The obvious answer to the question ‘what is SEO?’ is just its definition: search engine optimization. But what does that mean for someone like you?
It’s all about how Google and other search engines influence customers.
You may have already heard some surprising statistics relating Google searches and purchases. For example, according to a study done by Google itself, 92% of people who use their smartphones to search for products on Google make a related purchase that same day. And 76% of people who use their smartphones to search for something nearby on Google visit a related business within a day.
But what does this have to do with SEO?
If people visit Google before making a purchase, you want your business to be on Google. In particular, you want your business to be among the top results on a Google search.
SEO is a combination of methods to improve – or optimize – your website, so that your business gets to the top of relevant Google searches.
You can think of SEO as a toolbox that can help your business rank higher on search engines. And a higher ranking means more visitors and more sales.
You probably know this already, but having a website is essential for any business.
According to the Google’s survey, 97% of respondents said they use smartphones for immediate needs, and 75% said the same for personal computers.
Every single potential client of your business uses the internet – whether it’s on their smartphone or on a computer. And they will try to find your business on the internet before purchasing from you. How would they feel if they discover you don’t have a website?
Having a business website gives you the opportunity to showcase your products and services, explain how your business works, and give visitors information about how they can contact you.
Having a website is essential for people to find your business. But how do people find your website?
In other words, if having a website is important, making sure people visit your website is even more important.
That’s why optimizing your business website for SEO is essential. Whenever someone googles a phrase related to your business, you want your website to be the very first result.
Seriously: you want to be number 1, because number 1 gets the most web traffic – by far.
Ranking of organic traffic done by Optify, showing Click Thru Rate vs. Search Rank Position
As the graph above shows, the first result on a Google search – that is, the website with the best SEO – gets roughly 40% of the clicks. The following results get less than 15%.
That’s why SEO is so important. And now we’ll teach you the basic methods you can use to optimize your website.
Each search engine has its own algorithms that decide how the millions of websites are ranked when someone searches something.
However, there are some common rules that apply to all search engines: Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube.
These rules result in methods that you can use to get your website to the top for every relevant search. They can be divided into two groups: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
On-page SEO is what beginners think of when trying to answer the question ‘what is SEO?’. On-page includes all the techniques you can use on your own website.
With on-page SEO, you modify your own website so that search engines think its content is valuable and should be on the top of the rankings.
We’ll see later that there are other techniques that don’t involve optimizing your own website: off-page SEO. But on-page SEO is easier and should be the first set of methods you apply to improve your ranking position.
The very first on-page SEO technique you need to know about is content optimization. Your website has text that explains who you are, what you do and how you work. Doesn’t it?
Every piece of text included in your website is analyzed by Google. If your content is good, your website will get a higher ranking.
But what exactly is good content? Good content is content that matches the user’s search terms.
Have you ever heard of keywords? Keywords are the common phrases that people search for when using Google or other search engines. If your content includes keywords your customers could search for, Google will point them to your website.
Another method from on-page SEO is content distribution. The aim shouldn’t be to repeat a keyword until it doesn’t make sense. Keywords must blend in with the rest of the content, so that it’s informative and interesting to your website’s visitors.
Content distribution is the technique of creating web pages, blog posts, infographics, videos and even podcasts that include your keywords.
Make sure you’re creating useful quality content, and Google will know that your website is a good source of information for users.
Finally, you need outstanding web management. This means your website has to be flawless when it comes to its code and its design.
Including the keyword in page titles, descriptions, headers and sub-headers will let Google know that that particular keyword is relevant to your business.
A great website distributes its web pages coherently and with user-friendly tags and links. Here’s a challenge for you: go to your website and read the URLs of the different pages, including your blog posts. Is it written in English or is it all gibberish?
Your website should also be extremely fast. Not only will visitors thank you for it, search engines will rank you higher because of this.
On-page SEO methods involve improving your website so that all of its content is excellent and includes the keywords your potential customers search for.
Now that you know what on-page SEO is, there is a very simple definition for off-page SEO: it is the exact opposite.
Off-page SEO refers to the methods and techniques you can use to help your website rank higher without modifying your website. Seems weird, doesn’t it?
Here’s the trick: when Google tries to find results for a search, it doesn’t only look at each individual website. It also looks at the relations – the links – between them.
Ultimately, off-page SEO measures how popular a website is by finding out how much other websites mention it.
If thousands of websites have links to Amazon, Google assumes Amazon is a popular website. Therefore, Amazon will rank higher than other lesser-known businesses.
All the off-page SEO techniques aim at making your business more trusted and popular. So what are these techniques?
The most used off-page SEO technique is backlinking. Backlinks are links from other websites to yours. Having backlinks is the easiest way to let Google know that your website deserves to be among the top results.
But it’s not only about the number of backlinks: the quality of these backlinks also matters. Backlinks from trusted and popular websites will make your website become more trusted and more popular.
The other great off-page SEO method that improves your ranking is local SEO. If you have a local business – that is, if you sell a product or provide a service from a fixed position – your online success will depend strongly on local SEO.
To improve your local SEO, you can register your business to Google’s My Business Listings and let people rate your services. The more people share their experience, the more popularity you will have, and the more you will climb in the search engine rankings.
But what about social media? Is social media a part of off-page SEO? Not really.
Social media interactions don’t affect directly your search engine rankings. A business may have thousands of Twitter or Facebook followers, and yet not appear on Google searches.
However, social media can be used to promote your content. If someone sees your content on social media and then writes about it on a blog or personal website, that counts as a backlink.
Although social media doesn’t act as a direct off-page SEO technique, it can be a part of an effective SEO strategy.
Off-page SEO methods involve improving the status of your business website by getting other websites to link to it and having your local customers rate their experience on Google.
So far, we explained what is SEO and how you can implement SEO on your business website. But we only covered the basics.
If you want to know how SEO can bring more exposure and clients to your business, we recommend a free crash course from SEO Affiliate Domination.
Their course is the best source for you to know more about the different methods and platforms that can help your business grow online. And it’s free!
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