SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization is a strategy used in optimizing web pages and their contents to enhance their visibility in search engines, thereby making them more discoverable by users.
Taking for example an Ecommerce website, the higher the site ranks, the more the traffic your website gets from prospective customers, of which later on translates to more sales.
It is quite vital to stay informed on the SEO field. This is because SEO is actually not a one time process. It actually keeps on changing because search engine algorithms drive these changes.
Search Engines And How They Work
Simply put, a search engine is an online tool that allows users to search the internet for content.
Search Engines use algorithms to determine if your website content is a useful result to be rendered, for a particular search. Examples of search engines include Google, Bing and Yahoo.
They are more of deciders, and tend to determine what’s going to rank higher in search results and vice versa.
Each search engine has a different ranking algorithm. Google has the largest market share worldwide, hence it would be vital to consider optimizing your website for Google, which is what we will have as our focal point within this course.
Google uses three key steps to how search engines work:
- Crawling: Here, Google uses software programs known as spiders to discover new and updated content on the web.
- Indexing: Once the content is identified, the search engine will try to understand, organize and store the content.
- Ranking: Here, the search engine serves the most relevant content to the search query.
How Does SEO Work?
As an example, let’s say you have a blogging platform on WordPress SEO. You will try as much as possible to have it optimized so that it’s rendered on the first page as a first result, so that anyone who searches for the phrase “WordPress SEO” identifies it at least amongst the first results.
This is where SEO comes in.
SEO mainly works by convincing search engines that your website content is the best or rather most relevant result for the search queried.
Types Of SEO
It can be categorized into three main categories:
- Technical SEO: This involves improving the non-content elements of a website in order to improve its visibility in search engines. Some of the guidelines applied here would include:
-Structured data Implementation
-Website Speed optimization
-Website Security
- On-Page SEO: This entails strategies that have an impact on the content within your website. Some of the strategies involved here include:
-Optimizing page titles
-Publishing quality content with the correct formatting
-Internal linking - Off-Page SEO: This is a strategy that involves promoting your website elsewhere. Some of the techniques used here include:
-Link Building
-Publications
-Social Media Marketing