One of the most popular questions among businesses that are just starting to build their website is- “What is SEO”?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps you make a few improvements or positive changes so that your company website can rank higher and gain more visibility on search engines. Simply knowing some of the basics of SEO will help you better understand how it impacts your business and the measures you need to take to stay in good form.

 

What is SEO? How does it work?

 

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process of increasing a site’s visibility so that it can gain organic, or un-paid traffic from the search engine results. So, making a few changes to your web design and content helps make your website more attractive to a search engine. So, you leverage SEO in hopes that it will help your website rank at the top of the first result page of a search engine.

 

Search engine optimization can get very complicated when you consider all the different factors which contribute to the ranking of your website. However, the necessary process is quite simple to understand.
Every search engine wants to provide not only high quality but most relevant search engine results so that the searcher gets what he/she is looking for. Hence, search engines scan and crawl into different sites to evaluate the quality of content and what the site is all about. Doing so helps the engine deliver relevant and high-quality results to a searcher who is searching for specific topics or keywords.

 

Search engines will scan a site to determine how easy it is to read and navigate. Hence, a search engine rewards user-friendly websites with higher rankings.

 

Factors that influence SEO

 

1. Content marketing
Every company must consider the quality of content pieces that they put up on their website. The more quality content you put up, the higher a search engine will rank your pages. Similarly, more engaging and useful content will make visitors want to spend more time on your website and even make purchases.

 

Quality content is effective in attracting search engines and building connections with site visitors as well. One of the best-kept secrets to drawing the attention of search engines and human site visitors is to create content on a variety of different types. Make sure the pieces are well written and are streamlined to your target demographic.

 

Content types that boost SEO rankings:

 

• Social media content
• How-to guides and tutorials
• Blog posts and articles
• Videos and audio recordings
• E-books

One of the significant things to look at while creating content is the usage of SEO keywords and phrases. The keywords and phrases are relevant words that a search engine user might type while searching for results. So, ensure your products and services are written in bold within your content.

 

You may further improve the chances of content visibility if you create content around the keywords and phrases. Also, the freshness of your content matters a great deal. You have a greater chance of experiencing a higher ranking if your organization keeps posting new content regularly on your website.

 

However, there are other alternatives to keeping your content fresh. You may choose to rewrite your content to make it more relevant, update posts, or add new information or statistics over a period.

 

2. On-page and off-page SEO

 

The on-page SEO factors are the things that you have complete control over. These factors can be improved over time through the best practice of SEO. Such factors go much deeper than Content marketing and deal with your site’s HTML.

 

A few of the factors include:

 

• Title tag– It tells the search engine what your page is about. The tag should not be more than 70 words and should consist of your business name, and the keyword your content focuses on.

 

• Meta Description– A meta description tells search engines and human visitors a little more about your webpage. It should include keywords and tell visitors what your content is about.

 

• Trust– You may build quality backlinks from trustworthy sites that have authority. It is an excellent way to show a search engine that your website is legitimate and can be trusted by visitors.
Finally, social signals such as likes and shares help boost SEO rankings. However, you would want to look for quality shares from influencers. So, the more quality content you publish, the more likes and shares you will get.