Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important elements of a digital marketing strategy. Strong SEO can mean the difference between dominating search engines and suffering from low brand visibility.
So, what is SEO, and why do you need it?
In this blog post, Ray Day, SEO Strategist, will dig into the fundamentals of SEO, its importance, and how you can incorporate certain best practices into a winning strategy.
What We’ll Cover:
- What is SEO?
- Why Does SEO Matter or Your Business?
- 3 Types of SEO to Pay Attention To
- Black Hat SEO to White Hat SEO
- How Do Google Algorithm Updates Affect SEO?
- SEO Ranking Factors
- SEO and Content Marketing
- Backlinks for SEO
- Social Media and SEO
- FAQs: What is SEO?
What is SEO?
To begin with: What is SEO, exactly? Search engine optimization, or SEO, entails optimizing web pages to rank higher on Google and other search engines organically.
SEO efforts can entail many tasks, including on-page SEO and off-page SEO optimization, technical SEO, and content marketing. With the right efforts, you can rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs) without the need to pay for placements.
The main goal of search engine optimization is to achieve top rankings and supplement paid search results. With the right approach, you can achieve and maintain results at the top of page one, where people are most likely to look for the results they want.
My Expert Opinion On SEO
If you’re not optimizing for SEO, you’ll struggle to get ahead of competitors in search engines, which is just going to hurt you in today’s highly competitive online environment. People want to find the solutions they need as fast as they can, and they use Google more than they ever have in the past to do so.
Even if you believe that paid media and advertising are enough, you might find SEO to be considerably more cost-effective and efficient as it supplements your advertising efforts. In fact, when combined, you can get the best of both SEO and PPC worlds, and integrating SEO into other digital marketing efforts can give you the competitive edge you need to flourish.
Expert Tip: Focus on user-friendly content that prioritizes quality over quantity—something Google cares more about today and for which Google ranks content. Regardless of how many keywords, backlinks, or technical SEO elements you optimize for, your efforts won’t get you far without developing content for the user first.
Why Does SEO Matter?
In short, SEO matters because it’s one of the most effective ways to climb to the top of SERPs, helping you reach your target audiences and attracting high-quality traffic to your website.
According to Monster Insights, pages that rank in the first position on Google attract around 28% of all clicks in SERPs, with the top five results getting about 70% of clicks, as people rarely explore below these rankings.
Whether for an ecommerce brand or a company that provides other products or services, just about every business and industry can benefit from SEO to connect with audiences.
There are different SERP features that you can also rank for, helping you get the most from your efforts, such as:
- Featured snippets that summarize the content of a certain result, encouraging people to click through to learn more.
- People Also Ask sections answering commonly asked questions in a list format.
- Knowledge panels include information that people want to learn in a bite-sized format.
- Sitelinks that list the different web pages for a specific website.
- Rich snippets that can include product images, ratings, and other details.
- Carousels displaying multiple products in a side-scrolling format.
3 Types of SEO To Pay Attention To
What is SEO for a website in terms of the different SEO types? When it comes to SEO, there are three main categories that your tasks can fall under: on-page, off-page, and technical SEO.
Websites like ecommerce stores, enterprise websites, international and local sites, and news websites can benefit from incorporating each type of SEO to maximize online reach.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO consists of all the work you can control.
Some of the many types of on-page SEO elements can include:
- Internal links
- URLs
- Headings and subheadings
- External links
- Meta descriptions and title tags describing the contents of each page
- Image alt text describing image contents
- Relevant keywords
These things play a big part in helping search engines crawl your page and index it properly. The best part about on-page SEO is that you control it. All of the work you do here will pay off in a visible and tangible way.
Here is a good list to review when optimizing your on-page SEO:
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO consists of all the optimization techniques that take place outside of your website.
Off-page SEO differs from on-page SEO in that, while you can work on it, you can’t directly control it. Much of it relies on other people, companies, and websites.
Off-page SEO can consist of the following main elements:
- Backlinks on other websites leading back to yours
- Social media shares and posts that link to your website
- Guest posts that include backlinks
- Forum links
- Reviews on platforms like Google and Yelp
Off-page SEO is really all about building genuine relationships with other people. When media outlets, educational institutions, or other websites enjoy your content, they will be more likely to share it organically, providing you with quality backlinks. Google likes these types of links more than link exchanges or other spammy techniques.
