What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
What does SEO involve? SEO involves executing a series of techniques to improve the visibility and ranking of a website and its content on search engine result pages (SERPs).
Search engines like Google use complex algorithms to determine the relevance and quality of a website when providing search results. SEO involves various techniques and strategies to align a website with these algorithms and achieve higher search rankings.
How is SEO different from SEM and PPC?
The ultimate goal of SEM, PPC, and SEO is to drive traffic to a website.
| SEM | PPC | SEO | |
| Full term | Search Engine Marketing | Pay-per-click | Search engine optimization |
| Form | Combines both SEO and PPC to drive traffic through organic and paid searches | Drives traffic through paid advertising | Drives organic traffic from search engines |
Read more: What is SEM? Learn About an Essential Tool in Marketing
What is the role of SEO?
The objective of SEO is to drive organic search traffic, which accounts for 53% of website visits. SEO plays a crucial role in delivering compelling business results.
When users want to go somewhere, do something, seek information, or purchase a product, their journey typically begins with a search. Nowadays, searches can be conducted on various platforms, such as familiar search engines (Google, Microsoft Bing, etc.) or social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, etc.).
Search often serves as the primary source of website traffic, making it essential to ensure that search engines are friendly to any platform where users may find your business.
This means businesses must improve their visibility and search rankings to outshine competitors, which can positively impact revenue.
SEO is also vital for businesses because search result pages are highly competitive and include paid search ads.
SEO provides sustainable and practical results compared to paid ads. Moreover, search engine optimization helps businesses build trust with the public. Websites with quality, trustworthy content that offers valuable information are often highly rated by search engines.
Types of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO involves three main types of optimization:
Technical SEO
This type of SEO focuses on optimizing the technical aspects of a website, such as page load speed, mobile-friendliness, and usability.
On-site SEO
On-site SEO involves optimizing website content for both users and search engines. This means optimizing the content readers see and what search engines detect in your content (code).
To optimize content for readers, consider the following:
- Share relevant topics (from your experience or expertise)
- Include keywords that users search for
- Provide unique content
- Use clear, grammatically correct language without spelling errors
- Incorporate images, videos, and audio
- Ensure an easy-to-read and understandable layout
For search engine optimization, remember these key elements:
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- Heading tags
- Image ALT tags
Off-site SEO
Off-site SEO refers to activities that build brand assets, increase brand recognition, and create customer demand.
Linking to a website is considered an essential activity in off-site SEO. When your business website receives links from related, authoritative, and trustworthy sites, it demonstrates the quality and credibility of shared content.
Ways to obtain valuable links include:
- Building a strong brand
- Creating compelling content marketing strategies
- Marketing and optimizing social media
- And more.
Read More: Top 7 Most Popular Digital Marketing Tools
How to Effectively Implement SEO Activities
Understanding How SEO Works
First, you need to understand how search engines operate to create appropriate content that achieves good visibility.
When discussing traditional search engines like Google, it’s important to consider four distinct stages of search:
- Crawling: Search engines typically use crawlers to discover web pages by following links and using location data.
- Rendering: The page’s interface uses HTML, JavaScript, and CSS information.
- Indexing: The search engine analyzes the content and metadata from the pages it discovers and then adds them to its database.
- Ranking: Complex algorithms consider various factors to rank a page.
However, it’s important to note that search engine optimization on Google differs from that on social media.
Conducting Research Activities
When doing SEO, you need to conduct specific research activities to enhance SEO performance, such as:
- Detailed research on the target audience (who they are, their pain points, etc.)
- We are conducting keyword research to identify keywords with high search trends and opportunities for high rankings.
- Researching competitors (how much traffic they have, the number of high-ranking keywords they possess, etc.)
- Researching opportunities or challenges that may hinder the website’s success in increasing organic traffic.
- Analyzing search engine results pages (SERPs) to better understand user intent, thereby creating high-quality content that has the potential to rank high on SERPs.
Planning SEO
To ensure effective SEO, you need to develop a specific execution plan. Your plan should include:
- Clear objectives
- Defining KPIs and specific metrics
- Deciding which projects will be created and executed (internally, externally, or a combination)
- Coordinating and working with internal and external departments
- Choosing the execution tools/technology
- Recruiting and training personnel
- Setting up the budget
- Measuring and reporting results
- Documenting important project details
Turning the Plan into Specific Actions
Once you have a plan, the next step is to turn it into specific actions, such as implementing new content, finding ways to increase time spent on the page, removing or updating old/low-quality content, etc.
Monitoring and Addressing Limitations
Regularly monitoring SEO results will help you promptly identify limitations so that you can find timely solutions to improve SEO performance.
Analyzing, Evaluating, and Reporting Results
You cannot improve SEO if you do not measure it. You can use various tools to measure SEO effectiveness, such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, etc.
Learn more: Marketing Strategies that Lead to Outstanding Brand Success
Conclusion
These are the insights on the topic ‘What is SEO?‘ that Glints wants to share with you. We hope that this article has helped you gain a better understanding of this important marketing strategy, as well as how to implement an effective SEO plan.
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