A website is only successful if it gets visited by users. The reason nearly every webmaster or website owner wants their site to be popular is that _______. Attaining that goal, however, is far from easy.
We want our sites to have a lot of traffic to start generating revenue, naturally. The higher the traffic for online stores and information sites, the greater the chance for sales and advertisements, respectively. We want traffic to our website to come mostly from Google search or another search engine. Traffic from Google Ads is okay, but it’s not the main source we want.
How can we ensure that our website will get enough traffic? The promotion of websites in search engines is a complicated process that requires the involvement of an SEO specialist or even an entire team.
What is SEO?
SEO is the process of optimizing a website for Google search with the goal of earning higher web traffic levels. The main purpose of SEO is to make it easier and faster for users to find the information they need. This information should be as relevant to users’ interests as possible.
An SEO expert’s goal is to improve a website so that it meets the standards set by search engines. It is easier for the target audience to find your site, service, product, or content when it is well organized. This makes it more likely that they will take the required action. This main verb can be anything that requires some kind of action. For example, buying, subscribing or becoming a regular customer.
In order to gain a greater understanding of this topic, let’s examine a search engine results page. It has two sections: Paid and Organic. An SEO expert’s job is to help your site get as high of a ranking as possible, ideally at the very top of the organic results section. This would result in more users visiting your site.
Why is SEO important?
Even though Google’s ad units are taking up more space, users still rely primarily on organic results. Only 19% of users click on ads while searching
Also, 65% of users choose the TOP-10 websites
This shows how important it is to optimize your site for search engines if you want to get traffic from people finding your site organically.
Advantages and disadvantages of Search Engine Optimization
Advantages
1. Cost-effectiveness
Of this traffic, we then determine which users were interested in our services and products and interacted with our site We determine which users were interested in our services and products based on the traffic that was attracted to our site. These are generally the people who are ready to take the required action. This tells us that by making a site more visible, SEO can help increase a company’s income.
2. Long-term effects
The positive effects of optimization will last much longer than if you were to pay for contextual advertising, where your website would no longer be visible as soon as you stopped making payments. If a site’s pages rank highly after all the necessary improvements have been made, they will likely retain that position unless the search engines update their rules, and requirements, or content of even higher quality is posted elsewhere.
3. Relationship of trust with clients
Although users may not trust advertisements, they are still likely to choose sites at the top of the search results. After making changes to optimize a website for users, it becomes more user-friendly and creates a better impression on customers. This makes users more likely to come back, buy more things, and tell other people about the site.
Disadvantages
1. Protracted execution and delayed achievement of results
You shouldn’t expect quick results from SEO like you would from contextual advertising. The first noticeable effect of the drug is usually not seen until 3-4 months after taking it.
2. No guarantees
No specialist can give a 100% guarantee in SEO. Even a well-optimized website may be adversely affected if the requirements of search engines change. Since more and more people are using smartphones to access the internet, it has become necessary to focus on mobile website versions. Search engines have updated their algorithms to take this into account. However, experts who are qualified know how to adjust their promotion strategies to the conditions that are always changing.
3. The need for complex technical revisions
In order to achieve the goal, it may be necessary to make a lot of changes to the site and implement them in a timely manner. You can improve your website in many ways, including code optimization for faster loading speeds, and better visuals to improve conversion rates.
How does SEO work?
What are the objectives of search engines? The goal of the company is to provide users with appropriate answers. In order for your site to be considered relevant by search engines, you must optimize your content for SEO.
Rankings
When you search for something on Google, the algorithms select the most relevant pages that will answer your query as best as possible. Then the algorithms arrange the documents in the appropriate order, which is known as ranking. The ranking of a page by a search algorithm is based on how authoritative, high-quality, and complete the page is.
Okay, let’s summarize. To provide the users with the right information, the search engines analyze:
- The relevance of a page for the search query and whether it can satisfy it;
- The authority of a page, its quality, and completeness.
This is not all the information that search engine algorithms check, but rather a simple example to better understand the process. There is no complete list of what affects the ranking of websites; however, some believe that factors such as website design, content, and inbound links may play a role. Google itself holds this information in secret. SEO specialists are continuously analyzing different sites to see how the search results change. They have access to practical information about some ranking factors.
Google has been trying to improve site content by checking for E-A-T. This gives us more guidance on how to improve our site.
Visibility
The visibility of a website is determined by the number of times it appears in search results for a given query. If a site has low search visibility, it means that it isn’t being shown in the results for searches that would be relevant to potential new customers.