Technical SEO
Another element to consider is technical SEO, which includes all of the more technical aspects of a site that you’ll need to optimize. Much of technical SEO has to do with on-page SEO.
The following are some of the main components of technical SEO:
- Page load speed
- XML sitemaps
- Duplicate content elimination
- URL structure
- Security through SSL certificates and HTTPS
- Structured data and schema markup
- Redirects
Ultimately, improving your website’s structure with these elements can go a long way in helping you boost your site’s rankings.
Moving From Black Hat to White Hat
The first site was created in 1991. In fact, it’s still live today! Back then, and throughout most of the early ’90s, there wasn’t much competition.
But as more and more people started using the web, more sites popped up. With more competition, it became harder to navigate them all. This is when search engines were born. The first was Yahoo in 1994 with Google following shortly after in 1997.
Once robots started indexing sites, there became a need for sites to make themselves stand out.
Before all the complex rules and strategies we know today, SEO was fairly simple. There were few rules and far fewer ramifications for spammy sites.
That lack of rules created a “wild west” attitude that quickly gave rise to Black Hat SEO–the practice of using spammy tactics against search engine guidelines to improve rankings.
But eventually, search engines caught on.
This led to the birth of White Hat SEO. Websites that want to be recognized for their quality content include white hat SEO tactics, including creating valuable content that builds a site’s authority and integrity.
If you’re interested in diving into the evolution of SEO even further, check out SEO: The Movie.
Google Algorithm Updates For SEO
To combat Black Hat SEO, Google introduced several updates to its algorithm. Since the search engine giant quickly established itself as the go-to site, its changes affected the internet entirely.
The main purpose of Google’s algorithm updates has been to increase the overall quality of search results and fight spam, ensuring users find helpful, high-quality content through the search engine.
Find our complete list of Google Algorithm Updates here.
SEO Ranking Factors
Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and, as of today, it has over 200 factors it uses to determine a website’s rank.
Google lists some of these factors, including keyword queries, page quality and relevance, the user’s location and settings, and authoritativeness of web pages, among others.
While all of them are important, there are a few that you should focus the majority of your attention on. These include:
- Referring domains
- Domain authority
- Mobile usability
- Dwell time
- Organic click-through rate
- Total number of backlinks
- Content quality
- On-page SEO
When working on optimizing your website, focus on these eight factors first, as they make the most difference in your ranking.
SEO and Content Marketing
What is SEO content marketing, and how can it boost your rankings? In short, you need high-quality, helpful content that appeals to users if you want to rank high on SERPs.
Optimize your content for users first, which will translate to good content for search engines. In the process, you can follow this checklist to ensure your content meets all the requirements for good SEO:
- Knowing your target audience through market research and competitive analysis
- Establishing goals for your content
- Planning content based on user intent, from the awareness to decision stages of the buyer’s journey
- Documenting all content using project management tools and others
- Promoting content with a calendar to help schedule publishing
- Measuring and monitoring all content to gauge performance
- Incorporating all on-page, off-page, and technical SEO elements to help content climb to the top of rankings
E-E-A-T
One way to ensure your content adheres to Google’s quality standards is to check content for E-E-A-T. This stands for expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
These guidelines indicate whether your content displays ample expertise and authority and whether users and search engines can trust it enough to rank it highly.
Check out this article on E-E-A-T to learn more about these guidelines and how to appeal to them with content marketing.
YMYL
You’ll also want to optimize pages that apply to “Your Money or Your Life,” which are any pages that feature content that can impact a visitor’s finances, health, safety, or happiness.
Because of the importance of these pages and the stakes involved, you must ensure these pages have top-quality content that includes helpful, accurate, and up-to-date information that will benefit users.
Learn more about YMYL and how to optimize for it in this article on YMYL pages.
Backlinks for SEO
What is an SEO strategy without high-quality backlinks? As we know from recent algorithm updates, Google is constantly getting better at spotting the differences between high-quality links and low-quality ones.
The following is a complete checklist to help you get the best results from link building efforts:
- A backlink analysis that looks at all existing links, determines which pages need more links, and the sources for all current backlinks
- Goals to guide your backlink campaigns, including increased organic traffic to certain pages, higher rankings, and increased revenue
- Deciding which pages to build more links to based on keyword analysis and top-ranking or poorly ranking pages
- Spreadsheets that help track all backlinks
- Competitor analysis to identify gaps that your website can fill
- Updating broken links on external sites by replacing them with yours
- Linking to currently unlinked brand mentions across the web
- Looking for niche-relevant sites to link back to yours
- Adhering to content guidelines for all guest posts
- Continually monitoring backlinks to gauge the health of your backlink profile
In Google’s eyes, a link to your content counts as a vote. If it’s from a site with a poor reputation and domain authority, that vote could count against you. Rather than focusing on those sites, focus your attention on high-quality and reputable sites. Those votes will count in your favor.
