SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a process of optimizing online content so that the search engine showcases it as one among the top results of the searched keyword. SEO involves rolling out specific improvements to the web architecture and that makes the website increasingly alluring to a web crawler.
The search engine works on certain algorithms which are crawling, indexing, processing, calculating content relevancy and retrieving the search results. The web crawler uses algorithm filtering out the results from searched keywords. The SEO process throws light on many factors such as website analysis, keyword research, web architecture design, website optimization, link building, etc shown above in figure. Search engine fetches for the best relevant results for their users. It crawls and gives the best relevant output to the user based on the searched keyword.
By doing SEO, one works to expand its visibility on the search engine. This lets us reach & connect to increasingly potential clients. With effective SEO focussed web-content, you can grow your chances of getting focussed on natural traffic to your website. Google ranks or indexes webpages and not websites based on its relevancy of the searched keyword. The Google ranking keeps on varying every year as per the requirements. Let’s have a look at some of the important factors impacting search engine optimization. They are as follows:
- Secured website
- Quality based content
- Web Page Loading Speed
- Mobile & User-Friendly
- Freshness (frequently updated content)
- Meta description
- Internal links
An SEO strategy can be divided into two categories as On-Page SEO & Off-Page SEO. On-Page SEO involves the use of optimizing the web content to rank higher driving more relevant traffic to the website. SEO improves both user and search crawler experience, which leads to higher search rankings. SEO search results have featured snippet content. SEO optimization takes time and requires regular testing.
Creating internal connections between your sites paves way for sitemap and your search engine mapping is submitted so that both help in improving the crawlability of your site and providing a clearer understanding of the designed content for search engines.
When it comes to achieving the marketing goals, I had to spend more time on Off-page SEO. Off-page SEO is like feedback on what target audience thinks about the web-content we showcase them. Many often get confused Off-page SEO with link building but it goes beyond that.
On-page SEO happens within the site, but Off-page SEO occurs as outdoor factors that help in raising the search engine results page ranking upon a keyword search. Off-page SEO factors are Blogging, Articles, Social media networking, Directories, Content sharing, Photo & Video sharing. In the case of SEO, internal pages are often overlooked.
When focusing on SERP (Search Engine Result Page) you have many other competitors in the same race of getting indexed on the first page of search engine. Those results vary from paid searches to non-paid but dependent on crawler algorithm which gets them there. Natural links (active links) on the respective websites serve as independent confidence votes to improve the accuracy of search engines on your website.
SWOT Analysis of SEO which covers Strength, Weakness, Opportunities & Threats helped me understand SEO better. Thus, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the activity of making the web-content search engine friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results. Superior the quality of our content, the higher the ranking we achieve, the larger the traffic we gain and the greater will be the popularity of our website.