What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization has become very important factor in the world of online business. It is important in terms of the potential it creates for your website.

So every webmaster has to understand the true meaning of SEO to create that potential for his online work.

What is SEO?

Whenever you search on Google, you must have noticed that certain search results always come at the top.

Generally, users check those results which top their search and consider them to have all the answers to their questions.

They think the search result they have got, has the most relevant information to their query and they are never wrong.

Have you ever wondered how these websites get higher ranks than those of others?

The answer is simply because they have optimized their website with this powerful web marketing technique called Search Engine Optimization.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of getting the quantity and quality of traffic to your website from natural or organic search engine results.

By now you have got some idea of what SEO is and how it can pin you at the top.

SEO in short, is a set of rules that can be followed by website administrators to optimize their websites for search engines to increase their search engine rankings.

Therefore, using SEO in a right and guided way helps in achieving improved and higher search engine rankings for your website.

How Search Engine Works?

Search engines use electronic robots (a.k.a. bots, spiders, etc.) that march around or "crawl" the internet constantly. Here is a guide of their work:-

Visit & revisit web pages. The term "web pages" is used for a single page of content on line. "Web page," or "page" here are not WordPress Page or Post. In this context, both WordPress Pages and Posts are considered "web pages" or "pages" as they both are a single piece of content with a unique web address ("URL").

"Index" (categorize & organize) the information contained on those web pages.
File & store that information away so when a user is searching, it can be found immediately. (Imagine if all the tons of pages on the web weren’t organized in some way!)

This must be helpful enough because when you want to search something on the internet these are the steps you go through:-

You choose Google, Yahoo, Bing etc
Type your query or the information you want and press enter
Google quickly looks through the web pages indexed by Google boat (see above), and provides you a list of search results that are, ideally, exactly what you’re looking for.

Google decides which search results to show you on the basis of various factors. The exact formulas ("algorithms") for these results are closely-guarded secrets and highly complicated. Google algorithms are changed CONSTANTLY.

How Search Engines Affect Bloggers Life?

A blogger’s life is affected when any web page of his site is shown on the first page of the search results of Google for a particular search.

It is important and valuable for a blogger. It’s like being noticed in a stack of million pages.

A searcher never clicks over to the second page of search results. You must have also experienced that by clicking the first page of a search result instead of the second one when you searched something the last time.

So if your site appears on the first page for a particular search, it’s huge and indicates more traffic on your page.

Every website and blog owner around the world is constantly trying to make their websites SEO-friendly so the world can see their site’s pages at the top of that front page.

Now you must be thinking of getting there but that won’t happen if the Google, Bing, Yahoo etc doesn’t know your site exists. As I told you earlier when your site has been indexed that means:-

Bots (spiders) found your site
They crawled through it
Bots figured out what your blog is about by reading your content
They organized, filed & stored the information about your blog’s pages in their gigantic collection of indexed WebPages
They determine how your page ranks among similar pages on the internet (based on various secret formulas and algorithms).

Why SEO is Important for Blogs or Websites?

Search engines help millions of users per day in their search of answers to their questions. Therefore, in this race of competition SEO has become more important than ever.

SEO helps in meeting the business goals and objectives of your website or blog and growing rapidly.

Search Engine Optimization is essential because:

Most of the search engine users always check the few top suggestions in the Google result pages, so it is very important to optimize your webpages properly and earn more and more visitors for your website, blog or clients for your online store. To get this benefit you need to be in the top position.
SEO is done not only for search engines but it is for website visitors. So good Search Engine Optimization practices can increase the traffic and usability of your website.
Making a website that is keyword-friendly and having its presence in the top positions on Google, Yahoo, Bing etc, which is trusted worldwide increases the web site’s trust.
It is good for the social promotion of your web site. If people like your website after searching it on Google, Bing, Yahoo etc Then they will definitely promote it through Facebook, Twitter or other social media channels and recommend it with their contacts.
So, if you want to be ahead of the websites that are selling the same things as yours, In that case your optimized website will get a lead in the competition over others and make more customers and sales.

