Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is hugely profitable for many businesses.
Ranking your business Organically (not with Paid Ads) in Google's Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) can be for your business as well.
On this page, I look to cover some of the basics of SEO to give you an idea of what can be done to grow your business online with Organic SEO.
If you would like to get a Free SEO Analysis ($1,000 value), then submit a discovery form today.
As a website owner, being on the first page of Google and the other search engines for search phrases your target market is searching can be a huge boon to revenue. The whole inclusive process of promoting a website to bring increased numbers of visitors is known as Search Engine optimization (SEO).
This guide will give you a good base of understanding of SEO 101, right from making a site search engine friendly to discovering the phrases and terms that increase traffic, from marketing the unique selling point of your website to building links.
If you would like to get a Free SEO Analysis talking about the ideas in this article specific to your situation, submit a discovery form today
Why SEO is important?
Search engines like – Google, Yahoo and Bing direct web traffic to your website. The users use them to navigate the websites whether they are looking for some specific services, information, or products.
These search engines can be considered pathways that lead the users to the websites that can provide for their needs. These search engines provide the websites with targeted visitors and this gives the sites extraordinary exposure, publicity and revenue.
Through with the improved technology, the search engines are getting smarter day by day, yet the significance of SEO can be overlooked. SEO can boost the ranking of your website and will bring hundreds, thousands, and more visitors and customers to it.
How Search Engines Work!
Search engines mainly perform these two tasks –
Crawling and Indexing: Every search engine has ‘spiders’ or ‘crawlers’. They are the automated robots and can reach billions of documents that are interconnected through links. These documents can be anything from a web page to JPG (a picture) to PDF to any other file.
The internet users expect to get instant results when they search the web through these search engines. In order to provide the exact answers in the fastest way, the search engines construct data centers throughout the world that hold thousands of machines to process the large mass of information.
When the search engines find the pages, they decode them and store them in huge hard drives so that they can easily be evoked when they are needed again for a search inquiry.
Giving Answers: When a user performs a search, the search engine goes through billions of documents and displays the most relevant and useful results. It also ranks these results in order of utility or importance.
To ensure the relevancy of the content, the engines look for the right words on the pages. But there are many other factors that influence this relevancy (these factors will be discussed further).
All major search engines determine the importance of a website or information through its popularity. The more popular a page, site or document is, the more useful it will be. In order to interpret the popularity, the search engines use many mathematical equations or algorithms that are comprised of hundreds of ranking factors.
Tips to get Better Rankings in Search Engines
Though the algorithm of the search engines may seem very complex and impenetrable but the
engines themselves give some information on how to get better rankings in their engines. While doing SEO, these tips can help in a great way to influence both – ‘relevance’ and ‘importance’ in search engines –
Tips from Bing engineers at Microsoft –
- Make sure that the link and content don’t get hidden from crawlers due to rich media like – Ajax, JavaScript or Adobe Flash player.
- Place a Keyword rich URL structure.
- Provide the websites with relevant and engaging content regularly.
- The text that is needed to be indexed should not be displayed inside the images.
Tips from Google engineers –
- Place a keyword rich, human-friendly and descriptive URL and only one version of a URL for a document.
- To address duplicate content, use rel=”canonical” or 301 redirects element.
- Use, informative, useful and relevant content.
- ALT attributes and <title> elements should be accurate and descriptive.
- Create the sites that have text links and clear hierarchy.
- There should be minimum one static text link and every page should be reachable from it.
- The pages on the sites should be created mainly for the visitors and not for the search engines.
- Refrain from “cloaking” in which the content provided to the search engines is different from the content that is displayed to the users.
How are the Search Engines Used?
The users use search engines, when they experience the need for a solution, answer or information. They type a string of words (known as ‘query’ or ‘keyword’) into a small box. Generally, the queries that are performed by the users are of these three types –
- Navigational Queries – “GO” – These queries are performed, when the users look for specific online destinations, for example – looking for the homepage of ATSG, Twitter or LinkedIn etc.
- Action Queries – “DO” – They are also called transactional queries, examples of such queries include booking a show ticket, watching a video, listening to a song etc.
- Informational Queries – “KNOW” – These queries are performed when the user looks for some specific information, such as – the best multiplex in Los Angeles, name of the actor etc.
When the users type the search queries into the search box, they are directed to the sites that contain the relevant information. The search engines are primarily responsible to provide the users with results that can satisfy their queries.
If your site is not able to provide the users with what they are looking for or when they can’t complete a task, they have a bad experience. The search engines will be able to measure that you didn’t give the searcher what he or she wanted and, as a result, over time your site will go down in the rankings.
On the other hand, when the users feel happy and satisfied with your website and get a positive experience, it increases the popularity of your site. As a result the search engines find your site important and thus you get better rankings.
That’s why it is said that you should always create a website that provides a great user experience. Don’t just create your site for the search engines. When you do this, you get better visibility and marketing through search engines.
Further, the importance of web searches and search engines can be described as follows –
- Search drives a remarkable amount of online and offline financial activity.
- Search is getting more popular every year.
- Higher rankings exponentially increase the visibility of a website.
- If the website gets listed at the top of the results, it seems to the users trustworthy and this result in a great amount of traffic.
You can definitely achieve these goals by understanding Search Engine Optimization and performing it properly on your website. This will make your site search engine friendly and then you will have a definite advantage in customers and visitors.
If you would like to get a Free SEO Analysis talking about the ideas in this article specific to your situation, submit a discovery form today.
