website for the search engines and user needs. Got it? Let's get started.
Table of Contents:
- Introduction to SEO
Introduction to SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a powerful way to increase the visibility of your business. At its most basic, SEO optimization is about increasing the rankings of your website. At its most complex, SEO optimization is all about managing the programming, content, visibility and success of a website. It helps you to know what your customers want and helps them find you on the search results page.
Three main components of SEO are:
- Users
- Search Engine
- Search Engine Optimizer (it's me)
Users:
Who use the internet to find relevant information for a query.
Search Engines:
A software that attracts huge number of users by providing relevant information for user search queries and generate revenue from paid search and ads.
Search Engine Optimizer:
Who bring their content to the top of search engines to reach users.
SEO marketing is one aspect in the digital marketing world and it is also considered as the king of the digital scape. Above all the digital marketing channels like email, search engine marketing, content marketing, search engine optimization provides the highest ROI (return on investment) for the businesses.
So for businesses and people who wants to make their mark online we will help you to educate what works in SEO optimization and best SEO practices in 2021.
When it comes to learning the best practice to follow is start from basics because without being strong in foundation if you build something on it, do you think it will stand? Nope, I would say. So keeping this in mind, we will learn step by step from basics.
SEO Terms and Definition
All right. Now, when you ask me what should be the first thing I should learn? I would say, the nuances. When I say nuances it is about the technical terms that we use in a domain on a day-to-day basis. Shall we start? Let's go.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP):
SERP stands for search engine results page. This is the page that display the results for a query you searched for. SERP is the first line of communication between the search engine and the user which is you.
For example, I'm searching for a query, "what is the color of the sky?". SERP will give you results like this:
I hope, now you got it right. Ok. Let's move to the next one.
Pay Per Click (PPC):
PPC refers to the method of purchasing paid advertising in the search results. The advertisers pay per click, rather than per impression. It is identified by the terms:
- Ad
- Sponsored
Algorithm:
An algorithm is a mathematical computation of multiple factors; it helps ascribe importance or relevance to a large volume of information. The algorithm produces high-quality and relevant results that help the customers.
Keywords:
Keywords are the words that are entered into the search bar by the searcher in order to fetch information. To perform search engine optimization, understand and analyze the keywords searched by people.
Impression:
The term impression refers to the number of times the ad or result has been viewed.
Click:
Click is nothing but when a users click a link.
Some of the ways to measure user activity are:
- Clicks
- Click-through
- Click-through rate
Visitor:
A visitor is someone who visits your website through:
Social media
Typing the website URL directly
Search results
Engagement:
Engagement refers to the condition where a visitor interacts with you or your website. The activities of the visitor are measurable through:
- Clicks
- Views
- Downloads
- Interactions
- Responses
- Read
Referral:
Referral is the source of the visitor. A visitor can visit your website through:
- Search Engine
- Links
- Ads
- Email
- Social Media
Analyzing the source helps in determining the seo marketing and other marketing channels that are most effective at driving visitors to websites.
Bounce:
Bounce refers to the number of visitors who click on a result, view a page, and leave immediately. This helps in deriving the bounce rate.
Analyzing the bounce rate helps in determining the flaws within a website. Thus, it helps in improving the website and ensuring the relevance of specific terms.
How Search Engines Work?
Search engines are always evolving and changing their results page to provide a better search experience to their users. As a search engine optimizer, you need to focus on the competitive landscape of SERPs and identify opportunities to increase your visibility.
Next up, we will see how many types of result do search engines actually provides us. Let's dig a bit deeeep!
Paid Advertising:
The Search Engine results page is divided into various sections. Paid Advertising is one of the sections. Paid Advertisements are influenced by paid positioning through Google Ads.
Organic Results:
Organic results are not influenced by the paid model and are produced by the search engine’s algorithm.
Organic results are the natural or free results. It takes some work and investment in order to get listings and get highly ranked. It is not exactly free, but you don’t have to pay every time someone clicks on it. This leads to the use of certain types of words to describe the search engine’s algorithmic results, which can be seo optimized.
Images in SERPs:
Images may appear in the search results based on the type of information being searched.
Videos in SERPs:
Similarly, videos may also appear in the search results based on the type of search.
Google tries to provide answers to your questions on the results page to keep you on the page. If the answer is provided directly on the SERP, people will use the search engine more often.
