How does SEO work?
Before we dive into SEO and learn more about how SEO works, let’s first understand what exactly SEO is.
As we all know, the digital landscape is evolving faster than ever and thus creates an urgent and immediate need for all online businesses to not only embrace but also take advantage of the growing online trends and digital economy. Although there are many digital marketing strategies to get business online, but the most effective and sustainable one is the organic method, part of which is SEO or search engine optimization.
Search engine optimization helps search engines find websites, blogs or web pages for related keywords. SEO is also commonly known as “organic”, “natural”, “unpaid” or “earned” results.
How exactly does a search engine work?
There are two key steps primarily responsible for search engine results. They are the following:
Crawling: Search engine robots crawl all web pages linked to a website. Major search engines like Google crawl millions of pages daily.
Indexing: After getting all the pages through the crawl process, these pages are indexed in the database for future retrieval. The indexing process is extremely important. The higher the number of indexed pages of your websites, the higher the chances of improving your rankings. Although, it depends on the strategies you formulate.
The main search engines update their algorithm periodically and there are several factors that influence these results directly or indirectly. It is recommended to update the sitemaps
How does SEO work and what are the best tips to improve SEO?
Search engine optimization depends on a number of factors that influence rankings directly or indirectly. We would find out all those factors in this article. Here are the key factors:
Delighted – It is one of the most important SEO factors. Anyone who has heard of digital marketing must have also heard that “content is king”. It’s true. On numerous occasions Google has said that it rewards sites with great content. So if you want to outsmart other websites, when it comes to SEO, you might want to focus on your content as well. In the wish content section, there are some important factors to consider such as readability, using H1/H2 as appropriate, and controlling the use of passive and repetitive sentences.
On-Page SEO – If you want to outsmart your rivals, you need to work on your site’s on-page SEO. Get the fundamentals right. Work carefully the meta description and keywords. Focus on content and internal links. Add relevant headlines, optimize all images (add alt tag), infuse a combination of H1, H2 headings and subheadings, add LSI keywords by controlling keyword density. The length/description should be according to the difficulty of the keyword. The higher the difficulty, the more detailed your content needs to be to get a top score and make sure you get the basics right.
backlinks – Generating quality backlinks is extremely important to increase the domain authority and page authority of your website. Some of your efforts should also be focused on building enough high-quality backlinks. Most of this should be accomplished by creating compelling content because the better content you produce, the better the chances that people will link to your website. Stick to relevance because if the links are irrelevant then it would do more harm than good when it comes to Google rankings. It has to be generated through ethical methods with only the right types of backlinks (white hat strategies).
website speed (Page Load Time) and User Experience: Google rewards sites that are faster. It focuses on user participation more than anything else. What it means is that the fundamentals of the site must be intact. Look at your site speed (page load time). This became clear in the latest speed update from Google. You need to adjust/arrange accordingly. You should also work on user engagement metrics such as clicks in/out of total impressions. Focus on bounce rate, pageviews, session, and all of these metrics to understand in great detail. Simply put “the faster the site, the better the results”.
mobile friendliness – As we discussed in the previous part of the article, search engines update their algorithms regularly and according to the latest Google algorithm update, it was confirmed that the more friendly the site is to mobile users, the higher its pages will rank. Therefore, Mobile Friendly affects your SEO efforts. Check if your site is mobile friendly or not. If not, that should be your first priority.
domain age, URL and Authority: The age of the website, the URL and its DA/PA (Domain Authority and Page Authority) are important factors of SEO. DA/PA would improve with a number of strategies: backlinks, internal links, content quality.
image optimization – It is advisable to optimize all the images on your site, as it improves your chances. Add relevant titles and alt tags to all images. It adds a lot of value when it comes to image search results.
social cues – Links or social signals cannot be overlooked when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization) strategies. These are authority signals that not only increase your visibility but also generate links in the forms of social signals. One can share their site on social media platforms to increase signals. The more, the better.
structured data – Focus on the structure of your web pages, as they must be completely aligned. Update the sitemap. The bottom line is that you need to think from your user’s point of view, as we know that user engagement cannot be overlooked.
Conclusion: Now, we know how SEO works and what are the key factors that influence or accelerate your organic digital marketing efforts. Keep them in mind and work on these parameters individually to outsmart others and rank your site or your clients’ site at the top of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Obviously, SEO is one of the most effective strategies to capitalize on the growing digital economy and it also brings sustainable results as long as you follow the right strategies and keep the basics intact. It is a continuous process and requires constant efforts.
