What is Search Engine Optimization all about? Worry not if you heard the term coined by digital marketing giants and don’t know what all the fuss is about. Let’s get started.

Want to blog, sell something, or open a website?

Great!!

But did you know that in order to do all of the above, you must ensure that people can find you online?

How will people find you in this big pool of content?

The answer is search engines.

Search engines:

Search engines are designed to do web searches. They search the databases and show results in a line format. This search result is also known as a search engine results page (SERP). The results can be links to different websites, videos, images, etc.

So if search engines can find you, you will be at the top of all the search results. But if they cannot find you, then even if you put amazing content, products, or services out there, it will not matter.

Search engines generally follow these steps to create results:

1. Crawling

2. Indexing

3. Ranking

 

Crawling:

Crawling is a process for discovering web pages. They trace and record everything on the web pages. All the links are crawled, too. This way, they prepare them for indexing. Also, getting crawled does not necessarily mean you will get indexed.

Indexing:

If a page has been crawled, that does not mean it will get indexed. But if a page has been indexed, that means it went through crawling. When a search engine bot crawled through a page, it saved its data for indexing. Index stores data on your pages like keywords, videos, images, content, etc. Due to this, whenever someone searches for specific things that match your page data, your page will pop up in the search engine results pages (SERP). This is a super-fast technique for search queries.

Ranking:

Ranking depicts the position of a website in the search engine results pages (SERP). When someone searches for anything, search engines scan all indexed pages and give out the best results. Various factors decide the ranking of a website such as keywords, content, links, user experience, accessible website, etc.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

 SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of increasing your website traffic so that when people search for something related to your business, you will pop up on top.

When you search for something, the results that appear on top are paid ads. They are labeled as ads, too. These are not organic search results. One can not pay for a high ranking in organic traffic. Through SEO, one can drive organic traffic to their sites.

SEO is crucial for marketing as the number of searches and content is really huge. So to be higher than your competition in ranking, SEO plays a vital role.

There are broadly two types of SEO:

1. On-page SEO

2. Off-page SEO

 

On-page SEO

On-page SEO is more about the quality of the content that you create, using keywords correctly, posting regularly, etc. Using external and internal links also falls under this category. It focuses more on examining the content of your site. Also, this does the majority of the SEO work.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is the work that happens off your website. This includes backlinks, creating connections, exchanging links, etc. As we know, this does not do the majority of SEO work, but it is still really helpful. It focuses more on the popularity of your site.

Once we understand all about SEO and its different types, we can talk about different strategies. There are ethical and unethical ways. If someone chooses to be ethical, that does not mean everybody is going to do the same. However, there are consequences to unethical behavior.

Again, broadly speaking, there are two types of SEO strategies:

1. White hat SEO

2. Black hat SEO

 

White hat technique

 White hat SEO follows the guidelines set up by search engines. It focuses more on creating quality content for its audience and providing them with some value. This is the right way for building up your business online.

Black hat technique

 Black hat SEO is often used as it gives quick success. Their whole focus is to improve ranking at any cost. It is the technique that tries to dodge guidelines and fool the search engines. Search engines penalize the sites for using black hat SEO. They can either de-indexed or blacklist your site. This can result in bankrupted businesses.

Some of the black hat tactics are:

 

• Keyword stuffing

• Cloaking

• Duplicate content

• And more

With all this information and strategies, practice is one thing that can help you improve your SEO. Also, there are so many tools out there (paid and free) that can up your SEO game.

Here are some tools that can help you with SEO:

 

• Google analytics
• Google search console
• Keyword planner
• UberSuggest
• Keyword Hero
• SEMrush
• Keyword explorer
• Bing webmaster tools
• Ahrefs