If you are new to internet marketing, and you want to cultivate your knowledge of SEO, then you have come to the right place. In this guide, you will learn all the basics and important things to keep in mind as you optimize your website for the search engines.
SEO In A Nutshell
Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is a marketing technique that’s end goal is to increase rankings in search engines.
The techniques that are involved in SEO help to position your site higher in SERPS (search engine page results) so that it may get as much organic traffic as possible and can be easily found for its keyword terms when people make those searches.
This, in turn, will increase the number of people visiting your website, which can potentially boost your sales and revenues. It should also be noted that search traffic tends to convert better than that from other sources, including social media.
Importance And Benefits
Successful online businesses and high authority sites, for the most part, get their web traffic from major search engines like Yahoo, Bing and Google. Despite the escalating popularity of social networks, search engines remain a very important source of traffic for most websites. For most consumers and Internet users, search engines are the main method of navigating through the web.
Search engines can be very beneficial to your online business in a lot of different ways. For one, they can help generate targeted traffic from web users who are searching for topics within specific niches.
As online research and surveys have confirmed, the traffic coming from search engines can determine the success or failures of an organization or business. Basically, getting targeted organic traffic to your website can provide exposure, publicity and increase revenues unlike any other marketing medium.
It is also a fact that organic traffic converts better than other sources, with the only exception being email marketing.
The Purpose Of SEO
Search engines are advanced and sophisticated, but they still need some help from webmasters when making websites visible in their search results. The top search engines are constantly looking for ways to improve their technology, so they can search the internet deeper, and yield better results to consumers and end users.
But, search engines have a limitation in terms of their operations. With that in mind, it is the responsibility of the webmaster to make his or website optimized in appropriate ways and provide the proper relevance in order to gain the visibility and rankings that search engines offer.
Basics of SEO
Search engine’s goals are to provide results that relevant and useful to what search traffic is looking for. Basically, this relevancy can be determined through:
- Correctly Optimized For Keywords And Topics - It is important that search engine bots can interpret the topics or keywords the site is targeting. But, it’s important to keep in mind that over optimization can land penalties in Google, so, it’s important to use a good balance, and not stuff pages with keywords. The basic rule of thumb is to create pages for users not search engines, and all will fall into place.
- Website Content – The content of your site should be relevant to the product or service you are offering. It should also be fresh, unique and updated regularly. Search engines feed on content, and statistically content that is on Page 1 of SERPS is on average 2000 words.
- Natural Link Profiles – There was a time when one can build 10,000 spammy links for their site and rank on page 1 of Google for various terms. Those days are gone. A lot more thoughtfulness needs to be put into the link building aspect of SEO. These days it’s important to choose quality over quantity when it comes to link building and stay away from spammy
links that can cause ranking penalties. - Website Speed Performance – Search engines prefer websites that load quickly and that has been confirmed as a ranking signal in the Google algorithm.
- Low Bounce Rate – A bounce rate is a metric that measures how long visitors stay on the site once they arrive. The lower the bounce rate the better sites will perform in search engines, especially Google that uses this metric to gage how users view websites.
- Authority sites – Authority sites tend to rank better than any others. Establishing authority takes time, work and focus, but, the results can be remarkable and can create a business that will be stable for the long term.
Implementing An SEO Campaign
SEO can be rather complex and intricate, especially for those are new to internet marketing. There are, however, a lot of honest online sources that can help you become an expert in search engine optimization. With practice and practical application the art and science of SEO can go a long way to serve in you gaining a very valuable traffic source.
