How Does SEO work?
Before we dive into SEO and find out more about how does SEO work, Let us first understand what exactly SEO is.
As we all know, digital landscape is evolving faster than ever before and thus creating an urgent and immediate need for all the online businesses to not just embrace but also capitalise on the rising online trends and the digital economy. Although, there are many digital marketing strategies to gain online business from, but the most effective and sustainable is the organic method, part of which is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.
Search engine optimisation helps website, blogs or webpages to be found by the search engines for related keywords. SEO is also commonly referred to as “organic”, “natural”, “unpaid” or”earned” results.
How exactly does a Search Engine works?
There are two key steps responsible primarily for search engine results. They are as follows:
Crawling: Search engine bots crawl all the web pages linked to a website. Major search engines like Google crawl millions of pages on a daily basis.
Indexing: After fetching all the pages through crawling process, these pages are then indexed in the database for future retrieval. The process of indexation is extremely important. The more the number of indexed pages of your websites, the greater are the chances of improving your rankings. Although, it depends on the strategies you formulate.
Major Search engines update their algorithm on a regular basis and there are various factors that influence these results directly or indirectly. It is advisable to update sitemaps
How does SEO work and what are the best tips to improve SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation depends on a number of factors the influence the rankings directly or indirectly. We would uncover all of those factors in this article. Here are the key factors:
Content – It is one of the most important SEO factors. Anyone who has heard about digital marketing must have also heard that “Content is King”. It is true. On numerous occasions Google has said that it rewards sites with great content. So if you want to outsmart other websites, when it comes to SEO, you might as well want to focus on its content. Wishing content section there are some important factors that must be kept in mind such as readability, use of H1/H2 as appropriate and keeping a check on use of passive as well as repetitive sentences.
On-page SEO – If you want to outwit your rivals, You need to work on your site’s on page SEO. Get the fundamentals right. Work on the meta-description and keywords carefully. Focus on content as well as internal linking. Add relevant titles, optimise all the images (add alt-tag), Infuse a mix of H1, H2 headings and subheadings, add LSI keywords by keeping a check on keyword density. Length/description needs to be according to the keyword difficulty. The higher the difficulty, the detailed your content should be to outscore and please ensure you get the basic right.
Backlinks – Generating quality backlinks is extremely important to boost the domain authority and page authority of your website. Some of your efforts should also be focussed on creating enough great quality backlinks. Most of this should be achieved by creating compelling content because the better the content you produce, the higher are the chances of people linking to your website. Stick to the relevance because if the links are irrelevant then it would do more harm than good as far as Google rankings are concerned. It has to be generated through ethical methods only with the right types of backlinks(white hat strategies).
Website speed (Page Load Time) and user experience – Google rewards the sites that are faster. It focuses on user engagement more than anything else. What it means is – fundamentals of the site needs to be intact. Look at your site speed (page load time). This was made clear it the latest Google speed update. You need to adjust/arrange accordingly. You need to also work on the user engagement metrics such as the number of clicks/Out of total impressions. Focus on the bounce rate, page views, session and all these metrics to understand in great detail. Simply put “faster the site, better the results”.
Mobile Friendliness – As we discussed in earlier part of the article that Search Engines update their algorithms regularly and as per the latest Google algorithm update it confirmed that the friendlier the site for mobile users, the higher the rankings of its pages. Therefore, Mobile Friendliness affects your SEO efforts. Do check if your site is mobile friendly or not. If it is not then that should be your first priority.
Domain Age, URL and Authority – Age of the website, URL and it’s DA /PA (domain authority and Page Authority) are all important factors of SEO. DA/PA would improve with a number of strategies – backlinks, internal links quality of the content.
Image optimisation – Optimising all the images on your site is advisable as it improves your chances. Add relevant titles and alt tag to all the images. It adds a lot of value when it comes to image search results.
Social Signals – Social links or signals can not be overlooked when it comes to (search engine optimisation) SEO strategies. These are authority signals that not only increase your visibility but also generate links in the forms social signals. One can share its site on social media platforms to boost signals. The more, the better.
Structured Data – Focus on the structure of your web pages as they should be thoroughly aligned. Update the sitemap. Bottom-line is you have to think from your user’s point of view since we know that user engagement cannot be overlooked.
Conclusion: Now, we know how does SEO work and what are the key factors that influence or expedite your organic digital marketing efforts, Keep these in mind and work on these parameters individually to outsmart others and rank your or your clients site on top of the SERP (search engine results page). Evidently, SEO is one of the most effective strategies to capitalise on the rising digital economy and it also gives your sustainable results as long as you follow the right strategies and keep the basics intact. It is an ongoing process and requires constant efforts.
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