What is Search Engine Optimisation? (SEO)

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the art of ranking pages higher in search engines. As using a search engine is one of the main ways people can discover content online, as well as ranking higher in search engines can lead to an increase in traffic. When searching search engines, there are two type of results. The results at the top are paid ads, followed by regular results called “organic“. Organic is the main aim you’re after. “Organic search” traffic is differentiated from traffic that comes through paid ads (search). Organic traffic can be collected in a number of different ways, but the main ways, include organic search, image search and video search.

It is very important while working with SEO you consider, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines by their targeted audience. SEO is KEY because a website will receive more visitors from a search engine when websites rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP). These visitors can then potentially be converted into customers. Paid search is often referred to as search engine marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC). All is very important.

SEO activities can take place both on-site and off-site.

The Benefits of SEO and How it works?

Search results are presented in an ordered list, and the higher up on that list a site can get, the more traffic the site will receive. Search engines use an algorithm a set of rules to follow, these determine what pages to show for that given keyword. Algorithms have evolved over the years to be extremely complex, these determine the rankings of their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Take into account, there are four important factors to follow that search engines evaluate to determine the quality of a site and how it should rank.

• Keyword research – Keyword research is often the starting point for SEO and involves looking at what keywords a site is already ranking for, what keywords competitors rank for, and what other keywords potential customers are searching for.
• Content – The search engines also analyse the content of a webpage to determine if it would be relevant for any given keyword, searched for. A large part of SEO is in creating quality content that is used to target keywords that users are searching for. Once keywords have been identified, content comes into play. This can be updating existing content or creating brand-new content. Quality content also has a greater chance of being shared on social media and attracting links.
• Optimisation – Improving the actual structure of the page can have tremendous benefits for SEO, and is a factor that is entirely in the control of the webmaster. Common optimization techniques include optimizing the URL of the page to incorporate the keyword or keywords, updating the title tag of the page to use relevant keyword search terms, and using the ALT attribute’s to describe images. Updating a page’s meta tags (such as the meta title as well as the description tag) can also be beneficial – increasing the click-through rate from the SERPs. External links are not the only thing that matters for SEO, internal links (the links within one’s own website) play a large role in SEO as well. Thus a search engine optimizer can improve a site’s SEO by making sure key pages are being linked to and that relevant anchor text is being used in those links to help improve a page’s relevance for specific terms. Creating an XML sitemap can also be a good way for larger pages to help search engines discover and crawl all of the site’s pages.
• Link building – The way in which other websites following links plays a key role in determining the ranking of a site. The reason being, a link can be seen as a vote of quality from other websites, since website owners are unlikely to link to other sites that are of poor quality. Sites that acquire links from many other sites gain authority (called “PageRank”) in the eyes of search engines, especially if the sites that are linking to them are themselves authoritative.

The search engine optimisation process involves optimising each of these core components of search engine algorithms in order to rank higher in the search results.