An Overview of SEO and its Six Basic Strategies

Supposedly, you want to check a new software, or a new car model, or a new baking recipe? What is the first thing you do? Turn to Google. Without Google, your business will have to face digital conflict. Hence, build your strong online presence with SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

What is search engine optimization?

SEO or search engine optimization is the means to improve your business site and increase its visibility. When people search for products and services in search engines like Google and get your page at the top of the search results, it means your brand's page has good visibility.

In such cases, you are more likely to garner attention and attract prospects to your business. As a result, you have better chances for conversions that ultimately lead to more customers and more revenue.

How does SEO work?

To understand how you can rank your content higher in the search engines, you must understand how SEO works.

Search engines optimize the website's content, conduct keyword research, and check for inbound links to increase the ranking of content and enhance the website visibility. Search engines like Google crawl pages on the web, gather information about these pages, and put them in an index.

Considering several ranking factors, search engine algorithms analyze these pages in the index. They determine the order these pages should appear in the search results for a specific query.

A particular domain needs to be prominent in the search engines. When a domain isn't visible for relevant search queries, it tends to show lower search visibility and vice versa. Unlike paid search ads, search engines do not accept any payments to get your page higher organic search rankings. It is solely the responsibility of the SEO experts to get your page to rank higher in the search results.

How to drive SEO traffic from search engines?

Google follows certain practices to help you position your site and make content rank higher on other search engines as well-

• Search engines like Google search for pages that contain genuine and relevant information.
• Google's algorithm determines the relevancy of content based on the keywords it contains.
• The search engine determines the quality of a page by its link profile. It verifies the quality of other websites that link to a page and site as a whole.

Google’s search algorithm evaluates additional ranking signals to determine

• A site’s loading speed and responsive behavior
• Whether people are engaged and remain with a site, bounce back and click on another link, or whether they ignore your listings in the search results
• The authenticity of the content
• Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) framework. These are not direct ranking factors but can impact direct ranking factors and improve SEO

What are the best SEO strategies?

SEO strategies involve comprehensive plans to optimize your website and get more visitors to your site through search engines.

Let’s take a look at some of the best SEO strategies to implement –

Simple website URL :

Keep your website URL short and simple. Include the primary keywords with which you want to optimize the page.

Text-only navigation and links

The search engine cannot see images. They use links to find other content and analyze it. Therefore, your website's navigation and links should be in 'text-only' form.

Page speed:

Search engines use page load time as an indicator of website quality. Several factors like image size can impact the speed of your website. Google’s Page Speed Insight Tool is recommended to improve the load time of your website pages.

Quality content:

As it is rightly said that ‘Content is King, Google prioritizes high-quality, authentic, and relevant content to rank websites in search engines. Creating quality content based on value propositions along with organic keywords ensures perspective finds you when they are looking for information in search engines. The length of the content is significant. Usually, long content ranks better as they contain exhaustive information.

Keyword optimization:

Make sure you include the following keywords to make Google understand them and rank your page accordingly-

1. Title: Google values words put at the beginning of a headline.
2. URL: The page of a web address should contain the keyword. You should remove stop words.
3. H1 tag: Make sure your platform uses an H1 tag to display the title of the page by default.
4. Meta title and Meta description: Search engines use both tags to understand a page's topic. They display the Meta title as the search listing’s title and Meta description to provide content.

Alt tags and image file name: Search engines use Alt tags as a relevancy signal to display text browsers instead of an image.

Make sure at least one of the images contains a keyword in the file name.

1. Search engines view graphics and images in their file names.
2. The first 100 words: Put the keywords on the first 100 words of the content to reassure Google that this is the page’s topic.

Link optimization

Leveraging ethical link-building practices can improve the ranking of a website. Here is how to do it.

• Build quality backlinks through guest blogging and improve your search ranks. However, be careful of spammy links.
• You can earn links from authoritative sources by participating in podcasts, interviews, and expert roundups.
• Promote your blog posts and articles on different social media channels.
• Track and reclaim broken links but your competitor's broken links as well. Get them replaced by links to authentic resources on your website. External and internal links confirm the credibility and authority of the page.
• You may use an outreach strategy program to build links. Create a piece of content and contact other websites to publish it. If they find your content valuable, they will reference it.

SEO is an integral part of digital marketing. SEO optimization ensures your website maintains a strong ranking in search engine results.