The goal of the search engine is to:
- Keep people on the results page
- Answer questions
- Provide information upfront
Products in SERPs:
Products can be added in the SERPs and can show up based on specific searches. Users can directly go to the advertiser’s site by clicking on the product ads.
Recipes in SERPs:
When you search for a recipe, it is provided on the SERP with pictures and ratings.
The format of the recipes ideally includes:
- List of ingredients
- Instructions to prepare
- Instructions to serve
The simple format makes it easy for the search engine to look at the information, group it accordingly, and present it in the search results.
Up-to-date Information:
The search results change based on the recent or up-to-date information.
Up-to-date information includes:
- Latest news
- Sports
- Weather
- Movies and show time
- Restaurant reservations
- Travel plans
Regionalization:
Regionalized results are displayed based on the searcher’s location. The displayed results will be relevant to the searcher’s location.
- Searched for Zoo in South California.
- Searched for Zoo in New York.
Local Businesses in SERPs:
You can also look for information about a local business close to your location.
The search results for local businesses will include:
- Maps
- Addresses
- Operating Hours
- Menu
- Directions
- Phone
- Reservations
- Pictures
Local businesses can improve their visibility by taking advantage of the opportunities that search engines provide. Business listings in search engines are free. All you have to do is claim your listing and develop additional content.
The Search Engine Index (Crawl, Index, Algorithm)
Have you wondered how search engines provide you the results you exactly wanted?
Let's see how search engines nail their job.
- Take information from your website?
- Republish information online?
- Apply the search engine algorithm?
The Index
The index is a database of all the files and documents found and copied by the search engines. Search engines make copies of web pages, PDFs, files, documents, images, etc. that are on your web page.
A search engine makes digital copies of all the digital documents it finds online and stores them in a database. You can actually see what information search engines have for your site by looking at the snippets of information.
Spidering
How do search engines download all of this information to their database?
The term Spidering refers to search engines looking for additional information, new information, or updating existing information in their database.
A spider is a software program that follows links on web pages to new web pages. By following links, search engines find new and updated documents and update the database based on this information. Spiders are also known as:
- Indexing
- Bots
- Crawlers
Spidering a Website
Search engines find new websites and pages by following links from pages that already exist in the database. The best way to get search engines to find your brand new website is by providing a link in a page that is already in the search engine index.
When a spider is sent, the content of the index is crawled again. The crawler finds new information that links to the new website. The structure of your website is critical. Understand the programming and the link between the pages.
The Search Engine Index
The website content is available on the database. The algorithm is then applied to these documents.
If your website cannot be crawled or indexed by search engines, it will not appear in the search results, even if the domain name is used. The algorithm is then applied to these documents. The links to and on your website should allow search engines to crawl and index the content in their databases.
The Search Engine Algorithm
The search engine algorithm is a mathematical approach to assess hundreds of millions of documents for relevancy and importance.The search engine looks for trusted sources, relevancy, and influence and adds them to the algorithm.
The algorithm is based on human factors because searchers are a search engine’s primary customers. The main goal of search engines is to please the searchers and return results that they want.
How is the Algorithm Calculated?
The algorithm is calculated based on human judgment. The factors that determine the relevancy of a document are:
- Intent
- Judgement
- Credibility
- Structure
- Accessibility
Algorithm Factors
- Keywords - What words are used? How do they relate to each other?
- Page Content - What is the page and the website about?
- Relevance - How relevant is this website to the searcher’s questions?
- Page Layout - How does the website present the information and how is the content structured?
- Importance - How often is this website linked to?
- Authority - Who else cites this page/site as a resource?
Note for you guys! Attention please: Search engines are trying to think like humans and present results that help the customers. So whatever you do, do it for human not for the search engines.
So, here comes the bonus information for you guys. Sharpen your focus, it is directly from Google.
Google Guidelines
The first Google guidelines were published to create pages primarily for users and not for search engines. Refer to the Google guidelines.
Create pages that humans will find:
- Informative
- Helpful
- Relevant
Ensure that all pages on the site can be reached by a link from another findable page.
Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site content actually includes those words.
Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. Don’t fake relevancy to increase the search ranking. Google enforces quality of their results. Violation of the accepted practices can result in penalization or complete ban from the search engine index.
Finally, we have arrived to end. Wait! end? Not really. So, please stay tuned for next part of this blog, which will be arriving soooon. If you like our blog please follow us, express your thoughts on how it was, or do we have to improve it more for you in the comments. Take care guys. Stay Healthy! Stay Safe!
