What is SEO? SEO is a short form of “search engine optimization.” The keyword ” SEO optimization ” enjoys the highest number of monthly Google searches.
Specifically, SEO is the process by which a site can get traffic from organic, editorial or natural results displayed by search engines such as Google.
An SEO definition that is used in 99% of the articles covering this topic is: “SEO is the practice of increasing the amount and quality of traffic received by a site through organic search engine results.”
How does the SEO ecosystem work and help you?
In order to better understand what SEO is and how it can help you attract traffic to your site and, implicitly, potential customers for your business, you need to think of search engines as a site on which to perform a search, in order to find a solution to a problem, and Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other search engine you use will answer you with a long list of links to other web pages that have the potential to give you the answer.
Have you ever wondered what is behind these magical lists of links?
Here’s how it works:
Let’s say the search engine you use is Google, it has a crawler that gathers information about all the content you can find on the Internet. The crawler brings all the information back to the search engine to build an index.
Then, this index, which is powered by an algorithm that works based on over 200 factors, tries to link your search to all the data collected to give you the best possible results.
One thing is for sure: if you want your business website to have increased visibility in Google, it must meet the criteria imposed by it and provide the best possible result to have the chance to be displayed in the top 3 – 5, or even on the 1st place in the list of organic results.
That’s why SEO is important for your business. Your site needs optimization to meet both the demanding requirements of search engines and the specific needs of people who perform daily searches on the Internet through these engines.
Optimization can take many forms and can consist of factors such as:
- Informative titles and descriptions with a suitable length
- Implementing internal links
- Attracting external links through SEO advertorials
- Other aspects that our team will address in future articles that will be published on this blog.
Returning to the algorithm used by a search engine like Google, all you need to know is that it is secret, but all the known factors that are taken into account in strategies to improve a site have been divided into two categories:
On-Site SEO and Off-Site SEO
The two categories incorporate the full spectrum of optimization tactics and strategies that you can address to improve your site’s presence in search engines and define two distinct directions of action: an internal one, which focuses on the optimized site, and a external, which aims to increase the visibility of the site by specific methods.
On-Site SEO:
A website without On-Site SEO is like a car without an engine. Why do I say this?
The positions obtained by your site in Google are partially decided based on the On-Site optimization factors. These factors consist in all the aspects that you can influence through the changes made in the site. They contain technical aspects (code quality and site speed, etc.) and aspects related to site content (structure and quality of texts, etc.).
You cannot start Off-Site SEO without solving everything related to On-Site SEO, because you will not get the desired results and you will never be able to achieve your goals.
Off-Site SEO:
This part of the SEO strategy includes attracting relevant links from other sites and any other marketing activities performed outside of your site. Although these are the factors that can be the most difficult to influence, you should know that the most important aspect is the number and quality of links placed by other sites to your site.
Therefore, the more links you attract to sites relevant to your business and target audience, the better positions you will get in a short time in Google.
Another aspect from the point of view of Off-Site SEO that you have to take into account is your competition because in some areas (niches), it is much harder to reach the top of organic results due to strong competition, which will reduce your chances of to attract massive traffic from organic results.
Tools used for SEO
However, in order for an SEO specialist to be able to carry out his daily activity, he has several tools that he constantly uses in the implementation of SEO campaigns. The most important tools used for SEO are Google Search Console, Google Lighthouse, Google Trends, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, Yoast SEO (for sites made with WordPress CMS), Majestic, Moz, and Pingdom.
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