The Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization Success

In this article, we will try to understand what is search engine optimization. Search engine optimization namely referred to as SEO is the technique of improving the visibility of a website or the content of a website so that it gets ranked high on the search results of Google and other search engines. It involves a set of practices to be followed to improve the website’s visibility organically on Google’s result pages.

What is Search Engine Optimization

Organic traffic, although a little difficult is the backbone of any website because it responds directly to the users, searching for a particular product or service. So we have to learn what is search engine optimization. 

SEO-optimized content has a good response to users’ queries. It helps brands to get high engagement and capture good business. Therefore, successful businesses always hire SEO expert or tie up with SEO agencies for promotion of their brands and pay high SEO packages to them.

There is tough competition between businesses to get ranked on Google’s search engine result page (SERP). To be visible on Google’s first page is the priority of every individual organization. Since many websites are being listed every day, Google can’t show all of them on the first page.

Google has a lot of algorithms that have different ranking parameters and play a vital role in deciding a website’s position. Search engine optimization is to meet the requirements of these parameters, therefore SEO is an important and integral part of the whole digital marketing strategy.

How SEO works

Now let’s try to understand what is search engine optimization and how it works. Google uses bots also called crawlers or spiders to crawl the pages of a website. The whole process is covered in 4 major steps.

1) Crawling

Bots visit the different web pages and URLs and collect helpful information. Here it is very important to mention that, the more you write the content, the more frequently your website is crawled. Hence the chances of ranking of the website get improved.

2) Indexing

The information collected is downloaded and stored in the index.

3) Retrieving

Whenever a user searches for a query, bots gather the relevant information from the index library and show it to the user.

4) Ranking

Before showing the result to the user, the search engine algorithms decide the order of the web pages in the SERP. Different algorithms decide parameters like SEO quality, keyword placement, misspelled words, tags, location, etc. 

Types of SEO

There are 3 main types of SEO to be taken into consideration.

On page SEO

On-page SEO or on-page optimization is writing valuable and unique content to improve the ranking of the website organically. Make keyword-rich content with proper headings, internal links, external links, and distribution of primary and secondary keywords along the whole content. Use focus keywords in the meta title and meta description. Use images with alt text wherever needed. Focus on page speed, content readability, relevancy, and user search intent. An SEO plugin namely Yoast SEO can help a lot with all these functions.

Off-page SEO

This is the technique used to improve the ranking of the site with activities outside the website. In this process, we create backlinks that are shareable. The backlinks are created by guest posting on other websites and also through social media marketing.

Technical SEO

In this process, mainly technical aspects of the website keeping in mind a good user experience, are covered. This involves maintaining XML sitemap, page load time, and image optimization with alt text.

To support the above factors, we use some additional methods for ranking a website as below.

Keyword Selection

A thorough research of the keywords should be performed and the keywords most desirable to rank should be selected. A close look at top-performing competitor’s websites can give an idea of the high-performing keywords. High search volume keywords are best to be taken into consideration for building a strategy against the competitors.

1) Creating a unique quality content

After the keyword selection is done, the next focus should be on creating valuable content. Websites with content having relevance to the user’s queries are most likely to be ranked on Google’s SERP. Including focus keywords in the page’s title and description helps users understand the relevancy of the content. Moreover, the content should be unique and should not be copied from any other sources.

2) Using images with alt text

Alt text is used to describe what an image is about. This helps google bots understand what a particular image represents. Sometimes it takes a bit more time to load an image on the page. In that case, alt text helps to identify the image relevancy. Additionally, it helps to input more keywords.

3) Slug of the URL

A slug is a part of the URL which is unique and different for different pages. It also tells the user what is on a particular page.

4) Pay-per-click

Pay-per-click is a paid advertisement used to increase organic traffic with a click-through rate. A certain amount is paid to Google for showing the search results of the website on the first page of SERP.

Best SEO Tools

Many tools provide recommendations for the SEO of a company and help improve the ranking of the website. These tools compare your website with top-ranking websites and help analyze your website’s performance and optimize accordingly. They help in researching top-performing keywords and developing SEO strategies. Some of the best are mentioned below. 

Yoast SEO

This tool is for on-page optimization used by websites using WordPress as CMS. This is a free tool although the paid version is also available. It allows us to define the meta title, meta description, and slug (part of the URL). Also, it provides a checklist of the parameters to ensure maximum optimization of the page.

Google Search Console

This is a free tool from Google. It provides us the real-time data on the SEO performance of a website. With Google Search Console, we can monitor website traffic and optimize the ranking of the web pages for the best results on SERP.

Google Trends

Google Trends is also a free tool from Google. It looks for the trending topics for the content world-wise and helps find popular longtail keywords of the related niches. We also get the comparison of the keywords of the topic.

HubSpot

Again a free tool that generates a report card of the SEO performance with actionable insights. It tells whether a website is mobile-friendly or not. Besides measuring website performance, it also gives us security recommendations.

Frase

This is a paid AI-based article writing and SEO tool. It is used for keyword research, writing, and optimizing content for high-quality SEO performance. This tool is used to plan the information to create new SEO-optimized content. 

Bing Webmaster Tool 

This tool works well with the Bing search engine. Useful for instant crawling, indexing, and finding the site’s content. You can get data from the website and analyze insights to improve the ranking of the website or a page on the website on Bing search results.

Spyfu

This is a keyword research tool mostly used for competitor analysis. It gives the most comprehensive and detailed data of competitors’ websites, be it running paid Ads, organic ranking of the website, top performing keywords, and even the backlinks created.

Semrush

Semrush is a paid and costly but very trusted and powerful tool for keyword research and online ranking. Websites use this tool for tracking the keyword strategy of their competitors. It is also used for SEO audits of the website. Gives an idea about backlinking.

Ahrefs. 

This is also a paid SEO audit tool with a foolproof user interface used for growing traffic on the website.

Hey, I am a digital marketing freelance consultant. I have expertise in website designing, SEO, Google Ads, and social media optimization. I provide SEO solutions to businesses. You can contact me for the best organic SEO services.