Basics of SEO for Beginners

Search Engine Optimization is an effective way which can take your website to the top positions in the search results of Google, Yahoo, Bing or others. It improves your website’s ranking and makes it appear among the top results.

When you perform a search on Google, the results are displayed on the basis of complex algorithms.

On the basis of various factors Google, Yahoo, Bing etc decide which web page should appear on the first place, second place etc.

Therefore, optimized sites will get an advantage over non-optimized website and that will increase your chances of securing a higher rank in results.

As we have already discussed, SEO is the set of rules and processes, not a static process.

It can be divided into 2 main stages:

On-site SEO: What rules to apply on your site to make it search engine friendly

Off-site SEO: How to promote your website or blog so that it can rank better in search results.

On-Site SEO:

It is also known as On Page SEO.

On-page SEO is the exercise of optimizing individual web pages to get better rank and extra relevant visitors in search engines. So On-Page SEO is the process of optimizing content and HTML of a page.

Internet is very big market place. How are you optimizing your website to make your voice heard on internet? It starts with making sure that you have followed on-page SEO basics rules properly to provide excellent performance of your website in search engine and visibility to your audience.

Off-Site SEO:

It is also known as Off Page SEO.

Off-Page SEO is a process of building incoming links to a web site.

But I favor to use the term website promotion instead of link building. So Off-page SEO basics involves plenty greater methods and techniques than just building links.

Incoming links are the important factor to decide position of a web page to appear in Google search result.

Incoming links are the signal of trust and depending upon quality of the links, they can greatly affect the ranking position.

So, back links will affect rank positively If they are coming from well known and trusted sites. Paid links, article directories, link farms etc will affect rank negatively.

Good Content is Important Success Factor for a Blog or Site

Before closing this introduction to search engine optimization make it clear that only SEO cannot help you if you don’t have good content on your web pages.

In other words if you are optimizing a website without excellent content your chances of succeeding are very less.

On the other hand, a website with excellent content can do well even without search engine optimization. SEO will just give the web site an extra boost.

How to get more links?

I am sure that if you search the Internet for this question you will get hundreds of different answers.

In my opinion, you should forget about building links and concentrate on creating good quality content for your web site.

Good content will get you natural links which in turn will give you good rankings and traffic.

Therefore, If you buy links or get them the easy way, you may have a temporary success. And then your web site may disappearing from the top pages after the next Google update.

Search Engine Optimization is a Must for every Blog or Website

To sum it up, Search engine optimization is a technique to optimize your website in the best way possible.

Search engines will understand it better and reward you with higher rankings.

So a good SEO approach can draw plenty of traffic to your website which will fulfilled most of your business goals.

Types of Search Engine Optimization

We can divide SEO into two basic categories: white hat SEO and Black Hat SEO.

What is White Hat SEO?

White Hat SEO is also called Ethical SEO.

In search engine optimization terminology, white hat SEO techniques focus on human readers’ not on search engines.

White hat process completely follows search engine rules and policies.

White Hat technique uses proper keywords, keyword density and keyword analysis.

It also includes back linking from good sites, organic link building to increase link popularity, and writing good and helpful content for human audience.

This technique is mainly used by the people who are making a long-term investment on their website.

What is Black Hat SEO?

Black hat SEO uses the aggressive SEO techniques that focus only on search engines not human readers. It generally does not follow search engines rules and guidelines.

This technique uses unethical methods like keyword stuffing, invisible text, and doorway pages. They also add unrelated keywords to the web page content.

Black hat method is mostly used by the people looking for a fast financial gain rather than a long-term earning on their Web site.

There is a possibility that Black hat techniques can result in Web site ban from Google.

Since the goal is fast high return, Black Hat SEO experts consider that search engine can ban their website.

Conclusion:

You just cannot underestimate the power of Search Engine Optimization when ranking higher is the main priority of your website
You can be visible to more people with the help of optimization, So they can see, hear and appreciate you
Use white hat methods to optimize your website for long term business.
Never compromise with less than the top five positions