Social Media and SEO
Everyone wants to know what effect social media will have on their search rankings.
The thing that people forget, though, is that social media itself is not a ranking factor.
It does, however, affect your rankings indirectly. More specifically, any links you get from social media do have an effect.
According to Search Engine Journal, social media can positively influence SEO by boosting your content performance, increasing your amount of quality backlinks, and working to bring more traffic to your website.
People are spending more time than ever on social media platforms. If you can pull that traffic from your social media page to your website, it will help Google see you are a popular and trusted site.
Your social media is also a great place to build solid relationships and a level of trust with your audience, which also helps build your brand authority. Just consider the fact that more than 50% of consumers build stronger connections with brands on social media, making them more loyal.
FAQs: What is SEO?
1. What is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing your online content, so it has a better chance of being discovered through a search engine’s organic search results.
2. What is SEO in digital marketing?
SEO is the best way to boost organic traffic to your website. Traffic is key to being successful in digital marketing. The more people who land on your site, the better.
3. How do you do SEO?
Important SEO ranking factors include having a secure website, a strong brand presence, a positive user experience, and engaging content. You also want to make sure you’re driving links to important pages so you can grow your overall website authority.
4. How does SEO work?
SEO optimizes your page to improve your SERP ranking to increase your organic traffic and conversion rates.
5. What are the types of SEO?
There are a variety of types of SEO, including local SEO, international SEO, general content marketing SEO, and ecommerce SEO.
6. How do you improve SEO?
To improve your SEO efforts, focus on building your authority in your field by creating quality content written for the users’ benefit.
7. What is an SEO audit?
An SEO audit is an evaluation of your website. Typically, an SEO professional will analyze your search engine friendliness and make suggestions for improvement.
8. What is SEO consulting?
SEO consultants tell you what steps you need to take to boost your SEO both online and offline.
9. What is SEO content?
The type of content you create on a blog, home page, product page, category page, and service page are all reviewed by Google according to their intent, keywords, and authority. Google will then rank your website higher or lower accordingly.
SEO content is specific content formulated exactly so users can more easily find you on search engines.
10. What is SEO copywriting?
An SEO copywriter uses SEO strategies to craft copy to increase a website’s search engine ranking.
11. What is SEO blogging?
This is the practice of optimizing your blog’s content and site architecture for search engines.
12. How much does SEO cost?
Unlike paid media, there isn’t a general set cost because SEO costs depend on various factors. Generally speaking, you can expect to pay between $5,000 and $15,000 per month if you are running a medium-sized website that produces between $5 million and $1 billion in revenue per year.
13. What is local SEO?
Local SEO is a branch of SEO that refers to the process of getting an HTML page ranked within a city and the Google Business Profile ranked inside of the maps.
This is important because some businesses have hundreds or thousands of locations and local SEO allows each location to target local customers.
14. How do you find keywords for SEO?
You can use tools like the Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console report, Bing Webmaster Tools report, SEMrush, and SpyFu to find keywords.
15. What are SEO tools?
Some of the most popular SEO tools include Moz, SEMrush, Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, and Pitchbox.
16. What is a SEO service?
This is a service offered by an SEO agency that handles all activities related to SEO, including reporting, dashboards, recommendations, link-building, and content creation.
17. Is SEO dead?
Absolutely not. In fact, SEO is one of the most important digital marketing channels out there.
18. How can you become an SEO expert?
SEO takes time and practice. Subscribe to digital marketing blogs such as this one or take advantage of online classes and workshops to sharpen your SEO knowledge.
Get Help With Your SEO Strategy From Ignite Visibility
At Ignite Visibility, we can help you build the ideal strategy for a local or national brand.
With our SEO expertise backing your strategies, you can:
- Identify your target audiences
- Perform in-depth keyword research
- Develop high-quality SEO-friendly content on a regular basis
- Optimize all web pages for on-page, off-page, and technical SEO
- Continually monitor and measure results for improved optimization
- Achieve top rankings
If this sounds good to you, reach out today and speak with one of our experts to get started on your next campaign.
