{Beginners Guide} What is SEO and How Does it Work?
Willing to learn what is SEO and how does it work? Check this simple guide to know in depth about SEO.
If you are running a digital marketing agency or started a new digital marketing agency then the first question, you will get from your client that what is SEO and how does it work? It is obvious that any new user will ask such type of question because most of the people have a perception that taking the business online only means building a website. But there is much more than that. Businesses need to perform after building a website that is where the need of SEO comes.
Even though you are new to SEO still you can start making some positive moves by learning and implementing the best SEO strategies. This article will help you to learn what is SEO and how does it work?
What is SEO?
The full form of SEO is Search Engine Optimization. It is used to bring a website on top in search engine. In short, whenever a user searches for the query in search engine, he gets the results for that specific query.
Those displayed results are top websites that the search engine has considered to satisfy the needs of users.
The optimization part of SEO comprises the list of steps that you can use to take your website on top in search engine. However, this list of steps consists of many techniques that you need to follow and wait patiently to experience the best performance in terms of traffic and leads.
At the initial stage, you will find SEO tough, time-consuming and delay in results. On contrary, SEO is challenging but easy to implement.
How does SEO Work?
As I have explained before, whenever any user searches for a query on a search engine, the displayed results comprise of websites that user can consider as a solution. Additionally, those websites have a higher domain authority. For example, you have searched what is digital marketing?
A search engine will show many results and those top results are implementing best SEO techniques and that is why they are on top and appear in your query.
This is because search engine uses advanced crawlers to gain information from every website with an aim to deliver the best content to the end users.
Also Check: How to Increase Your Website Performance?
Moreover, it develops an index for all websites to compare with the algorithm that is prepared by Google for better SEO practice.
Let’s have a look at 8 Important Factors of SEO
1. Domain Authority
Domain Authority is also known as (DA) that indicates the trust of your domain that you have developed over the time with backlinks. Likewise, the older your domain, the higher is its domain authority. Furthermore, it is important to use relevant keywords as per the domain name and niche. For example, rankraft.com is more likely to rank for keywords that consists of SEO, digital marketing, keywords ranking, content marketing, etc. Being a digital marketing expert, I have also experienced that shorter domains are ranking well than longer domains.
2. Keywords
SEO starts with keywords and ends with keywords. This is what, I know about the importance of keywords in SEO. Google offers tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs that is used by many businesses to know the exact keywords of their niche. Being a newbie, you can target long or medium tail keywords. Later, you can start focusing on short or competitive keywords. For example, Rankraft will rank for this keyword “how to do search engine optimization” easily in comparison to the short keyword “what is SEO”?
3. Relevancy and Context
Gone are the days when the search engine was very lenient and its algorithm comprised of easy steps to do SEO. Now, search engines are smarter than ever before. They quickly identify the difference between a relevant page and copied page. They also differentiate whether the website is about digital marketing or web designing. Therefore, writing content on your niche will help search engines and users to follow your website or blog for solution purpose.
4. Inbound and Outbound links
Building backlinks for website or blog is an ultimate task in SEO. However, building genuine backlinks in your niche will increase your link juice and score of SEO. Furthermore, building inbound links is like icing on the cake because those links are most favoured, if they are pointing from reputed and relevant sources.
5. Site Speed
This is another important factor that Google considers after backlinks. If your website is loading quickly then search engines and users will give top priority to your website. In the fast solution era, don’t miss the chance to lose potential customers by not offering an instant solution. Therefore, make sure that your website is loading quickly and use cache plugins like W3 Total Cache or CDN for quick content delivery.
6. Clean and Responsive Design
Websites that are well optimized are most preferred by search engines. If you are using WordPress then it is 100% sure that your website is mobile-friendly and responsive. In short, all CMSs offer the mobile-friendly and responsive feature that by default make your website responsive for all types of devices. In case, you’re not a WordPress user then learn how to make use of the accelerated mobile pages’ project defined by Google.
7. URL Structure
Try to keep your URL short and simple, so that, it would be better for humans and search engines to recognize what your post is all about. Let’s check an example of SEO friendly URLs:
From above-mentioned screen short, you can see that how to design SEO friendly URL for your website.
8. Content-Length Matters a lot
Yes, it does matters a lot because the ranking of the article is dependent upon the word count. In short, if your topic is “What is SEO?” and “How does it work?” Then you should cover each and every aspect of SEO and its working in your article. The search engine gives priority to long-form content and those articles are ranking on top in search engine. Being a writer, if you are writing a long form article then you are learning a lot and helping others also to learn on the same topic.
Which Tools You Can Use For SEO?
The list of tools in SEO is never ending and every tool has its own advantage and disadvantage. It totally depends upon the users’ feedback because every user uses a different tool for their businesses. You can check reviews of any particular tool before buying for your business. But there are a few popular tools that every business is using and you can also use them. Some of the tools are mentioned below:
1) Keyword Planner to know the most searched keywords in your niche.
2) Google Analytics to monitor website traffic, keywords, campaign, etc.
3) Google Webmaster to know the website performance.
4) Pingdom to check website and page speed.
If you are a WordPress user then you will get many plugins that you can install as per your demand.
Why You Should Do SEO?
If you are happy with your physical business then it’s Ok! But if you aim to take your business online then you need a website, if the website is there then you are required to do SEO. SEO is needed to make website optimized and SEO friendly for the search engine. In the online world, you are “ZERO”, if you miss SEO for your business.
Is SEO Better than PPC (Pay Per Click)?
PPC (Pay Per Click) is one of the strategies used in digital marketing. SEO and PPC have their own uniqueness and usages. SEO is used to gain organic traffic and PPC is used to gain paid traffic on the website. You as a beginner should focus on SEO instead of PPC. At the initial stage, avoid investing in PPC. SEO is a complete free solution that is used by all types of businesses, if you experience good traffic then later you can think of investing in PPC.
Do All Search Engines Except These SEO Tips?
You might think that all these above-mentioned tips are for the Google search engine but, those are applicable for other search engines also like Bing, Yahoo and Yandex, etc.
Alternative To SEO?
You have to do SEO all the time but simultaneously you can also invest in social media ads like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram paid ads. Affiliate marketing is also one way to drive traffic on the websites.
Final Words
SEO concept is very vast and you can’t learn it in one day. It takes years to learn and implement the best SEO strategies to get the best output online. Implement all these listed tips and have some patience because after some time your business is going to shine in search engine results.