What Is SEO?

It is the time when digital marketing is ruling all over the world. There are 7 different types of digital marketing that play a huge role in connecting with audiences. They are content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, pay-per-click, and affiliate marketing. Read on to know more on what is SEO? 

In these digital marketing tools, SEO is one of the most important tools that help you to get your content noticed by search engines like Google, Bing, etc. Therefore allowing your content to get more traffic.

How search engines work? 

Have you ever wondered how the search engine works? It’s interesting to get to know how it works. For starters, they work by crawling billions of web pages, then start indexing them, and then finally they are ready to serve you with the high-ranking websites. 

In precise this is what’s happening. But to know it more clearly, let’s discuss the process in detail. 

1. Crawling: In order to serve you with the web pages, search engines must find them first. They do this by constantly looking for new pages and adding them to the index. After they find pages, they start crawling. 
2. Indexing: Once the crawling is done, it’s time for indexing. After a page is found by the search engine, it is stored in the index, organized in a way that makes the search engine get the results quickly.
3. Ranking: After the pages are crawled and indexed, they are now stored in a search engine results page (SERP). Here the pages are stored in ascending order. Search engines determine ranking by various factors such as relevancy, quality, location, authority, and the number of inbound links. 

What is SEO? Why is it important?

Search Engine Optimization is an important tool for any business as it can play a huge role in your brand visibility through search, increase traffic to your website, build your brand as a trusted authority, grow your business efficiently, and many more. Let’s check out in detail a few benefits when choosing SEO for your business.

Rankings and Visibility

When anyone searches for any content online, they are more likely to select the first few sites that are suggested by the search engines. Rather than scrolling down and picking what is at last or is very rarely to go to the next page. Whenever you google, it provides thousands of search results in seconds, but more than 25% of people click only the top five results. Hence, Search Engine Optimization helps you gain more attention and visibility and make sure the viewers click on your site. Even if they do not click, they will remember your site name in the future when something comes up.

Web Traffic

When your website is not on the top results, you will miss the potential customers and the sales opportunities. Search Engine Optimization helps increase organic search engine traffic; increasing the visitors to your website daily. This will help you in increasing sales overall because if each day potential customers are visiting then there are chances to make sales more.

User Experience

When the website is well optimized, it indicates the service you offer shows how to get it, and answers all questions surrounding it. So, if your website is catering to the user experience then it indicates that the site is appealing to search engines like Google and Bing. So, if both the users and search engines can find your website it is optimized properly. On the other hand, if users are finding it difficult to navigate to your website then the chances are that search engines will also find it difficult to.

Growth

Search Engine Optimization has a lot of importance for the growth of your brand. The higher your rank is the more visitors click on your website creating more sales. If the visitors are satisfied with your brand then they are more likely to share on other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

SEO Strategies: Black Hat Vs. White Hat

White hat and Black hat are two types of SEO practices that are used to rank in search engines. A white hat SEO refers to optimizing the site in an ethical way for ranking. A black hat SEO is completely the opposite of white hat SEO; by not following the rules and regulations. 

What is white hat SEO?

A white hat SEO refers to the practices followed as per the recommendation of search engines. Search engines like Google have got rulebook that to be followed. The criteria followed by a white hat SEO are:

• Follows search engine guidelines

White hat SEO follows Google’s Webmaster guidelines which is widely used by most. They are a set of rules that Google has laid out to properly optimize a site. The rules are known to be ethical Search Engine Optimization strategies.

• Focus on the human audience

In white hat SEO, involves making changes according to the site’s visitors. It is one of Google’s approved strategies to follow and many of them started following it. Such as publishing high-quality content and improving page load times, what the visitors get from the site, and how easily they can navigate it.

• Long-term approach

If you are following Google’s guidelines and are trying to create a positive user experience. Then it will take time and more work to input than black hat methods.

What is a Black Hat SEO?

A black hat is entirely the opposite of a white hat, not following any guidelines and violating tactics. The following are the criteria for a black hat SEO:

• Violates search engine guidelines 

Black hat SEO violates Google’s guidelines and follows the tactics you shouldn’t use.

• Follows manipulative tactics

Black hat SEO manipulates Google’s algorithm in order to improve rankings. For example, if a website shows Google that it provides more value to users than it really does, it is deceptive.

• Focus on quick wins

The strategies followed by black hat SEO are mainly focused on exploiting loopholes in Google’s algorithm. Which will easily increase the rankings.

What are the main goals of SEO?

There are many objectives of SEO that can effectively impact on your business for long-term endeavors. The main goals of Search Engine Optimization are:

• To increase traffic: By increasing search results, getting more visitors to your website.
• To improve the user experience: Make your site user-friendly so the visitors will have a good experience.
• To build trust: Create your site in such a way that it shows as a reliable and trustworthy source; helping to enhance higher search results.
• To sustain long-term results: Regularly update your site and improve strategies. Which will keep your site’s performance in the long run.

Types of SEO

There are three main types of Search Engine Optimization, On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, and Technical SEO that help in its visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). 

• On-Page SEO: It involves optimizing website content to enhance rankings, such as using keywords, meta titles and descriptions, URL structure, and internal linking. And also focusing on content quality, relevance, and user experience.
• Off-Page SEO: This is when the activities are done outside of your website to improve ranking. The methods include acquiring high-quality backlinks, social media marketing, and influencer outreach.
• Technical SEO: It involves optimizing the technical side of a website such as its speed, mobile friendliness, security, etc.