What is Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO is not as difficult as you may think. It’s very easy to learn.

I have come across many people who still ask the question; “what is SEO“? SEO is the art of improving your website’s content, formatting wire framing and the code with the aim of giving users a better experience and gaining better rankings in the search engine results like Google, Yandex, Bing, Yahoo etc.

Therefore SEO is about getting free traffic popularly known as (organic traffic) known as “earned media and also satisfying users search intent. However, you are unable to buy your pages into organic top results in the search engines. With that said, only PPC or SEM can buy you qualified traffic

Google, the major player in the business crawls billions of pages and index new ones under various categories. Whenever a search is performed, Google will use very sophisticated algorithms to find out websites that matches the search query and pull up such pages in the other of relevance and authority while also considering your location, technology and search intent.

Performing a search on a mobile might give you results that will be different to those on a desktop. In other to rank well in the searching engines, Google and other search engines takes relevance and authority as part of very important factors to determine your online presence’s position.

Nowadays, quality and authority is measured under various criteria including the following

• The quality of the content on the relevant search page.
• The authority of other websites linking back to your web page
• The quality of website’s responsiveness
• The relevance of your keywords on the page in respect
• The amount of time it takes your website to load
• The time people spend on your website

The above is neither an exhaustive list but some of the major factors to take into account about search engine optimization. In a nutshell, your website’s pages have the opportunity to rank well in the search engines so long as relevant, quality and authority web pages from external websites link to them. I am sure if you were one of those people who frequently asked; what is SEO, upon reading this article, you will never ask that question again.

How to apply SEO on your website to rank in the search engines

This is no rocket science. It is very straightforward. SEO has evolved over the years giving room to quality thought leadership content.

Thought leadership is about wowing your users and target audiences with exactly what they want which could be infographics, copy, video, audio and images. Content that brings back users search for more all the time.

Therefore with great and quality interesting content and relevant authority backlinks, you will definitely earn your stripes. Remember, Google wants its user to be happy with the results Google splashes out to them.

Types of SEO technics

There are three types of SEO techniques used by marketers around the world. However, there is only one technique classified as best practices. SEO techniques methods includes;

1. White hat
2. Black hat
3. Grey hat

White Hat SEO techniques

White-hat SEO techniques takes into consideration best practices and the ethics of a professional service. It means, following certain guidelines and principles that govern the art. If you are interested in learning more about Google’s SEO best practices guidelines then you will grow to become an SEO professional. Download Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter guide

Black Hat SEO techniques

The best way to ruin your SEO before it even starts is to engage in blackhat methods. Black hat SEO strategies are usually focused on gaming the search engines to rank in the SERPS without taking users into consideration thereby breaking all the fundamental principles and best practices of this lovely art. With the recent Penguin 4.0, there is no more room for black-hat though practitioners will always find alternative methods. Examples of black-hat SEO may include but not limited to cloaking, keyword stuffing, hidden text, door-way content etc

Gray hat SEO

Gray hat SEO can be somehow difficult to define. However, it comes with some risks because it is neither whitehat meaning that there is always something not right about the process and tactics.

As earlier said, SEO is about those activities aimed at increasing the flow of organic traffic to one’s website. There are various components that build up a good SEO strategy. Here is what you will need to cover;

• Onpage optimization
• Offpage optimization
• Technical SEO optimization

Summary

Quality links are as important as quality content if you are going to well in organic search. Without relevant quality links and quality content that resonates with your target audience, all your efforts will become in vain. Having quality and great content is a cornerstone for earned media resulting in gaining backlink. However, it is worth noting that, authority websites never link to poor content.

The production of good and resourceful content comes with primary, qualitative and quantitive research. Gone are the days when marketers and businesses simply pumped out a load garbage and expected consumers to consume without a say. Nowadays, there is a game changer which means it is vital to know what your target audiences are looking for and or interested in before you publish. Do this backed by data and insights and you will eventually see a surge or increase in the amount of your readership and brand ambassadors.