SEO = Search Engine Optimization
What That Actually Means Is…
SEO is a wide set of things that when brought together combine to generate a favorable response from the algorithm run by the search engine company.
There is an ever increasing set of criteria that search programs take into account when working out SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and rankings.
Factors which have long been important are:
Onpage
- The use of the primary keyword in the title.
- The use of the primary keyword in the meta description.
- The use of the primary keyword in the H1 and other sub headings.
- The use of the primary keyword in the written content of the relevant web page.
- Strong Internal Links
Off Page
- Good quality links pointing at the site in question - perhaps the most important factor.
- Link relevancy, Google is getting increasingly good at detecting this, largely as a part of their anti-spam measures.
- Do-Follow and No-Follow links, whilst people love having do-follow due to the power transmission a balance is needed, you can over optimize on this.
Other Important Factors:
- Use of keyword in the domain name, this is something which comes in an out of vogue with Google, sometimes it can win you points, other times it is irrelevant.
- Social Media, search programs do now take into account the presence of social shares, that is they actively check for them and when they see social interaction then points are awarded effectively which help ranking.
- The Use of Rich Media, inclusion of images and video is another thing that Google checks for, they value user experience and the presence of such media constitutes what they see as a quality user experience. Within this the various elements of rich media need to be appropriately optimized too in order for the best effects to be gained.
- Traffic, if you are getting zero traffic then Google will believe your site to be unimportant, when you have high volumes of people visiting your site then Google perceives it as important and thus elevates it in the rankings.
- Authenticity, this may sound strange it is however valid, the presence of valid addresses, phone numbers, contact details and the other factors which make a business real all provide benefit in rankings.
- Symantic Coding, the use of schema and the various off-shoots of it are increasingly important in helping search engine to easily understand web content now.
- Site Speed is becoming increasingly important due to the focus on user experience, slow is far from fun, fast delivers good experience and thus gets rewarded.
The above are just a small number of the things taken into account when rankings are calculated.
In order for SEO to be the most effective all these things have to be accounted for and the information served up to the robots which crawl through websites and webpages assessing rankings.
Search Engine Optimization is incredibly in-depth work and in order for sustainable results to be achieved from it it has to be carried out using ethical practices. Failure to do so may see short term increases in rankings, though long term will result in massive penalties.
For this reason SEO is divided into 3 commonly known categories:
- White Hat SEO - Sticking with on page and ethical practices.
- Black Hat SEO - Link building schemes and anything that infringes Googles ToS.
- Grey Hat SEO - A step towards Black Hat from White Hat which tends to involve questionable practices which are pushing the limits if not outright infringing them in Google’s eyes.
Is is through these that SEO does what it is used for, getting websites and webpages to the number one spots in SERPs.
SEO Is All About Ranking Better Than Competitors
It is a tool that is used to grow businesses and as such increase profits, disseminate information and reach the largest number of people possible.
When used within marketing as part of a high quality campaign to improve website visibility it can produce incredible effects for the site owners.