What factors affect a search?
When we use the Google search box, a lot of things are happening behind the scenes. To determine the results for each query, Google takes into account more than 200 different factors. There are many different paths to optimization, though no one knows all of the factors.
Google’s excellent Inside Search interactive resource offers a small glimpse into the process:
We will now look at a few of the main factors that Google looks at when it assesses your search.
1. Your question
Google’s first priority is understanding the user’s query. The search engine uses a technology called Knowledge Graph to help it understand the nature of what you are looking for. It then decides whether to provide a definition, a list, a map, or something else that will best satisfy your needs.
As you type a search into Google, you may have noticed that it guesses what you’re looking for and corrects your spelling if you make a mistake.
It also tries hard to give you what you want quickly. If you type “timer 30 minutes” into Google, it will create a timer for you right from the search results.
If you check the status of a flight while signing into Google with your Gmail address, the search engine will look through your mail to give you an update on the flight.
Search engines are always trying to find ways to more accurately and quickly predict what we are looking for and what we need.
2. Your location
A search engine not only takes into account the nature of your question but also the location you are asking the question from. For example, if I type “pizza” into Google, it will show me a list of pizza places near me instead of a Wikipedia entry about the history of pizza.
To be visible to local customers, businesses need to put extra effort into their SEO, such as optimizing their Google Places pages.
3. Who created it
Google likes rewarding real people who write great content. One way Google establishes trustworthiness is through Google Authorship, which gives a special designation to authors who are verified through Google+. If you see a small photo next to a piece of content in your search results, this means that the author of that content has been verified.
4. Your friends
Search engines are increasingly valuing an individual’s social network as a factor. Social search is a way to find content created by your friends and contacts. This includes things like restaurant reviews, blog posts, photos, and more.
5. How it get shared
Search engines use social sharing as a signal to determine the quality level of a piece of content, not just to serve you personalized results.
Google’s search algorithm takes into account social actions, such as Facebook shares and Google “+1s”, when determining which results to display for a given search.
6. Your device
A search engine needs to be able to tell whether a user is on a computer, tablet, or mobile phone in order to deliver appropriate results.
How do your needs change when using different devices? When you’re using a laptop, you might want to find something enjoyable to read. If you’re using your phone, you might need a phone number right away, or a way to quickly compare prices.
Different types of mobile searches require different types of results.
The factors mentioned in the text mean that the search results for a specific question will be different for different people, depending on factors such as who they know, where they are, and what type of device they are using.
But what does an SEO Expert do?
What does SEO do? They understand and study the many factors that affect search results.
The goal of every SEO is to make a website more visible and accessible to people. However, the methods they use to achieve this goal can differ significantly.
There are some general things people tend to do when they are trying to improve their website’s ranking in search engines. An SEO:
Optimizes the site
The first step in creating an effective SEO strategy is to focus on the technical aspects of your website. An SEO’s job is to ensure a website’s content is easy for Google to find and index. Ensuring that your site has a sitemap that Google can find is one way to optimize your site. Additionally, making sure your site loads quickly and analyzing your site’s design and architecture are other ways to optimize your site to work well for users. Many SEO specialists will do a technical audit to find a list of problems with a website.
Researches and optimizes keywords
The words you type into a search engine to find what you’re looking for are called keywords. The company might want to be known for keywords related to its product, such as “tennis shoes” or “sneakers.” Additionally, the company might want to be known for specific brands, such as Nike or Reebok.
SEOs target specific keywords for a given site after conducting keyword research. After choosing relevant keywords, they ensure the website uses them frequently and in appropriate locations, a process called keyword optimization. This graphic from DataDial provides an overview of where to place keywords for optimum results.
Builds links
The main element that search engines like Google used to determine which stuff was the best on the web was links.
A website that is respected and trusted by Google links to your site is a good indication that your site is also reputable. Google will rank your website higher if it is a trusted and quality website. This is because if multiple trusted websites link to your website, Google will assume that your website is also trustworthy.
This means that SEO professionals spend a lot of time working on getting links in a process called link building. There are many different ways to build links, from simply asking for a link to writing a guest post. Again, DataDial breaks it down.
Conclusion
In this article, we covered the basic terms and stages of SEO. I will be honest with you, the search engine optimization techniques are quite extensive. I will gradually introduce you to them in the following articles, explaining them in more detail.
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