Before starting off with the importance SEO holds for any business, let’s have a look at what SEO is and why it has created such a buzz in the market nowadays.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a set of certain rules which are implemented over website or blogs in order to improve the ranking of that particular blog or website on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
SEO helps in increasing the quality of the site as it makes it user-friendly, easier and faster for navigation and quicker for search engines to discover. SEO isn’t a single set of rules; it has different stages & guidelines and a set of controls through which different aims are achieved.
What is the importance of SEO?
In today’s world, every business personnel must go for a website or blog and SEO services. Search engines and internet surfing is such a common thing among the youth, not to mention the popularity it has gained among the people of other age groups. The online world has grown so much so that from styling to trend, job opportunities to business opportunities, business to market, everything is searched over the internet. There are millions of site over the web and most people visit the sites that rank high on search engines, i.e., appear over the first or second page of the search engine.
SEO doesn’t constrain only up to rank the site high but is also extended to improving the experience of the customers or visitors visiting the site and making the site user-friendly is a job of SEO personnel. So, basically, SEO makes your website rank high on search engines so that people can easily see and search you. Also, it makes your site good enough for the users to quickly go through it and make the best use of the information shared.
SEO has many parts within it, but the two main components are:
- Off-site SEO.
- On-site SEO.
Off-site Search Engine Optimization:
Google and many other search engines determine the ranking of a site based on its review of other sites. So, there is no direct involvement of the site in the optimization of the ranking. This is also known as off-page SEO. Off-site SEO is achieved from the other sources and not your site. To achieve this, high ranking keywords are targeted that exist in the direct links to off-page sites but have the content that is related to your site or on page contents.
In order to rank the site high on a search engine, quality link building is a major factor. High rank can never be achieved if your search engine optimization expert does not build quality links. Quality links and backlinking requires content.
Good quality content is required for the purpose of quality linking and backlinking. Articles that are written solely for the search engine optimization purpose and do not hold any useful information are as good as trash. Nowadays most of the people are interested in articles that have some informative content and can enhance their knowledge else the reader just switches to other articles and all your effort put into backlinking will go to waste.
It was explained earlier that the off-site search engine optimization depends on the review of your site over other sites. Therefore, social media plays a major role in off-site search engine optimization. You must encourage visitors and users of your site to use all the social bookmarks present at your site like Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
There are five building blocks of off-site search engine optimization:
- Internet marketing.
- Advertising.
- Peer to peer promotion.
- Social media.
- Link building.
Content is no doubt the master in the off-site SEO, but you must not give all the information in the content. Keep some of the relevant information for your website and blogs. You must make the reader keen enough to hit the link to your blog or website in order to have proper and complete information.
On-site Search Engine Optimization:
It is the process of making your website appealing enough for search engines as well as your visitors. It improves and reviews the face of your website or blog that is seen by users with the coding & technical parts that are checked and seen by the search engines. Evaluation of a site is different for a search engine as it would be for the humans. It doesn’t appeal to a search engine that how good your website or blog appears, how good the products and services are or how well and informative the contents of the site are, for that matter. It focuses more on the technical part of the website or blog and accordingly ranks it high or low.
Key factors of on-site search engine optimization:
- Adding keywords to the URLs. Adding meta description, title and header tags, alt tags, etc. is an important key point of on-site search engine optimization.
- Creating new pages or assigning an existing one to the new keywords.
- Improving the contents of the blogs or website in order to have better content than the competitor’s site.
- Target potential keywords.
- Analysis of the inbound link profile is another key factor.
- Make sure that each and every page of the website has a unique title and description which at the same time explains its worth as well.
- Check your site at particular interval of time for the broken links and fix them as soon as possible.
- Add social media sharing buttons wherever it is suitable to use.
- Your site must be free from duplicate content. There shouldn’t be any repeated or duplicate content over your blog or website.
- Make sure that the readability and format of the content are correct. The usage of easy and understandable language and words make it more readable. Avoid using difficult words in your content.
- Ensure that you have the authority of the contents that are displayed on your site.
- If you’re using WordPress as a content management system, consider using SEO optimized theme. You can download free WordPress themes on download sites such as WordPress.org or MagPress.com. If you’re looking for premium WordPress themes, there are a few trustworthy sites such as ThemeForest or Elegant Themes.
Search engine optimization has many different processes. But all aim at one common thing and that is a high ranking of the site alongside making it easier, faster and user-friendly.
Some of the factors need to be reviewed on a regular basis and others need to be dealt with just once in a while. Like the content of the blog or website needs to be updated as per the demand of the market. Also, in off-site search engine optimization, the backlinking, quality linking, etc. demands the content. Good and efficient content can always boost up the ranking.
Whether it is a start-up or an established business, both need search engine optimization for better ranking and to have organic visitors to their site. If a visitor likes your site, then he or she will surely recommend it in his or her circle. This mouth to mouth marketing is essential for the business.
No doubt that the ads through hoardings, flex, etc. reach people but the social media promotion isn’t constrained to a particular area like them. It provides you a global platform and the venture has an extraordinary and brilliant opportunity of reaching millions by investing so less.
A good SEO expert can give such traffic to your site that it would be a surprise for you that online marketing can boost your business to such a level. Nowadays, self-publishing is in trend, and there are many start-ups of self-publishing companies. These companies need writers and authors who are willing to publish their book. Now, for a start-up company getting authors or authors coming at doors to publishing is a far dream. They get their authors through the help of search engine optimization. They promote their site and anyone who searches for the publishing book, get to know about them and voila, their job is done.
Final Conclusion
This is the basic SEO tips which are followed not only by publishing companies but by all businesses from Amazon to Fortune 500 and everyone who needs and depends on search engines to make their business profitable.
Search engine optimization also creates brand awareness. Unconsciously, people trust search engines result. They believe that the company ranking high on search engines is more popular and is the best among the others. So, indirectly, search engine optimization makes you a brand. Suppose you search for a product using different keywords on a search engine 5 times and name of particular company pop-ups 3 times for that product. Won’t you buy the product from that company or just for once won’t you visit that company’s site? The probability is more than 90% that you will definitely visit the site.
It increases the credibility and usability of your site. It makes your site available for the potential visitors and users who if like the product and services will not only visit your site again but bring more users to your site as well. Also, it makes it easy for the visitors to visit your office for Google maps, etc. which is good for your local market and is termed local SEO.
