What is SEO and how does it work?

Most of us have very scarce knowledge of SEO. We just use the term in our conversations and presentations to sound cool. But as a marketer, it is very important to understand this complex concept. It is hard to cope up with the latest SEO techniques as it is undergoing constant evolution.

In this article, we have tried to discuss about the several aspects of SEO. After reading this, you will have a tight grip on the concept. You will be able to implement SEO for your own business benefits.

So, let us get started with a brief introduction.

What is SEO?

The full form of SEO is Search Engine Optimisation, which is partially a misnomer. Reading the word, most people think that they have to optimise the search engine. Or they start optimising their site for the Google. But none of these acts are fruitful. Because, the main aim of SEO is to deliver best visitor experience.

When a visitor searches something on Google, the search engine presents a list of relevant searches. You apply SEO to take your site ranking to the top of this page. That means you have to modify your content and titles so that they are more context relevant. Most importantly, your content has to solve the customer queries.

If your content fulfils these two criteria, search engine would drag your ranking to the top.

This boils down to the fact that in SEO, you optimise a site for the audience! Because they are going to buy your products. Search engine is just a medium to filter and serve quality content. You don’t really optimise for Google as the term denotes.

How SEO works?

This is the next fundamental concept you should know. There are three processes which comprise SEO- Crawling, Indexing and Ranking.

In the first step, Google has to notice your site and updated content. So, it sends crawlers or spiders to detect the fresh content on internet. Now, after the new info has been collected, they are indexed in the directory of Google.

At the end, ranking takes place when a user searches for a keyword. Google immediately looks into the index and grabs the most relevant content. Then the websites are ranked according to their value.

The important thing is what are the factors influencing your site’s rank. Mainly three factors have been identified –

Relevance – Does your content contain the searched keyword in similar way?

Site authority- From all the relevant pages, top rank is given to the page having high domain authority.

User signals- The site which most people have found valuable has greater engagement. So, they capture the top rank.

The first and foremost trick to excel in SEO is to make your content damn relevant! Here are the ways to do this-

• Keyword Research-

This research will help you know what your audience is searching on Google. Then only you can mould your content to suit their needs. You will also know the search volume and competition per keywords. It implies how many frequently a keyword is being searched.

How to start applying SEO?

The saviour tactic in SEO is long tail keywords. Unlike short keywords, they have higher buying intent and less competition online. That means you can easily capture qualified leads into the funnel and drive straight to a top SERP rank.

Most recommended tools- Uber Suggest, SEMRush, Ahrefs.

• Viral and valuable content-

The keyword research will give you proper insights on blog topics. Now is the time to start crafting the blogpost.

Structuring and organising the content rightly, makes it more impactful.

So, start with a catchy headline. It is going to make the first impression and push your readers to stay on the page.

Next, write a brief introduction that glues the audience. Present any surprising fact, ask some intriguing questions to raise the curiosity level.

After the introduction, dive into the pain points of the reader. Make the readers feel heard, create an emotional bonding with them. Then come to the solution part. Explain how your products or service will be practically helpful. Why your solution is of the best quality in the market?

At the ending note, give a powerful call to action. You can also encourage your audience to interact in the comment section.

On page SEO

It helps the search engine algorithm to locate and index your content. It makes your website and webpages relevant to costumer queries. There are 6 elements of on page SEO-

1. Title Tag- It has to be framed within 60 characters. Use keywords to make it more relevant to the webpage.
2. Meta description- description- It should be written within 160 words. It briefly summarises the content of a webpage. It appears in the search results. So, a good meta description will increase your CTR.
3. Header tags-

These are used to demarcate the headings. H1 tag is used for main headings, while H2 to H6 are for the subheadings.

• URL-

It is the address of your webpage, in other words, we call it Uniform Resource Locator. It should also contain proper keywords. Avoid using words like of, on, the as they make your URL extra long. All the words should be in lower case.

• Images-

 Images are also being searched on Google, so they can drive enormous traffic. Ensure the crawling of your images, by adding keywords in their alt tags.

• Content- Include relevant keywords in your content. Because, search engine algorithms scan the keywords to understand a blog and rank it. But refrain from doing keyword stuffing. It will harm your SEO.
• Off page SEO

This SEO is based on number of quality backlinks a website or a webpage possess.

A backlink is of rich quality when you receive it from a high authority website. You can check the quality of your backlinks using tools like Ahrefs.

You must maintain a proper balance between do follow and no follow backlinks. Your anchor texts should not be spammy either.

• Technical SEO

When you have sufficient knowledge of technical SEO, you can crawl your site efficiently. You should use Google Search Console to check how your website is being crawled. Ensure that all main, valuable pages are ‘valid’- means they have been crawled successfully.

If you get any error pages, fix it on time.

Try to exclude the unimportant and private pages from crawling. This can be done by using the robot.txt files. Here you will disallow the Googlebot to crawl the sensitive pages.

Create sitemaps using tools like YoastSEO and RankMath. Then submit it to Google Search Console. Sitemaps make the links between different pages clearer to understand. So, Google crawls it effectively.

And lastly, improve your site loading speed by optimisation. Get a SSL certificate to ensure maximum protection.

So, this ends our basic guide on handling SEO. We hope it clarified your doubts on SEO principles. Now, you can return to your site and make suitable changes. It will take a while to witness the improvement, but it will be worth of your hard work!