Search engine optimization AKA SEO is the process of organically increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to one’s website or landing page from search engines. At its core, SEO is nothing but a systematic process of ranking one’s website in the unpaid section (organic listing) on search engine result pages. As a leading SEO agency in Mumbai, we have created this comprehensive guide that is sure to help you get started with everything you need to know and learn about search engine optimization. So, keep reading!
Why is SEO so important?
If you’re still contemplating as to why SEO is given so much importance, hear me out. Did you know, people conduct more than 2.2 million searches on Google per day. Let alone other search engines. Now, with such a vast daily search volume, imagine if your business shows up on the first page of Google in your specific niche. As you know, 90% of the time, we tend to click on the results that appear on the first page of Google while conducting a search. If your website is SEO friendly, this would only mean that if anyone searches for a product/ service related to your offerings and if your site is on the first page, you get more clicks and traffic. While optimizing your website for SEO, you need to consider two factors that drive it- ranking and visibility. Now that you are aware of the importance of SEO, in order to rank your site, you need to know how search engines work.
How do search engines work?
There is a famous quote by Mr.Phil Frost, “Successful SEO is not about tricking Google. It’s about PARTNERING with Google to provide the best search results for Google’s users.” Many of the times, we have this notion that SEO is all about tricking Google to get your site rank higher. However, we cannot escape the fact that Google’s rule of thumb while considering ranking is to organize all the information online and present it so that the “best” is at the top of the search results, in other words, only highly relevant content to the searcher’s results will be displayed. So, here’s how search engines work.
Search engines function by taking into account a list of known URLs, which then go to the scheduler. The job of the scheduler is to decide when to crawl each URL. The crawled pages then go-ahead to the parser where vital information is extracted and indexed. Parsed links go to the scheduler, which prioritizes their crawling and re-crawling.
When you search for something, search engines return matching pages, and algorithms rank them by order of their relevance. You will be shocked to know that this entire process is done with a fraction of seconds. Don’t go by my word, try it out and see for yourself. Go onto Google and conduct a random search. Just below the ‘All’ section, you will see the amount of time it took to calculate the ‘x’ number of results.
How to kick start SEO?
There are 3 main components of a strong SEO strategy. They are as follows: technical website setup, content, and links.
1. Technical Setup- Now that you know SEO is nothing but ranking relevant pages organically on search engines, in order for your site to rank, three factors are a must. Firstly search engines need to find your page on the web. Secondly, your page should have relevant keywords/ content that tells the search engine what exactly your page comprises of and finally, it needs to index your page so as to consider displaying your website for relevant queries. A few more factors that fall under technical setup/ on-site optimizations are as follows:
- Website navigation and links
- Optimize images on the site so the load properly and fast
- Add simple and short URL
- Check for dead links or broken URLs
- Decrease load time. Use Google’s Page Speed Insights to check your score.
- List all your sites URLs in a sitemap file. This allows for better crawling and indexing.
- Eliminate the use of duplicate content on your site
2. Content- The very fact why search engines exist is because of content. Content may be in various formats such as blogs, articles, product recommendations, videos, and much more. Regardless of the content types, the more content you publish, the higher are your visibility chances to show up on the first page of result pages. Think about this, content is what consumers are looking for while conducting a search. If your site is above to provide the exact answer to a consumer’s query, higher are your chances for greater search visibility. Factors that search algorithms look for in terms of content are as follows:
- Page length and structure
- Keywords on your page
- Conduct on-page optimization
- Add H tags on your site
- Insert keywords in your page’s URL
- Add a keyword in between the first 100 words
- Add meta-titles and meta-description tags
- Add ALT tags for images to let the search engine know what the image is about
3. Links- If you have read this blog till here, you will know that no website/ web page will rank without two factors namely, relevance and authority. The previous two components that are technical setup and content focus on increasing page relevancy. Links, on the other hand, help highlight a page’s authority. Google’s algorithm considers many factors, but the most vital is the number of websites that reference, or link, to the information. To better understand, consider each link like a vote in that website’s favor telling Google that it deserves to rank high in the search results. The more links you generate from third-party sites, the higher are your ranking chances. Here are the following ways you can up your SEO game with the help of links.
- Generate quality backlinks to your site
- Get backlinks from good quality sites
- Generate backlinks from sites specific to your niche
- Develop a link building strategy and follow it
- Conduct regular competitive analysis
How to monitor and track if SEO is working?
Unlike any other strategy, it is pivotal to monitor and track if your efforts are reaping the desired outcomes or not. Don’t know where to start and what to track? Here are the most common KPIs ( key performance indicators) you should consider paying attention to:
- Organic site traffic
- Keywords rankings
- CTR or click-through rate
- Bounce back rate (visitor that visit your site and bounce back)
- Organic conversion rates
- The number of indexed pages and more…
