There are over 1.5 billion websites on the internet. But do you ever wonder why only a few websites appear in the top results when you search for something? Hi everyone this is P S Kathait and today I am going to share what is SEO and how works and the importance of SEO.
As per the data of internetlivestats.com, there are over 1.5 billion websites in the world. But whenever you search for something there are always a few websites that show up at the top of search results. Did you ever wonder why this happen? It is all because of SEO.
What is SEO or Search Engine Optimization?
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimisation. It is the process of optimizing your website or the page in such a way that it ranks higher and higher in the search results of a search engine. But that’s the technical definition. In simple terms, it is the process of creating your website and the content on it in such a way that whenever someone searches for a query in your niche or category, you show up in the top results.
Three ways to drive traffic;
Let's say you write an article or a post on your website or blog. Now you have three ways to drive visitors to your article or post.
- The first one is by sharing it on social media. Now if you are someone with a huge social following you can drive tons of visitors to your post. But if you are not having a huge number of following then you are hardly going to get a few visitors on your blog.
- The second method to drive traffic to your blog is by running ads. But again if you want to drive a good amount of traffic through ads, then you have to burn a good amount of your investment also. You want a good amount of traffic but also don't want to spend any money. So what's the solution?
The solution is the third method which is SEO where search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo send traffic to your website. But here we are going to discuss Google only.
Because it processes more than 3.5 billion searches every single day. And with 92% of the market share worldwide, Google dominates the search engine world. Now just imagine how much free traffic you can get to your website or blog if you can rank in the top results of Google.
Important points about SEO;
But with all this good stuff, there’s something about SEO which you should put in your mind. SEO is a time taking process. With all this competition you cannot expect to rank in the top results within a few days. It can take weeks or months to pop at the top results of search engines. For a highly competitive keyword, it can take even years. SEO is a very vast topic and it is not practically possible to discuss it in a single article. ( Click here )
How does SEO work?
Google has over 200 different factors to decide whether to rank or not a particular piece of content. You start off by submitting a Sitemap of your website in Google Search Console, which was earlier known as Google Webmaster.
What is a sitemap?
Whenever you read a book, you will see that at the ending or at the beginning of the book there’s an index. A sitemap is just like an index for your website. Through these sitemaps, Google indexes your website in its database.
What is Google Search Console?
It is a tool or a web service by Google which allows you to index your website in Google’s database. Through the Google Search Console, you are able to learn and understand why your website is doing good or bad in the organic results. Similar to Google Search Console, Bing has Bing Webmaster and Yahoo has Yahoo Webmaster. After submitting the sitemap, Google starts collecting data about your website with the help of crawlers.
What are crawlers?
As the names suggest, these are the bots that crawl your website and collect the data about your website. And through this data, Google’s algorithm decides if your content should be on top or not.
But the surprising thing is, no one knows exactly how does Google’s algorithm work. According to searchengineland.com, 500 to600 updates are made in Google’s algorithm every year. That means at least one update every day. Some of these are very major changes while some are so small that people don’t even notice.
For Google, users always come first. So, if your content is good enough to satisfy the queries and demands of the users, your rank will automatically start climbing up. But again, it’s a slow process and you need to be patient to see the results.
Different types of SEO
Now let’s read the different types of SEO. SEO can be categorized into three different types: On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, and Technical SEO. Again each of them is a huge topic in itself. So, in the article video, we will just see each of them in short.
On-Page SEO
You optimize the content of your webpage or website to rank higher in search results. Basically, it contains the factors which you can change in order to rank higher.
For example;
- Optimizing the meta title, meta description, headings, URL, content on the page, and some other factors. All of these are in your control.
So, you take actions and optimize them, like putting keywords in the meta tags and URL. All of these changes are done on the website or webpage that’s why it is called On-Page SEO.
Off-page SEO
It includes the external factors and actions which affect your rankings in the search results.
For example;
- The backlinks to your website or webpage. Or the social signals like how many people are sharing your content. Backlinks are a very important factor in SEO.
But, you cannot control if someone wants to link back to your website or not. Similarly, you cannot control how many people will share your content. And since all these are the factors that are not in your control and are taken outside the website, it is called Off-Page SEO.
Technical SEO
As you have already guessed by the name, it contains all the technical parts of SEO. Technical SEO includes factors like page speed, sitemaps, errors like broken links, etc. There are a lot of other factors in Technical SEO which we will cover in another article. ( Click here to know more )
If we go through the approach, we can classify SEO into another 3 types which are: White Hat SEO, Black Hat SEO, and Gray Hat SEO. I am going to share a couple of lines about each of them.
White Hat SEO
If you don’t violate the rules and guidelines of the search engine in order to rank higher. Or if you practice all the ethical techniques and maintain the integrity of your website, then it is White Hat SEO.
Black Hat SEO
And opposite to white hat SEO, if you are breaking the rules of the search engines. Or if you are trying to please the algorithm by violating the terms and conditions, it is called Black Hat SEO.
In short, in Black Hat SEO, instead of focusing on the human audience, you are focusing on the algorithm. Keyword stuffing is an example of Black Hat SEO.
I will never suggest you to practice black hat techniques. Because it’s going to hurt you in the long run. Sooner or later it will hurt your brand and business. And you may also end up getting your website penalized.
Gray Hat SEO
It is something which is neither a white hat nor a black hat. For example, using Private Blogging Networks or doing link exchanges. You cannot surely say if these are going to violate the terms or not. But still, you should avoid practicing black hat and gray hat SEO techniques. All this is about SEO but still, a big question remains unanswered.
Why SEO is important?
Why you should use SEO as a strategy to drive traffic to your website? If I start on the importance of SEO, This Article will never end. So I will just cover some important points on why SEO is important.
- The first point is in the definition of SEO. It helps your website to rank higher and higher in search results. When done properly, you can drive a ton of visitors to your website or blog.
- Second, it builds trust and credibility in your brand or business. You can get in the top results by running ads also. But if you are getting in the search results organically, it will boost the trust and credibility of your brand.
- And also SEO is relatively cheap. You may hire agencies and digital marketers for SEO for your website. But still, it’s cheaper as your getting a lot of visitors to your website organically and you are not paying search engines anything for that.
SEO also impacts the buying cycle. This is the time of the internet and before buying anything, people tend to check the reviews. It can also help you boost your revenue.
Let’s say you have a clothing shop. Now if someone searches ‘clothing shops near me and you rank on the top.
So, these were some points from my side to help you understand what is SEO and how works, and the importance of SEO. That was all for today’s article. I hope it helped you.
